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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: June 25th, 2024.
Director: David Gregory/Joseph Velasco
Cast: Bruce Li, Bruce Lei, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee, Jon Benn, Bolo Yeung
Year: 2023/1980/1978
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The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 – Movie Review:
Severin Films has opted to peel back the layers of one of the strangest cult movie movements in the history of cinema with their release of The Game Of Clones – Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1, another one of the label’s massive boxed set editions, this time dedicated to the strange films made to cash-on on the success and subsequent passing of the one and only Bruce Lee.
Disc One – Enter The Clones Of Bruce:
Directed by David Gregory, Enter The Clones Of Bruce Lee documents one of the more unusual phases of exploitation film history, and it does so while being both very informative and also very funny. See, when Bruce Lee passed away at thirty-two years of age on July 20th, 1973, he was at the height of his popularity. Fans wanted more of what Bruce was able to bring to the silver screen, and so some rather enterprising film companies decided to cash in on that using a group of Bruce Lee lookalikes, stock footage inserts and crafty marketing tactics to create what would come to be known as Bruceploitation.
The documentary starts off by giving us some brief context of the Hong Kong film industry around this time, discussing the massive influence of Shaw Brothers’ output and the importance of Lee’s work with Golden Harvest, their main competitor. From there, we get a crash course in Bruce Lee’s life and some of the mystery and controversy surrounding his passing before being introduced to the surviving ‘Clones’ like Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Dragon Lee (born Ryong Keo) and Bruce Leung. These men were recruited to essentially impersonate Bruce Lee in films intended to fool audiences into thinking that they were watching a ‘new’ Bruce Lee movie.
In addition to using the ‘clones,’ these producers and distributors would also sometimes incorporate footage from some of the black and white films Lee made as a child, footage from his funeral or even footage from his work as Kato on The Green Hornet and title the films with Lee’s name in the title or a catch word or two that audiences would connect to the late martial arts master – hence we wind up with films like Enter Three Dragons, Enter The Game Of Death, Goodbye Bruce Lee – His Last Game Of Death, The Dragon Lives Again, Bruce And The Iron Finger, Super Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and lots, lots more.
Some of these movies were fairly traditional martial arts movies, while others were completely absurd. The Clones Of Bruce Lee would introduce bizarre sci-fi elements while The Dragon Lives Again would see ‘Bruce Lee’ fight Popeye and The Man With No Name and even have an encounter with Emanuelle herself! The documentary offers up plenty of pertinent clips and interviews not just with the four ‘Clone’s mentioned but even some of the distributors responsible for putting these movies out there, like Terry Leven from Aquarius and Andre Morgan from Golden Harvest, and directors affiliated with some of these movies, like the mighty Godfrey Ho. We also get insight form David Yeung (Bolo's son!), the great Angela Mao, Ron Van Clief, Eric Tsang, Wang Dao, the mysterious Mars, Sammo Hung and quite a few others, in addition to experts there to offer some important and valuable context. We also find out what’s happened to these actors since the Bruceploitation wave has died off, and how the Hong Kong film industry itself has changed over the decades since these movies were made.
It’s a very well-made picture with great pacing, really strong editing (courtesy of none other than Douglas Buck!) and strong production values and it’s the perfect primer for the rest of what is contained in this ridiculously comprehensive boxed set.
Speaking of which…
Disc Two – The Clones Of Bruce Lee / Enter Three Dragons:
Bruce Le, Bruce Lai, and Dragon Lee star in the amazingly inept The Clones Of Bruce Lee, also known as Cobra Warriors, a film that finds a scientist played by named Professor Lucas (played by Jon Benn of Return Of The Dragon for an extra layer of Bruceiness!) solving the problem left by Bruce Lee’s untimely passing. Deep in his wonky dime store laboratory, complete with flashing lights and plenty of dials, he creates three clones of Bruce Lee and he names them, oddly enough, Bruce 1 (Dragon Lee), Bruce 2 (Bruce Le), and Bruce 3 (Bruce Lai). See, he was savvy enough to draw a vial of Bruce Lee’s blood before he was buried, so this is totally sound on a scientific level. The professor puts some metal in their heads so that only he can control them, and sends them off to a martial arts trainer (played by Bolo Yeung, star of Enter The Dragon and a zillion other fun movies) for some serious martial arts training. You’d think if they were clones of Bruce Lee they wouldn’t need serious martial arts training, but apparently Bolo has a thing or two to show these clones.
