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In 1985, Jackie Chan grabbed an umbrella and ran towards a moving bus. Here’s how Police Story changed action cinema forever.

There had never been an action scene quite like the one that appeared in the first few minutes of 1985’s Police Story. Jackie Chan’s plucky cop, in dogged pursuit of crime boss Chu Tao (Chor Yuen) engages in a wildly destructive car chase through a hillside shanty town, demolishing rickety buildings and detonating gas bottles in his wake. When Tao and his goons then make their escape on a stolen bus, Chan’s Sergeant Kevin hooks onto the back with the help of an umbrella, his body flung to and fro as the vehicle lumbers through traffic.

The scene is brilliant not just because Chan’s risking his neck by doing his own stunts. It’s not just brilliant on a technical level (the planning that went into...

A stunt choreographer tries to recapture his 80s and 90s youth in a movie that pays tribute to Hong Kong action cinema. Our Stuntman review:

Exploring similar territory to this summer’s The Fall Guy, but made with less noisy bombast, Stuntman is a heartfelt ode to the golden age of Hong Kong action cinema. It opens with what looks strikingly like the climactic set-piece in Jackie Chan’s 1985 masterpiece, Police Story – a bruising fight in a shopping mall, with hoodlums being side-kicked down escalators and sent crashing into glass display cases. This, we later learn, is the set of mid-90s martial arts crime movie Operation Vulture, on which Sam (Stephen Tung) was at the height of his powers as a stunt choreographer.

During the making of that film, however, a high-wire stunt involving a leap from a bridge and a moving truck went catastrophically wrong, almost fatally injuring...

The sudden death of martial arts superstar Bruce Lee in 1973 shocked the world. Fans everywhere mourned the loss of an icon who had left us far too soon. Lee had accomplished so much in his short but brilliant career, popularizing martial arts cinema globally with smash hits like Enter the Dragon. Yet when that fateful day arrived, Lee had just begun to make his mark. Four iconic films were not enough; the world wanted more.

In Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea, filmmakers saw an opportunity. If they couldn’t deliver more from the master himself, they would find men to carry on his legacy in spirit, if not in fact. Lookalikes with pseudonyms like Bruce Li and Dragon Lee stepped into the role. Movies copied or faked Lee’s titles and style, often featuring these “clones” in leading roles. An entire genre sprung up to feed the worldwide thirst for all things Lee,...

Plot: A deep dive into the Bruce Lee exploitation film craze that dominated grindhouse cinema after the iconic martial artist’s death.

Review: Flashback to the year 1994. On my 13th birthday, while cruising the video store for a movie to watch with my friends at my birthday sleepover, on a whim, I decided to rent Enter the Dragon. I was never the same. After watching it, I enrolled in Karate classes and tried to learn as much about Bruce Lee as possible. While cruising those same video store aisles, I was very confused by how many kung-fu movies had his name and image on the cover, given that, even back then, I knew there were only four Bruce Lee movies, plus Game of Death. And why were they constantly misspelling his name? Who was Bruce Le? Or Bruce Li? Or Bruce Liang?

This, of course, was my introduction to the...

The idea of cashing in on a recently deceased celebrity is a shameful one, but when Bruce Lee died in 1973 at the age of just 32, Asian markets — predominately Hong Kong — cornered and spinning heel kicked the market, delivering a wheelhouse of movies that would come to be known as Bruceploitation.

While Bruce Lee could fall under the category of “often imitated, never equaled”, filmmakers and stars behind Bruceploitation worked to keep their hero’s legend thriving on the big screen. One such star of the genre was Wong Kin-lung, who would go on to be known as Bruce Le (get it?). As he put it, “It was almost like an honor,” although the opportunity presented its own challenges. “I thought I could make Bruce Lee-style action my way, because I was a martial arts teacher.”

On developing a technique among everybody else who was part of the Bruceploitation explosion of the ‘70s,...

When Bruce Lee died under mysterious circumstances in 1973 at age 32, the actor and martial artist left a hole in the action star firmament that seemed irreplaceable. That did not stop the Hong Kong film industry — and the rest of the world, for that matter — from trying anyway.

As Lee’s final (complete) film “Enter the Dragon,” released just six days after his death, became a worldwide box office phenomenon, “Bruceploitation” was born, enlisting look-alike performers to replace and imitate the trailblazing martial artist on screen. Decades after these copycat films deceived viewers — while still delivering some genuinely thrilling fight sequences — Severin Films is releasing “The Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1,” a compilation of 14 titles starring Bruce “impostors” like Ho Chung Tao, who went by the name Bruce Li, Ryong Keo (Dragon Lee), Chang Yi-tao (Bruce Lai) and Wong Kin-lung, who to this day goes by the name Bruce Le.

To celebrate the release of Enter the Clones of Bruce on Digital and coming to Blu-Ray 27th May, we have a Blu-Ray to give away!

When the world’s most famous martial artist and screen icon Bruce Lee died in 1973 at just 32 years of age, he’d completed only four films. Within hours of his funeral, Hong Kong studios began producing hundreds of unauthorised biopics, sequels, prequels and spin-offs, finding a new legion of stars whose main skill was that they were Lee lookalikes. Over the next decade ‘Bruceploitation’ would become a staple of global cinema.

Now following its hugely successful premiere at FrightFest 2023, Enter the Clones of Bruce, a cinematic story like no other, gets its UK release on digital and on Blu-ray from 27 May 2024, complete with a slew of special features thanks to Severin Films.

