"Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen" Finnish VHS Cover

AKA: King Boxer II
Director: Joseph Kong Hung
Producer: Robert Jeffrey
Cast: Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin Long, Wong Kin Lung), Chan Sing (Chen Sing), Lita Vasquez, Chang Lee (Cheung Li), Ruby Anna, Cloyd Robinson, Nona Herrera, Vivian Velasco, Ernie Ortega, Tsing Tong Tsai, Angel Confiado, Ruben Ramos , Jimmy Cruz, Romeo Blanco, Joe Canlas, Ely Rufuerzo, Ed Ramos, Nanding De La Cruz, Bill Feijoo
Running Time: 78 min.

By Joseph Kuby

One film critic put it best when he said…

“With all the realism and reason in most today’s movies, this was briskly anarchistic in terms of boring rules of movie making.”

The credits verify this. We have a Perry Boy, Peedoy, D’vultures, Paeng Giant and SOS Daredevils (Filipino’s elite stunt team). There’s an actor called Chang Lee whose name is separated, giving the impression of two one-name actors.

King Boxer 2 seems to be a family affair. We have a trio of Velascos (Joseph, Vivian and Leonardo) and a quintet of Ramos’ (Ruben, Ed, Ever, Segundo and Amber). The disjointed nature of the production may as well have been due to a case of family feud or nepotism that may have occurred on set or off.

The plot is best described as a comedic version of The Gold Connection with everyone getting their necks deep into some priceless treasure all the while a mysterious hit man keeps a watchful eye. The stark contrast in those films is akin to comparing Jackie Chan’s distinctive (to the point of conflictive) 1993 efforts, City Hunter and Crime Story.

However, Bruce Le (a less talented Chinese Jeff Bridges) is no match for James Ho (or Dragon Lee for that matter) and for a Filipino actioner it could have done with Inosanto’s presence to seal the deal on the martial arts stakes. Given today’s climate when it comes to action cinema, I think the whole world could benefit from seeing an authentic Filipino action hero who reveled in the beauty of Escrima and the likes.

I admire Dan for helping Escrima and Jeet Kune Do gain more exposure in the West but his mastery of the martial arts, along with his knowledge of action directing, could have made him an ideal stunt coordinator for the Filipino film industry. His creative input could have easily bolstered the quality and boosted their place in world cinema and right now we would have decent quality films from the Philippines that would rival Ong Bak in their artistry. Daniel Inosanto could have done for the Filipino film industry what Bruce Lee did for the Chinese one.

That may seem like a bold comment to make but bearing in mind that Danny’s experience on Hollywood and Hong Kong features gave him a truly dual-world perspective, an advantage that not many people had back in 1982. As such, Filipino action cinema has been stunted in its growth as a powerhouse in action film-making. Filipino cinema, as a result, has been impeded with the cheap-as-hell tag.

As you can tell from what can be read above, this is a somewhat disappointing film which had the potential to genuinely put Filipino action movies on the market but alas this film is ruined with a loosely connected plot whose unfocused narrative makes the confusing mess of Enter the Game of Death look startlingly linear.

Both movies were made by Joseph Velasco (a.k.a. Joseph Kong Hung) but unlike the latter (which was the film he made prior to this), this one lacks any real sense of coherence despite the protagonist seeming to have more drive and purpose in his actions than in the previous outing. To say there’s plot holes would be a vicious understatement. You’d think bad decisions with the editing, rather than the script, are what caused these gaps.

Unlike their previous collaboration, there are no celebrity look-alikes. For instance, in Enter the Game of Death there’s a Caucasian man with dark hair and facial hair who looks like British comic Jimmy Carr and one of the black martial artists looks like Michael Winslow from Police Academy (I saw this film lately at a house party and one of my friends swears it’s him). Don’t let that put you off King Boxer 2. The film isn’t too far from the term “so bad it’s good.”

The director is the same dude responsible for Bruce’s Deadly Fingers (which boasted having Lieh, Nora and Bolo), Bruce and Dragon Fist, My Name Called Bruce (written by a Zackey Chan), Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu, Enter Three Dragons (a.k.a. ‘The Dragon on Fire’ which had Philip Ko, Bolo, Lee Hoi San and Bruce Lei or Dragon Lee) and Eye of the Dragon (a.k.a. ‘The Ninja Strikes Back’ with Hwang Jang Lee, Casanova Wong, Bolo, Oddjob and Chick Norris).

He also helmed Return of Bruce (a.k.a. ‘Boxing Brothers’ which also had Lo*) and Cobra (not with Sly Stallone but with Bruce Lei).

…and I’ve not even hinted at the two “special” Leesploitation chop-sockies he did. Hahahahaha!

As with a lot of martial arts movies, what you can always rely on to salvage a film with a weak plot are stellar action sequences but that depends on how good the action director is. Despite there being plentiful chances for culturally diverse slugfests, the film’s bouts of martial combat range from average to slightly above average barring one truly good duel that happens later on in the film. This happens during the course of the third act (in the beginning of said act) and not surprisingly it’s with another Chinese fighter but I’ll talk about that later.

On the plus side, if you want something that’s unusual to the point of being bizarre (if nonsensical) then you will enjoy watching the eccentricities that are inherent (if not wildly abundant) in this film. The best way to describe this movie is imagine watching a film that was a combination between Godfrey Ho (minus the ninjas) and Ken Russell.

There’s a surrealist tone to this film which makes the film wacky to the point of being incoherent. Not quite in league with Chu Yen Ping’s Fantasy Mission Force or Chan Mei-Kei’s The Eternal Evil of Asia but almost vying for the same level of attention. Honestly, after watching this movie, I’ve come to see Wong Jing as David Lynch.

Let’s see, this film has a bunch of henchmen who are dwarfs (one of whom fires a pistol as if it was a shotgun), a homosexual rapist, a tribe of sickle-armed dwarfs, a very hot snake fist-styled Filipino lady, a group of similarly clad dagger-wielding femme fatales, a murderous obese masseuse, a transvestite who’s accosted by Bruce Le and a team of Shaolin Bronzemen. After all, this was made by the same team who brought us Clones of Bruce Lee. However, the film is misleading with its alternate title of Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen as they’re only featured in one scene.

Equally dubious is the title King Boxer 2 as this has nothing in common with Lo Lieh’s breakthrough film. Actually, given the nature of Lo Lieh’s appearance in Big Boss 2**, it would have arguably been more fitting if these two films switched titles. These films would probably have benefited more in reception, especially in the case of Le’s flick since if people can confuse Chinese with Japanese then they can confuse Filipinos with Thais.

