Bruce Lee défie Las Vegas

I bought this movie years ago at a local dollar store for the title alone and once I got around to watching it, I was pleasantly surprised how entertaining it was. It's been years since I've seen this film, so I'll have to go digging through my archives and watch it again - but don't believe the crap people say. It's an enjoyable movie, though as best as I can recall it didn't have much ( or anything?) to do with Bruce Lee returning from the grave. It's not a zombie movie or anything, just an enjoyable and entertaining kung fu B film from the 70's. I myself am a huge Bruce Lee fan, but I don't initially hate a movie because it tries to capitalize on the death of a legend by using his name in the title...I believe there's an entire genre of that - bruceploitation. I'd definitely recommend this film to fans of B films or old kung fu films. The copy I got was pretty grainy...but I bought it for a dollar, so...I didn't exactly go in with the highest of expectations. So if you buy it cheap or see it for free, read the title, and know the star is bruce lea, go in with your expectations set low - you might like it.

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.

This movie is a underground martial arts cult classic (as with fantasy mission force), although this movie does not star Bruce Lee, it is about him, and stars the look-alike bruce le , who has portrayed lee in other films. This is about bruce lee making a pact with the dark angel, and he has come on earth to get his "revenge" on the people that tried to kill him. For Bruce Lee fans this can be a funny film or a film they hate , i found this film funny though.

rated R for action violence and mild brief nudity.

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.

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.