Director David Gregory examines this fascinating phenomenon using interviews from those who experienced it first hand,...

‘A deeply twisted shocker… You will never, ever, ever find a psychotic she-monster more blood-chilling than Susan Tyrrell’

Coming Soon

‘An excellent shocker… queasy and wildly ahead of its time… Susan Tyrrell delivers a character unlike any other in horror history’

Mondo Digital

‘Tyrrell steals the show… the sight of her… clutching a machete and chasing a poor unfortunate through a stormy night is once seen, never forgotten!… I heartedly recommend you seek out’

Hysteria Lives

One of the notorious 1980s video nasties Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker has been lauded as ‘Brilliantly insane’ (Cool Ass Cinema) and a ‘horror gem, well-crafted, ripe for analysis… should not go overlooked (Bloody Disgusting) and now, thanks to Severin Films, you can witness the film like never before. The company announces a brand-new Special Edition Dual 4K Uhd and Blu-ray is set for its UK release on 13th May 2024.

In a surprising change of direction,...

Severin Films and Alamo Drafthouse today announced the 21-market theatrical engagement of the award-winning documentary Enter The Clones Of Bruce beginning April 12th at Alamo Drafthouse in Los Angeles. In addition – and direct from Hong Kong – legendary Bruce clone Bruce Le will make rare personal appearances at screenings in LA (4/12-14), San Francisco (4/16), Austin (4/18) and New York City (4/20-21), which will also feature screenings of Le/Bruceploitation classics that include The Dragon Lives Again, Enter The Game Of Death, Ninja Strikes Back and The Challenge Of The Tiger.

On May 21st, Bruceploitation is globally unleashed with the Blu-ray releases of Enter The Clones Of Bruce, along with Severin's unprecedented The Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Volume 1, a 7-disc collection presenting 12 of the very best – and frequently very bizarre – films starring Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee, Bruce Liang and more, all restored for the first time ever from original elements.

Aquarius Releasing founder Terence “Terry” Levene, who released dozens of B-movies in grindhouse theaters in the 1970s and ’80s and beyond, died Jan. 13 in Englewood, NJ. He was 90.

After working at Commonwealth United, Levene started Aquarius Releasing, which released genre films ranging from kung fu to sci-fi and far beyond and serve as a sub-distributor for Roger Corman and others. Aquarius had offices above the Selwyn Theatre on 42nd St. in New York, and released films including “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” “Isaac Hayes: Black Moses of Soul” and Lucio Fulci’s “The Beyond” (retitled as “Seven Doors of Death.”)

Among the other films he distributed or booked were the New York release of the wildly successful sex film “Deep Throat,” the Northeastern release of “Halloween” and John Sayles’ “Alligator.”

In the tradition of other exploitation film mavens like William Castle, Levene passed barf bags to patrons of “Doctor Butcher M.D....

Terry Levene, the schlock showman who as the head of Aquarius Releasing was behind such films as Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave and Doctor Butcher, Medical Deviate, has died. He was 90.

Levene died Jan. 13 surrounded by his family in Englewood, New Jersey, Severin Films executive Josh Johnson announced.

Operating out of an office above the Selwyn Theatre on West 42nd Street in New York, Levene creatively marketed low-budget American features including Isaac Hayes: Black Moses of Soul (1973) and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984).

For grindhouses and drive-ins, the onetime amateur boxer rebranded Lucio Fulci’s supernatural horror film The Beyond (1981) as Seven Doors of Death (1985) and Umberto Lenzi’s Italian shocker Cannibal Ferox (1981) as Make Them Die Slowly (1983), promoting the gory latter as “The Most Violent Film Ever! Banned in 31 Countries!”

Aquarius passed out barf bags to those paying to see Doctor Butcher, Medical Deviate (1983), which was a re-edited...

Whether you’ve heard the term or not, chances are you’ve seen an exploitation film somewhere in the wild. From sharksploitation megahits like Sharknado, to culture-defining classics like ozploitation’s original Mad Max, or carsploitation’s Death Race 2000, the quality of these carefully marketed mockbusters – built entirely around audience trends with huge, eye-catchingly stupid titles – has always been up for debate. But it’s rare there’s a moral dimension too; after all, no one owns the copyright on cars or sharks or post-apocalyptic bikers. It’s a little different when the genre being exploited though, is an actual person.

Bruce Lee is arguably the most famous and accomplished martial arts performer that’s ever lived. Despite a tragically truncated filmography, cut short at just four features, by his sudden death in 1973, he had co-birthed the entire kung-fu genre, which continues to live and thrive half a century on.

A singularly wacky moment in film history is poked in “Enter the Clones of Bruce.” It surveys the years immediately following Bruce Lee’s untimely 1973 death, when the sudden international thirst for martial arts movies that he’d awoken could seemingly only be slaked by the man himself — or by a host of imitators who popped up under lookalike pseudonyms.

David Gregory’s documentary won’t convince most viewers that the resulting flood of opportunistic cheapies are worth more extensive investigation. But they’re certainly cheesy fun in excerpt, and interviews with surviving participants provide an entertaining window into an anything-goes heyday for Hong Kong cinema. Premiering in Tribeca’s midnight section, this high-kicking flashback should appeal to the same fans who previously enjoyed such prior psychotronic excavations as “Not Quite Hollywood,” “Electric Boogaloo” or this director’s own prior investigations of cult figures Al Adamson and Richard Stanley.

When...