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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: June 25th, 2024.
Director: Joseph Velasco/Bing Lin/Chi Lo/To Man-Bo
Cast: Bruce Le, Bolo Yeung, Bruce Li, Ching Li, Bruce Leong, Ching Tang, Lee Hoi Gei
Year: 1978/1975/1977/1979
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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.
For the first part of our coverage, click here.
Here’s the second part of our coverage of this titan of a boxed set.
Disc Three – Enter The Game Of Death / Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death:
Enter The Game Of Death, once again directed by Joseph Kong (Velasco), stars Bruce Le as a guy named Chang, a man who, in the opening sequence, dresses up in that iconic yellow and black track suit from Game Of Death and shows us what he can do with a pair of nunchucks. After smashing a few things, the story proper gets started and.... it's basically Game Of Death, but set around the Second World War.
We see Chang go up against Bolo Yeung and defeat him in a martial arts tournament, after which a mobster, impressed with what we saw on display, offers him a job as his bodyguard. Chang declines and the mobster does not take kindly to this, sending a small squad of henchmen to beat the snot out of Chang. Of course, it doesn't work out so well for them and they learn firsthand just what this guy is capable of.
From here, Chang is hired by the British government to swipe some important papers from the Japanese government for them. Chang isn't into this idea at all, until his cousin is raped by some Japanese guys, at which point he changes his mind. From here, with the basic plot set up, Chang has to fight his way through a series of combatants - a Shaolin monk, a guy who fits with snakes as weapons, an aged martial arts master and then a guy with a beard - each victory getting him one setup closer to finding those papers, and getting revenge against the man that raped his cousin, but of course, before it's all over there's a twist - and more Bolo!
Not nearly as over the top as some of the entries in this set, Enter The Game Of Death is still a fairly entertaining watch, highlighted by the evil snake guy who, once Chang has him cornered, bites the head off of a snake (animal violence warning!) and sprays his opponent with its blood! The fights between Bruce Le and Bolo are also pretty solid, with some good movements and solid action contained therein. The rest of the fights in the movie don’t have quite the same amount of impact but it’s fun to see Bruce Le doing this thing here.
As to Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death, which was released domestically by Aquarius Releasing, it starts off with Strauss' 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' and a montage of photos and clips of Bruce Lee over which a narrator tells us how rad the real Bruce Lee was and how various celebrities really liked him - we even get some interview footage with Karim Abdul-Jabbar talking about working with Bruce. From here we get a brief biography of Bruce and a load of archival photos, showing off his mastery of the various martial arts and the creation of Jeet Kun Do.
From here, we're introduced to Lee Hsaio Lung, a.k.a. Bruce Li, and learn how he was brought on board to finish scenes in a movie that Bruce Lee never finished. At this point, we get an amazing theme song called ‘The King Of Kung Fu’ performed by a group called Candy, playing over footage of Li training to get ready for his work as the new Bruce Lee, eventually getting into a fight in a park with some nogoodniks.
At this point, we're twelve minutes into the movie and there isn't much of as story yet. That changes quickly as it turns out that the producers of the film that recruited Li to play Lee are actually involved in a money laundering operation of some sort. When Bruce realizes that he's been conned, he turns the tables on the producers and sets out to make things right. What Bruce doesn't expect is for the bad guys to abduct his girlfriend, Lu (Mung Ping), and stash her away at the top of a Tower Of Death! Bruce makes his way into the tower and works his way to the top, fighting a new opponoent on each floor - a guy with a head band and some nunchucks, a tall guy with a staff, a big white dude with a beard and an aversion to shirts, an Indian guy with a turban and then a guy in a polyester shirt with a bullwhip named Boss K (Fei Lung).
A movie that kinda-sorta starts out as something akin to a legitimate documentary, the movie soon takes the film-within-a-film concept and runs with it, offering loads of mediocre fight scenes and Li doing his best Lee. Using the archival footage to open the film actually serves as a pretty effective setup for the goofiness to come and there’s a fair bit of unintentional humor on display throughout the movie. The scenes that take place in the Tower Of Death in the last half of the movie are genuinely entertaining, even if they guys that Li as Lee goes up against clearly aren’t going to stand a chance against of fake hero.