From here, the clones carry out the scientist’s missions for the ‘Special Bureau Of Investigations,’ lead by Colonel Colin (Andy Hannah), with Bruce 1 sent to take down a film producer involved in a gold smuggling racket and Bruces 2 and 3 off to Thailand to take out a meet a guy named Chuck (played by Bruce Thai, who also looks like Bruce Lee!?!) who help them taken down Dr. Ngai who is running an illegal drug operation. Then they hang out on a beach with some naked ladies.
Once these missions are complete, however, he decides that he doesn’t really need three Bruce Lee’s after all, and that one will suffice. Lucas wants to make sure he gets the best one, however, and he decides that the best way to figure out which one is the best is to make them fight to the death – you can’t really argue with that logic! Will the sexy nurses that work for the scientist save the Bruces or will they be forced by Lucas’ evil mind control devices to kill each other in the ultimate battle for Bruce Lee knock off supremacy?
This movie, shot in both Hong Kong and South Korea, is amazingly bad, but in all the right ways. An exercise in over the top ridiculousness right from the start, it’s got everything you could ever want: Bruce Lee clones, Bolo Yeung, random naked women, lasers, mad scientists, and covert ops. None of it makes a lick of sense (this will be a recurring theme throughout this boxed set!), but when all of these elements come together in one movie, that is irrelevant. This movie would go really well with a bottle of whiskey. Not just a glass, but an entire bottle.
Directed by Joseph Kong Hung (also known as Joseph Velasco) with none other than Godfrey Ho serving as the assistant director, and featuring some remarkably mediocre fight choreography from Bruce Le, the movie is a blast if you’re in the right frame of mind for it. Seeing our three Bruce Lee impersonators do their best work trying to impersonate the legend with varying degrees of success is amusing enough, each man sporting dark aviator shades and yelping a lot, and there’s enough completely gratuitous nudity in here to keep things perky (Boobsploitation and Bruceploitation – two great tastes that taste great together!). The real treat, however, is getting to see them all act alongside one another and eventually fight each other – that aspect of the movie is genuinely ambitious and seriously cool. The acting is awful but it sort of needs to be for this to work the way that it does (Benn might be asleep during parts of the film), but the pacing is pretty solid and there’s so much rampant stupidity crammed into this one that you can’t help but love it. And check out that extra crass use of footage from Lee’s funeral and dig that very familiar sounding music! Oh, and we get an army of bronze men to contend with as well. Magic!
Up next is Enter Three Dragons, also known as Dragon On Fire, once again directed by Joseph Kong, a film that makes The Clones Of Bruce Lee seem coherent by comparison. It opens with a poorly lit scene where a guy named Sammy (Samuel Wells) gets into trouble when some diamonds he's transporting get stolen. This lands Sammy in hot water with his boss.
Thankfully for Sammy, his pal Dragon Hong (Bruce Lai) has just arrived in town and is more than happy to help him out. His other pal, Min Young (Nick Cheung), is also willing to chip in and help them take care of business. Elsewhere, a guy named Bruce Hong (Dragon Lee) is running about and getting into fights with a loan shark, but then there's a guy named Dragon Yeung (Bruce Thai) involved who is often mistaken from Dragon Hong. Bruce Hong is Dragon Hong's brother.
Anyway, Sammy and the three Bruce/Dragon guys eventually team up to fight the bad guys, led by Phillip Ko, but not before consulting with a Buddhist month who discourages pacifism and encourages Bruce Hong to kick the shit out of people who are giving him a hard time. When Min's cute sister gets kidnapped by the bad guys, it's a race against time to save her but then Bolo Yeung shows up, everybody fights and occasionally things happen in weird Benny Hill style super fast motion to goofy music.
