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Martial arts B-movie stars like Matthias Hues, Loren Avedon, and Richard Norton have gained notoriety through their roles in low-budget films. These underground heavy hitters have appeared in iconic martial arts movies like The King of Kickboxers, Cage, and City Hunter. While some stars, like Billy Blanks and Jeff Speakman, have had success outside of the genre, their careers as B-movie stars still deliver exhilarating action.

There are many martial arts B-movie stars whose work should not go unnoticed by those action films. In the long history of martial arts movies, many of the biggest stars of the genre have become household names, including Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. However, in the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s, many other martial artists have also cultivated sizable followings without making it quite as big as the genre's most well-known stars.

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Roy Horan III, the U.S.-born actor and film executive whose martial arts career flourished in Hong Kong’s Golden Era, has died. The father of Hong Kong-based actor Celina Jade, Horan was 71.

Horan (also known as “Sandy” and sometimes credited as Roy Haron) died on Oct. 12 after hiking and meditating in the hills near Los Angeles. A memorial ceremony will be held in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

After graduation from the University of Rhode Island, Horan began his career as a martial arts student of renowned Korean taekwondo master and popular Hong Kong movie super-villain Hwang Jang-Lee (aka “lord of the super kickers”). He emigrated initially to Taiwan and later to Hong Kong.

In 1975, with Hwang’s help, he broke into Hong Kong film acting with roles in “Bruce Lee’s Deadly Kung Fu” (1977), “Snuff Bottle Connection” (1977) and “The Ring of Death” (1980).

While he missed Bruce Lee, who...