Weirdly enough, however, the movie never goes back to the kinda-sorta documentary style that it opens with, and as such, there’s no closer to the ‘This is Lee Hsaio Lung and he’s now Bruce Li the new Bruce Lee’ nonsense that opened the movie. It just sort of ends, kind of like this review of the film – but interestingly enough, this was released before the real Game Of Death!
Disc Four - The Dragon Lives Again / Bruce And The Iron Finger:
OK, deep breaths. Let's give this a shot here... also known as Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu and directed by Chi Lo (the same man who directed Crippled Masters) in 1977, The Dragon Lives Again is absolutely fucking insane. Sorry for the profanity here, but we're all adults, right? It's fucking bonkers. It's also "dedicated to millions who love Bruce Lee" according to the opening.
When the movie begins, Bruce Lee (played by Bruce Leong) has died. His body lies on a slab in a strange room lorded over by a man in a fancy outfit (Ching Tang) and a couple of scantily clad ladies who can't help but notice the massive bulge in dead Bruce's pants. Well, it turns out that this isn't a giant schlong but a pair of nunchucks, but that doesn't stop every lady in this film for wanting to test out Bruce's legendary pork-sabre. At any rate, Bruce is dead but he's not down for the count. See, he's arrived in the underworld and the guy in the fancy outfit is the basically the king of the underworld. Whenever he wants to, he can start massive earthquakes by shaking a pillar in this room. They rouse Bruce from his eternal slumber and note that death causes someone's face to look different, conveniently explaining why Bruce Leong doesn't look all that much like Bruce Lee.
At any rate, after Bruce talks to the king for a bit, he heads out of his chamber to a tavern called The Cool Inn where Popeye (Eric Tsang), Kwai Chang Caine from the Kung Fu TV series and Zatoichi are hanging out. There's also a guy called The Godfather there and Bruce is told straight up that if he messes with The Godfather, he'll have to mess with The Godfather's bodyguards, they of course being James Bond (Alexander Grand) and The Man With No Name (Bobby Canavarro). Bruce ignores this advice and starts some shit and soon finds himself fighting a small army of zombies played by guys in skeleton suits. After getting injured, Bruce is taken care of by a doctor who, after dealing with a talking skeleton, discusses Bruce's dick some more. Bruce, meanwhile, makes it clear that all he wants is to head back to Earth.
At any rate, elsewhere in the underworld, The Godfather is scheming with The Man With No Name, Zatoichi, James Bond and... Emmanuelle (played by someone known only as Jenny) as well as a guy just dubbed The Exorcist who speaks in a French accent for some reason. They know that they need to take care of Bruce Lee before he causes them more problems so they figure they'll bring Dracula (pronounced Dracu-lurr for some reason) and his zombie hordes.
Bruce, at this point, has decided to open a martial arts studio to teach kung fu but not before he runs into The One-Armed Swordsman at a gambling parlor. After Bruce beats up some zombies, the king's perpetually horny queen wants to give Bruce a ride, as do her handmaidens. It seems that the king has been trouble getting it up lately, but this doesn't stop him from eyeing the naked ladies as they bathe together. From here, the king has really loud sex with Emanuelle, who fails in her attempts to screw Bruce (it might have something to do with the weird polka music playing!), and Bruce fights everyone at a rock quarry leading to a finale involving mummies and flying and a whole lot of strangely named specialty moves (a lot of which are named after real Bruce Lee movies) - and at one point, Bruce grows a third leg and kicks Dracula in the balls!
Lots of Brucesploitation films deal in wacky scenarios but this is, by far, the wackiest film in this collection and very definitely a movie that needs your attention. It’s simultaneously a one of a kind movie and a total (and totally inaccurate) rip off of other movies, stealing characters and musical cues from plenty of better known films but at the same time putting its own completely bizarre spin on things. It doesn’t really get any of the ‘famous’ characters right, but it gets an A for effort – who wouldn’t want to see Bruce Lee and Emmanuelle in the same movie with James Bond and Dracula? It never, for a second, makes a damn lick of sense and plenty of things just sort of happen in the movie for no discernible reason, but you can’t help but be riotously entertaining by all of this insanity.