With that said, there are a few scenes which seem similar to The Big Boss with one of the antagonists taking pleasure in watching their hired men spar with each other as well as joining in for a martial arts demonstration. Even some dialogue at the end recalls something Lee uttered in the finale of said film.

Notwithstanding possibly intended allusions to Bruce’s first action film, it’s a shame that there weren’t that many Bruceploitation films that capitalized on The Big Boss. The grisly nature of the film’s violence coupled with the prostitute angle was enough for exploitation movie moguls everywhere to expound upon. There was never a Bruceploitation film that truly quenched the thirst of porn pundits and fed the hunger of bloodhounds. Had there been so, exploitation cinema junkies would have sought highly after these films regardless whether they liked martial arts or not.

Opportunities were also missed on directly cashing in on Enter the Dragon. Given the plot elements of escorts and captives, filmmakers could have remade Enter as a “women in prison”*** movie with tons of sexploitation and lots of multi-ethnic diversity to entice global audiences. If Wong Jing was a director in the ‘70s, he would have explored such a concept. Jingie is an exploitive genius who would have given us enough sex, violence, juicy foul language and ‘70s cultural tidbits to satisfy the most ardent of grindhouse fans.

Back to this movie, which should not be confused with Treasure of Bruce Le (directed by Joseph Kuo****), it is a fairly middling affair with slightly meandering direction in light of both characterization and action. If there had to be one film that is required to be watched with friends and consumed substances, in order to be fully enjoyable and not utterly pointless, then this is the one. Whilst the film occasionally shines with inspired moments, it just plods along aimlessly in search of meaningful direction.

Looking back in retrospect, the main deficiency here is the dubbing. No one is a native English speaker so it’s hard to fully immerse ourselves with the interaction that exists between the characters. The dubbing is notable for having artists whose native language is obviously not English. Everyone sounds Mexican. Bruce Le sounds as if he’s dubbed by a Spaniard who sounds like Antonio Banderas. The guy who does the voice-over for Bruce pronounces uncle as “ancel.”

Another issue with the dubbing is that there’s moments when someone is speaking but nothing is heard, something that becomes quite apparent during the fight scenes where the usually present war cries are fairly absent (this happens with other kinds of sound effects during some of the scenes). This makes for an emotionally detached experience, though (save for a few okay actors) the sub-par acting on offer belittles any substantial levels of engagement the filmmakers were aiming to derive from the audience.

Then again, the dubbing could have thwarted some decent voice acting since I’ve always believed that if an actor is limited facially, they can deliver vocally (take for instance John Hurt in The Elephant Man). Maybe someone felt having foreign dubbing made it realistic but that is a jarring thought to consider since the problems of comprehending the dialogue diminish any well intentions of the sort.

The post-production team could have at least attempted in getting an actor like James Hong (who had lent his talent to several characters for the Li feature Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger). Gone are voice artists who sound like celebrities (like the Sean Connery soundalike for the villain in Interpol). No longer do we have dubbers who sound like John DeMita (Li’s role in New Game of Death) or Jonathan Frakes (Lung Fei’s villain role in New Game of Death).

George Lucas once said that film is 50% sound and I think this film displays a stark contrast between quality of dubbing and scoring. King Boxer 2 is testament to how much a decent quality soundtrack can enhance the experience of a film. What the film may lack in its visual components, it certainly does not lag with its audio composites. There are some rousing moments of orchestration which help make the film more achieved than it deserves (the accomplished fight scene with the Chinese hit-man being the highlight).

We’re treated to some classic funkadelic beats (‘70s bass lovers will get a kick outta this flick) and one rip-roaring fight scene with a Filipino gang near the beginning is a notable example. Of course, like a lot of the Hong Kong films during the period, this film contrives some cues from other movies (The Sand Pebbles must have been a huge hit in Hong Kong because its music was ripped off majorly for Jackie Chan’s Dragon Fist).

On the surface, the film seems to have the ingredients of a classic Bruceploitation film but it never really gels those ingredients together in a truly cohesive whole. It starts off like a traditional Kung Fu movie with some guy showing off his repertoire of movements. The only thing here being remotely different is the aspect of lighting with Bruce Le being illustrated fairly vibrantly in a red coat of light in front of a pitch black background (you gotta dig the contrast) then we get taken to some scenic agricultural setting where Bruce is training (with some of the most over the top sound effects ever heard).

Next we see Le trying to survive in the wilderness by hunting for fish and using darts to snatch melons from trees. We then come across his martial arts master in ancient garb and we get the impression this is some period tale but then afterwards we get taken to a scenario with thugs in contemporary attire. In any other movie, this would have been seen as defying audience expectation (since it is common for Chinese people to wear ancient robes in a modern setting e.g. the Waise Lee movie The Cat*****). In this movie, it’s just an example of the filmmakers deciding to make up things as they went along.

Le’s character is questionable morally as when the thugs attempt to rape a woman, he doesn’t do anything until they accidentally kick his pot of cooked fish. There’s nothing wrong with having protagonists whose agendas are with shades of gray (like Eastwood’s in the Dollars trilogy) but there doesn’t seem to be many plot points which allow for these filmmakers to explore the possibility of having a morally ambiguous “hero” (either that or they decided to drop the act after failing to come up with more angles on this). Once more, the would-be rape victim tries to kill Le moments later!

After foiling an ambush attempt by some random goons, Le encounters a mysterious martial arts expert played by Cheung Lik (who played the nunchaku exponent in Enter the Game of Death). Cheung was the fight choreographer for both this and Enter the Game of Death. The problem with this film is that during the group conflicts, it’s more obvious than ever that the stuntmen are just waiting to get hit than to be giving the impression that they’re that involved in the fight.

Throughout a lot of these fights, they come off as referees overlooking the action before anticipating in the combat. The filmmakers of this could have learned a lot from Last Fist of Fury from the composition of similar-themed fights. Despite this, both movies share scenes involving one of the protagonists being entangled in rope during a melee.

Some of the humour in the feudage helps to give the film an endearing touch even if some of it is quite hokey (if not ho-hum), namely when one of the gang leaders punishes a fellow hooligan by pulling out some of his facial hair.

Bruce Le’s vest, in some scenes, reads Saplot which is also the name of a feature-length presentation sex drama. Which reminds me, King Boxer 2 could have done with some nudity and porn. Given the randomness of the movie, the producers really missed out on going full-tilt with the exploit-everything angle. Nothing beats a good ol’ fuck and fight flick.