The last fifteen minutes is basically one giant fight scene and the story is really, really difficult to follow, but Enter Three Dragons, while not as wacky or bread-laden as the first movie on the disc, is still a pretty entertaining watch. If you go into this accepting the fact that it isn’t going to make much sense from a narrative perspective and just appreciate it for the dumb exploitation movie (and I sincerely use that as a term of endearment), you can have a lot of fun with it.
Dragon Lee and Bolo Yeung are the scene stealers here. Dragon Lee yelps and scowls his way through the majority of the film, flexing a lot for no obvious reason and delivering all sorts of punches and kicks with a pretty solid Bruce Lee-esque wail behind it all. Bolo is just Bolo, the guy is seriously intimidating even when he’s appearing in a movie as goofy as this one, and the man dubbed the ‘Chinese Hercules’ (and who seems to be allergic to shirts no matter what film he’s in!) struts his freakishly muscular stuff in this one with plenty of cartilage cracking swagger. It’s also fun to see Phillip Ko (complete with flower in his hair to make him look older than he was when the movie was made) show up here, with the actor who got his start working at Shaw Brothers before starring in countless Golden Harvest and independent productions after leaving the studio, making for a solid choice for the villain. Bruce Lai and Bruce Thai are also in pretty fine form here, but they don’t quite bring the enthusiasm to their Brucey roles that Dragon Lee does, so he gets to take home the prize.
Ultimately, Enter Three Dragons is an incompressible but somehow very entertaining mix of decent action scenes, screwy characters, completely inappropriate and unnecessary comedy and martial arts movie clichés that, despite or maybe in spite of, it’s many and obvious flaws is totally worth seeing.
The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 – Blu-ray Review:
Enter The Clones Of Bruce Lee is framed at 1.78.1 widescreen in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer on a 50GB disc. The new material is all shot digitally and it looks as clean, crisp and colorful as you’d expect a recent project to look. The various archival sources used throughout the movie vary in quality, with some looking pristine and others looking a little rough around the edges but that’s how it goes with a documentary that culls from various sources, some of them in less than perfect condition. The disc is authored well, there aren’t any compression problems. Really, it all looks just fine.
The Clones Of Bruce Lee and Enter Three Dragons share the same 50GB disc and are presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition, both framed at 2.35.1 widescreen. Clones Of Bruce Lee is taken from two 35mm prints, one from Germany and another from Italy, while Enter Three Dragons is taken from an interpositive supplied by Transcontinental. Film elements for these movies are tough to come by, so don’t expect pristine presentations but despite some softness creating a slightly smoother than normal looking image, the picture quality for both films is pretty solid. Yes, there is damage here and there – scratches and white specks – but it isn’t especially distracting at all. Colors look good, if sometimes a little faded, while skin tones and black levels fair pretty well. There aren’t any compression or edge enhancement issues and those used to seeing these films on various ‘public domain’ DVD editions and crummy old tape-sourced transfers will, no doubt, be quite pleased with how they’ve turned out here.
The only audio option for the documentary is a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo mix, in English, with optional subtitles provided in English, French and Chinese. Audio quality is on par with the video quality, in that the new material sounds crisp, clean and properly balanced while some of the archival material has some audible hiss alongside some pops here and there. Again, it’s perfectly listenable and par for the course given the many different sources used for the feature.
Audio for The Clones Of Bruce Lee and Enter Three Dragons is offered up in 24-bit DTS-HD Mono, again with optional subtitles in English. Both films, which are presented in their English dubbed versions (which, let’s face it, just adds to their wonky charms), sound decent enough. The audio is, for the most part, pretty clean though you might pick up on some sibilance here and there. Levels are well-balanced and the dialogue is always pretty easy to follow and understand. Range is, of course, limited by the elements but the movies sound fine.