The fights aren’t always very good, but they are at least sort of creative. We see fake Bruce go up against guns and other weapons and it’s fine. It’s more interesting to see him deal with the overall absurdity of the situation, however, and the movie is loaded with goofy dialogue and just…. Wow. I can’t imagine what people who saw this first run in the theater thought of it. Words cannot do it justice.
A little saner is our next feature, Bruce And The Iron Finger or, if you prefer, just plain old The Iron Finger, or if that doesn’t work for you, Bruce Against The Iron Hand, directed by To Man-Bo in 1979 and once again starring Bruce Li.
When the film begins, a guy is walking around the city at night only to run into different guy sporting a mask. They get into a fight for reasons not properly explained, and the guy in the mask kills the guy not in a mask by punching him with his iron finger! Cue the opening credits, and we're off.
From here, we meet a cop named Bruce (played by Bruce Li, of course) who is taking a well-earned vacation and hanging out with some friends. They hit up a local bar and then get some food at which point, one of his pals - the chief of police - tells him that although a lot of crime in the area is done, the murder rate is creeping up. Bruce offers to help but the chief will have none of that, not while Bruce is on vacation! From here, the guys take in a show where a guy named Wong Ki (Yukio Someno) demonstrates how tough and strong he is before challenging anyone from the crowd to come up and try to kick his ass. A guy gets up and is quickly trounced, after which he leaves the bar, and his girlfriend Lulu (Lee Hoi Gei), behind. Lulu, who sports quite the wardrobe in this film, in turns, heads home for the night with Wong Ki where he shows her the kind of kung fu he can do in bed, which she tells him is her favorite kind. What they don't realize is that a mysterious weirdo with an iron hand is watching them through the window and after Wong Ki gets in, gets off and gets out, the iron handed guy kills him!
When Wong Ki is founded killed, poked by iron fingers, Bruce the cop decides that his vacation just isn't important enough and so he leaps into action to try and figure out who is behind these killings and why. Familiar with the iron fingers technique, Bruce wonders if the guy who Wong Ki embarrassed in front of Lulu and the crowd at the bar but he's got a pretty solid alibi. Eventually, Bruce learns about a local martial arts master named Hu Pao (by Ku Feng) who knows the iron fingers technique and has a connection to Lulu. He's also got some weird sexual problems. Bruce decides to chase him down and see what's what, but before doing that gets some help from his pal, Cheung (Bruce Leung).
A bizarre kung-fu/whodunit hybrid that borrows quite liberally from what sure sounds like the soundtrack to Death Wish, Bruce And The Iron Finger is a seriously entreating mix of goofy kung fu movie clichés, mystery movie tropes and seventies exploitation goodness. As a murder mystery, it really isn’t very good but it makes up for that with some pretty cool action set pieces, a wonderfully maniacal killer and the true star of the show, Lulu! She’s not a nice person and is involved in some slimy criminal activity but Lee Hoi Gei vamps it up and steals the show. Ku Feng is also really good here as the bad guy, chewing as much scenery as possible and really giving this one his all. It’s kind of odd seeing a one-time Shaw Brothers A-lister slumming it in a no-budget indie quickie cash-in film like this, but we’re all the better for having him in it.
The fight scenes in this one are solid and the movie is paced pretty well. The finale, set in a yard full of shipping containers, is pretty cool and lets Bruce Li strut his stuff. He moves well here, doing a decent Bruce Lee impersonation and kicking just the right amount of ass doing it. You don’t really have any trouble figuring out where the plot is going but getting there is a pretty fun ride.
The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 – Blu-ray Review:
Enter The Game Of Death and Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death share a 50GB disc and are both framed at 2.35.1 and offered up in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Enter The Game Of Death is transferred from a German 35mm print and it generally looks pretty solid. There’s mild print damage here and there but it’s mostly small white specks and what not, rather than anything more distracting than that. Colors look pretty solid, skin tones are fine and black levels are, if not reference quality, quite good. Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death is taken from a scan of an internegative provided by Aquarius Releasing, it looks really good. Minor print damage will pop up here and there but if you’re not really looking for it, it isn’t that noticeable. Colors and skin tones look quite good and black levels are nice. Neither transfer shows any problematic noise reduction, edge enhancement or compression artifacts.