The actress who plays the villainess is Lita Vasquez who was thought of as the Philippines’ answer to Angela Mao. Lita can be seen in the Filipino cult classic Darna and the Planet Women.

The scene with the miniscule tribemen was, no doubt, inspired by the popularity of Weng Weng whose major claim to fame was the Bond spoof For Y’ur Height Only******. Weng had fought Lita in The Impossible Kid which was released one year after For Y’ur Height Only.

Yukari Oshima would be the next big female action superstar for Filipino audiences, although her status is surpassed by actress Vilma Santos who is seen as the Filipino Meryl Streep (conversely yet curiously, Cynthia Rothrock’s popularity in Jakarta was such that she was, oddly enough, viewed as a martial arts Meryl Streep).

No Bruceploitation movie could be complete without the requisite humour, even if a lot of it is unintentional (save for a Filipino equivalent to the type of Waylon Smithers-esque role usually reserved for Lee movie expat Wei Ping Ao). A sign on the door of a sauna (for men) reads ‘keep smiling’ (eerily unsettling given the nudity on display). One of the female protagonists informs Le that one of the crooks is as big as an elephant and when Le is at an amusement park, the director attempts to make the statues of creatures look scary but this would only work in a film like Jurassic Park. Here, it comes off as tawdry.

Rape scenes are never intended to be funny (unless you’re Wong Jing) but in this movie some Filipino thugs try to steal this fat guy’s big bowl of white cream (innuendo unintended) and one of them tries to undress him, causing the chubby guy to moan like a puppy dog as he yearns for his food. If Wong Jing was behind the camera (and left to his devices) this would be on par with his scripted James Ho movie, The Lama Avenger (o.k.a.******* The Three Avengers) which, believe it or not, isn’t as tacky as one may think.

A “poignant” scene takes place nine tenths into the film but rather than being tear-jerking, we’re succumbed to laughter as we see Bruce Le became Bruce Banner. Heheheheheheheheheh!

The brawls presented are literally a case of hit and miss but one fight that’s likely to excite viewers is what should have been the true denouement given the limited skills of Lita and the element of suspense that the film was trying to generate with the mysterious Chinese fighter.

The martial joust illustrates what we’re missing in the other fights: a sense of urgency and a feeling of danger. Mr. Lucas once said that a film is only as good as its villain and throughout the majority of this movie we never get the impression that Le is closer to the threshold of death. This is only hinted at with the premise of each fight rather than explored to devastating effect.

Le is engaged in a fast-paced battle of wits involving having to constantly change his style to jinx the concentration of the hired killer. Le and Lik constantly utilize different styles of Kung Fu, back and forth, in a way that makes other Kung Fu films look stilted and formal in their progression of styles. Le uses an assortment of leopard, dragon’s tail, snake, crane and tiger techniques to combat whatever Lik throws at him. There are parts where they even have to engage in the more conventional fisted combat just to gain an advantage. Lee would be impressed.

Describing the structure on a basic chronological format is fairly daunting, let alone describing the way they employ their techniques. Simply put, the duel serves as a master class seminar in how to counteract the other duelist’s style. It would have been the icing on the cake to have had some mantis and eagle (thumb, index and middle fingers) stylings going on. Having some monkey and panther-fist (middle knuckle raised) shenanigans would have been the cherry on top.

The unconventional conclusion of this bout may have motivated the development for the one between Jackie Chan and Don Cheadle in Rush Hour 2. The music even sounds similar but then that’s probably just me.

The finale is pretty exciting for what it is in theme although it’s kinda uneven in that the very final fight scene doesn’t live up to what preceded it: a series of progressively enthralling fight sequences. We have Karatekas with blades, Karatekas with poles and some Escrima exponents thrown in for good measure. To be honest, Le fought so many people that I think I may have left out something.

Now, if we had Dan Inosanto leading a pack of Escrima-styled cronies against Le then this could have rivaled James Ho’s Chinese Stuntman or even Bruce Lee’s Game of Death for that matter. As is the case here, the premise for the third act never really delivers in a way it should, making the likes of Enter the Game of Death look like Tower of Death. Which is all the more insulting to all concerned when you consider that Enter the Game made New Game of Death look like the original Game of Death.

I wonder how big this film would have performed at the Filipino box office had Weng and Dan appeared in it. Perhaps, Dan was offered to join but was weary of Le and Weng may not have been content at doing a cameo as a Filipino Ewok (he still could have played Agent 00 gunning down would-be gunners attempting to foil Le’s path to obtain justice).

Some gaffes can’t be ignored though. For instance, there are two topless guys who are waiting to pounce on Le in some hotel lobby but the receptionist only notices them when they start fighting (bearing in mind that one of them is standing very near her). Le hits a guy’s thigh but the guy reacts like his extended mushroom and bag of prunes (*cough* *cough* *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*) have been tremendously whalloped.

Some of the kicks don’t look effective since they obviously miss their intended target. Even if people don’t want to get hit, there are ways of obscuring these things with camera positioning but thankfully this never becomes too frequent.

When Le defends himself against the masseuse, she actually smiles after she gets hit. This is an inadvertent example of someone reverting from sadism to masochism. Add a few more techniques at the proverbial hands of Le (as well as some suggestive grimaces) and the term sadomasochism would spring to mind too. The director is prone to some bizarre moments of creativity so maybe Le should have fist-fucked her too.

The villainess of the piece tries to invite Le for a swim but even in the shallow end of the beach she struggles. Despite having reasons to distrust her, he helps her anyway only to be attacked then later on he kisses her like as if the whole thing was just a game of hard to get. When Le fights the first wave of Karatekas, they scatter away for some reason (leaving another group to get wiped out) and then they come back again. It’s like the director had suddenly found a way to extend the finale mid-production.

A good example of the lousy film-making apparent is that in one shot we can see the reflections of the film crew in Le’s shades. Thankfully, we don’t get too many shots like this otherwise this film would be plagued in its attempts to take the viewers to a world that seems to exist outside a filmic environment.

This film is so flawed that it makes Last Fist of Fury look like the work of Akira Kurosawa. Yeah, it’s that bad. Writing and directing mean nothing if the lead actor is not capable. Bruce Le, at best, is an average actor who manages to make the minimalistic Chuck Norris look like a subtle method actor. At worst, Le is a bad actor who can convince movie goers that Michael Wong can evoke the presence and mood of Anthony Wong.

Seriously, Le lacks the expressionistic texture that separates good actors from bad actors. Given the animated nature of some of the other talents Kung Fu cinema had to offer, Le can not hold one’s attention when he’s not in action. Le exhibits little of the charisma and charm Li effortlessly conveyed. He also makes Dragon Lee look like Jason Scott Lee.

