Part of this movie’s infamy is derived in how the film makers or distributors somehow thought it was a good idea to include Bruce Lee in the title and have him with some shoddy lightning effects occur as a blurry Bruce Lee impersonator pops up from a fake looking grave. The “jumpscare” type of leap barely is given a second of frame time before the title flashes on the screen. But it’s quite clear that whoever jumped out was no Bruce Lee and not even a Bruce Lee impersonator.

Yet as cheap of a gimmick as that intro was, nothing can prepare one for the absolute dreadfulness of this god awful picture. First, the picture quality itself is grainy and looks to have been film on someone’s home recorder. In turn, that cheap appearance makes the bulk of this film nearly indiscernible and at the same level as Manos: The Hands of Fate, despite that Manos was made 10 years before on a shoestring budget by a fertilizer salesman. And that’s merely the start of the issues here.

The people involved in this film are practically nobodies that accomplished nothing except Kosugi Sho, who might’ve been either desperate for a paycheck (or maybe even a free lunch at the soup kitchen) or in need of any kind of film credit to get into the business (this apparently was his 2nd listed film he was involved in as per IMDB). Otherwise, the best way to describe this cast is the “who’s that?” of the martial arts genre.

The lead himself is some goofball named Chong Jun, who plays Han Wook (Han Solo + Wookie???). This guy has the charisma of a pencil sharpener if the pencils were made duller after insertion. His character makes absolutely no sense in this film as he arrives in LA apparently and gets himself into a variety of trouble while bearing some poster of someone. Before that happens, apparently he trains in martial arts in South Korea (because of the flag on the back of a uniform) with someone else. Neither person are immediately identified and one guy complains about money.

Han shows up at some spot that lacks any detail but I presume it’s supposed to be where he delivers an urn of his friend/mentor’s ashes. Afterwards, he decides to get super drunk at a bar then into a fight with some random black guy. Then he’s apprehended by the police somehow and gets released by a benefactor. Thus far, we have no idea whom this guy is as his identity has yet to be formally revealed. But this is how the story goes as he just wanders around, has no money apparently (but enough to take a plane flight out to LA and enough to get a taxi) and ends up in random fights because why the hell not.

As he leaves the police station, a fancy car pulls up and he’s requested to get in. A woman (who really isn’t good looking but was probably the best the producers could find) sits in the back and takes Han to some guy’s home. One would assume this person is responsible for posting Han’s bail. The man asks a job for Han politely enough but Han flat out refuses merely because he didn’t like the way the man asked. I swear this Han guy is a real piece of work. The thing is that we don’t even know why anyone would want to deal with him. In this case, why would this gangster-like boss character bother with Han? Nothing is established about Han outside of him being a shitty martial artists and that he’s just wandering around with some stupid picture around his neck in LA. We’ve got some real competition to the illogical scenes in Manos right here.

The movie transitions to a random woman walking through a massive albeit completely dead parking lot. When she goes into her car, an assailant appears in the rear to try and assault her. She runs through this massive, population-less parking lot as this guy chases her. As opposed to screaming and running through the most open area, she zigzags through cars to try and escape this guy (take that Rickon fans who insisted that Rickon should zigzag!) Somehow, she manages to lose the guy and circle around back to her car. Of course, that guy is waiting back in her car and proceeds to rape her. Naturally, the only result is for our hero Han to rescue her.

They end up on some high tower that doesn’t look like anywhere in LA. The girl (Susan) gives him some diatribe about nothing being free in America. This miserable discourse turns to the image of the guy on the picture where Han asks what she knows about the guy. Apparently, this person was some wealthy business person who committed suicide. I guess he was so famous everyone in this country ought to have known about him because we all read the paper back then. Han thinks that there was no reason for the guy to commit suicide. As she’s about to reveal what she knows, a bizarre smoking figure appears in the distance. In what looked like a blooper, Han rans after the guy but knocks into his luggage. It’s hard to say if that was intended because this film is beyond rotten. But when he looks back up the guy is gone, leaving only a burnt out cigar. Afterwards, Susan takes Han to her cafe where she works as a waitress.

At the cafe, Susan gives the background story of the rich dead guy, despite the fact she’s dressed in her waitress uniform, taking a long break and giving Han free coffee. One of the more interesting parts here is that she worked at the Turkish bath part of the gymnasium, implying she was doing Soapland-like prostitution to pay for her college tuition. It’s at this point where I think the film makers were just filling things in as they went because there’s no reason why Han should have randomly shown up to find Susan in the parking lot. But by revealing her connection to this rich dead guy, the plot makes a tiny amount of sense, even though they never really try to explicitly connect why Han was searching for Susan in the first place. Also, the dialog in the coffee shop is worse than the “how’s your sex life?” part from The Room because at least The Room is funny and Greg Sestero isn’t a bad actor as opposed to the coma inducing lines being blandly read by the dubbers here. The only thing remotely humorous about this movie is completely accidental because of how bad it is.

At any rate, Han gets some information on the people involved in this weird conspiracy/murder/whatever you want to call this bullshit and decides to continue hunting them down, despite having no money, no connections and no real means to locate them. For absolutely no logical reason, Susan decides to follow him outside at the risk of her waitress job, which gets conveniently ignored and apparently allows unlimited PTO.

In turn, Susan takes him to her place, which I guess is rented from some people who not around. There was zero reason to add that detail because none of that would come into play, much like the “I got the test results back; I definitely have cancer” line from Lisa’s mother in The Room that went nowhere. Out of nowhere, Han wants to teach Susan martial arts but she wants even more coffee (how much fucking caffeine is she on anyway???) while he gets milk (for an Asian???? I guess lactose intolerance wasn’t a thing back then).

After having their little drinks, he proceeds to instruct her (rather poorly) in the martial un-arts. Of course, the choreography isn’t even close to the level of a Bruce Lee much less the lowest of the impersonators but she manages to knock this joker down. She tries to pay him for the lesson but he refuses and asks for a different type of payment where he leads her into the bedroom. Duh duh duh! Nope, no sex scene. Instead, he continues to make inquiries about the boring people he’s seeking and he denies staying inside with her, preferring to go on the streets.

Now, before I continue let me say that the first 8 minutes alone was a real slog to get to. I’m sure flying to the center of the galaxy with the Pinto Susan drives in this movie seem faster than the pace of this will sapping film. By the 30 minute mark (which is where I paused here), I had to stop because my brain felt as though Bruce Lee did, indeed, return from the dead and start punching my skull in. I took at least one nap during this film and I’m sure that within the nap, I took another nap from comatose-like levels of energy this thing produced.

The day after, Susan goes outside to find Han on her car. She accuses him of sleeping on the park bench and sadly nothing actually happened, meaning this chode actually slept outside like some homeless person. Oddly, his clothes are pristine and Susan does not once wince at this guy stinking since it’s clear he probably hadn’t showered since departing his home country.

Either way, Han requests that she take him to the Chinatown in LA. He gets into a minor fight with some random person standing outside a building that Han probably had never seen in his life. He goes to see the boss of this joint and gets taken inside after beating the pimp in broad daylight. Susan follows him despite seeing that Han is obviously a very violent person and that he’s involved in some sort of a strange racket.

An imperceptible encounter follows where you can’t see shit because they use some dark filter, transmogrifying the already grainy picture into crayon-like blurs. But in this encounter, Susan gets hurt and Han applies acupuncture to heal her. How, where and why he knows acupuncture is anyone’s guess but it’s one of his billion randomly provided skills in this movie that only shows up when it’s convenient.

Once Susan is healed, she wakes up and cries in Han’s arms. I mean, her acting is about on par with the mother’s from Manos: The Hands of Fate here; just wretched, overdramatic and the dubbing does her absolutely no favors in the most cringy dialog possible. But Susan effectively is shown as this whiny, willowy figure right after “learning” some martial arts. So what was the point of all that in the first place? Also, as they hold one another, that creepy smoking guy (Korean Cancer Man?) is outside observing without their knowledge.

When Susan is about to go back to her job (which one????), she gives Han some money, acknowledging the fact that he has nothing in America. Han takes the money and promises to pay her back. The first thing I shouted here was, “How??????” What’s this jackass going to do? Rob a bank? Work at a male strip club? Star in a gay pr0n movie? I mean, he’s got no skills outside of shitty martial arts so how does he ever expect to pay her back?

As she works, Han stands around and watches a parade. Later at night as she’s waiting to meet with Han, Susan gets ambushed by another random kidnapper. Korean Cancer Man appears smoking in the shadows which causes the kidnapper to pull out some chain whip weapon while Susan escapes. She meets Han again as he tells her that the car was towed. Like WTF is this shit? I honestly believe that the film makers were so stupid that this probably happened during the shoot. There really is no rhyme nor reason to why anything happens in this Godforsaken movie.

They end up at some car lot and meet Cal Worthington and his dog Spot with the “Pussy Cow Pussy Cow Pussy Cow” jingo. Okay, that didn’t happen but I wish it did because at least it would’ve picked up the pace for this abomination. They end up selecting a camper of all things to do their version of Breaking Bad before it debuts 50+ years later. Okay, maybe not exactly like that but we’ll see that drugs are involved in this movie (probably not just as part of the plot) When they go back home, they hallucinate (actually not from drugs) that some person is inside and Han attacks nothing. Susan goes bad melodrama with him and they sleep on the floor.

Then a Japanese dude shows up. A confusing conversation occurs between Han and the Japanese dude (actually Kosugi Sho) and they fight. To be honest, Kosugi Sho’s fight is probably the only thing worth watching in this trainwreck. He uses a katana (how’d he get that there?) and some nunchucks type of weapons. Unfortunately, he jobs out to this Roomba charisma sucking, talentless shmuck. Anytime, Han goes on offense here it’s done with multiple takes and bad camera effects to make him look like he can do anything credible. Worse yet he makes insufferable Bruce Lee noises where you only could pray that Bruce Lee would suddenly manifest from the ground and beat the living fuck out this turdball for daring to be anything like him.

They go to the race track to search for someone I don’t care about because I’ve lost track of any details and Susan gets kidnapped yet again. You would think that by now Susan might take a hint and either fly to the opposite side of the country, detach himself from this loser and/or call the police. But I guess that’s why she has the lowly job of a waitress. I shouldn’t say that because we did get Sarah Conner, who had a similar disposition but ended up becoming a super bad ass leader of the freedom resistance against Skynet. It just goes to show in the hands of amateurs, some people in charge should really just be working in a diner rather than making films.

More fights continue along as Han seeks out Susan and rescues her. He goes to some gym where a big fat guy and him get into it. It sucks and just looks like a jobber match on some indy pro-wrestling show with no fans so I tune out. The tie the fat guy out and go to some remote, desert location. Their camper is parked there and Han runs to investigate it where some cowboy called Mark comes out with a rifle.

At this point, I’m screaming for this idiot to shoot Han. I’m really rooting for the bad guys to end this painful endeavor as I’m bored, frustrated beyond belief and wanting something different to occur. Instead, Han leaps in the sky and flies behind the fat guy, threatening to kill the fat guy if Mark does anything. So this is probably the only interesting twist in the story, if you want to call it that where Mark just shoots the blob dead. It’s so shocking even Han is surprised by this. And Susan melodramatically turns her head.

In the worst dubbing of a cowboy accent, Mark says something along the lines of “Now, hand over the drugs or I’ll kiuuuelll you.” It’s so bad I couldn’t stop laughing. Han and Mark have a little fight where Mark is aiming at both Han and Susan. The gun gets knocked out of his hands so they race to grab it. Mark picks up the gun and Han leaps to the sky again and deliver a shitty looking kick to the face but not in time to prevent Mark from pulling the trigger and killing Susan. Mark gets emotional over Susan’s demise then takes one of the cars in a road rage up the sand dunes where a bunch of drugs and money are buried. This ignorant putz taste the powder even though it’s pretty obvious it’s an illicit substance.

Suddenly, a guy in a trench coat appears. It’s none other than the man in the picture that Han was carrying around. Of course, he’s the ultimate bad guy in all of this and explains his machinations like every villain does, which still makes no sense to me because of how convoluted and bad this movie has been. That leads to the final boss fight where he actually beats the fuck out of Han. Han is nearly knocked unconscious and he’s about to pummel him with a stone but gets shot as Korean Cancer Man shows up in the nick of time along with the police. Han gets scared and hightails it as the surround the area. The black cop at the station gives the Korean Cancer Man a handshake and tell Han that he was under surveillance by the FBI the entire time. They offer him a medal but Han is too depressed over Susan’s death to accept.

But what a shit show. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to any martial arts film ever produced. Han doesn’t even look remotely like Bruce Lee and the plot has nothing to do with someone coming out of a grave beyond the few frames shot at the beginning of the movie. The only thing relevant with regards to the title about anyone fighting from death is the ultimate bad guy.

The plot itself is barely coherent and it almost seems as though things were being written on the fly. I’ve read how one review on IMDB described this as low budget, but I call this no budget. I’m certain that all of the LA shots were done gorilla style as there’s no way in hell the so-called production company could’ve afforded a permit. I mean if Chang Cheh and the Shaw Brothers couldn’t get one for Fu Sheng for The Chinatown Kid, what hope does this low class studio have?