Disc One – Enter The Clones Of Bruce:
Extra features kick off with an audio commentary with Co-Executive Producer/Director David Gregory, Co-Producers Frank Djeng, Vivian Wong and Michael Worth, and Director Of Photography Jim Kunz that covers a whole lot of ground. They go over why they included a 'very brief recap' of martial arts cinema and the life of Bruce Lee to start the movie, how they came across some behind the scene footage of Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires to use in the opening sequence, challenges involved in editing the picture, getting the different interviewees involved in the production, finding the different locations featured in the documentary, how they all met and came to work together on this movie after collaborating on the Kung Fu Trailers Of Fury DVD trailer compilation release, where all the different clips were taken from, what it was like shooting in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, how difficult it is to find film elements for many of these movies, memories of and stories about shooting some of the different interview segments, tracking Angela Mao down at her restaurant in Queens, how Mars was kind enough to drive the crew home after the interview, problems that arose during the shoot and loads more. It's a really interesting talk that does a great job of explaining what went into getting this documentary made.
Up next is a nineteen minute featurette called Working At Shaw Brothers, which is made up of outtakes from the interviews that were conducted for the documentary. Godfrey Ho talks about getting his start at the studio rather than going to film school, working with Chang Cheh and Chor Yuen, what it was like working at the studio and the differences between working for the Shaws and the independents. David Chiang talks about how he got into acting and how he started with the studio, learning martial arts, what he learned at the studio and from Chang Cheh and why he feels these movies hold up. Yasuaki Kurata covers how he came from Japan to work for the Shaws in Hong Konga and getting along with Lau Kar-Leung, while Lee Chiu talks about learning martials arts, joining up with Shaw Brothers, different people that he collabroed with, the specifics of his training and how the industry has changed in the region. Lo Meng talks about his love of kung fu movies and the Shaw stars, getting into acting, working with Chang Cheh, his training and how nervous he was at first and some of the movies he worked on at the studio.
Bruce Lee And I is a selection of outtakes running twenty-four minutes. Eric Stsang, Roy Horan, Godfrey Ho, Mars, Le Meng, Yasuaki Kurata Lee Tso Nam, Angela Mao, David Yeung, Sammo Hung, Andre Morgan, Eric Tsang, Casanova Wong and Philip Ko all discuss their thoughts on what Bruce Lee meant to them, the importance of his place in Hong Kong and world cinema, his influence on martial arts films and action films in general, how he basically saved Golden Harvest, his screen presence, what it was like working with Bruce Lee, what made him unique compared to other martial arts stars, his ability to always look good in front of the camera, how he dealt with stuntmen, learning of his passing and the legacy he leaves behind.
The Lost World Of Kung Fu Film Negatives is sixteen minutes of outtakes with Lee Chui, David Chiang, Philip Ko, Joseph Lai, Lee Tso Nam, Angela Mao, Roy Horan, film preservationist Stephane Derderian, Casanova Wong and 35mm film collector Emmanuel Rossi. They go over why so many kung fu movie negatives have been lost over the years, film preservation efforts in Hong Kong, the historical importance of these movies, having to shoot sequences without monitors or digital cameras, having to do scenes in one take, the lack of policy regarding the distributors and their elements, why elements were discarded or treated so poorly, how differences between western film industries and the Hong Kong film industry came into play and why it remains important to preserve these films.
Bruce's Hong Kong is a location tour with Frank Djeng that runs twenty-seven minutes. Here get a look at how the locations featured in some of these movies appear in those films compared to how they look now in modern day Hong Kong. We also get a look at the crumbling Shaw Studios buildings, sadly now in very poor condition and rumored to be turned into condos soon, as well as some of the temples, city locations, streets and businesses featured in various Bruce Lee films - we even get to check out the island featured in Enter The Dragon, Bruce Lee's home, since torn down in 2019, and some of the more important theaters in Hong Kong and quite a bit more. It's really interesting stuff and Tseng not only knows his stuff, but proves to be a very enthusiastic tour guide.