Like what Michael Caine said, an actor is always thinking if not talking. Unlike James, we don’t get to see much introspection from Le. Maybe it’s the lack of opportunity to explore facets of emotion but Le is as one dimensional as they come. If Ho was in this movie, this would have been an above average feature if not an entirely good one (like the offbeat ‘Bruce Li in New Guinea’ – also directed by Joey Kong). As it stands, this is quite a bad film with redeeming qualities that stop it from being deemed as terrible.

In spite of this, I feel reluctant in calling this a terrible film since it would be an insult to those who’ve seen worse films. This film, whilst not being consistent, is at least unpredictable and manages to deviate from an unbearably slow pace considering its script seems to have been improvised on set. There are some nice scenic locales too.

Even if the film was without merit, watching bad movies can be good so as to help you be aware of what it means to make a good film and certainly watching terrible movies can make you more aware of the overall standards.

On the whole, this film is worth checking out if you’re looking for a film that’s out of this world. It’s not the worst Bruceploitation movie but nowhere near the best, not by a long shot.

The UK DVD, courtesy of 23rd Century, is missing a good part of the Filipino samurai segment where Le gets cut and uses the nunchaku to bring down the Karatekas. The French title for this film is Le Vainqueur which means The Winner.

Joseph Kong Hong’s filmography probably makes Lo Wei look like Chang Cheh but he’s not without his credentials. Yuen Woo Ping’s second job as stunt coordinator was for Joseph’s directorial debut Tough Guy (starring Chan Sing, Fung Hak On and Mars). Ping would go on to work with Joey on Tiger Force (starring Michael Chan Wai Man, Chan Sing and Jimmy Lee Fong). His last effort with Lo Lieh was The Furious (not to be confused with the Dragon Lee movie of the same name).

His last directorial credits were Thundering Ninja and Out of Danger. Joe’s last movie (as producer) was Black Spot, a film which would motivate the team responsible for Police Story 3: Supercop to pull ideas from it (in story and action). To speak of the devil, Jackie also reinvented the playground fight from New Game of Death for Police Story 2.

As much as Chan criticizes the Bruceploitation (or Bruce-spoof) franchise, it obviously left him an impression (intentionally or subconsciously) to the point of lifting the bus fight gag from Golden Sun (a.k.a. Bruce Lee, We Miss You) for the first Police Story. Criticize he may, Jackie can’t deny the importance these JKD rip-offs had.

Call them purid, full-length presentation, comedy sketch-shows or trash-taste crap-fests but if it weren’t for the Bruceploitation sub-genre, Hong Kong action cinema would have not maintained the popularity it did in the West. It helped bridged the gap between Lee and Chan in terms of sheer commercial momentum.

Many would like to think that these films failed in Hong Kong but if they were well and truly turds that stank up theaters, the local filmmakers wouldn’t have felt inclined to make dozens of them. Exploitation cinema doesn’t get more exploitive than capitalizing on people wanting to see their deceased hero. Critically abysmal? Yes. Commercially dismal? No.

At the end of the day, if you wanna watch a Filipino Bruceploitation actioner that delivers and doesn’t disappoint then check out Chaku Master which stars Bruce Ly (he sort of looks like a Filipino Ngai Sing/Collin Chou). One example of classic humour from that film is the uncanny usage of symbolism during an oral sex sequence. Coincidentally, both flicks offer some of the same locations such as the female villain’s Manilla villa. Heck, Le’s appearance in the Bollywood action flick Katilon Ke Katil, starring Dharmendra, is worth watching than this.

In retrospect of how his career turned out, Bruce Le should have concentrated on making either American or Hong Kong movies than working in the Philippines which is seen as the hell to Hong Kong TV’s purgatory for action movie stars.

After making this movie, Bruce Le worked on the fight scenes for a Chansploitation film called Fearless Hyena 3 starring Jacky Chen Shao Lung (which had Bolo Yeung). Bruce would then be choreographed in a film called Treasure Hunters by no other than Bill Yuen Biao (this shouldn’t be confused with the Wong Jing scripted Shaw Bros. movie which starred Al’ Fu Sheng, Wang Lung Wei, Gordon Liu, Lau Kar Wing and Wilson Tong).

With hindsight, this film seemed to inspire Sammo Hung for some of the comedies he made with Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao. If you were to watch this flick followed by Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars and Winners and Sinners, you’ll see how he incorporated certain elements into better movies. It’s a shame no one started up a Hungsploitation genre, get some Japanese fella and rename Sumo Hung. Hey, even Nora Miao had an imitator – Cora Miao. Hong Kong favourite Cheung Hok Yau was named after Jackie.

The gag of having an action sequence take place at a gambling horse den seems to have influenced Joe Cheung for the finale of Flaming Brothers (with firepower replacing fist- and feeticuffs).

You know, for a critically maligned sub-genre, Bruceploitation offerings have had a fair amount of influence. New Game of Death motivated John Woo with using freeze-frame techniques to emphasize dynamic parts of his films and Storming Attacks (Image of Bruce Lee) was given a sly nod by Wong Jing for his overlooked 1989 action comedy classic, Crocodile Hunter (starring Andy Lau). Then there is the correlation that occurs between The Dragon Lives and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story along with others.

As for Filipino cinema, it should at least be noted for making a name out of this particular Hong Kong movie star.

* How Lieh avoided the label “Lo budget Lieh” is anyone’s guess since his willingness to appear in tacky dreck (like Fist of Fury 2) almost tarnished his respectable reputation.

** Not to be confused with the Dragon Lee movie of the same title which was alternatively titled Dragon Bruce Lee 2.

*** Usually referred to as WIP.

**** Like the American cartoon, ‘Ed, Edd and Eddy’, it would have been canny to have had a production with Koo, Kuo and Kong. Joseph Koo being a film score composer as avid Bruce Lee fans would attest.

***** Which boasts one of the greatest fight scenes ever depicted on film…between a mutt and a feline, it has to be seen to be believed (the action director was Philip Kwok a.k.a. Kuo Chui who also appears in the film).

****** Otherwise known as.

******* Peculiarly, James Ho had done a film prior to Weng’s cult classic which had him up against Oddjob and a mini-me variation of him.

Joseph Kuby’s Rating: 5.5/10

"Enter the Game of Death" Korean Theatrical Poster

AKA: The King of Kung Fu
Director: Joseph Velasco, Lee Tso Nam
Cast: Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin Long), Bolo Yeung, Li Hai Sheng, Lee Hoi San, James Nam Gung Fan, Chu Chi Ling, Kim Wang Kuk, Samuel Walls
Running Time: 90 min.