One of the funnier things that came to me as I’m watching this is how the movie was filmed in LA (apparently) with a moderate sized non-Asian cast. Yet it was still dubbed. So I’m wondering how the actors without the dubbing would’ve sounded in the first place. A good chunk of the dialog makes The Room almost sound like Chaucer or Shakespeare while the “acting” was competitive to a play put on by kindergartners.

But watching this is more effective than taking propofol. The only way I was able to barrel through to the end was by putting on a few Mahjong games to demonstrate the sheer struggle to stay awake as this menace to society played on my side screen. The first time I made a major pause and saw that I was only 8 minutes in, I knew I would have an extended night ahead of me. By the 30 minute mark, I honestly thought about tapping out as the penultimate version of a sleeper hold had taken grasp of me (or perhaps this was more like a chokehold because I could barely breathe in between shouting and getting knocked unconscious).

Now, one would ask, why would you even bother attempting to put yourself through torture worse than waterboarding? The answer is quite simple: I have this masochistic need to endure the Bruceploitation genre. Most times, these Bruce Lee impersonator type of movies are at the least entertaining. Bruce Li, for instance, is someone I considered a worthy successor to Bruce Lee and made a few decent films that were very watchable while Dragon Lee is someone I would consider a guilty pleasure because he’s highly entertaining for his mannerisms.

With Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave, it’s more of the novelty of having said I’ve seen it to figure out where it belongs in the genre. It is one of those curiosities that exist because some jackass decided to cut in a few shots at the beginning then attaching Bruce Lee as part of the title to export this piece of garbage outside of Korea. Apparently, the alternate titles suggest a different movie where it’s also called Visitor of America. The problem is that the movie has no context for anything and it merely stumbles its way towards an ending. You don’t really get invested into the characters because they’re either bland, stupid or annoying (or all three). And the movie does a poor job of introducing people such as the main character whose name isn’t shown until 20 or so minutes in.

That all said, there’s absolutely zero reason to check out this movie outside of morbid curiosity. This movie has zero significance in the scheme of things but merely demonstrates how a bad movie can be exported using a few cheap tricks to make people think it has any relevance at all especially to Bruce Lee.

The post Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (1976) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Despite the oddly placed ominous overture from The Black Hole, Blood Brothers is more like a combination of The Godfather and The Blood Brothers. Believe it or not, there actually is a plot to this that doesn’t involve constant fighting and there is some character development. As a result, I found this movie to be reasonably watchable. But let’s get into the premise. Chen Kuan-Tai and Don Tao play two street thug type of characters who swore a blood oath, even though they aren’t actually related in this movie. The work at a casino for a shady boss who has them influence customers to bet in a certain manner.

However, Chen Kuan-Tai becomes greedy and overconfident in believing that a lucky turtle roll will win and bets a bunch of money their boss entrusts to them. Don Tao is the more level headed of the two and attempts to discourage his blood brother from placing down a bet neither can pay off. Naturally, they lose and figure on escaping. Their boss tracks them down and has them beaten up but they manage to escape and split up. From there, the story mostly follows Chen Kuan-Tai’s path as he tries to live a normal life.

Chen Kuan-Tai shows up at a brothel looking for muscle. Immediately, he is smitten by a young girl cleaning the floors but is admonished by the owner to avoid falling in love. Nonetheless, she hires him. The brothel tries to sell a new young virgin who turns out to be the young cleaning girl to a rough character. She’s forced to spend time with him. While that occurs, the owner receives additional payments from other customers to watch this live pr0n studio in action. Eventually, Chen Kuan-Tai can no longer stand hearing the cries of the young girl and rescues her. Of course, he’s fired but it’s clear that wasn’t a place for him to work anyway.

The young girl and he stay together at a kind couple’s home where they rent out a small room. Oddly, Chen Kuan-Tai tells the couple that the young lady is his sister but the couple aid them in various ways such as providing food and giving them work. Chen Kuan-Tai works with the husband of the home doing loading work at the docks. The town’s head honcho struts around but is a high target for his status against rival gangs. A sniper on a nearby boat makes an attempt for the boss’ life and Chen Kuan-Tai dives to save the man. In turn, the boss (played by Chan Sing) is grateful and gives Chen Kuan-Tai a gold pocket watch and makes an offer to employ him. However, Chen Kuan-Tai is content at his current job (and probably doesn’t want to get involved with the mob) so he humbly denies the request.

As Chen Kuan-Tai’s life normalizes, he and the young girl adopt the couple as surrogate and the couple encourage the pair to marry (they conveniently forgot the part about the two being siblings). In turn, they hold a private wedding ceremony. During the ceremony, Chen Kuan-Tai’s old boss (Peng Gang) learns of his location and decides to pay the family an inconvenient visit. The parents are murdered and his bride is almost raped but dies (suicide?). Chen Kuan-Tai attempts a futile comeback but he’s beat up gratuitously. Soon the cops arrive and find Chen Kuan-Tai still alive, taking him to the hospital.

At the hospital, the police attempt to figure out what happened and determine Chen Kuan-Tai’s identity because he’s wrapped up almost like a mummy. At this point, his old buddy Don Tao walks in and unveils that he now has taken up a career as a cop. He immediately knows the nearly obliterated friend but cannot get a response. However, he believes it’s Peng Gang who is responsible and swears to help his friend.

When Don Tao returns to visit his friend, he discovers that Chen Kuan-Tai has somehow checked himself out but leaves the illustration of a turtle, which confirms his identity to Don Tao given that it was the fatal symbol that started his downfall. However, Chen Kuan-Tai has other plans as he approaches Chen Sing’s lair and shows the gifted pocket watch. This time he accepts the original offer to work for Chen Sing and ask to help gain revenge against the murderous Peng Gang.

Peng Gang is at a pool hall where his members are shot up and Chen Kuan-Tai has the equivalent of a kung fu style pro-wrestling bullrope match where he gains revenge. From there, Chen Kuan-Tai’s position rapidly rises in Chen Sing’s organization as he participates in various underworld activities with a great deal of success. He ends up taking on high priced courtesan as part of his reward.

Thereafter, the gang works with a corrupt government official to deal with an opium trader and a rival gang. Chen Kuan-Tai proposes a better plan which helps increase the gang’s profits and furthers his standing in the organization. However, the police from Shanghai are onto them along with a rival gang boss. Don Tao accompanies this new group to confront Chen Sing as the gang rivalry heats up.

Chen Sing is assassinated at a live performance, setting up a funeral where both the rival gang show up along with the cops. Without a leader in place, Chen Kuan-Tai’s gang selected a new leader. He does not wish for the position and it’s given to the next experienced person. However, there is a growing schism within the organization where the other heads want to retaliate and they enact a hit against the rival gang and cops.

Chen Kuan-Tai heads down to aid his blood brother but gets hit in the shoulder (how the fuck this guy isn’t dead is a mystery in itself). He lets his Don Tao out but decides that the situation needs a resolution. He calls the other gangs to meetup to resolve the issue where he forms a special committee headed by himself to avoid the other gangs’ risking their assets. He wants to make the business legitimate in establishing this new business but is still under the suspicion of the police.

Don Tao’s boss (a foreigner) demands that Don Tao take the case and confronts his friend but Chen Kuan-Tai believes that he can legitimize these various operations under his new corporation. One of the underbosses running a prostitution ring gets caught by the police and later targeted for assassination by the more ambitious members of the organization. Little by little the old empire crumbles as the members are killed off. Soon it’s Chen Kuan-Tai’s turn as the rival gang seeks to control over the area. They kidnap Chen Kuan-Tai’s girlfriend, leading him to team with his old friend to take down the remaining rival gang. A terrible bike and car chase happens where the rival gang boss is killed. Of course, Chen Kuan-Tai is heavily beat up but says he’s going to survive while the police show up at the last minute.

You can see the heavy influence from Coppola’s movie had here. Chen Sing effectively is similar to the more honorable Vito Corleone while Chen Kuan-Tai is similar to Michael Corleone. I mean, Chen Kuan-Tai’s girlfriend gets brutally murdered/raped which sets off his vengeful mood. Also, the idea of legitimizing Chen Sing’s operations was similar to Michael Corleone’s goal with the Corleone empire. Also, Lung Fei plays the internal betrayer who gets overlooked much like Fredo, which leads him to frustration.

Because this movie is a clear copycat of The Godfather I and parts of II, the plot is reasonably coherent as far as a martial arts movie can be in this period. Don Tao’s character is the main odd man out in that there’s no real corresponding character in The Godfather series. But he does provide for a side character and moral anchor point that Chen Kuan-Tai can come back to later in the movie. The problem is that he’s pretty bland here where his main characteristic is that he “has no vices.”

Oddly, there’s not that many major fights in this movie compared to other movies that use any excuse to inject a kung fu movie (* cough * The Clones of Bruce Lee * cough *). I would argue that the fights themselves lack anything spectacular given the talent involved. There are quite a few recognizable names/faces in this film but the focus really isn’t on the fighting. However, some of the action sequences become downright outrageous such as the various motorcycle chase scenes. Probably, the most egregious is Chen Kuan-Tai having near infinite hit points. In one scene, he goes under a truck and survives getting nearly run over. Even if Chen Kuan-Tai can sell pain, it’s ridiculous on how he manages to survive everything in this movie.

The movie itself isn’t necessarily boring and it doesn’t overwhelm you with fight scenes to keep the plot moving along. So I liked how things would slow down and breathe a little to develop. I did think some of the violence was overbearing just like the action scenes themselves. Chen Kuan-Tai’s brutal beating was gratuitous and close to Robocop minus having his arm blown off. Because of how gratuitous those scenes became, I honestly preferred the non-action portions better.

As a stand alone movie/in isolation, it’s not a terrible movie. They did use The Black Hole theme a few times as well as another theme (maybe the hospital one?) which was humorous to me. But when you think when it was made and the various movies that came before it, Blood Brothers simply reminds you of being a cheap knock off. The main novelty was seeing Chen Kuan-Tai and Don Tao acting together. If you want to see a better movie, check out Chen Kuan-Tai’s The Blood Brothers, which is far stronger and more interesting with better character and plot development.

The post Blood Brothers (1982) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

This episode was more of the tragic ending for Ray Traylor, who probably most people growing up in the late 80s/early 90s watching the WWF knew as The Big Boss Man. For me, I got to see him with Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express in ’86 during his NWA years. He was such a great figure back then as this silent, intimidating bodyguard character for Jim Cornette, who could get involved in a match when the time called. They touched briefly on his involvement with the two infamous Skywalker/scaffold matches involving the Midnight Express and the Road Warriors the later the Rock n Roll Express with the story about how he missed catching Jim Cornette. Since I didn’t have cable back then, I only knew about the scaffold matches either through magazines or clips on the weekend TV programs.

They show how Ray Traylor would transition to the WWF in the late 80s where Vince McMahon learned about Traylor’s background as a correction’s officer, leading to Traylor’s most famous run as The Big Boss Man. His size and quickness allowed him to feud with the still popular Hulk Hogan in a period where Hogan was on top and could still wrestle reasonably well. The main clip used was the superplex off the top of a cage that The Big Boss Man was able to pull off, which people considered incredibly impressive for both men to do especially at their size.

Gradually, The Big Boss Man would become a babyface, having major feuds with people like Curt Hennig (aka Mr. Perfect), the Mountie (Jack Rougeau, who actually dressed up in his full Mountie gimmick here) and later Nailz (Kevin Kelly). They didn’t mentioned the Nailz feud (probably because it was awful) but did manage to bring up the one with The Mountie. Of course, in asking Jack Rougeau if he really was a Mountie, he answered, “No, but I was a real jerk.” That was for a good laugh.

One part conveniently did not mention was Ray Traylor going to Japan for All Japan Pro-Wrestling in ’93 for a short stint. According to his Wiki page, Traylor would be called Big Bubba, just like his NWA name and was used more heavily in tag team matches and tournaments.

Afterwards, he returned to the renamed WCW promotion as just The Boss. He suffered through various gimmicks because the WWF, of course, owned The Big Boss Man name. And while that fanbase did still know him as Big Bubba, WCW and their general lack of creativity kept giving bad gimmicks until he eventually landed on his real name. He did have a few high profile matches and even joined the NWO. But simply as Ray Traylor, he lost his oomph and faded more to the background as the roster filled up with bigger names. The show did fail to mention that instance of him as being part of the NWO but I suppose in the scheme of things it would simply demonstrate how little he meant to people like Eric Bischoff later on.

From there, he would return to the WWF during the Attitude Era as an upgraded version of the Big Boss Man, using a swat team type of uniform and serve as Vince McMahon’s bodyguard in the Corporation. Here’s where my history of Ray Traylor severely becomes hampered as I hated this period of wrestling. All the stupid crap Russo was putting on during this period are things I try to put out of my mind. They showed the hanging moment, the chair shot, a stupid dog food moment (where Al Snow was fed his own dog). It was just horrendous.

But let me comment here about something Al Snow said that infuriates me. He talked about that segment with the dog food situation and said, “Pro-wrestling can be anything you want it to be.” That’s more modern wrestling gibberish. That line of thought is why pro-wrestling sucks so horribly right now because people think you can make it into anything. Because of that we have stupid schlock like that gay ghoul on the WWE, for which I’m boycotting as long as he’s on. It’s just all stuff done in bad taste, which Al Snow did admit. But this stuff has turned pro-wrestling into such a horrible joke that it’s almost in a state of no return.

