Goodbye, Bruce Lee

Long before the Golden Harvest's unfaithful Game of Death was released in 1978, shameless Taiwanese filmmakers did put on the map a copy-of-the copy that was unfaithfull as well, but funny: as soon as the still photos of Bruce's unfinished project were printed on local magazines, carachter-actor Lin Bing and YiYun Film Company invented this movie. They didn't know anything but the original story, they only knew the still photos showing Bruce, Kareem and others. The movie was made in just 2 weeks on a shoestring budget of less than 100.000 US dollars and they sold it everywhere in 1975. Ho Tsung Tao was renamed "Lee Roy Lung" before becoming "Bruce Li". All in all the movie is an unintentional joke: the popsong King of Kung-Fu sung by "Candy" was a cooooool weird piece, expecially if you considers that grade-B Kung-fu movies rarely had original music composed for them, they used steal music from other films. The cast includes Lung Fei with a whip, Shan Mao as a karate-man, the ubiquitous Chang Yi Kwai as a stuntman, Tsai hung with a turban... not to mention a ridicolous black boxer with an almost female breasts and a wrestler who looks like a caveman! No word is spent to explain why modern gangsters waste their time hiring fighters instead of simply shooting the hero with a pistol. Fight coreography is merely decent in some occasion. When this movie was released in Italy, in the city of Turin audience went angry on finding Bruce wasn't in it and they call the police, asking back the admission price and forcing the owner of the theatre to put out a sign that said Bruce Lee didn't appear in the movie. They were less idiots than the filmmakers thought, nonetheless if you take this movie for what it is, you can have some fun (expecially when the shadows of the fighters are incidentally casted on the fake sky-panel outside the pagoda's balcony). That's why this trash ranks 6 in my memory. Ho Tsung Tao was an excellent athlete anyway and a nice guy.

Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death (1975)

** (out of 4)

Bruce Lee suddenly and tragically dies so Bruce Li is asked by some movie producers to film new scenes so that they can finish GAME OF DEATH. It turns out that these are actually criminals trying to get Li to transfer some money and after refusing to give the money back Li has his girlfriend kidnapped. She's forced into a tower where Li must battle people on various floors to reach her.

GOODBYE BRUCE LEE: HIS LAST GAME OF DEATH is another Bruceploitation picture and I must admit that I was actually entertained by this one. If you're looking for a "good" movie then you're certainly not going to find it here but if you enjoy this Bruce Lee wannabe movies then you should be able to get a couple kicks out of this one. It certainly doesn't help that we get an opening song, which is a rip-off of the one heard in SHAFT so things get off to a fun start.

The entire story is rather bizarre and silly but it makes for a decent exploitation picture. The film contains various rip-offs including Li going up against a large black basketball player. The final thirty minutes of the movie is pretty much non-stop martial arts as Li has to go from one floor to the next and battling various people. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking with these scenes but they are slightly entertaining in their own way.

Again, this isn't a "good" movie by any stretch of the imagination but at the same time I thought the film was fairly well-made considering the budget. The cinematography was actually decent and there's a fairly good flow to the picture. GOODBYE BRUCE LEE: HIS LAST GAME OF DEATH isn't a masterpiece but it's entertaining.

Making a quick buck on the death of the great Bruce Lee? This is it. I've seen Bruce-exploitation movies that were worse. At least this one has some kind of a story. The movie starts about a guy who is asked to finish a Bruce Lee movie. They show him the movie. But this movie is a complete movie and after that movie-within-the-movie the whole movie is done. It's disturbing. The most boring part of the film is when the main character has to climb a tower and fight some martial arts experts on every floor. Really, really boring. The scriptwriters didn't do a lot of effort here. A lot of story lines are being started up, just to be forgotten about afterward. What happens to the money? What happens to the brother and his girlfriend? Who called the police? Who's that other bad guy (the one from Korea) and what becomes of him? I would have been a lot better if they'd make a kung fu movie without trying to jump on the Bruce Lee wagon and get the screenplay right.