Shen wei san meng long

I saw this film in the early eighties, so my memory of the plot details is pretty hazy. I do recall, however that the clones mentioned in the title not only didn't look very much like Bruce Lee, they didn't look like each other! Also, there was an army of overweight men in diapers who were covered with metallic paint and were supposed to be made out of bronze. Whenever these guys would get kicked or punched a metallic "bong" was heard on the soundtrack to enhance the illusion. The only problem that the effect was ruined by the way their flesh jiggled on impact. I went to a lot of lousy films in those days, but this one got by far the worst audience reaction of all of them(although the place was nearly full!). If they were dumb enough to think a film with a title like this would be good, they deserved to be disappointed. Personally, at the time I thought it was a lot of goofy fun.

With the news of actor Bruce Lee's sudden death in July 1973 from a mysterious brain aneurysm at the age of 32 it's decided by Mr. Colin of the SBI-Special Branch of Investigations-to have a sample of Bruce's brain used to have him cloned into not one but three Bruce Lee's to fight crime in the orient. It's a task given to mad professor Lucas who as we'll soon see has plans of his own in using the Lee's to do his insane bidding; Which is to kill each other in mortal combat for his own sick entertainment!

The Lee's get involved with a number of bad guys in the movie one a film director who uses his job as cover to smuggle gold bars out of the country-Hong Kong-and have Bruce murdered while staring in his movie as a cover to his crimes as well as increase the film's box-office returns. There's another crazed psycho who plans to create a army of free rang and grass fed men of steel or bronze to take over the world and make him the supreme dictator. And then finally Professor Lucas himself who's just plain crazy who plans to destroy the very thing or things that he created the Lee's just for the fun of doing it! Played for laughs the movie does in fact have a number of great fight scenes with the three Lee's doing their best to imitate the late Bruce Lee but falling a bit short.

There's also in the movie a number of shocking but very titillating T&A scenes-With naked and very busty Chinese girls running around on the beach-in the film that are in fact far better then any of the action scenes in it. Worth watching in seeing just how influential the late Bruce Lee was in that his death didn't put an end to his career but made him far more popular then he was when alive. That to the point of movie studios raising Bruce from the dead in order to do it!

Here's yet another in the fairly lengthy list of Bruceploitation flicks to emerge after the great mans untimely demise.

Well, first things first, you just have to hand it to the makers of this – what a bloody ridiculous (i.e super cool!) plot! There is just one slight problem from the start however……the three clones of the late martial arts star actually bear bugger all resemblance to him! (nor to each other even more alarmingly!!!) Still, let us not nit pick over such erm….inconsequential factors; rather let us instead revel in the never ending series of chop-socky fights, cool seventies fashions (including humongous sunglasses and medallions) and indeed the presence of perennial B-movie faves Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and Bolo Yueng.

Also of note there are some admittedly hilarious scenes on offer including an entirely gratuitous sequence featuring a group of naked girls on a beach, and in another set of scenes, a bunch of chubby bronze warriors who just can't seem to catch on that chomping on certain poisonous plants isn't conducive to one's good health(!!!)

Despite the above high points, it does have to be said that the film is actually rather mundane in it's execution however and that the numerous fights (which account for the majority of the films running time) do actually become somewhat tiresome after a while. Nonetheless, as I previously said, credit where credit's due – for sheer stupidity of plot, this is something of a classic!

THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE is perhaps the ultimate Bruceploitation film, featuring no less than three Bruce Lee imitators (and two of those are the hard-working Dragon Lee and Bruce Le). It starts off with the depiction of the death of the real Bruce Lee, only to have his body claimed by a mad scientist (Jon Benn, who starred in CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER and WAY OF THE DRAGON) who proceeds to replicate three clones from it.

This action-packed tale then follows each clone as he engages in training routines before being sent off on special missions, typically performing assassinations and the like. Eventually they turn on each other. The whole thing was brought to you courtesy of infamous exploitation director Dick Randall, whose CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER is a mini masterpiece of its type. THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE isn't, but it's still a must for trash fans.

There's no denying the slapdash nature of this film, which was shot in Thailand and the Philippines. While the plot is more involved than your regular kung fu outing, the fight scenes feel very laboured and predictable; the Bruce Lee imitators spend too much time copying Bruce Lee instead of showing much in the way of real skill themselves. I feel they did better work elsewhere. Still, on the other hand, the viewer does get treated to Bolo Yeung (DOUBLE IMPACT), gratuitous nudity, training scenes set to stolen ROCKY music, and a general air of ineptness and anything-goes cult appeal.

This movie is actually so bad. (Direction, acting, effects, even the fighting) that it has reached some sort of cult status over here. You should check it out. It's funny as hell.