Around this period though, the damage started to accumulate and the effects seemed to become more apparent at home. They did mention the soma drugs, which seemed to be on the rise sometime during the mid 90s that would help block off some of the pain. Since Ray Traylor wasn’t a known party type, this was a situation that would gradually spell the end for him as he became addicted and his physical well being would spiral out of control like other wrestlers from around this time. One doctor was named here that I think got arrested and the daughter effectively labeled as a drug pusher (which I do believe; the difference is that as a doctor, he would seem more legitimate and be able to legally get away with things).

Another thing that affected Ray Traylor mentioned here was his friend Curt Hennig’s demise that only occurred about a year before his own passing. The wife mentioned discovering Ray’s body downstairs but being unable to administer help, which was attempted by the daughter who studied CPR. There is some survivors guilt here but the family did manage to move on.

One thing I will mention is that I have to wonder whether the increase of somas and painkillers were a thing from the harder style that started to spring up from the mid 90s onward or whether this situation would be inevitable given the differences in physiques compared to earlier stars. The one thing is that Ray Traylor was never a real muscular type but it does seem that the Attitude Era with the harder style might’ve accelerated the use of pain medication and somas. They did say that his condition was hereditary though as he did die of a heart attack. It seems that the incident was fairly common with those people around that period.

At any rate, this was more of a tragedy of this character/person. For the most part, Ray Traylor’s life seemed pretty decent in that he wasn’t a troublemaker and considered a pretty decent person, who was a great family man. The dark parts were more about the change in pro-wrestling landscape that he got caught up in but saw as a necessity to continue caring for his family.

The post Dark Side of the Ring the Big Boss Man Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Ha Kwong-Li plays Lo Ling Chi whose husband is escorting something on police/government business when they are ambushed by a group of thugs. One of the bandits takes Lo Ling Chi to the side and does the unmentionable while her husband is massacred. Afterwards, she recovers at a temple and begs the head female monk to teach her kung fu once she learns that the lady has the capability. Because Buddhism preaches against violence, the female monk attempts to discourage Li Ling Chi from her path but Li Ling Chi counters that evil still needs to be countered.

In turn, the female monk accepts Li Ling Chi as her pupil where Li Ling Chi undergoes rigorous training to build up her strength with exercises that you would see in other training montages like carrying water, breaking bamboo, etc. Yet her determination for revenge is her chief motivator here where she overlooks the suffering she must endure.

The bandits themselves plot to lay low since the police are watching and that they have competition that despises them. Despite collecting the loot, they have a difficult time fencing it and decide to slowly sell it as antiques while letting the heat slowly die down on them. But the main boss is your typical white haired bad guy type. Quite honestly, I didn’t recognize him but you, of course, have to realize if the guy has white hair and a lengthy fu-manchu mustache, he must be a bad ass of sorts.

The training montage continues but first Li Ling Chi is taught to temper her anger and swear never to use kung fu for evil. Eventually, the female monk challenges Li Ling Chi and determines that she is ready to return to the world. However, she continues to emphasize the lessons of peace, despite how the memories of her encounter with the bandits would haunt her forever. With a shorter hair cut, Li Ling Chi leaves the temple in disguise as a young man.

Her first encounter is with another group of highway robbers where some officer gets assaulted. Li Ling Chi almost immediately defies the “no killing” rule and stabs one of the guys to death. The other two clowns hobble off while she tries to save the dying officer. Although he doesn’t make it, the officer gives his last wish to inform his captain of the names of the bandits. In turn, she takes his body back to the police and receives the bigger picture of just whom these bandits are. She requests to join up with the police and go undercover, revealing her real identity as a female.

In the town, she hunts thugs encountering some low grade criminals and beats them up while helping out a fatso (he’s actually called Fatso by everyone and I will too from here on out). In saving Fatso, Li Ling Chi makes a bargain with him by getting a free room at where he’s working in exchange for some lessons in kung fu. The place she’s at is run by one of the mini bosses who nearly recognizes Li Ling Chi. But apparently all these people have rotten eyes for not being able to distinguish that this is a girl even though she’s clearly wearing lipstick. Nevertheless, the mini boss allows her to stay on the condition she doesn’t make trouble.

Naturally, that means Li Ling Chi is going to be a little nosy in searching the home as a ninja. The mini boss miraculously hears a disturbance and attacks her. She escapes back to her room with Fatso and they both deny anything happening. Luckily, Fatso is loyal to her and reveals nothing to the mini boss. The following day the people train at the site as another mini boss appears. Li Ling Chi recognizes a medallion he’s bearing but does not think he’s the one that raped her. Nonetheless, we learn this guy is the mini boss’ nephew and is suspicious of Li Ling Chi, warning his uncle that the police man that got robbed previously was part of a failed mission. This puts the two on high alert. Fatso overhears them plotting and warns Li Ling Chi, who tells Fatso to get out but promising she will eventually reveal everything once the situation is cleared.

Li Ling Chi ambushes one of the robbers but the nephew is there waiting for her. They have a fight where Li Ling Chi cripples the nephew and gets the robber to reveal the location of the nephew’s father, who gave the son the pendant. She lures the father out to a distant location and tries to get him to reveal the identities of the other men. Of course, a fighter proceeds where she not only cripples him but crushes his larynx.

Back at the uncle’s home, he and the man that raped Li Ling Chi discuss the strange recent occurrences as well as the main boss’ orders to remain passive. The rapist (considered the brains of the group) goes to a brothel while above Li Ling Chi spies upon them. She follows the brains guy to the brothel and learns that he has a special inclination for a girl called Orchid. At the same time, another woman begins following Li Ling Chi around from the shadows.

In the morning, Li Ling Chi awaits at the uncle’s courtyard with a pair of mini spears and bereft of her disguise. She challenges the uncle and gains her revenge. It’s interesting to note here how her mini spears could be combined to form a double spear. Also, Ha Kwong-Li used a similar type of weapon in Shaolin Invincible Sticks. After disarming the uncle, Ha Kwong-Li uses her Dragon Fist to disable the guy and again crush his larynx.

Later, Li Ling Chi goes back into disguise to speak with Orchid to get the identity of the brains mini boss as her circle of vengeance continues. Part of what she learns from Orchid is that this guy served as her doctor and is an expert at acupuncture. At the big boss’ HQ, he’s practicing a style called the Double Strike. The brains/doctor mini boss and him chat about the recent killings but the main boss reveals that the girl is onto them and has figured out much about her. He gets the doctor mini boss to go back to the brothel to deal with her.

At the brothel, the doctor mini boss requests for new girls while Li Ling Chi waits as a new worker there. She goes to see him now disguised as one of the prostitutes working there (of course, this gives her the opportunity to dress up nicely). The doctor though is ready for Li Ling Chi and delivers a needle that disables her right arm. Before she can pull it out though, he informs her that prematurely removing it would cause paralysis. This allows him to beat her up until the mysterious woman shows up to defend her. The mysterious woman demonstrates that she too knows the Double Style and threatens to kill the doctor if he doesn’t back off. However, she has a limp so she can’t fight at 100%.

A small flashback showing the partial origin story of the big boss where he exhibits his nefarious traits in murdering a master who had been his teacher. The teacher also is this mysterious woman’s father. The big boss breaks her leg here while the teacher fends him off so she can escape.

The pair formulate plan to defeat the big boss, which involves Li Ling Chi mastering the mysterious woman’s various techniques, including her kicking technique (which is actually Ha Kwong-Li’s real style). So we have the second set of training sequences, which are actually far more impressive than the first ones because we get to see Li Ling Chi power up through some really brutally designed exercises. One major difference between the training here and other training montages is that her new teacher is very supportive. Most times when you have the teacher-student relationship, it’s more abusive even though over time the teacher gradually gains respect for the student as the student progresses. I think this is one of those rarer instances that show how one can act as a positive reinforcement but still remain demanding and effective.

One thing the female teacher reveals to Li Ling Chi is the weakness of the Double style where Li Ling Chi can defeat the user by aiming for the crotch to kill him. They discuss their future plans where Li Ling Chi wishes to eventually open a gym with her newfound friend but the creepy doctor character shows up with his men. Li Ling Chi gets the doctor creep to submit and confess who ordered the assault, which in agreement she would spare life. The conniving doctor tries another trick with a needle but Li Ling Chi counters and snaps his neck.

That draws out the big boss who applauds their effort since he probably wanted to eliminate the goof anyway. The final fight is mostly Li Ling Chi against him and it’s mostly impressive when she’s on offense. The female teacher does get involved at some point to help Li Ling Chi out but the surprise to me was that the aforementioned crotch shot is never delivered. Instead, Li Ling Chi uses her invented move of climbing up some ropes to discombobulate the evil boss then deliver numerous overhead kicks to give this guy some bad CTC before a final kick knocks him down cold.

So for me this movie in all likelihood is Ha Kwong-Li’s best effort as it really an epic that features her. She has another movie called The Leg Fighters that is impressive when she’s involved. However, there’s a really annoying sidekick that makes me hate that movie. Also, she comes off more entitled there whereas in The Woman Avenger, she has a very clear cut purpose. My favorite movie of hers though remains Shaolin Invincible Sticks, although she’s positioned more as a side character.

Nonetheless, this movie was fairly enjoyable as one of those independent movies. The pacing is decent and it doesn’t drag. The villains are pretty much one sided characters but I think that’s by design so that when Li Ling Chi is taking revenge, there’s no sympathy towards them. Compared to the recent kung fu movies I’ve reviewed, I will state that I thought the action was far better. Part of that is because I am biased towards Ha Kwong-Li as I think she’s one of the best early martial arts females around, only second to Kara Hui. But not only is she pretty but her moves are insane because of her incredible flexibility. And while she does perform her sets of rolls and tumbles, they don’t feel as egregious compared to the usual Taiwanese acrobatics stuff because she combines her moves with hard hitting kicks and impressive flexibility. Lastly, I think Ha Kwong-Li is quite charming and here she gets to play a few roles beyond her bad ass female fighter form.

The post The Woman Avenger (1980) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Enter Three Dragons (as I will call it here) is certainly a Bruceploitation movie that isn’t as tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek compared to the more infamous The Clones of Bruce Lee. As I mentioned, this movie utilizes three Bruce Lee impersonator types as a kind of hook and even a not-so-subtle plot device that causes confusion both for the audience and some of the characters in the movie. But I think that part somewhat helps make this movie more interesting than it deserves.

The movie starts out in a very dark setting presumably in some random back alley where Samuel Walls, creatively named Sammy here, an African American martial arts person, gets ambushed over some diamonds. Sammy seems like a shady character and that goes into playing how he works himself into this barely coherent plot. Effectively though, this ambush causes him to be blamed over the diamonds, which in these more modern films can be substituted for drugs, prostitution, money laundering or some other cheap underground, nefarious affair that require the police to investigate.

After this beat down, we actually get a neat little 60’s/70’s pr0n music introduction with the night life in either Hong Kong or Taiwan. I honestly really like these types of shots because they certainly have a nostalgic/atmospheric quality to them that give these movies a little bit of personality compared to the typically bland scenery of a studio set or some far off country side location that has no context except for permitting outrageous fights.

From there we encounter fake Bruce Lee #1 (for this movie) played by a guy named Francis Kwok Si-Chi, someone who played another fake Bruce Lee (or Bruce Lee 3) in The Clones of Bruce Lee (albeit not very well as he jobs out to a random laser blast; but I suppose he’s still better than Chuck or Bruce Thai, who gets almost nothing in that movie). He’s arriving at an airport in a Bruce Lee stylized red tank top, rice bowl haircut and dark sunglasses. Note for the entire duration of this honestly wretched movie, he’s dressed in this manner. Accompanying him is comedy figure To Siu-Ming. To Siu-Ming is a fairly recognizable figure in the kung fu drama as he has a twisted eye and usually plays a goofball. Here, he’s no different. which means you get a rather annoying person filling up time. But in a way his goofiness/stupidity is actually part of the plot as you’ll see shortly.

At the airport as well is yet the other main Bruce Lee impersonator here Jang Il-Do. Unlike the other impersonators, I would argue this guy had more of a normal filming or kung fu career than the bulk of the impersonators. For this film, they just had him grow his hair out a lot more, make mean Bruce faces and occasionally wear sunglasses as well as the signature white wife beater. We don’t know this character’s purpose as he leaves the airport but his appearance may seem confusing to the audience since we just witnessed the other Bruce lookalike exiting.

Rounding out these is an ill placed Nick Cheung, who arguably, is the real star of the movie (or at least half). He has a sister and the fake Bruce (Dragon) shows up at his home with the goof. He calls Dragon “cousin” and inquires about his kung fu but oddly doesn’t question the person’s identity. Likewise, this Dragon character doesn’t repudiate his own identity nor wonder whom these people are.