Finishing up the extras is a ninety second Severin's Kung Fu Theater intro with Michael Worth and a trio of trailers for the feature.
Disc Two – The Clones Of Bruce Lee / Enter Three Dragons:
Extras for The Clones Of Bruce Lee begin with an audio commentary with Michael Worth and Frank Djeng, who are joined by Bruce Lee Historian Brandon Bentley, author Chris Poggiali, Matthew Whitaker of The Clones Cast, Action Film Historian Mike Leeder, Stunt Coordinator/Author John Kreng and Rick Benn, the brother of Actor Jon T. Benn. It's a very active track with Worth essentially serving as the ringleader here, bringing Rick Benn into the talk and getting him to discuss his brother's work, how they lived in Hong Kong together and how he wound up getting into film, his own work in the tech industry before Silicone Valley existed, the use of actual footage of Bruce Lee used in the movie, his brother's education and background and more. Ten minutes in, Frank Djeng takes over, discussing the different alternate titles that the movie is known under and the different cuts that exist, the film's release history, details on the different Bruce Lee impersonators in the movie as well as the other cast members and more. Brandon Bentley takes over at the eighteen minute mark, discussing the film's history and details of the cast and crew that worked on it, how the film connects to other Bruceploitation movies and some of the details of the sets used for the movie clearly meant to make it look like it was shot outside, artwork for the film and plenty of other details. From there, Poggiali and Whitaker take over and discuss the film, sharing their thoughts on some of the more absurd moments in the movie, the use nudity in the film, the differences between the different Bruce clones, some of the wardrobe choices, the fight choreography and plenty more. Whitaker is swapped out for Leeder around the fifty-four minute mark and discusses with Worth the different Bruces and their characters, some of the more riduclous plot elements, the use of the bronze men in the film, how the clone movies were much more widely seen than a lot of people realize and how much ridiculous fun this movie is. John Kreng and Djeng are up next, with Worth, talking about Jon Benn's career, the screenwriting that went into the script, the camerawork in the movie and how it captures the fight choreography and the use of stuntmen in the film among other things. Last up is Poggiali, who joins Worth to talk about the film's American theatrical release courtesy of Newport Releasing, different theaters that played the film, how the movie was marketed in America, when and why Linda Lee filed law suits over different Bruceploitation productions that use her late husband's image, Newport's connection to Hallmark and why the name changed and how the film has been received over the years. This track is a really good mix of humor and insight.
The Big Boss Remembered is an interview with actor Jon T. Benn where he speaks for just under seventeen minutes about his life and times, getting drafted and not wanting to go to Vietnam, going to language school in California, how he wound up travelling to various countries and winding up in Asia and then Hong Kong specifically in an era where the Triads where very active. He talks about meeting Raymond Chow and getting under contract at Golden Harvest, meeting and working with Bruce Lee, not having a script of storyboard to work off of on The Way Of The Dragon and different memories of the shoot. He also talks about meeting Chuck Norris, his memories of Bruce Lee's death, how he wound up appearing in Clones Of Bruce Lee, why he felt the movie was ridiculous, his appreciation of all the naked ladies in the movie, dealing with his own health issues and how much he appreciates people having an interest in his film work. Benn passed away thirty days after this was shot in 2018, so it's a very somber piece but also quite interesting.
Finishing things up is another Severin's Kung Fu Theater entry with Michael Worth and a trailer for the feature.
Extras for Enter Three Dragons are limited to a Severin's Kung Fu Theater intro with Worth (where we learn that Neal Adams did the original poster art for the movie!) and a trailer for the feature.
The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 - The Final Word:
The first two discs in The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 are a monumental achievement in cinematic insanity. The documentary is a fantastic primer and the two features on the second disc riotously entertaining examples of how much fun Bruceploitation films can be. Throw in loads of extras that provide context and important background details on the films’ history and it should be obvious to anyone with an appreciation for the more exploitative side of martial arts films that these are very definitely worth adding to your collection.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 Blu-ray screen caps!