By Joseph Kuby

Guilty Exploitation Pleasure!

Enter The Game Of Death (a.k.a. King Of Kung Fu) is really a bad film though one that’s highly enjoyable for Bruce Lee/martial arts/action/Hong Kong movie aficionados! (there’s plenty of references to films such as Fist Of Fury, Enter The Dragon and Game Of Death for those who care to decipher them such as the sub-plot from ETD about having the Bruce character agreeing to do a secret mission because of his female relative being attacked by would-be rapists)

Guaranteed, it’s not really as good as some of the Bruce Li movies (e.g. The Chinese Stuntman, The Gold Connection a.k.a. Iron Dragon Strikes Back, The Lama Avengers a.k.a. The Three Avengers) nor is at as good as the official Game Of Death movies, but nonetheless Enter The Game Of Death has its moments and then some!

The film is probably most interesting for utilizing the same location Bruce Lee had intended for his unfilmed magnum opus/tour de force masterpiece Game Of Death (which had also been used to good effect in the John Liu actioner Wu Tang Magic Kick a.k.a. The Mars Villa).

Bruce Le, at first, looks nothing like Bruce Lee (he appears in the opening credit sequence like an older Chinese version of Haley Joel Osmond) then as the film progresses there’s certain scenes, shots or rather frames that make you think or even say ‘Is that Brucie?!’ especially during the last fight Le has with Bolo and during his second to last fight scene with this black guy (in particular the beginning of the second slo-mo shot where he performs this kick and if you look carefully his face seems to resemble that of Lee’s).

Bruce Le may lack the acting skills and presence of Bruce Lee (not to mention immaculate performance of martial arts technique) but he manages to capture some of the movements and even the physique of Bruce Lee (physique-wise, he resembles the way Bruce looked when he did Enter The Dragon) even though his facial expressions are over the top (though perhaps not as much as Dragon Lee’s).

After reading the other Joe’s review, it’s very easy to see why the film has a slipshod nature as there’s little consistency in the film’s story (only a very basic plot which is vaguely linear).

The worst example of this consistency (or lack thereof) is the one concerning Bolo Yeung who switches between Japanese & Chinese costumes and is working for both a Chinese boss and a Japanese one without no narrative recourse. This is especially confusing when it’s seen at the beginning of the film when both bosses appear to be in allegiance with one another. A sub-plot would have been nice to explain such a rapid inconsistent moment of storytelling.

Speaking of allegiances, it’s never told comprehensively much less convincingly how Lisa (who faintly looks like Chingmy Yau Suk Ching – former starlet of Wong Jing) had become a double-spy for both the Chinese and Germans (this film is set prior to the World War II despite the fashions of Bruce Le and the Westerners he fights) and it’s never really been stated why she tries to convince Bruce to join both causes (I guess to keep her cover but again it’s not clear so as to make the viewer sure of what’s happening).

Also, when talking about female characters with strange motivations, Bruce’s cousin (for whom he’s avenging) asks for help after being raped but then moments later bites her tongue to commit suicide!… why bother to call for help in the first place? I know there’s this adage of making the audience guess and to figure things out for themselves but this is just ridiculously lazy, inane and virtually insane.

Henceforth, as a result, this movie is the best (or worst – depending on which way you look at it) example of making a film where there is no genuine motivation but to set up a series of fight scenes.

At least in some of the lesser examples of the genre, there’s a fairly substantial reason or reasonable excuse as to why the fights are there but this lacks logic (especially for the first encounter between Bruce Le and Bolo Yeung).

Also there’s a tournament sequence (that has a nice documentary feel to it) which even though features characters from the main storyline, it’s not been properly established as to why Bolo is fighting contenders in the ring. No explanation has been given afterwards, either.

The opening credit sequence features a funny and almost self-mocking portrait of its star Bruce Le which has two funky themes playing throughout (the last one which sounds like a retro version of the James Bond theme which I don’t think was ever used in any of the 70s Bond movies or even the Dr. No inspired Enter The Dragon – a missed opportunity for the latter, would have made it seem less of a rip-off of the former as the usage of the music cue would imply that the similarities were intentional, almost referential).

This credit sequence is strange because when the screen pauses each time a credit pops up, a virtually different music cue pops up (seemingly from different films altogether e.g. Drunken Master and The Hot, The Cool & The Vicious); distractingly, some of the same cues are used to encompass the credits towards the ending duration of the credit sequence.

For the last half of the film, music cues have been ripped off from Enter The Dragon. But for some reason, it never seems all that out of place or shamelessly derivative given the nature of the film (I guess it would have been sloppy if this had been done in a film where there hadn’t been such an exploitative nature and if it didn’t have so many references towards Bruce Lee).

The score features a strange airplane-esque soundtrack (I don’t mean Airplane the movie but the actual vehicle itself) which encompasses some of the slow motion segments of the fight scenes, not only is it overdone in their singular segments but just when they’re repeated in other fights.

What made me give this film a 4 rather than a 1 or no rating at all, is that the film is great cheeky fun and the fight scenes are surprisingly very good (especially the pagoda sequence) and are worth a rental alone. Nice use of weaponary and different exponents of different styles.

The snake fist exponent who fights with cobras is a nice tongue-in-cheek inventive touch and the best fight has to be the nunchaku duel which only has 50% of the talent Bruce & Dan had when they shot their nunchaku duel in the real Game Of Death.

My favourite fight is the one where Bruce takes on these Westerners in the forest as he’s going for a jog – the choreography is crisp but the unintentional humour of the whole affair (courtesy of the dubbing and Le’s reactions) is priceless and worthy of rewinds.

The only bad thing about the fight scenes is that it’s obvious when the audio changes from the English dub to the Chinese one as the war cries sound more authentic and the sounds have a more crisper and fresh-sounding quality to them.

Of course this film doesn’t have the level of depth and symbolic metaphors which was a part of Bruce’s intended vision for his version of Game Of Death, nor does it have the Kubrick standard of perfectionist filmmaking, subtlety and pacing which Bruce would have brought to the finished version of Game Of Death.

What’s also noticeable is that rather than Bruce Le climbing onto tougher levels, he graduates through easier ones (the only explanation I can think of is that the filmmakers reasoned that if you wanted to protect something you’d have the toughest fighter on the bottom floor so that IF any intruder had actually passed the first floor then they wouldn’t be able to defeat the most tedious of fighters due to the sheer energy spent on the first floor).