The other fake Bruce Lee/Dragon somehow manages to wonder on foot all the way from that major airport down to a loading dock by the sea. Why he goes there of all places is a total mystery except that we know it’s so he can get into a fight to demonstrate he knows kung fu. In turn, one of the men who gets his ass kicked survives to report his findings to the main boss of the movie, Philip Ko. Philip Ko is also one of the action/martial arts directors here but he’s at the very least an excellent villain and generally has good to very good fight scenes worth watching. So I do become more intrigued to see where this movie is leading.

Instead, we get another scene of Nick and Sammy randomly encountering each other. They have some nearly indecipherable dialog that, of course, leads to another fight (can you see a pattern in these kung fu movies?????) fake Dragon shows up to prevent them from fighting. Then at some bar/den, they discuss plans about a name that I do not recognize, probably the diamond smuggler character. Fake Dragon poses and pretends he’s Bruce but he gets slammed by Sammy (try saying that a few dozen times) saying his kung fu sucks effectively and finally they figure out this guy isn’t the real Dragon.  Now, why on earth didn’t anyone determine this at the start besides that goofy side kick character?

Speaking of the goofy side kick character, he shows up again with the fake Dragon. They encounter a loan shark who threatens the goofball by telling him he’s going to strip him until he receives $700. The fake Dragon does a few shitty moves but they run off before everyone can figure out just how bad of a fake Bruce Lee this joker is. As the loan shark chases the pair, he encounters another guy who has similar attire to the fake Dragon running and assumes it’s the fake Dragon. Naturally, this turns out to be the real Dragon, who proceeds to kick his ass and send him literally running off in a Daffy Duck-like fashion.

The movie slows down to a snails pace once again because we’re forced to endure the dialog of Nick Cheung and his sister. Both realize just how idiotic they are and talk about dreaming as well as the confusion surrounding Sammy and the fake Dragon. It’s established that Sammy and Nick Cheung are friends in this movie, despite nearly trying to kill each other earlier but that Sammy had asked the real Dragon to aid him. Then it’s revealed that Dragon has a half brother, played by none other than the pet project himself, Dragon Lee.

Dragon Lee gets a pro-wrestling kind of entrance where the Midnight Express theme plays as he’s practicing kung fu in some mountainous region. After seeing Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee and listening to Dragon Lee’s explanation for things, I suspect that Dragon Lee only was used sporadically in this movie because it probably was his first movie outside of Korea and that he most likely had limited Chinese skills. His hkmdb profile indicates that this might’ve been his second movie ever made and that he manages to get top billing, despite barely appearing in this movie at all. Methinks that Godfrey Ho probably was assigned to film Dragon Lee’s parts, which maybe how they formed some sort of working relationship. But again this is all my hypothesis.

At any rate, after the segue, we get back to the main plot where Nick Cheung and Dragon meet finally. The air is cleared up on the two Dragons’ names. The “real” Dragon asks where the other guy is and Nick replies, “Somewhere.” Like WTF man? You just dropped this poor fucker who probably has no idea where he is, why he’s around or what he’s doing? It just makes me think everyone in the movie is of unexceptional low intelligence. At any rate, this gives Nick and Dragon a chance to, you guessed it, have a practice fight. On top of that, Dragon is dressed in Bruce Lee’s famous yellow striped jogging suit to further prove that the film makers were shameless in their Bruceploitation motives.

Dragon, Sammy and Nick have a heart-to-heart and try to figure out how to get Sammy out of this mess. On the other hand, fake Dragon goes for a walk on a night in town. He stumbles across a topless bar that doesn’t show any topless women. Also, he’s still dressed up as a shitty imitator Bruce. He looks for some woman called Kathy (why the non-Chinese names?) and approaches a woman in the lounge area threateningly. Alexander, who also appears in The Clones of Bruce Lee, is probably some pimp/bouncer and takes interest in this fake but he gets punted (very poorly) to the ground by this lame impersonator.

To increase the RNGesus of appearances in this movie, we arrive at some gym where Dragon Lee is practicing. Alexander and another guy, who looks like a poor man’s Luke Skywalker, manifest and challenge Dragon Lee, which is absolutely the most futile thing to do. So you can conjecture the finality of these two jokers. Not oddly, these two would return in The Clones of Bruce Lee so I suspect that many of these people just figured on working together again later on to maximize their Bruceploitation prowess.

Then in even more nonsensical non sequitur, Philip Ko decides to find a few of these people. At some river bed, he encounters Nick Cheung and has a fight where Nick admits, “You’re really good.” Guess, Philip Ko had to get that in as the action director. For whatever reason, Nick is allowed to live so that Philip Ko can go on to fight Dragon, who also survives the encounter. Philip Ko continues to brag with his assistant glazing him.

Next, Dragon Lee shows up at some massive mansion kind of spot where that goof apparently lives. Just as Dragon Lee appears, the idiotic loan shark and an assistant show up to try and collect from the goof. Of course, this gives Dragon Lee the opportunity for a comedic Bruce Lee style ass kicking. Also, this presents a chance for Dragon Lee to meet Nick and clarify his relationship as well as the identity of the two Dragons.

Business picks up as Philip Ko decides to capture the sister and the fake Dragon. The fake Dragon gets lamely clubbed over the head by the loan shark and is tied up at Philip Ko’s estate. They shove an orange in his mouth for good measure. Also, Sammy contacts Chiang Tao, who apparently is a boss of an operation that Sammy got involved with in terms of the diamonds. One of Philip Ko’s assistants spies on Chiang Tao’s phone conversation and plots to kill Chiang Tao secretly.

Another comedic scene occurs with the loan shark finally catching the goofball and stripping him naked. The goofball goes back to the household wearing a large cardboard box. Nick and Dragon are there and the goofball learns that he’s simply an idiot because of not recognizing the difference in names nor faces. So if you were still confused about the two Dragons, this is the moment where it’s demonstrated how you’re an equal moron to the goofball for this ridiculous plot.

Sammy gets ambushed by Philip Ko’s men. He’s accompanied by some guy named “Georgie,” whom I doubt we had met in this movie until this point. But he’s been used by the sub boss to lure Sammy into this trap so that we get another prolonged fight. Also, apparently that loan shark is part of this criminal operation (maybe to make it convenient?) Dragon and Nick show up to help Sammy but I think the rando friends jobs out after he gets to make his cameo to receive a payday.

While the good guys get distracted, the sister gets kidnapped at night. The guys return and figure out what happened. Sammy blames himself and decides to try and meet Chiang Tao in the mountain where he “practices kung fu once a month.” Sammy tells Chiang Tao the real deal about the diamonds and I guess for once Chiang Tao isn’t the main villain or even a sub villain in a movie.

For whatever reason, Nick and Dragon Lee show up at a Buddhist temple. They speak with some monk who talks about fighting, why to fight and violence. If there was a moral here, it’s kinda wasted just because the movie has nothing but nonstop fights, corrupt people and a desire for serious ass kicking. So this injection made no sense outside of bad pacing. Eventually, Chiang Tao meets the other sub bosses and a variety of heel-face-heel turns occur all at once, leading to a Game of Thrones type of “Valar Morghulis” scenario that almost everyone gets killed, including a sub-sub-sub boss by Philip Ko, now that he’s secured the diamonds (because why leave jabronies around when you can have it all?)

The three main heroes start to plot on a rescue operation. Sammy actually comes up with the plan since he’s been in cahoots with the evildoers. There’s a gratuitous 7-up and Coke in movie ad (btw a LOT of 7-up drinking here) before in movie ads really started to becoming annoying and prevalent. While his friends sleep, Sammy decides to go on his own to infiltrate the big boss’ spot at night. In turn, he encounters Bolo Yeung and barely survives the encounter. His friends wake up and immediately see that Sammy has gone off.

To continue this off putting pacing, we go back to the Buddhist temple where Dragon Lee prays and undergoes more philosophical dribble with the monk. The loan shark makes one more attempt at the goof and Dragon Lee saves his ass and reveals where the others have gone off to. Sammy is shown badly injured as Dragon and Nick discover him. But pretty much that’s the last of Sammy we’ll see for the movie and we have no idea what his fate would be.

The other two invade Philip Ko’s home and split up. Dragon fights with Bolo to avenge Sammy while Nick fights an underboss and rescues his sister and the fake Dragon. Nick tells fake Dragon to take his sister back so that Nick can fight el big boss. But that pretty much ends the sister and fake Dragon’s story.

An exceptionally long and drawn out fight occur where Dragon and Nick take on Philip Ko. While I do enjoy Philip Ko, neither Nick nor Dragon are skilled nor interesting enough to make me think they’ll win this fight because we still have Dragon Lee who is slowly coming up. Philip Ko gives Nick a nasty throat injury so that Dragon has to chase after Philip Ko for a 1v1 scenario.

However, in another cameo, Lee Hoi-Sang manifest for the first time in the movie to fight Dragon Lee. As you may recall, Lee Hoi-Sang plays that Iron Head guy in Mad Mad Kung Fu. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a hard head in this movie and has the unfortunate fate of meeting Dragon Lee, whose sole purpose is to kick everyone’s asses and no sell virtually everything to look super badass. Of course, Lee Hoi-Sang is no match for Dragon Lee’s wannabe Bruce Lee impersonation act so he jobs in an embarrassing manner. Nick shows up to tell Dragon Lee where his brother is.

In an actual instance of not in the nick of time (pun partly intended), Dragon Lee shows up to witness his brother getting slaughtered by Philip Ko. I guess Dragon wasn’t Bruce Lee enough to avoid jobbing here. Dragon Lee is super pissed and goes into full Bruce Lee impersonator mode, which means Philip Ko stands zero chance of doing much except get a gratuitous ass whoopin’. Dragon Lee’s dub gets a great moment where he screams, “You killed my BRUDDAAAAAHHHHH!”

Poor Philip Ko has already had his ass beaten by two other guys so his defenses are down, which allows Dragon Lee to smash him apart. Philip Ko does manage to get a few decent blows in, including a major scratch on Dragon Lee. But that only serves to increase Dragon Lee’s pissed off state. Dragon Lee asks, “What other styles can you do?” for which Philip Ko replies, “I can do the Devil’s Palm.” We get a great line from Dragon Lee where he says, “This time the devil will get exercised” (maybe referring back to the Buddhist temple portions?). Dragon Lee flexes and does a series of backflip kicks and flies up to land on Philip Ko’s neck and twists his legs so that Philip Ko can do his signature blood puke spot to end the movie.

But what a mess of a movie. I think they tried to make this plot extra complex by dumping the various clones in place. Dragon Lee is billed as the top star in this movie but he mostly seems like a background character until the end. Most of the plot is moved forward by Nick Cheung and Sammy. While Sammy is a novel character (because he’s a black guy in a kung fu movie), Nick Cheung simply does nothing for me. He’s kinda there, sucking up my interest with his black hole of a personality. Likewise the other Dragon can only do a mean Bruce Lee face. While he might be a legitimate martial artist, he simply lacks any screen magnetism especially once Dragon Lee shows up.

Part of the other problem in this movie is that the pace is very uneven where you have sudden fight scenes for no good reason other than to have them interjected almost randomly. Then once we’re back to the core plot of the diamonds, Sammy and Nick, the movie drags like molasses. None of the characters are intelligent except perhaps Philip Ko as he’s the only one scheming and manages to secure the diamonds (which never gets resolved in terms of their fate after all this hassle). The plot might seem straight forward but I think the various turns and reveals just muddy the pacing and potentially confuse the audience. Also, the relationship between the Dragons is equally troublesome because of how easily the characters can’t themselves can’t figure out whom the right person to deal with is.

Besides, the 70s type of scenery and occasional pr0n music, the only real reason to catch this movie is to watch Dragon Lee and possibly Philip Ko. I’m certain that the agenda of this movie was to get Dragon Lee over to a Chinese and/or international audience. At the same time, I don’t think he may have had good language skills so his interactions were limited just like his dialog. Unfortunately, that put more pressure on giving additional screen time to Nick Cheung, whom I simply don’t care for as someone who should be anywhere near a leading role. Also, the encounter (aka main event) between Philip Ko and Dragon Lee felt really anti-climatic since Philip Ko spent too much time dealing with Nick and the other Dragon. Once Dragon Lee and Philip Ko locked up, Philip Ko was already beaten up and barely could do much against Dragon Lee. That probably was by design but it left me feeling that Dragon Lee wasn’t necessarily the superior martial artist to Philip Ko because he “cheated”.

Then there’s the various comedy elements in this movie. To Siu-Ming possibly is one of the most annoying actors I’ve seen in Chinese cinema. He’s always playing a comic relief character, making goofy faces because he has that bad eye. But it’s generally the same goofball character in every single movie. I tend to prefer him in a villain role though since his personality seems better suited getting his ass whooped by the good guys. In this movie, he’s just a guy who never pays his debts and gets bullied. Yet his friends never question why he’s got a loan shark on his ass the entire time. They don’t help him pay and defend him.

Finally, there’s the other fake Dragon/Bruce Lee impersonator. I have a special fixation for this guy in this movie because he basically sucks ass the entire time. There was another major old school kung fu movie site that reviewed all these actors. One of the comments was how this guy ended up tied up the entire time in The Clones of Bruce Lee. Actually, the writer made a mistake (the guy in that movie was Chuck/Bruce Thai) and meant this movie. This impersonator would eventually show up in The Clones of Bruce Lee as a clone but he wasn’t tied up for over half the movie like he was here. One of the funny things about this movie was the title Enter Three Dragons, which implies these three characters who are named “Dragon” in this movie. But this guy hardly functions or does anything useful except get himself into more trouble. Probably, his best usage was getting the orange stuffed in his mouth.