The Dragon Lives Again and Bruce And The Iron Finger also share a 50GB disc, again, both framed at 2.35.1 and offered up in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. The Dragon Lives Again is taken from a 35mm print supplied by AGFA (the negative exists but it's trashed and has deteriorated to the point of being unusable) and it shows quite a bit of print damage from start to finish. It's watchable and stable but expect some color fading and regular scuffs and scratches. Bruce And The Iron Finger, which is taken from a 35mm print courtesy of a private collector, does show a fair bit of damage. Some scenes from that print were so damaged that they had to instead be sourced from a previous release of the movie so that it could be presented in its complete form. Again, it's watchable enough, but a little dark in spots, especially that opening sequence. Like The Dragon Lives Again, the image is free of any noise reduction or compression issues, always looking like proper film. Even if the elements used for the transfers on this disc are less than ideal, they’re quite an improvement over the old tape-sourced transfers that we’ve seen before.
All four films on these two discs are presented in English language options with 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono and optional subtitles provided in English only. Like the video presentation for these films, the audio is decent enough but imperfect if you’re gauging this against the latest Hollywood blockbuster (and if you are doing that, you’re probably in need of some help). With the elements being as rare as they are and in less than ideal condition, it’s reasonable to expect some hiss, sibilance and occasional distortion. Levels are generally balanced well and the dialogue is usually pretty easy to understand (and when it isn’t, the subtitles come in handy). Range is, of course, limited by what’s available but those familiar with how these films have been treated in the past should be just fine with the audio quality.
Extras are spread out on these two discs as follows:
Disc Three – Enter The Game Of Death / Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death
Enter The Game Of Death gets a partial audio commentary with Michael Worth that talks about how he discovered these movies as a kid while looking for more legitimate Bruce Lee content, the studio backdrop opening so common in various martial arts movies, how the film mixes and matches music from The Bee Gees and various film soundtracks, details on Bruce Le's life and career, seeing the film play theatrically, some of the wonkier plot devices in the film, some of the low budget tricks used by the filmmakers to make things look bigger than they really are, details on the other cast and crew members that worked on the picture, how real cobras and snakes were used and killed during the making of the movie, some of the marketing tactics used to promote the movie and quite a bit more. The partial commentary runs just over forty-two minutes of the film's ninety minute running time.
We also get a scene specific Commentary with Actor Chi Ling Chiu that runs four minutes. He talks about some of the important scenes in the movie, what he feels makes them good, working with Bruce Le, where his scenes were shot and his character. Mostly though, he just sort of laughs a lot of his scene.
Kung Fu Movie Hustle is an interview with Chi Ling Chiu running fifteen minutes. Here, he speaks about how through films Bruce Lee was able to spread kung fu around the world, his own martial arts schools, how he originally learned kung fu to protect himself, his parents, how he wound up appearing in martial arts movies, his father's work with medicine, how he's helped some of his students get into film, how much work it was being on set and thoughts on the current state of martial arts training.
Up next is Talking A Good Game, a roundtable discussion with Martial Artists/Kung Fu Film Experts Tatevik Hunanyan, John Kreng, Ron Strong and Michael Worth. This segment runs just over eleven minutes and covers how they first came to see some of the genuine Bruce Lee movies theatrically and on home video, how the filmmakers managed to get a scene that Lee had written for Game Of Death (the red light scene) into their film, their own experiences seeing some of the Bruceploitation films, how the film compares to the real Game Of Death, the fight choreography and some of the more nonsensical elements in the movies.
Another Severin's Kung Fu Theater With Michael Worth entry and a trail for the feature are also provided.