Another reason to seek this film is that it serves as a historical document – not just as a retro reminder of the times but of how widely known the Game Of Death project was even before John Little had found the script notes and extra footage that he was to use for his documentary ‘Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey’.

For instance, the way Lee Hoi San (famous Kung Fu actor who also appeared as one of the temple guardians in Tower Of Death) had blocked the entrance for Bruce to pass onto the next floor is eerily reminiscent of Kareem’s refusal in the footage the real Bruce had shot.

Also just like Chi Hon Joi, one of the exponents in the pagoda is also lying down on a bed. This should serve as a reminder as to why John Woo and Jackie Chan never use storyboards when they make movies.

Overall, good fun if you don’t take it too seriously. As a piece of trivia, the Game Of Death style rip-off called The New Game Of Death (a.k.a. Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game Of Death) has a theme song called King Of Kung Fu (which, if you remember, was the alternative title for this movie).

Joseph Kuby’s Rating: 4/10

This movie proves yet again that Bruce Le sucks, and was the worst “fake Bruce” of them all. Even Dragon Lee had some charm, compared to him. The reason behind Le’s loathsomeness is the audacious levels of “action” he and his producers packed into each of his movies; plot, character development, and even dialog were cast aside whenever possible and replaced by unending kung-fu battles. At least Bruce Le was a good martial artist, with some impressive kicks, but the guy just looks too goofy with his overdone “Bruce Lee” expressions and mannerisms.

The film kicks off with an opening credits sequence which features Le on a blank set, wearing a GoD tracksuit, kicking apart large vases and other inanimate objects. During this some funky music plays that sounds like Kool and the Gang. The credits declare “SUPER STARRING Bruce Le,” and immediately we know we’re in for an exploitative beating.

Reports vary on this flick. Supposedly it was originally going to feature a bunch of clips of Bruce Lee, from his movies, a la “Tower of Death,” even including a bunch of unreleased stuff from Bruce’s original “Game of Death” footage. Filming began around 1978, with Le acting as Bruce’s stand-in. But then apparently Linda Lee/Raymond Chow threatened to sue, and the film was dropped, only to be revived in 1981 by Filipino producer Joseph Velasco, who remade most of the movie and cast Le solely in the lead. This goes to explain why Enter the Game of Death seems so incoherent; characters who were previously shown to be dead will suddenly reappear, and some characters and sets seem to change through the film, giving the impression that this thing was shot over a long span of time.

Whatever the story behind the movie, the only thing that really matters is that it blows. Literally, one fight follows the next, and you have no idea what in the hell is going on. From what I can understand, it’s set in the 1930s, and the Germans and Japanese are planning to do something to China, and it all hinges on a secret document that’s been captured by someone. What this document contains is anyone’s guess. All of us have seen movies where the plot is nothing more than an excuse to set up the next action sequence, and Enter the Game of Death is the pinnacle (or should I say nadir) of such movies. It comes off as if it’s been written by a bunch of kids who’ve watched three straight years of low-grade Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

To give you an idea of the pointlessness behind the fights, Le is introduced to us as he’s taking a leisurely jog through the forest. He stops his jog and proceeds to beat up an innocent tree. Bruce abruptly cuts off this impromptu sparring session, creeps behind a few trees as he goes into a “Bruce Lee” scowl. Then a group of sword-wielders materialize out of the foliage and attack him. Why? It’s never explained. Bolo (he of “Enter the Dragon” and “Bloodsport” fame) is one of the attackers, and Bruce beats him up.

Bruce takes off, and the very next scene features Bolo fighting a bunch of inferior martial artists in a tournament (kids, never follow one action scene with another). But guess who Bolo’s final opponent is? Why, it’s Bruce Le! The guy we just saw kick his ass! And Bruce kicks his ass again! So when does this fight happen? Before the confrontation in the forest? After it? Never explained.

After this tournament, Bruce is offered a job as a bodyguard for a Chinese official who’s a turncoat, working for the Japanese. Bruce denies the offer, and the official warns him that he’d better watch himself. Bruce leaves, and sure enough, gets attacked by this guy’s thugs! Bruce beats them up and runs off with Linda, the Chinese assistant of a German official. She tries to recruit him for the German cause, whatever that is. Bruce turns her down, and she returns forlornly to her employer, who decides that Bruce better be taken care of. Man, this complicated plot is making my head hurt. I hope there’s another action scene, soon.

Next we see Bruce jogging in the woods again, wearing the Game of Death tracksuit! Several scenes begin like this, with Le just jogging through the woods. Maybe he’s training for, oh, I don’t know, a fight or something. Sure enough, he’s attacked again, by another group of thugs who come out of the woodwork. Bruce beats the tar out of them, including a black fighter who shows off some fancy kicks.

After this we actually get a few minutes of action-free dialog, which I guess technically construes “plot advancement.” Bruce learns that Linda is really a double-agent for a group of Chinese patriots, who want Bruce to help them fight the Germans and Japanese, and rescue the document. Bruce refuses, claiming that he’s a free agent. A Chinese guy accuses Bruce of being heartless. Bruce scoffs and runs away. Next we get to see Le laying in bed, reminiscing over how his beloved cousin was murdered by the Japanese. “I hate the damn Japs so much!” Bruce reminds himself, which inspires him to in fact joining the patriots’ cause.

So, boringly-long story short, Bruce pulls on his tracksuit again and raids a pagoda with three of the Chinese patriots. The pagoda, of course, hides the secret document everyone’s looking for, but no one seems to know what in the hell this document is all about. Bruce’s pals get sidetracked outside the pagoda, fighting a bunch of stooges. Bruce sneaks inside by himself, going solo against the bizarre temple guardians.

On the first floor, Bruce takes on a Shaolin monk who uses butterfly swords and small metal balls, which he throws with deadly accuracy. This is the same monk from “Tower of Death,” the one who guarded the second level. Bruce fights him for a while, and the funny thing is, even though this is just the first guardian, Bruce has a harder time beating him than any of the following guardians. Bruce maybe takes a punch or two but he doesn’t get hurt at all, and kills the monk with a savage blow.

The second floor features a guy with a wild beard and crazy, fake hair who hangs out with a bunch of snakes. He also does snake style, of course. Le dodges a few snakes while beating the guy up. Then in what I assume the producers intended to be a “horrifying” moment, the guy bites off a snake’s head and shoots the blood at Le. This scene is hilarious due to the confused expressions Le shows off while the guy’s doing this. Le looks like a robot, he doesn’t even look real. Anyway, Bruce kills the guardian and proceeds upstairs.