One thing I will mention about the Tubi TV listing itself is that a lot of the details for this movie seem incorrect. The description itself I believe is from The Dragon, the Hero. Then for the cast, they list Dragon Lee twice as well as using his Korean name Keo Ryong. My only thought here is that whoever did the copyright must’ve gotten confused by this movie as well. But that’s to be expected when dealing with the Bruceploitation genre.

The post Enter Three Dragons / The Dragon on Fire (1978) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Dragon Lee Fights Again is also called Big Boss II and pretty much doesn’t seem ashamed in going full force into the Bruceploitation genre from the start. The thumbnail/cover art on pause shows Chuck Norris and the actual Bruce Lee during their epic battle from The Way of the Dragon just to demonstrate the deceptive hook some of these movies would go in order to gain attraction. For myself, I have to admit that I am a fan of Dragon Lee, especially when he’s being directed by Godfrey Ho, as those movies usually are at the very least entertaining. Sad to say, this movie was not under master Godfrey Ho’s command but under a different director who did a few other Bruceploitation flicks. As a result, the movie is quite muddied to say it nicely.

Even though the director himself isn’t Godfrey Ho, he did seem to employ Godfrey Ho’s infamous “Copy/Paste” technique of injection scenes, grabbing pieces from Clones of Bruce Lee into this flick (mostly the fighting sequences). So we’d inexplicably get Bruce Le or Chiang Tao showing up out of nowhere without any context except to add a gratuitous fight scene that did not seem appropriate randomly here and there. I don’t think Bruce Le even got any credit for this movie.

The movie itself I think was mostly using a Korean crew except for Nick Cheung, who plays someone called Agent Q-101 (I wonder if he was a precursor to the T-1000 just because this guy is more wooden than a bamboo forest). But the premise is that Dragon Lee, also called “Dragon” here, is a police officer or special agent working for the Korean government on a special mission to infiltrate a bizarre religious group. The way he gets in is through some weak tests that more of less has him demonstrate his fighting skills and later a test of “loyalty” in effectively swearing to a code of silence with this group.

Along the way he meets the daughter of the Bishop for this organization. Both are effectively imprisoned in their rooms and find camaraderie for their disposition. Later, Dragon is told he will be able to fully join the cult by some strange ritualistic gathering that occurs only during a certain moon phase (I forget the name of this cult; something about the moon but who really cares about details in a film like this?)

To get to this cult, he must board a boat as this cult’s HQ is on some mysterious island or cave. Both Dragon and the bishop’s daughter embark while Agent Q-101 (who obviously is a secret spy) gets denied by other people on the board, leading to a gratuitous fight. Dragon and the daughter watch from afar as the goofs get tossed overboard but are thrown a line which they must hold onto the rest of the way to the docks. Naturally, Dragon and Agent Q-101 bond without explicitly revealing their identities but I’m sure that they knew exactly whom the other person was in this situation.

Once they depart the ship, they’re taken to the hidden fortress, which is just a cheap ass cave that someone probably found in the country side. The new recruits are given some sort of strange water that has a hallucinogenic. Agent Q-101 warns Dragon about the water while the daughter is forced to imbibe some. By the way, the cult does have some odd rules for joining, especially the women in which their only requirement is to be beautiful. Gee, wonder what these people intend to do?

The daughter is drugged and tries to get Dragon to drink while Agent Q-101 gets seduced by some of those “beautiful” women (saying that he didn’t like his). He gets brained by an unseen assailant then tossed into a cave where he overhears the real father of the bishop’s daughter talk about his imprisonment and making drugs but repenting. Afterwards, the cult tosses in some drugs at Agent Q-101 and he’s taken to the actual boss of the place to be interrogated. Fortunately, Dragon comes in pretending to still be medicated and is the one responsible for forcing Agent Q-101 to imbibe what I presume is more drugged water. They determine that Agent Q-101 is a Hong Kong police operative without any actual proof (or if there is proof, it’s nearly impossible to tell). Afterwards, he’s tossed into a cave to suffer.

Dragon is summoned to the bishop’s quarters along with other men who are told of their real purpose. But part of that includes “training” where we get another copypasta’d scene from The Clones of Bruce Lee where Dragon does his fight with Bolo Yeung. There’s some other fight scenes from that movie using the various training exercises, including one with Bruce Lee #3 from that movie. Like seriously WTF. He has absolutely nothing to do with the actual movie. From there, Dragon Lee returns to his room with the daughter and she asks, “What happened?” for which he responds, “I think they believe me.” This movie is just so fucking ridiculous. Believe Dragon for what?

At any rate, the daughter impels Dragon to save her father and Agent Q-101. Dragon goes to the caves with some of the men and talks with Agent Q-101, revealing his real identity and sending the agent a knife to free himself. At the bad guy’s machination room, they determine that the heroin being manufactured is poor so they want to get the son of the maker. They arrange a meetup but the cops show up, which leads to the bad men determining that a spy is involved. They think it’s the daughter and she gets exposed.

In the meantime, Dragon helps Agent Q-101 out of the cave. Agent Q-101 has a shitty looking fight with some henchmen and goes through a pool to escape. The daughter gets nicely gagged for her troubles as bait with Dragon getting ambushed. Also, the police infiltrate the island as things tighten up. They find the bound Dragon and father in the caves below. Of course, Dragon is determined to see this mission out until the end.

The fake bishop brings some money along and gets turned on because “he can recognize the foreigners” in terms of the main gang leaders. So they tie him up and toss him with the daughter and father characters. In turn, they figure on laying low but needing to leave the country soon. Agent Q-101 and Dragon split up momentarily with Agent Q-101 locating the three prisoners and Dragon starting a long ass fight with the rest of the crooks. There’s some bizarre ass 70s pr0n music that plays until Agent Q-101 shows up to handle the men while Dragon goes after the head honcho.

None of the fights are memorable and it’s just a long sequence of brawls. There’s a little humor like some of the men falling into water or one of the assistants getting tossed into the back of a trunk. But it’s not as crazy as a Godfrey Ho type of production. Despite all that, this movie actually has a real ending. The cops show up, Dragon takes the head honcho away in cuffs, the girl and Dragon decide to marry, church bells actually play and the new couple get some applause.

But what a dreary movie this was. The pacing was really uneven and the strange placement of The Clones of Bruce Lee clips made it seem this movie was under an even tighter budget. The picture quality for a movie supposedly made in ’82 is awful where it was comparable to my parents’ old dial TV that required an antennae. I’m sure this movie somehow got transferred from a VHS tape as there was occasionally Spanish subtitles.

As for the plot, it’s pretty simple and seemed more of a convention just to get to the copypasta fights. I suppose part of the attraction here was seeing Dragon Lee and Nick Cheung on screen together as a kind of buddy cop drama. But there really isn’t much chemistry between the two. The fights are unremarkable in general except for the awkward injections from The Clones of Bruce Lee movie, which already stunk, but are humorous because they come out of nowhere most of the time. Like they even had the crappy fight between Bruce Le and that weird pale faced jobber at the end of The Clones of Bruce Lee without explaining who any of those people were. I suppose one has to ask just how much copyright existed in those countries because they weren’t shy about ripping each other off in this case.

If there is one positive to this movie that I find as a guilty pleasure, it’s the 60s/70s pr0n disco music. I think whenever you get one of those “modern” (i.e. non period pieces) kung fu movies, you absolutely are required to employ that 60s/70s disco tunes. It’s probably the only real redeemable part of this movie. The violence isn’t really violent, the women aren’t pretty (despite the aforementioned “requirement” for the cult) and the bad guys suck ass. But I figured it’s worth checking out if you’re into any of the Bruce Lee impersonators. Just don’t expect this movie to be very entertaining and it’s a real slog to get through.

The post Dragon Lee Fights Again (1982) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The movie starts off with a typical fast kung fu 70s introduction related to the odd concept of chess where Ah Pao flips around in some heavily edited clips of him moving across a Chinese chess board. We get a demonstration of him and Jack Long’s kung fu that will be used here along with bombastic music before the actual movie begins. From there, the evil master, Wan Chun Shan or the Ghost Face Killer, takes out his first victim.

Now, let me stop here and I have to interject some commentary right off the bat. This guy Wan Chun Shan does a LOT of talking and posing, which comes off as bragging before he goes to attack his foes. I found this display quite irritating because it makes no sense in the context of a fight. What I mean by that is that you shouldn’t show off to an enemy what you know, even if you could beat him. And in the case of Wan Chun Shan, he does numerous moves before actually engaging with his enemies. In contrast, his foes typically just stand around and identify his style out loud with “Five Elements!” before the guy goes on attack as opposed to either running away or trying to go on offensive immediately to throw the guy off. I know that the Long brothers were main characters here and so this felt like them masturbating with a tree in showing off their skillz as opposed to portraying an actual fight.

Once that fight is done, we go to Ah Pao “advising” a kung fu student in a game of chess against Jack Long, who plays a chess master, Chi Siu Tien, running a small chess based gambling stand. The student loses from taking Ah Pao’s advice and is embarrassed, forming a permanent hatred towards Ah Pao. Ah Pao is cocky like almost everyone else in this movie and the student tells him that he won’t forgive him unless Ah Pao kowtows to him. Since Ah Pao makes it known he’s in town to study kung fu, Chi Siu Tien informs him to pay his respects to be able to join the school.

For whatever reason, Ah Pao actually pays his respect all the way to the school. Once he’s inside, he continues to pay his respects but the student (who is considered the senior student) has Ah Pao bullied until the real master shows up and decides to take Ah Pao in. Accepted by the master, Ah Pao tries to integrate himself but the senior student (who has no name) gets the other students to bully Ah Pao around especially during dinner where he’s forced to serve the other students rice.

While the other students practice normally, Ah Pao is relegated to cleaning duties as he’s at the lowest rung on the chain. In turn, he meets the old cook, Yuan, played by Simon Yuen. Yuan is a bit of a red herring in the movie because he generally plays the ultimate master or trainer for the hero in numerous movies. Here, he’s got more of a cameo role but he still trains Ah Pao while claiming he has no actual knowledge of kung fu. As an aside, I think at this point, Simon Yuen’s film career was coming to a close and it seemed like he was doing more cameo appearances. The Mystery of Chess Boxing would be one of his later films so I imagine part of his involvement was to be able to work with the Long brothers and Li Yi-Min.

Either way, Ah Pao’s training proves fruitful as he is able to serve his classmates more efficiently and impresses most of them (except the senior guy). Eventually, the master of his school learns that Ah Pao is carrying a plate that signifies the evil bad guy’s signature and kicks him out without letting Ah Pao explain why he’s carrying it. Ah Pao somehow manages to track down the chess master, whom I think the cook instructed him to find.

Before that happens the evil master continues to search for his main nemesis, the chess master and almost catches him in town. But Chi Siu Tien feigns knowing any kung fu, which throws the evil master off his scent. Also, there’s another fight between the evil master and another rival. Note that throughout the movie Wan Chun Shan would frequently encounter these random “masters” and kick their asses to death as a kind of reverse filler (meaning I think part of the purpose is for the actor to show off his kung fu)

At any rate, Chi Siu Tien takes Ah Pao in under recommendation from his daughter, who obviously has a crush on Ah Pao. Initially, Ah Pao undergoes mental training by playing chess against Chi Siu Tien but becomes impatient when he feels that he has not learned anything during the month of staying. Instead, Chi Siu Tien reveals the thesis of the movie in terms of the connection between kung fu, the mental aspect of kung fu, calmness and playing chess. As a result, Chi Siu Tien insists that Ah Pao has been learning by playing against Chi Siu Tien the entire time. Then he starts working on Ah Pao’s physical attributes and eventually teaching him the actual kung fu itself.

One random day, Ah Pao is returning from who knows where and encounters his old bully student buddy on the road. They have a fight where Wan Chun Shan serendipitously appears to overhear of the student’s teacher. Wan Chun Shan engages with the bully student and gives him the ghost faced killer amulet to hand to his master after beating him. The master demands his students to leave, knowing that they will get killed if they stay around once Wan Chun Shan appears. So the students depart except for the bully student and Wan Chun Shan shows up to kill the master. the bully student submits himself to Wan Chun Shan and reveals that Ah Pao also has a pendant and knows about the chess master being the person Wan Chun Shan is seeking. In turn, the bully student guides Wan Chun Shan to Chi Siu Tien’s hideout, taking the daughter hostage so that Chi Siu Tien and Wan Chun Shan can have a fight.

Because of his age and other reasons, Chi Siu Tien cannot defeat Wan Chun Shan alone. Naturally, Ah Pao appears and takes over, managing to counter enough of Wan Chun Shan’s blows but not having enough skill to finish Wan Chun Shan. So Chi Siu Tien teams up with Ah Pao and the fight looks really gay. I’m not even joking about this. Just nonstop flips and turns that look like shit to me. It’s the one thing I really hate about the Taiwanese acrobats in so-called kung fu movies where a good chunk just devolves into nonstop flips that look too choreographed/rehearsed and impossible to execute in a real fight. Not only that but the fight lasts forever and I started getting madder because it was like watching modern pro-wrestling with nonstop kick outs. Eventually, Ah Pao delivers the death blow and Wan Chun Shan squirts blood from his neck as the picture abruptly ends.

