[UPDATED] In Memoriam: Actor, Martial Artist And Director Dennis Ruel
The stunt community suffered a terrible loss on Tuesday this week with the passing of actor, martial artist, teacher, and stunt professional, Dennis Ruel. The actor passed away peacefully in his sleep, according to an Instagram post on Wednesday by friend and confidant Sari Sabella.
Like many in his circle, Ruel, came into fruition with a generation of aspiring action stars creating online content in the early two-thousandsies. In his early onset while teaching, he joined actor and filmmaker Eric Jacobus along with a bevy of Bay Area talents in launching stunt and indie film collective, The Stunt People, galvanizing to revive old school Hong Kong-stylized action fandom. The move ultimately landed Ruel squarely on the genre map in role of the lighting fast martial arts villain “Ticker”, as seen in Jacobus’s 2006 hit action comedy, Contour, which Jacobus re-released for free on his YouTube channel last April. The movie was shot on several locations throughout California, including San Francisco’s The Hapkido Institute where Ruel served as chief instructor until its closure roughly ten years ago.
In 2015, Ruel made his own award-winning feature directorial debut, Unlucky Stars, starring alongside Ken Quitugua, Steven Yu, Sam Hargrave, Sari Sabella, Jose Montesinos and Vlad Rimburg, and featuring cameos by stunt industry stalwarts Simon Rhee (Best Of The Best, Best Of The Best 2), and J.J. Perry (Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation). The film screened for the 2015 edition of the Action On Film Festival with the cast and crew in attendance, joined in momentary celebration by screen legend Richard Norton for the event.
Par for the course, Ruel performed stunts and motion capture, and serviced fight choreography on a number of film, TV, and video game projects; He reteamed with Jacobus for action directing duties on Vasan Bala’s 2018 TIFF martial arts comedy, The Man Who Feels No Pain, and contributed stunts for Jacobus’s SuperAlloy Interactive motion capture label for the release of “Mortal Kombat 1” for NetherRealm Studios. Other professional stunt and screen credits also included Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior 2, supernatural series thriller “Lucifer,” Isaac Florentine’s Close Range, Netflix series “The Guardians Of Justice (Will Save You),” and Claudia Myers’s Above The Shadows to name a few.
Additionally, Ruel collaborated with other creatives over the years to create spectacular conceptual proofs and indie shorts like Micah Brock’s “Johnny Owes,” Haile Lee’s Final Fight fan film, “The Broken Gear,” Rimburg’s “Wild,” Eric Lim’s “The Forge,” and Stephen Reedy’s “The Man From Death”. Ruel also long-frequented partnerships with fellow cohort Montesinos for early webserial projects like “Fivel Throws Down,” “The Deadly Finger,” and “The Winds Of Time,” as well as 2009 feature drama, Owned, and 2013 action drama, Barrio Brawler, with Marco Antonio Alvarez, and Morgan Benoit. Recently in 2023, the pair reconvened to make action comedy proof of concept, “Chico & Rico: Animal Avengers,” which Montesinos released online.
Friends and veteran Stunt People members are paying tribute to Ruel in the wake of his passing on Tuesday.
“.. To know Dennis was to know integrity in human form. He lived by a code of honesty and loyalty that never wavered,” added Sabella in his post. “His laugh could fill a room, and his ability to listen made you feel like the only person in the world who mattered in that moment. Always wanted to be creative and make movies. Ideas flowed through his mind like a river making its way through the mountains. A brilliant mind and a heart of gold.”
“Beyond the stunt work, Dennis would come out and help train and test my black belt candidates,” said Bridger Fox in a direct statement. “He was just a really good dude and super talented martial artist.”
“He was always so good to me,” said filmmaker Jon Truei. “It definitely wasn’t his time either, he had so much left to give.”
“He was the absolute best of our generation,” added Jacobus. “He was like a combo of Hwang Jang Lee and Tupac for us.”
In a storied trubute to Ruel on Instagram, Stunt People cohort Pete Lee described him as “a great teacher” who “moved with purpose and passion,” and who “truly embodied the warrior spirit”.
As it stands, Ruel is precisely one of the many people I thank for inspiring me to start journalizing back in around 2006/07. I had a little start-up on a freehosting site where I began writing about projects like Montesinos’s “The Winds Of Time” webseries and the like. The platform didn’t last very long because my sister’s computer died and recession times didn’t really allow me the funds to acquire a new one or even keep the platform up. Before then, I did make an effort to reach out to Ruel on at least one occassion. I called his cell number at the time and left a voicemail. I never heard back, although my return to writing five years later at Film Combat Syndicate finally brought be back in closer proximity.
Aside from the occasional private message, Ruel and I never really chewed it up until about January 2021 over a video call. Pandemic frustrations be damned, we had a ton of fun, discussing movies, aspirations, and laughing it up, and we messaged each other every now and then when it was relevant to do so.
That year, Ruel even sent me a personal Blu-Ray copy of Unlucky Stars. In an interview we did in 2018, Ruel openly shared a lot of the turmoil he faced with the initial distributor he spent years and a lot of money wrangling his film back into possession. He managed to get the rights back a few years later, and that point on, decided to release his movie for free on YouTube to make it available to anyone who hadn’t seen it yet, instead of restarting a campaign to make another distributor money.
Ruel also talked at great length about his career, and his passion for the indie community. He also revisited hopes of collaborating with Jacobus again for a sequel to Contour at the time, as well to a follow-up to his two online shortfilm installments of “Rope-A-Dope”. He capped off our interview with the following:
“I really appreciate you and all the longtime fans that have followed us since 2005 and I hope everyone understands that we’re doing our best to figure out how to bring our indie spirit into an industry controlled by money and prestige – I refuse to believe that we won’t be able to figure it out and I absolutely will not forget how far we’ve come and that we started with one chip mini-dv cameras, water and power bars on ‘set’…and editing with whatever software came before Adobe Premiere and Final Cut!”
In a seperate interview prior at Kung Fu Kingdom, Ruel expressed hopes of making a sequel to Unlucky Stars with the possibility of casting the aforementioned Norton who himself expressed interest, along with other projects. He also reaffirmed Unlucky Stars as his greatest achievement thusfar having seen it from start to finish. Invariably, Ruel was far from finished living out his dream. Such will be the legacy carried on by many in his circle, and peers alike.
Film Combat Syndicate sends our condolences and heartfelt wishes to past and present members of The Stunt People, and to Ruel’s friends and family for this tragic loss.
Lead image via Pete Lee/Instagram
4.10.25 – 1:50pm EST: A previous version of this article was updated with more information on Ruel’s death, as well as additional quoting.
