Bruce Lee défie Las Vegas

This is a film with one of those great exploitation titles that promises so much more than it eventually delivers. At first glance I was expecting to see some extreme kung-fu horror flick with a mad sorcerer reviving Bruce Lee from his death and turning him into an unstoppable zombie killer, with only a young novice martial artist to stop him. Sadly this was not to be. Aside from the cheesy opening shot, in which a guy pretending to be Bruce Lee jumps straight out of a grave and a drawing of such a scene follows on quickly, we're in the middle of a run-of-the-mill fight flick that has nothing to do with Bruce Lee at all. In fact, he's not even mentioned!

The film instead concerns a young Bruce Lee lookalike named Bruce Lea (see where the confusion can arise?). It turns out that an old buddy of Lea's has died, so he goes to investigate and find the killers responsible. It turns out to be, apparently, the Village People! Yep, a Japanese man, a black man, a cowboy and a white man were last seen with the deceased and soon Lea finds himself battling the criminal gang in a succession of largely unimpressive fights. Things are tied up with a very unsurprising twist ending, a touch of tragedy and lots of very bad dubbing and worse acting. Lots of running time is taken up with scenes of human bonding which occur between Lea and would-be girlfriend Deborah Chaplin and the will-they-or-won't-they relationship which develops between them.

Interspersed with the light plot are some fairly average scenes of kung fu which are nothing to get excited about. They are okay, but Lea is no Bruce Lee or even Bruce Li. In fact, Bruce Lea is a better actor than he is a fighter, which is unusual considering the proliferation of good fighters/poor actors that fill our screens year after year! Chaplin is also not bad in a developed part, although the bad guys are little more than clichés waiting to be cut down by our hero.

The film is quite slow and uninteresting, let down by poor production values and a somewhat gloomy atmosphere. The photography is always dark and the editing looks like child's work, with silly slow-motion inserts for no reason (the moves aren't even that impressive to begin with). For some reason, some prints of the film claim that Umberto Lenzi is the director, but I believe this to be a simple case of mistaken identity; also, why on earth would Lenzi leave his beloved cop films in Italy to go globetrotting for a low budget kung fu trash oddity? A guy named Doo-Yong Lee appears to be the real culprit.

At first glance, "Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave" seems to be indistinguishable from other 1970s martial arts movies, though there are two differences. The first is that it was filmed in the United States, and the second being that it was made by Koreans instead of Hong Kong filmmakers.

But apart from those differences, the movie doesn't really stand out from the pack. As you may have expected, while the movie's title promises a resurrected Bruce Lee - and the opening sequence shows that title action - the movie quickly forgets what it promises and makes no further actions to be "Brucey". What follows is a long and hard slog through a really thin and boring story, with occasional martial art sequences that are badly directed, badly choreographed, and badly edited.

Is there any saving grace? Well, there is some really awful dubbing that occasionally provokes a chuckle, and the Korean filmmakers' occasional misconceptions of America and American people also is unintentionally funny at times. But there are not enough unintentional laughs to make this worth a look. Even aficionados of martial art movies will find this particularly tough to sit through.

Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (1976)

1/2 (out of 4)

The movie opens on the tombstone of Bruce Lee, which is struck by lightening causing the dead start to bust up through the dirt. From here "Bruce Lee" (Bruce K.L. Lea) seeks revenge on his former trainer who has been killed.

Brucexploitation is a sub-genre that really took off after the death of Bruce Lee. It was clear the Martial Arts genre needed something to keep those cash registers ringing so countless producers made in-name-only Bruce Lee movies. I'm slowly making my way through them and I really hope I don't come across one as bad as this one.

If you're a fan of bad movies then you'll get a couple laughs out of this sucker, which contains the typical bad dubbing and laughable sound effects. There's no question that the greatest thing about this picture is the American title, the opening credit sequence and how the title and this sequence are pretty much the only thing that deals with "Bruce Lee fighting back from the grave." I'm sure a zombie Bruce Lee movie with this title could have been awesome but sadly that's not what we got.

If you've got a Martial Arts movie with awful action scenes then you're pretty much dead in the water as far as entertainment goes. There are a couple funny action scenes including one dealing with a taxi cab driver but there's certainly not enough to keep you entertained throughout. The performances are all rather laughable and there's certainly nothing fresh or entertaining about the story.

BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE is a great title but it's certainly an awful film.

Let's be real here, if you are going to watch a movie called "Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave" and you are expecting a good or even a decent movie, you are delusional.

If you are instead expecting a bad movie with laughable dub and performances, editing and image quality proportional to the amount of money invested in making of the movie and fights that are decent for what they are, though expectedly ridiculous and over the top, you will enjoy your time with the movie.

It is what it is and if you are willing to accept it you will have a great time, especially if you bring a friend along this "so bad it's good" ride. I give it 5/10 and I recommend it to anybody that know's what he's in for.

An oriental Kung Fu expert named Wong Han (played by Bruce K.L. Lea) travels to America at the invite of his long-time friend and former Kung Fu school training partner only to learn his friend is now dead, apparently the result of a suicide. Suspecting foul play, Wong Han sets out to bring down a gang of strange characters he suspects are responsible for his friend's death but when he attempts to do so, there's also quite a few unexpected surprises awaiting our hero.

Despite the title referring to Bruce Lee, he actually has nothing whatsoever to do with this movie apart from an extremely cheesy, silly opening introduction title sequence in which we see a man resembling Lee jump out of a grave with the headstone behind him bearing Lee's name. What this movie is actually about is a man coming to America trying to avenge his fallen friend while protecting his deceased friend's last belongings. There he befriends a beautiful young woman named Susan (played by the delectable Deborah Chaplin) who tries to help him in his quest. However, the gang of colorful thugs, a true assortment of weird characters if there ever was one, are after him and Susan for some reason unknown to Wong Han and go all out in their efforts to bring them down meaning Wong Han has to constantly fight for his own survival while also trying to protect Susan.

As you can tell, the basic plot for this movie isn't half-bad. The Kung Fu fighting scenes featuring Bruce Lea, who throws a mean-looking kick, also proved much better than expected although they fall rather short in comparison to the one and only Bruce Lee. The major problem here is that the movie seems to go on a bit too long, the pace feeling a little too slow, which isn't helped by the fact there's too much obvious filler footage of people simply driving vehicles from place to place. Also the colorful villainous assortment of characters Wong Han tries to bring down never evolve beyond anything other than one-dimensional caricatures.