On top of all this, during the climax, there’s a bunch of obviously animated shots of pieces on a chess board moving around that’s supposed to represent the counter techniques used that are accompanied by strange noises.

I’m sure at some point this movie probably came on Kung Fu Theater on channel 9 in my local area during the early/mid 80s because it just has that look. Li Yi-Min was one of those independent movie actor favorites that my mom liked and would call “Bobby” probably because we didn’t have imdb or hkmdb back then. And while I do like various Li Yi-Min movies like The Shaolin Temple as well as some of his independent movies (which I may eventually review down the line), this movie kinda sucked for me. If it did come on during the old Kung Fu Theater days, it wouldn’t have registered for me just because the movie is kinda lame.

I know that the Long brothers achieved a moderate amount of success and recognition during the late 70s and early 80s kung fu period, but I honestly never really remembered anything that they had done if, indeed, I had seen any of their stuff. This movie might demonstrate why because the kung fu was downright masturbatory where you had guys just showing off rather than having more violent fights. The plot itself was a typical spaghetti western revenge/training story from that period and the training itself was quite dull. Perhaps, the only aspect that is somewhat distinguishing is that stupid introduction with Li Yi-Min flipping around in a heavily edited format on a chess board. But that kinda shows you the direction the movie would head towards as it seemed ridiculous to me.

Now, speaking on Li Yi-Min, he’s someone that I couldn’t tell if he actually knew real kung fu or not. His Shaw Brothers days seem to use him for what he was best known for in terms of his acrobatics and weapon usage. His later years with the independent companies, he seemed to exhibit more “real” kung fu that was interspersed with his usual flipping. And don’t get me wrong; he’s definitely one of the better “flippers” out there as you can see that his training was fairly intense. But my argument is that half the fights were him just jumping around.

I did start watching another movie he had done around ’75 but it was horribly boring and terribly paced. I think around that period he had done a few independent movies outside of the Shaw Brothers. But he didn’t really develop himself as a more well rounded actor. It did occur to me that his best roles were a mixture of the comedic, downtrodden hero who gets serious in the second act after revealing some tragedy. Some of his later roles had him play an unconvincing villain but I think his baby face made him less credible in those parts compared to him smirking around and acting silly.

Finally, there’s the abrupt ending to this movie. This is something that seems to have been a common trope in numerous kung fu movies back then. I did the lasting and abrupt shot from Chinese Godfather in my recent review. But in some of these cases, the ending leaves a bad unfilled feeling because some things might still be loose. Like in this case, there was the bully student who had been holding the daughter hostage. Once Mark Long is dead, we don’t see what happens to him. Does he scamper off? Does he get killed? There’s no karmic redemption after all the horrendous things he had done. This scenario just showed how these movies seemed more concerned with moving from point A to point B without real considering on the holistic picture.

The post The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Since I had been combing through numerous early to mid 70s movies in search of the infamous Chinese Godfather scene, one thing I had realized is that many of those independent films were terribly grainy, horribly shot, the kung fu being a mess and the plot lacking almost any coherency except as a method to get from one long fight scene between two real kung fu actors to the next. With Mad Mad Kung Fu (which we’ll call in this blog), the plot seems a bit tighter, the output cleaner and kung fu far tighter. So I think these movies were better to import than some of the earlier ones because they were more relatable and easier to understand for an international audience.

Mad Mad Kung Fu actually has a few names I recognize including the main star Cliff Lok, who oddly has no name, Peter Chan as Kwan Chang Chi, Lee Hoi-Sang as Lung Yung Feng, Simon Yuen as Bamboo Stick and even a small cameo by Chiang Tao only described as a “Japanese” judo master (so it goes to show that not only Americans/white cinema would use incorrect ethnic types in their movies to make their point). To me, Cliff Lok was like a low budget Jackie Chan or Fu Sheng type. He had decent charisma and reasonable martial arts skills but his movies or his character never really had the same level of impact to me that the other two did. Peter Chan had been in a large number of movies, including The Avenging Eagle (1978) as a ball and whip wielding Soaring Eagle Wang Tao Sang. Lee Hoi-Sang was another highly prolific martial arts star and most probably recognize him in a variety of Shaw Brothers productions playing some monk character with his bald head under Lau Kar-Leung. Chiang Tao is probably one of the hardest working villain character actors in kung fu cinema and very recognizable across the board. Finally, most people who watched many kung fu movies from the 70s period (mostly) would know the familiar face of the wise but typically gruff Simon Yuen playing the other hero, Bamboo Stick.

The story starts off with a bizarre man attempting to commit suicide by hanging himself. Simon Yuen comes along as a homeless guy trying to stop the man from committing suicide by getting the man to donate his clothes to him before he kills himself. Gradually, he learns that the man is in trouble because he’s being forced to marry his daughter away to a creep. The creep is played by Cheng Kang-Yeh (Lung Chan), someone many people would recognize as a Shaw Brothers bit player who frequently had comedic roles. Here, once he marries the “daughter,” Lung Chan naturally wants to sleep with the daughter. However, during the ceremony itself the father and wife do all they can to hide the fact that they’ve hired Bamboo Stick to pose as his daughter. Lung Chan does all he can to try and become intimate in the dark with the “daughter” only to be thwarted, revealing Bamboo Stick who get gets rid of the hoodlums, but inadvertently kills the son.

The father is Lee Hoi-Sang/Lung Yung Feng and he wishes to seek revenge against the folk hero Bamboo Stick. His advisor is a bookish fop who actually gives Lung Yung Feng sage advice throughout the movie that mostly works. Here, he suggest that Bamboo Stick needs to be drawn out and decides to use his student Kwan Chang Chi as the bait. Kwang Chang Chi works for the government doing escort work. Lung Yung Feng and his men ambush an unsuspecting Kwang Chang Chi and his men, killing them all except Kwang Chang Chi. In the process, the find that Kwang Chang Chi was guarding a precious jade ring, which they keep so that Kwang Chang Chi is blamed and sought after by the government for failure to return.

In turn, Kwang Chang Chi has to go into hiding as posters of his face are plastered around towns. He takes up the identity of a ruffian with a beard (important key here for me at least) and tries to escape. Government officials patrol and hold checkpoints to inspect travelers. As Kwang Chang Chi gets to one of these checkpoints, he notices that a person in front of him is pilfered but says nothing as he does not want to alert any officials. One of the officials inspects him but cannot discern Kwang Chang Chi’s true identity and allows him to pass. Cliff Lok also is part of this group.

Once they get through the checkpoint, some of these travelers stop for a break. The man who was pilfered from realizes that his money is gone and the thief accuses Kwang Chang Chi because he looks like a beggar. Without much thought, the man goes on a rant at Kwang Chang Chi as the thief joins in. But Kwang Chang Chi removes the thief’s hat to reveal that he has the stolen money. The thief tries to fight back but Cliff Lok intervenes and beats the thief silly. As Kwang Chang Chi and Cliff Lok buddy up, we learn that Cliff Lok likes doing good and has invented his own style of fighting.

As they get into some random town, a young woman is harassed and Cliff Lok once again acts as the hero. Unfortunately, the would be victimizer knows kung fu and is superior to Cliff Lok. Kwang Chang Chi realizes that Cliff Lok requires aid and steps in to give a guiding hand. Once again the pair beat the martial artists and the town applauds while their friendship grow.

From there, they get hungry and enter a restaurant, ordering a huge variety of chicken. When it comes time to pay, neither have any money. Kwang Chang Chi tries a few tricks, including calling Cliff Lok “Bamboo Stick” after his master but the restaurant proprietor insists on payment. In turn, Kwang Chang Chi dismisses himself to return disguised as some hombre from a western movie. He beats up the restaurant’s staff which forces the proprietor to beg Cliff Lok to aid him. As a result, Cliff and Kwang fight it out where Cliff “beats” Kwang and he leaves while the proprietor is eternally grateful. Kwang returns and their tab is removed with the trick paying off.

Their adventures continue as they encounter the “Japanese” judo master, who had been wanting to face Bamboo Stick. They setup a wager where if the judo master loses he would forfeit the gym. Once again, Cliff Lok is the one to take up the fight but gets his ass beaten until Kwang aids him by spitting weird seed or beans at the judo master. Outside, another bet goes on where two old men bet each others’ attire over each side. Of course, Cliff Lok wins, one of the old man hobbles away naked and poor Chiang Tao loses his pants and takes off to leave the school to the pair.

Once Cliff Lok obtains the school, he does a demonstration to his new students but Kwang initially humiliates Cliff until Cliff tells him that they need to demonstrate his strength. So Kwang plays the role of a fool and gets beaten so that Cliff can take a break. I suppose with their earnings from the school, Cliff manages to get a shabby home where they stay. During one meal, Cliff closely examines Kwang and notices something strange about him and determines that Kwang is the both the imposter from the restaurant and the man seen in the various posters. However, because they’ve become close, Cliff says that he won’t turn Kwang in and learns of Kwang’s true story and identity. In turn, they plot to recover the stolen jade ring from Lung Yung Feng.

Cliff goes in disguised as a prostitute but the advisor easily detects that he’s a phony, theorizing that Kwang might be attempting to recover the ring. Later, Lung Yung Feng and the advisor plot to play along to draw out Kwang. Cliff thinks he gets Lung Yung Feng drunk and steals an empty planted box without verifying that the ring is inside and returns to Kwang. However, this sets up an ambush by Lung Yung Feng and his men. A hopeless fight ensues where Kwang and Cliff manage to beat back Lung Yung Feng’s men, but are outmatched by Lung Yung Feng’s Iron Head technique. Kwang sacrifices himself so that Cliff can get revenge as Lung Yung Feng smashes poor Kwang’s face in with a gnarly headbutt that cuts to a watermelon getting wrecked. However, Kwang in death clings to Lung Yung Feng’s feet to allow Cliff to escape.

As Cliff mourns for his friend, he promises to get revenge by making his head stronger than Lung Yung Feng’s. He sets up numerous Chinese wine jars from ropes and practices hardening his head by smashing his head through them. Unfortunately, the technique proves futile as it takes only two before his head is bleeding from the hard vases. At that time, the real Bamboo Stick appears and wards Cliff away from this futile effort. But he learns that the reasoning behind his crazy exercise was to gain revenge for Bamboo Stick’s pupil.

As a result, Bamboo Stick is finally drawn out of hiding to face Lung Yung Feng. They fight with Lung Yung Feng gaining the upper hand (or head) Cliff joins Bamboo Stick to rescue him and hide in the bushes. As Lung Yung Feng pursues them, he believes he finds Bamboo Stick only to discover that Cliff is in Bamboo Stick’s attire. He gets headbutted for his trouble as Lung Yung Feng is more obsessed over Bamboo Stick’s demise. Cliff locates Bamboo Stick and the pair hobble off to Cliff’s home where they share medicine and begin their recovery.

While Bamboo Stick rests at Cliff’s home, Cliff works as a noodle vendor in town. We see that he’s quite adept at crafting his noodles, which may hint at a subtle kung fu he knows. However, as he finishes up for the day, one of Lung Yung Feng’s men spots him and tracks him to his home. Lung Yung Feng traces the pair and brings a few men to have a confrontation and finish the job. He tells Cliff that this isn’t his affair and focuses his attacks on Bamboo Stick. Nonetheless, Bamboo Stick hasn’t fully recovered, leading Cliff to take his place.

Cliff unleashes his technique but still has trouble overcoming the superior Iron Head technique. However, he manages to get Lung Yung Feng to smash his face into the dough, which blinds him. This allows Cliff to realize that he has a chance of beating Lung Yung Feng and grabs more dough to splatter and cover Lung Yung Feng’s face in. Unable to see, Lung Yung Feng’s attacks are more erratic and he gets his throat caught between two poles where Cliff smashes them together to kill Lung Yung Feng. Victorious Cliff and Bamboo Stick celebrate as they examine the dead body of their foe.

So just as I’m writing the plot up here, I realize just how much cleaner of a story and more understandable it is compared to Chinese Godfather or a few other early 1970s movies I had been watching this past week. There are problems like some of the pacing could have been better and how Bamboo Stick’s technique never was taught to Cliff seemed like a major missing opportunity. For the most part, this movie is fairly straight forward and easier to digest.

Also, I will say that Cliff Lok’s character here isn’t annoying. Some of the comedy fighters like Jackie Chan stay goofy for the entire movie. Once Kwang perishes, the tone quickly shifts where Cliff becomes very serious, even though the whole wine vase headbutt practicing scene was ridiculous.