The third floor’s guarded by another guy wearing a wig, and a fake white beard. He uses nunchucks, and this of course gives Le the opportunity to reveal his own yellow Œchucks, which previously must’ve been hidden up his ass or something. Le slams this guy around without breaking a sweat, despite the fact that he’s just been in two life-or-death battles, as well as having fought around twenty guys in the previous thirty minutes of the movie.

On the fourth floor, Le faces two guys: Black Tiger and White Tiger. He takes them on one at a time; White Tiger (old, fat, dressed in white, and white-haired) reclines on a bed while Black Tiger (younger, kinda fat, dressed in black, black-haired) tries to fight Bruce with some unimpressive kung-fu. Bruce kills both of them easily, but by this time you’ll be dusting your furniture due to boredom, so you won’t even notice. This scene IS interesting in that it proves that somehow, word leaked out about Bruce’s REAL “Game of Death.” In Bruce’s original story, as shown in “Warrior’s Journey,” Ji Han Jae flips on a red light on the fourth floor of the pagoda, and warns Bruce that the red light means death. White Tiger warns Bruce Le the same thing in this movie, even turning on a red light. So, given that the dialog Bruce wrote for “Game of Death” wasn’t discovered until the Œ90s, and that this movie was made in the very early Œ80s, how did the producers know that this line of dialog was in Bruce’s original?

Finally, the top floor. Le JUST MISSES a Japanese agent who rushes off with the secret document, thereby rendering the entire pagoda raid pointless. So Bruce is left to fight the final guardian, another fat Chinese guy who’s dressed like a mountain man or something. Bruce gets cut a few times in the process. Here the producers give us more bang for the Bruceploitation buck, combining the GoD tracksuit with the “bleeding claw marks” look from the final battle in “Enter the Dragon.” Bruce beats the guy to death in another boring match.

Bruce goes back outside, helps his pals finish off the stooges they’ve presumably been fighting for the past several minutes. Then Bruce goes on to fight the Chinese turncoat’s stooges, Bolo, the black fighter he took on earlier, the Japanese official (who, it turns out, is the same guy who killed Bruce’s cousin), and finally, the German official. Bruce fights ALL of these guys on his own. Keep in mind, this is directly after his raid on the pagoda! Yet he shows no signs of physical exhaustion, and he’s barely broken a sweat. Even Bruce Lee himself looks like he’s about to collapse, after his fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s character in the “Game of Death” footage.

This is one of the reasons Bruce Le’s movies suck so much; he’s presented as such a superhuman fighter that you care less than nothing for him. And it also doesn’t help that these fights happen back to back, which is a total beating on the viewer. Parts of the fight with the black guy are even drawn out via slow-motion! How much did the producers expect their audience to take?

This is a long review, which isn’t justified by such a poor movie. Basically I’m just trying to prevent others from making the mistake I made; namely, watching the damn thing. This one only comes recommended if 1). You want to see all of the “Game of Death” rip-offs, 2). You’re collecting Bruceploitation flicks, or 3). You have lost the will to live.

Speaking of the GoD rip-offs, this one’s easily the worst. Even worse than Bruce Li’s “New Game of Death,” and trust me, that’s saying something.

Joe909′s Rating: 2/10 (1 extra point for the sheer stubbornness of it all)

"Bruce Le's Greatest Revenge" US VHS Cover

Director: Lee Tso Nam (To Lo Po, Lee Tse Nam)
Cast: Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin Long, Wong Kin Lung), Bolo Yeung (Yang Sze, Yang Tze, Bolo Yang), San Kuai, Tong Yim Chaan, Lee I Min, Hon Gwok Choi, Michelle Lai, To Siu Ming, Guk Fung aka Ku Feng, Fong Yau
Running Time: 94 min.

By Goldenfist

This movie has to be one of the cheapest, most low-budgeted pieces of shit ever. However, it isn’t as bad as “Clones of Bruce Lee.” We even have your gay-looking Bob Baker wannabe who uses a fencing sword to help kill Ho Yuen Chia (in this version, he went to a dinner with Japanese and they poisoned his drink. He fought all Japanese, including Bolo, who is a Mongolian fighter) who was portrayed as a bumbling idiot. We also have your Mr. Wu (the guy who had sided with Japanese) wannabe.

The thing that I like about Bruce Le movies is that he uses traditional kung fu. Hell, he’s a better fighter than Bruce Li. Also, I liked the fact that during the Ching Wu/Japanese fight, the Ching Wu students put up a HELL of a better fight than those in the original “Fist.” The Ching Wu students in this movie can ACTUALLY fight!!! Especially Michelle Lai (who portrayed Ho Yuen Chia’s daughter) and Li Yi Min, who tries to act like James Tien in the massacre scene (dies trying to save teacher’s picture). Bruce Le doesn’t kill the main Japanese baddie sss (Ku Feng), he leaves him for 3 Ching Wu students. Oh Yeah, we also have a retarted student with a wandering eye???

Well, you have to see this film to believe it!!!

Cheap, but not exactly terrible.

Goldenfist’s Rating: 5/10

"The Clones of Bruce Lee" US VHS Cover

Director: Joseph Kong
Producer: Dick Randall, Chang Tsung Lung
Action Director: Wong Kei Lung
Cast: Dragon Lee (aka Mun Kyong-sok, Keo Ryong, Guh Ryong), Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin Long, Wong Kin Lung), Bruce Lai, Bruce Thai, Jon Benn, Bolo Yeung (Yang Sze, Yang Tze, Bolo Yang), Alexander Grand
Running Time: 90 min.

By Alvin George

Clones of Bruce Lee is a monotonous movie featuring not one, but THREE Bruce Lee “clones.” What are their characters’ names? Bruce Lee One, Bruce Lee Two, and Bruce Lee Three.

Most of the movie is a bunch of fight sequences, and they almost all seem the same as far as style is concerned. As you might expect, the dubbing is bad and the dialogue is cheesy. However, three scenes in the movie stood out for me:

1. The scene where one of the clones is attacked by two white dudes. One of them wears a white karate gi, while the other wears a blue Adidas-type tracksuit with white stripes down the sides. I’m not racist, but it’s about time these cheap-ass HK exploitation films have some white dudes.

2. The scene where there’s a bunch of naked Asian chicks with big bazookas running down the beach. (You can even see their pubic hair, though there are no really great crotch shots.) All they do is oil themselves and flirt with guy. It also has Bruce Le (I think) wearing Speedo-type swimming trunks, trunks so tight you can see his dong.