Frank Djeng, delivers a commentary for Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death with contributions from Chris Poggiali. This track discusses the use of music in the film, the movie's production and release history, the different titles that the film has gone under, the use of documentary footage in the film to sell the movie, details on Bruce Li's life and career, the film's notorious theme song and how it was written by Rebecca De Mornay (!!), details on the supporting cast that appear in the film, Aquarius' Terry Levene and his role in all of this, various ridiculous aspects of the film and some of its fight scenes, the increasing popularity of martial arts around the time that the movie was made, how the movie pulls from the unreleased Game Of Death, where the filmmakers are clearly "winging it," and their thoughts on the different Bruce Lee impersonators.
The Last Kung Fu Picture Show – The Bay Area's Movie Theater Era is a featurette with Djeng, Worth that runs twelve minutes and covers the Chinese and exploitation movie theaters that existed in San Francisco years back and their experiences seeing martial arts movies in some of these theaters. We get a look at the buildings that once housed the theaters and learn about the cultural significance that they had on the city, what it was like seeing these movies with and audience.
Closing out the disc are a Severin's Kung Fu Theater with Worth, twelve minutes of deleted scenes (highlighted by a scene in which our fake Bruce Lee fights a fake Mohammad Ali!), a radio spot for the movie and a theatrical trailer.
Disc Four - The Dragon Lives Again / Bruce And The Iron Finger:
Michael Worth and Frank Djeng offer up a commentary over The Dragon Lives Again that is pretty interesting stuff. They cover the different names that the movie is known under, the constant references to Bruce Lee's dick, the different characters that show up in the movie and how they're portrayed, references to other films both obvious and not so obvious, the fight choreography in the movie, details on the different cast and crew members that worked on the film, the significance of some of the visuals on display in the film and a lot of the details relating to Chinese culture that might be lost on western audiences. They also cover how the movie was basically shot on a soundstage and a single exterior (that being the rock quarry), the film's bizarre sense of humor, some of the idiosyncrasies in terms of logic on display in the film and, of course, the film's absurd ending.
Up next is a selection of seven minutes of deleted scenes from the French version that "fill in a few of the gaps that will not make a lot more sense." Great to see these included here, they really just serve to add to the insanity of it all and hearing it all in French just amplifies that even more.
The disc also includes an audio essay by Cult Cinema Critic 'Lovely Jon' that is essentially another commentary track running for the first forty-one minutes of the movie. He goes over why he's obsessed with the film, the VHS releases that brought these films to a whole new audience, the different sub-genres of the Bruce Lee knock off movie, where the movie occasionally pulls from Lee's real life, the continuing influence of Lee's work in the action movie world, the use of music in the film, thoughts on the different cast members and how the movie remains open to interpretation.
Of course, we also get a Severin's Kung Fu Theater entry with Michael Worth and a trailer for the feature.
Michael Worth flies solo on the commentary for Bruce And The Iron Finger that covers the history of the film's director, the use of music in the movie, thoughts on the different characters in the movie, the use of sex in the film, the use of Bruceploitation elements in the film, the fight scenes in the film, where the movie takes liberties with real martial arts tactics, some of the seedier elements on display in the picture, lots of details on Ku Feng's work, the quality of the wardrobe selections in the film, the locations used for the various fight scenes and his own thoughts about why he really likes this specific movie.
My First Bruceploitation is another roundtable discussion with Martial Artists/Kung Fu Film Experts Tatevik Hunanyan, John Kreng, Ron Strong and Michael Worth. This eleven minute talks about their experiences discovering Bruceploitation movies, the thoughts that they had as they were watching these films for the first time, what they enjoyed about the movies and how something always felt a bit off when compared to the 'real' Bruce Lee movies, audience reactions to seeing these movies in theaters, some of the recurring themes in the Bruceploitation movies, the marketing behind some of the movies and what they like about the various actors that were involved in the films.
Closing out this disc is yet another Severin's Kung Fu Theater With Michael Worth segment, a U.S. trailer and a Hong Kong trailer.
The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 - The Final Word:
Discs three and four of The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1, really up the ante in terms of the madness that was inherent in some of these movies, with The Dragon Lives Again really going all in on the craziness. Once again, the movies look better here than they have on home video in the past and the discs are loaded with extras. Bring on part three!