The martial arts itself isn’t spectacular compared to say the Venoms movies or anything from Lau Kar-Leung. But it’s still entertaining and moves well. I think part of that is due to Simon Yuen’s influence since he was another legit martial artists that you could take seriously, even in a comedy. Cliff himself is quite acrobatic and a few of his training feats aren’t bad. But I think without the real focus of martial arts in the way Lau Kar-Leung knows how to present, it’s harder to get into the training parts in the same manner as the trope wasn’t strongly used here. Like Cliff simply gives up on his own Iron Head practice, which makes sense then shows us his weird noodle making technique. But we never had seen him use it during the entire movie so when we’re shown it feels abrupt.

Likewise, there’s the one “subliminal” moment with the watermelon face smashing scene. This is the only time in the movie where it uses a kind of flashback or subliminal technique. I do recognize that the film maker employed this visual to give the impression of the impact of the Iron Head technique but I tend to think styles of visuals are best suited when they’re consistently used in a movie. For instance, Chang Cheh’s sepia flashback sequences and to a lesser degree even the odd interstitial cuts of Bruce Lee images inside of Chinese Godfather. So this is where the real difference to me is made when you examine the sharper Shaw Brothers movies in comparison to more independent movies.

But let’s go into that whole sequence with the head smashing scene. One thing I’ve come to realize about those 70s/80s movies in comparison to contemporary movies is how memorable more scenes were back then. Perhaps, part of that is due to age and how I have a better long term memory. Nonetheless, I do think movies back then did a far better job at allowing the audience to absorb key moments by creating unique scenes that would stand out.

The face smash moment was the main thing I had been searching for in some time. It was similar to the foot spike/arrow trap moment from Chinese Godfather. It literally had a major impact on me because it was both a gruesome and somewhat hilarious moment. The gif posted earlier is only missing the dramatic music, which was used in a few Chinese independent movies back then. But that music would heighten the tragedy of the scene where the poor bearded fellow got his face caved in. To a lesser degree, I also was able to recall the Iron Head training sequence with Cliff Lok smashing his head through wine vases because it just looked stupid and ridiculous.

However, I will admit that because of my love for kung fu, at one stage in those days, I too had used my own “Iron Head” to smash someone’s face in. No, I didn’t kill the person because I think I just delivered a hard headbutt. I can’t recall whom I did this to but it could’ve been my cousin, my dad or some stupid kid on the playground that pissed me off. All I know is that people would make fun of me back in those days as having a “big ol’ head” so one day I actually proved it. But in a way these movies with their memorable scenes demonstrate clearly how much of an influence they would have with me even in some practical/impractical manner.

That said, I’m actually happy I found this movie as like Chinese Godfather, I had been searching for decades for that particular scene. There might be one more movie with a special scene that I’m missing but it’s one that is going to be even harder to discover. I will admit here that part of how I ended up re-discovering this scene is using Google’s Gemini. Because I had no idea of the cast and could only describe the scene, the genre, etc., basic search often times would fail me. I did my best in going through numerous old kung fu review sites and images to no avail or inquired on reddit. But Gemini presented me with a list of potential candidates as the lead and I ended up narrowing it down to Cliff Lok. The movie is actually on Tubi but in Spanish. Once I had the title translated, I was able to find it on YouTube and the Hong Kong Movie Database. At any rate, I’m very satisfied that another leg of my life long kung fu quest has succeeded.

The post Mad Mad Kung Fu (1979) Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

So the movie plot reads (as per the description on Tubi):

The story of kung fu brothers Chow and Sii, who agree to carry out a thief’s dying wish of taking stolen jewels to his wife.

Truthfully, that’s about as sensible as you can get in this wretched movie. This movie has a horrible flow with lengthy fight scenes that leave you stunned with boredom in how the action doesn’t seem like action but filler in trying to get towards the end. Because it’s so old and done under what I presume is some independent umbrella, the quality, even on a platform like Tubi TV, is just god awful where most of the shots are nearly indiscernible especially as many scenes are done in the shade.

The basic plot revolves around some jewels that Michael Chan and his brother find from a dead thief. They get the address of the wife and plan to return them to her, despite not questioning how this person managed to scrounge them up. The wife lives with her young daughter, who believes her father is a good person because “he’ll buy her a house when they’re rich.” The mother isn’t as naive and dislikes her husband’s nefarious methods.

In opposition to Michael Chan and his obscure actor brother is some guy named Cheng Lei. I suppose I ought to give this guy more credit because he was considered part of the OG “Five Tigers” along with Jimmy Wang Yu, Chang I, Lo Lieh and Chieh Yuan. The thing is that I think he was more prominent during the early 70s while most of the films I cared about started around the mid 70s through the early 80s where the actors, martial arts and plots were far sharper and refined.

At any rate, Cheng Lei runs some gang of thugs and the jewels were stolen from him. Because of their value, he obviously wants them back while the wife realizes that the jewels are bad news for her. When Chan and his brother try to return them to her, she flat out refuses which disappoints the daughter but leaves Chan and his brother wondering what to do. They end up getting ambushed by the thugs and defeat them, earning the wrath of Cheng Lei and his group.

Another major player in this is Hu Chin, who is somewhat recognizable (I knew of her from The Boxer Rebellion 1976) but not by name compared to say Kara Hui. She runs a casino under her father and is a deceptive character who gets into various trouble because she’s avaricious. She often plays games with men’s hearts, including Michael Chan’s who discovers her as she’s about to get raped by one of her customers and kills him in self defense.

From there, the middle section is just Cheng Lei trying to find his jewels and beating up everyone in town. Eventually, he kills off the jobber brother, which naturally pisses Michael Chan off and he abducts both the thief’s wife and her daughter to try and determine where the jewels are. At some point, Michael Chan gets into a romantic relationship with the seductive Hu Chin and reveals the location of the hidden jewels to her. In turn, she goes to steal the jewels for herself while Michael Chan finds that the location had been ransacked by the thugs, which turns out to be the home of the wife and her daughter (why the hell would you hide the jewels there of all places????).

One comment I want to make here is the really bizarre use of subliminal inserts in this movie. Both the jobber brother and infrequently Michael Chan would have a moment or scene where for a few frames an image from a Bruce Lee movie is interjected. There is absolutely no explanation how nor why this happens. I think because this was a Chinese movie, they effectively got away with murder in terms of the copyright but this certainly ought to fall into the Bruceploitation genre.

Nonetheless, Michael Chan ends up tracking down Cheng Lei, imprisoning him and freeing the mother and daughter. The mother continues to want to have nothing to do with the jewels so Michael Chan suggest that they leave the town. As they start off for a new life, they get ambushed where the wife and her daughter stay behind. Some weirdo comes out of the bushes to try and rape the mother but she fights him off only to get stabbed to death. The daughter is left crying but there’s actually no resolution to her fate (I mean WTF)

Somehow Cheng Lei gets free because he knows something about martial arts and hunts down Hu Chin, who is examining the jewels at her lair. How he knew Hu Chin had the jewels is no ones guess because nothing really makes any sense and they’re just trying to tie up very loose ends as the story winds down. She tries to play off that those jewels are the stolen jewels but Cheng Lei knows better because they’re his. He gets pissed and kills her then takes back his stolen property (assumedly). Michael Chan finds the ruins of the gambling ring and gets mad at seeing his betrayer girlfriend killed.

So the last 8 minutes of the movie or so is an unending fight that makes no sense with numerous changes to scenery in transitions that are inexplicable. Like at one point they’re in some farm location and Michael Chan throws a bucket of blood on Cheng Lei only for them to suddenly appear on some rocks by a lake. Then they start climbing up towards a trapped zone that apparently is used for catching wild pigs, etc. So at this point, I’m actually intrigued because I’m beginning to really believe this could be The One.

The fights during this period are indiscernible because everything is horribly dark. Whatever filter is used makes everything seem like it was shot at night. It’s almost as if the camera was wearing Bruce Lee’s sunglasses to produce this mess. But the two climb uphill towards another set of traps in some forest area. Both men get entangled by the legs from a trap that pulls them up into the air and leaves them dangling. Cheng Lei manages to free himself and get a bunch of free blows on Michael Chan. From there, he laughs mockingly at Michael Chan (because he does look like an idiot here just swinging around helpless) before he blindly steps into another rope trap that causes spikes to be driven through his chest. THIS IS THE MOMENT!

I have been FUCKING SEARCHING FOR THIS GODDAMN SCENE FOREVER! It took me 45+ years to find this stupid scene.

But before I do my personal deep dive into this scene and what it meant to me, let me just say that the movie almost abruptly ends at this point. We get Michael Chan supposedly climbing to get his leg free while the writhes in pain with those horrible spikes sticking out of his chest. After that, the screen goes to “Fin” without any further resolution.

So why has this fucking stupid ass film that I just verbally eviscerated bearing this level of significance to me?

Growing up, my parents were kung fu fan aficionados. Judging from my blogs, you can see how the kung fu genre made a huge impact on my life with my love for the Shaw Brothers studios work as well as more independent films. Most of my current love comes from nostalgia where my parents would occasionally rent these films and there would be a certain scene that would stick out in my brain. Some scenes were so strong that they stayed with me for life.

Once the internet came about, I was able to begin my hunt for re-living part of my childhood. I found a few sites that sold old kung fu movies or I would hit up the old Suncoast store to pick things up. Then my family and I would sit around the dinner table watching these. Sometimes it might just be my father and I watching late at night some of these films during the late 90s.

Being a collector, I have this obsessive compulsive nature which is utterly determined once I become fixated on an idea. In the case of kung fu films, I wanted to find every single film that I had seen at some point, identify them, absorb them and get that feeling of satisfaction. An example of my life long quest is Rage of the Dragon (1980) and Dynasty (1977). In those instances, those movies were some truly rare moments that I only drew blanks because they weren’t typical Shaw Brothers movies where I was more familiar with the actors or names of the titles. I succeeded in discovering those movies because I managed to scrap up enough of a memory/description on reddit that helped me identify those two. But the last two, including this one, remained a mystery. So now, it’s down to one final movie on my list.

But for the memory itself, it’s such a funny thing to me because I was such a young child when I probably had seen this movie. I’m almost certain my family had rented it out and it might’ve been anywhere between ’79 – ’81 because of how we had this ancient Beta Max. But I couldn’t have been more than 4-6 when I saw that scene. The way my memory/mind works is very odd in how I had been trying to piece this puzzle together. For the longest time, the way I had thought about this scene was some guy with a mustache stepping into a trap (like something on the floor) which would cause a spiked ball to ram straight through him. You can see in the featured image how the spikes form a kind of broadening shape that makes one think that it had a ball shape.

But the other part was that my mind confused one of the actors to be a Bruce Lee type. For a while I had thought it was Bruce Li because my memory had entangled it with a different Bruceploitation film done by him (there’s a scene where Bruce Li is hitting some weird punching machine with sci fi green lights and another scene showing him torture working out on some machine then getting a headache). I think my parents rented both movies and I might’ve been coming in and out of the living room but somehow was made to think these two movies were the same thing (remember kiddies: we didn’t have el interneto to verify ANYTHING). So these fuzzy images were left imprinted in my brain.

As you can see though with that guy’s expression, he’s in pretty bad shape. But for whatever reason, I thought it was a mustached Bruce Li triggering a trap after beating the fuck out of some bad guy. I think what happened is that Michael Chan looked kinda like Bruce Lee here especially since this movie came out around Bruce Lee’s death and there’s a bunch of subliminal stuff here which would make one believe he could be a Bruce Lee type. I don’t recall seeing the subliminal stuff though until now so I’m sure I must’ve only seen that ending.

At any rate, I’m actually a little disappointed that the weapon that slays the villain wasn’t a spiked ball because the idea had been implanted into my brain for decades. Also, I thought it was the good guy that got impaled because it’s pretty rare to see the bad guy receiving the lasting image before credits roll. Yet in this movie, there are no credits at all. It just ends with no warning.

The thing for me about this entire experience was the various false leads getting to this point. No search ever came close to the image and I’m sure my minuscule description only caused question marks to be raised over heads of other hard core fans. I tried to even use AI to see if it could help me because the scene was simply so obscure. In recent days, I had been watching various independent movies with a fascination for Chan Sing, who was kind of like the Chinese version of Charles Bronson back in the day. He had a mustache and would play various hero roles in the 70s (as well as villains such as in Vengeance). So I thought his movies might make a good candidate for this particular scene.

Alas, as I perused through Tubi’s catalog and some of YouTube, I had not been able to find the infamous scene. Part of my technique was to load up a video, pause it and quickly scan through the movie’s frames to see if anything resembled that particular scene. Even with this movie, I was unable to notice it (because it happens right at the very end). Yet the weirdest clue occurred to me: the title. For some reason, Chinese Godfather rang a familiar bell in my head. I don’t know why this would be the movie and even though I did my fast forward run through and unsuccessfully hadn’t been able to spot the particular scene, my gut instinct said, “Look, this movie seems rotten. Just watch it and maybe you could write a review.” I did find a few interesting scenes that may have hinted at the end fight so I figured to give the movie a chance. Unfortunately, it was mostly an uphill battle trying to trudge through the muck of this sucker. Yet the title was the thing that kept me sticking around.

Perhaps, because of this low budget, forced ending my tiny developing brain at the time cludged all these elements together. The movie itself is pretty worthless for the most part as you see a bunch of nameless, fat, uninteresting thugs getting their asses beat or inexplicably being able to beat up the heroes. And though Michael Chan was supposedly a legit martial arts expert, he just has zero screen presence to me. At least, the villain ended up with a highly memorable reaction that left a permanent impression on an impressionable kid for this long. But I am happy to say that this is the one and I’ve managed to nail one more obscure life quest objective.

