Huo yuan jia zhi jing wu zhen ying xiong

DRAGON IN FURY is nothing more than a hilariously cheap, shot-on-video reworking of Bruce Lee's FIST OF FURY, with ageing Bruce Lee imitator Dragon Shek taking over the duties as the martial artist who decides to stand up to a cruel gang of Japanese oppressors. And when I say reworking, I mean that this is virtually a shot-for-shot remake of the Lee classic, with many scenes copied but inevitably inferior due to the non-existent budget. Even the infamous "no Chinese or dogs" scene is present and correct.

Shek has always been one of the most uninteresting of the Bruceploitation actors and he continues that trend here. It doesn't help that he looks nothing like Lee. The film is cheap and largely worthless and the fight choreography is pretty poor even for the low budget. I liked the surreal moment in which Shek fights a Japanese samurai in the woods complete with swirling camera-work and blowing leaves; a random moment ripped off from VERSUS for a change as it certainly wasn't in the original movie.

Bizarrely, DRAGON IN FURY features two ageing kung fu stars in supporting roles. Gordon Liu shows up in an early cameo and disappears quickly as if to hide the fact that he appeared. Better is Billy Chow, the lanky master villain who unsurprisingly plays the main bad guy (interestingly enough he already played the villain in another FIST OF FURY, the outstanding FIST OF LEGEND with Jet Li). I'm always delighted to see Chow on screen and even if he's given little to do here, he's still the best thing in the film.