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The movie starts by covering the meteoric rise of Bruce Lee and his quick fall. Part of it showed the old Shaw Brothers studio with Chang Cheh as the master director behind numerous classics. One thing I didn’t realize was that the documentary covered was how Bruce Lee showed up not only as an action coordinator but wanted to apply for a role. Apparently, Chang Cheh rejected the arrogant but obviously talented Bruce Lee when he asked for a leading role, calling him a nobody. Inadvertently, that bad call would be the start of the rise of Golden Harvest, the other major studio in that period. However, Golden Harvest had been struggling.

With Bruce Lee at the forefront, he became a sensation, although his identity would be altered to fit a more Chinese narrative (for instance, saying he only lived in America briefly as opposed to being born there in San Francisco). Bruce’s magnetic personality with unique traits such as his movements and trademarked noises would bring him great admiration. Of course, he would get his biggest break with Enter the Dragon that not only gave him global fame but helped make other major stars who participated in the movie.

Alas, Bruce Lee’s life would be tragically cut short. Like an Asian James Dean, Bruce would only live to be 32. His funeral had been broadcast as a camera crew filmed the scenes. But it was clear that the demand for more Bruce Lee was there and that’s where the start of the Bruceploitation began.

From the various copycat actors, the first introduced was Bruce Li, aka Ho Chung-ta. Amazingly, the film crew managed to get him as he had been somewhat elusive after leaving the industry (I read he might’ve refused other movies done in a similar vein especially the infamous Clones of Bruce Lee). I would say that of the copycats, Bruce Li probably is the best known. Basically, he was a martial artists that managed to get a role that caught someone’s eye in terms of his appearance. He would go on to study Bruce Lee’s movements and behavior that would allow him to mimic Bruce.

To be fair, I would say Ho Chung-ta probably was the best of the main three but I think that was more due to his acting ability. Some of his movies are actually decent and can stand on their own. He himself admits on the film that one person told him that if he didn’t look like Bruce, he probably would’ve gone farther. Also, of the three main guys, Ho Chung-ta seemed to actually be someone of good character. He wasn’t in it for money and he had somewhat of a guilty conscience for taking over the role. Once his wife became sick, he was forced to leave the industry to bring up his sons. Afterwards, he ended up both training new students and becoming a physical education instructor. I thought for his age in the movie (about 73), Ho Chung-ta looked decent and could still move in demonstrating some kung fu.

From there, the movie switches to South Korea where another upstart named Dragon Lee, or Moon Kyoung-seok, would become another clone. Dragon Lee would boast a massive physique and is said to have been obsessed with Bruce. The thing about Dragon Lee is that he had more of the mannerisms down for Bruce Lee but not the actual martial arts that Bruce Lee had been doing. His earlier films were more period pieces and he was brought to Hong Kong. Gradually, he had a few reasonably successful movies on his own such as The Hero, The Dragon and the infamous Rage of the Dragon (which I did review).

The thing with Dragon Lee though is that he gradually moved more towards comedy. Both Dragon Lee and Godfrey Ho were interviewed here but the movie did not directly connect these two as a pairing. One of the things I read at one point was how Godfrey Ho used Dragon Lee as a kind of pet project. The documentary does mention how The Hero, The Dragon utilized Dragon Lee in a bizarre, more modern fashion whereas the main portion of the movie was more of a period piece, or at least the kung fu was.

Dragon Lee did admit that he wished he did better for himself, namely being a better husband and father. I guess he wasn’t faithful and/or had issues with his wife at one time. However, I will say that of the impersonators, Dragon Lee probably looked the best at his age. There were close ups of his hands though and you could see that his knuckles had some sort of bubbles like warts or scarring so possibly the damage from practicing over the years may have cost him somewhat.

After Dragon Lee, comes the last of the major Bruce Lee impersonators: Bruce Le or Wong Kin-lung. I believe they mentioned that Bruce Le might’ve joined the Shaw Brothers or at least appeared in one of their movies before someone figured that he could play another clone. But the fascinating part of his story came in how he was in Burma and knew kung fu but the Burmese government had expelled all those of Chinese origin. However, because he only knew kung fu, it was the thing that got him by. They talked about how they would give him a bowl hair cut and some sunglasses since he had legit kung fu skills and could copy the mannerisms of Bruce Lee. For my money though, he was the least interesting of the three both in terms of his movies and his character. He legitimately comes across as arrogant and the least ashamed about the money grab. One of the things the documentary points out is how Bruce Le’s movies later would involve him in James Bond-like roles as well as having numerous topless female scenes. So he’s probably the worst exploiter of the lot by far.

The movie then goes into how the exploitation genre would start to get ridiculous such as using people from some of the Bruce Lee movies and doing “what if” scenarios by pitting a Bruce Lee clone against someone Bruce Lee hadn’t fought in his movies. An example is the hulk of kung fu, Bolo Yeung. One great part has his son talking in English about his father. I will say his son, just like his father, is fucking HUGE.

Another guy they brought up was Jim Kelly, who also was in Enter the Dragon. In Jim Kelly’s case, they mentioned the combined genres of Blaxploitation with Bruceploitation. One of the best lines came from a promo from one of Jim Kelly’s movies calling him “James Bond and Bruce Lee rolled up into one.” Unfortunately, Jim Kelly passed in 2013 from Cancer at the age of 67 so he wasn’t able to participate on this documentary.

Not only did the genre have male stars and stars outside of China, but females too. The predominant person mentioned here was Angela Mao. Like Jim Kelly and Bolo Yeung, Angela Mao had a brief role in Enter the Dragon. They managed to get the actual former actress here too and she looked great. I say former because she retired from acting in ’92 to start a family and would later move to NY to run a few restaurants. Here, she mostly was grateful to Bruce Lee and the people involved with her career as many fans still remember her.

Another part they touched upon is the roughness of the shoots. They mentioned how the choreography could involve up to 100+ moves in a single, long shot compared to the shorter shots that are done with editing in contemporary movies. Also, they discussed how unforgiving these shoots were in terms of getting injured along with the grueling schedule. It wasn’t uncommon for them to do multiple pictures in a single day, which left them few days off and little time to rest.

Also, they talked about the effect of Bruce Lee in terms of Asian perception. In Western portrayal, the roles were limited to Japanese soldiers, some flunky, geisha or prostitute and maybe a girlfriend of the white guy. Bruce Leung (another impersonator but not as prolific) mentions that this limitation was due to education (meaning understanding of culture) and how Western dominance was the thing until Bruce came along. One analyst mentioned how not only was kung fu popular with the Asian crowd but the African American crowd too.

And let me pause here to say that at least as a South Bay kid growing up, I can definitely attest to the popularity of Bruce Lee and kung fu out here. My friends and I would watch these movies because they’d come on during the weekends with Black Belt Theater on Channel 11 showing mostly Shaw Brothers imports or Channel 9 with more independent stuff. You’d get a few other channels that might be on late at night or the rare specials on Channel 13. But many of us would pretend to be Bruce Lee, make jokes about him (what is Bruce Lee’s favorite drink? Wat-tah!) or make those strange kung fu noises as we’d play fight outside. Of course, one of the most famous South Bay people involved in film, Quentin Tarantino was a known kung fu afficianado and even did the Kill Bill series as a homage to kung fu. The analyst said the identification with the black community was in part about the underdog beating the system. My belief is that kung fu looked cool, was accessible (for us) and was exciting to watch. It just became part of our lives growing up out here.

From there, the documentary dives into the seedier aspects of the Bruceploitation genre, which is the actual exploitation aspects. Doing things like calling a movie “Bruce Lee” or using posters with elements from Bruce Lee’s movies, these shady individuals would cater to a crowd that they hoped would not know the difference (hey, because all of us Asians look alike right?) One of the more nefarious moments involved someone clipping the actual image of Bruce Lee in his coffin and pasting it onto a small section for a poster. I mean it just shows how low some of these people would go to sell these products. However, there were enough hardcore fans that would recognize that the person involved once they saw the film wasn’t the real Bruce Lee.

In one of the funnier moments, they showed one of these shady distributors, who found Yasuaki Kurata, and relabeled him as “Bruce Lo” for a movie called The Tigers Claw. They even had the still living Yasuaki Kurata for the interview and hand him the poster with the Bruce Lo name and everyone laughed. There was a clip of Yasuaki Kurata fighting Gordon Liu in the Shaw Brother’s Heroes of the East where Kurata did his famous “crab technique,” where he explained how his style was Japanese (because, well, he is Japanese).

Of course, you can’t have a documentary called “Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee” without talking about the rare and possibly the most exploitive of the series The Clones of Bruce Lee (1981). The main thing here was how they managed to get two of the three big Bruce Lee imposters to appear (with Bruce Li not wanting to have anything to do with this apparently) along with Bolo Yeung. And there were two additional guys who would have some resemblance to Bruce Lee, with one called Bruce Lai being Bruce #3. Bruce Lai (or Chang Yi-tao) was a South Korean martial artists with a few roles prior to this. Bruce Le mentioned taking the guy under his wing and helping him out. One other person calling himself Bruce Thai or Bruce Tai (because they were in Thailand????) only got the job I guess because they gave him a hair cut and sunglasses and called him “Chuck.” I almost would think the purpose of this whole documentary was to actually leading to this point based on the name and the fact that this segment got a reasonable spot which went into the actual curious filming aspects, something some of the other Bruceploitation films would not get a chance to really do any deep dives into. Sadly, no one talked about the mysterious abrupt ending of the film nor what was intended.

Another infamous clone film that was done completely tongue-in-cheek shown here was The Dragon Lives Again (1977) with Bruce Leung. Fortunately for the film makers, they were able to get Bruce Leung for this documentary as he had passed away earlier this year. But he was able to talk a little bit about his background growing up, wanting to protect his family, who were poor, and thus learning kung fu. But I think the message here (along with other people in this genre who made a career from Bruceploitation films) was that they often were poor people who just needed the money. As for The Dragon Lives Again, like The Clones of Bruce Lee, this movie was given a little more detail, showing the sheer insanity with the bizarro world characters that exploited a variety of genres across movies like Popeye, Clint Eastwood and James Bond. But people would realize that this movie was done more as a comedic homage to Bruce Lee rather than a pure exploitation film in itself.

Another movie that they discussed that was exploited in its own right was Game of Death. While there’s been variations of the movie, the original has been widely known to only have 30 minutes of actual usable film. In turn, the movie employed actors and various tricks with other Bruce Lee movies to give the impression it was a finished product. The film maker himself (outside of Bruce Lee) mentioned that there’s nothing more available, despite conspiracies of how he had extra footage that he could use to pay for his retirement or some strange statement like that.

From there, the documentary starts to look at what was coming up the pike in the kung fu genre. They brought in Sammo Hung for this as he was also involved in Enter the Dragon but had become both a great choreographer, actor and film maker in his own right. He took the Bruceploitation film in a different direction where he managed to produce Enter the Fat Dragon, which wasn’t so much about Bruce Lee but a meta statement about Sammo as this non-idealized actor that could actually pull off all the same moves as Bruce Lee.

A weird tidbit comes in the form of the accepting of Bruce Lee’s passing as the Bruceploitation genre starts to wear thin. There’s a scene from one of Bruce Li’s movies (one of the semi-biopics) that ends with the conspiracy of Bruce Lee still being alive, but as a recluse awaiting to return in 1983, 10 years after his death. Obviously, that never manifested but the kung fu genre would continue to prosper without him.

The next big thing would be the combination of comedy with kung fu lead not only by Sammo Hung but the main forerunner of Jackie Chan. Of the prominent people still involved, Jackie was the only major person missing in this group. But the interesting note was the description of the Jackie Chan style movie where you have someone who would get beaten up throughout the movie only to prevail at the end. They didn’t really mention Jackie’s techniques like “wire-fu” replacing more legitimate martial arts. But I think most people would recognize Jackie Chan as one of the premier martial arts action stars that still is around.

The film concludes with the three main clones showing what they’re up to these days. I think Bruce Le probably is the most game of the three and probably can still go if he’d want. But the others have moved on.

For the most part, I found this documentary to be really solid. I was particularly impressed by how almost all the key people involved were given a fair amount of screen time and it was nice seeing where they are today (or those that managed to survive). They covered a wide variety of topics and showed a few of the more nefarious moments (including the Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave). Maybe the only person they didn’t mention was Lau Kar-Wing, who might’ve received a small credit for a Bruce Lee type of film but I’m guessing it was too insignificant.

At times, it did feel as though they just name dropped a lot of things without context like various movies. But I think it was more of a case where they needed to comb through a lot of ground and couldn’t go into as much depth as they may have wanted. I think the main points were showing just how wide the whole Bruceploitation phenomenon had gone and to what extent, which would give most people who were interested a taste of the Bruce Lee craze and one of the major aftermaths.

At any rate, I highly recommend giving this documentary a shot since it’s on TubiTV right now and for any Bruce Lee and/or Bruceploitation fan, this is a fun and memorable thing to watch.

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