3. The scene where one of the clones practices his moves as the Rocky theme plays on the soundtrack. The producers probably didn’t have any concern for copyright laws, but the theme song brought back good memories of the Rocky movies. The song reminded me of how they were much better than this crap.

By the way, the movie ends pretty abruptly without so much as closing credits or even the words “The End.”

Alvin George’s Rating: 3/10

"The Ninja Strikes Back" French Theatrical Poster

AKA: Eye of the Dragon
Director: Joseph Kong, Bruce Le
Producer: Dick Randall
Cast: Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin Long, Wong Kin Lung), Hwang Jang Lee, Casanova Wong, Harold Sakata (Oddjob), Bolo Yeung (Yang Sze, Yang Tze, Bolo Yang), Chick Norris (yes, that’s spelled correctly), Fabienne Beze, Andre Koob, Monica Lam, Jean-Marie Pallardy, Dick Randall

By Goldenfist

An international crime organization that has murder, kidnapping, slavery and extortion among their repetoire have made Bruce Le their main target. But Bruce is on a mission of his own – to crush the group and their hired assassins!

Bruce (Bruce Le) and Ron (Hwang Jang Lee) are buddies that are working for an Italian mob boss. Bruce gets put in jail during a mission. Upon being released, he tells Ron he no longer wants to be a part of the mob. The mob and Ron then turn against him.

Meanwhile, a ninja gang in Hong Kong (also connected with the mob) kills Bruce’s father, kidnaps his sister (along with the ambassador’s daughter) and puts her in a prostitution ring.

If anything, GOD ’78 should have been like this, LOL! So, so low budget, just as “Fist of Fear, Touch of Death.” Lots of nude white girls – even the ambassador’s daughter gets naked. The fight scenes are cheap and let’s not mention the finale (The x-rays of Hwang Jang Lee’s insides are cartoon drawings).

This movie is recommended for a good laugh.

Goldenfist’s Rating: 5.5/10

"Mission Terminate" Dutch VHS Cover

AKA: Revenge of the Kickfighter
Director: Anthony Maharaj
Writer: Joe Mari Avellana
Cast: Richard Norton, Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Rex Cutter, Judy Greene, George E. Mahlberg, Nick Nicholson, Henry Strzalkowski, Dick Wei, Franco Guerrero
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

My journey that found me watching Mission Terminate was somewhat of an interesting one. Back in 2008, I’d stumbled across an old Tai Seng DVD of a movie called Ninja vs. Bruce Lee. The movie starred one of the many Bruce Lee clones which the studios churned out after Bruce Lee’s death in an attempt to make a quick buck, renaming any actor who had even the faintest likeness of Lee to sound like they could pass for the real deal. This particular movie starred Bruce Le (see what they did there?), however it was the cover of the DVD which had my attention, as it featured a shirtless Le brandishing a ridiculously big machine gun and sporting an expression which meant business (click here to view the DVD cover).

It looked like B-movie gold, a Bruce Lee clone made out to be a kind of Asian Rambo, what could go wrong!? Much to my disdain, the scene off the cover of the DVD appeared nowhere in the movie, so I angrily set about making enquires to find out exactly what it was that I should be looking for. Thankfully some very knowledgeable people confirmed the image was from Mission Terminate, and proceeded to wish me luck at attempting to track it down. After a couple of initial enquiries which turned out to be fruitless, thanks to a combination of such factors like, well, having a life, I gave up my search. Skip forward 6 years later, and thanks to some kind soul having a much better memory than me, I finally found myself in possession of Mission Terminate, under the retitle of Return of the Kickfighter, and prepared myself for the unknown.

Thankfully Mission Terminate is indeed B-movie gold. Directed by Anthony Maharaj, whose filmography contains such other gems as Innocent Adultery, it is in fact filmed entirely in the Philippines, passing for Vietnam, and is everything you’d expect from a mid-80’s Filipino B-movie production. The Philippines had a whole host of American B-movie directors making action and exploitation cheapies there during the 80’s, thanks to the low cost crews and filming locations, so much so that the Filipino action B-movie almost became a genre unto itself.

Mission Terminate does the genre proud, announcing its intentions from the very first piece of dialogue, which takes place between two soldiers and goes as follows: Lieutenant – “I knew we’d get those motherf*ckers!” Marine – “Yeah, bet those suckers never figured we’d trail them back to their mothers wombs!” If only every movie had opening lines like this.

The plot concerns a unit of US marines operating in the Vietnam war during 1970, with the movie opening on a raid in a village. After massacring the villagers, the marines steal the villages gold, much to the objection of their Vietnamese translator and guide, played by Le. Skip forward past the credits sequence; it’s now 15 years later, and members of the unit are getting murdered one by one. This leads to the former head of the group, now a high ranking military officer, announcing that the only person who is up to the job of finding out the identity of the killer is an Aussie, Major Brad Cooper, played by Richard Norton.

Norton is the real deal when it comes to martial arts, and has gone one on one with the best of them, including Jackie Chan in the finale of City Hunter, and Sammo Hung in Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars. Here he’s given a rare lead role as the good guy, and most probably due to him not being able to do an American accent; the colonel explains to some disgruntled marines that “he was only raised in Australia, he’s American, ALL AMERICAN!” Sadly much more than his accent, it’s the fact that Norton sports a rat tail haircut which gives him away as an Australian, an epidemic that still seems to be an acceptable form of antipodean style even in the 21st century.

As mentioned Norton is the main character of the movie, with Bruce Le playing a significant supporting role. Another stalwart from Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung’s movies comes in the form of legendary kicker Dick Wei, who plays Bruce Le’s murderous sworn brother, and is the guy who’s killing off the marines in revenge for their slaughter of the village. It’s Wei’s appearance which indicates that perhaps the plot was just kind of made up on the fly. I mean, his killings of the marines are justified considering what they did, and the colonel is trying to manipulate Norton to find Wei and kill him only because he doesn’t want the stolen gold to be discovered. However it then suddenly turns out that Wei really is a bad guy, and that he’s working as a trainer at a hidden terrorist camp of ski-mask wearing ninjas hidden in a nearby mountain.

It turns out his revenge mission is just a sideline to his full time job as terrorist trainer. The camp seems to be being run by a Middle Eastern terrorist group, indicated only by a guided tour the head of the camp gives to some headscarf wearing gentlemen. Yes the movie contains a whole scene dedicated to a guided tour of the terrorists in training, one of the highlights being that they’re so evil that during combat training they have to use real ammo. If you get shot, it’s because you’re not evil enough and deserve to die, that’s their reasoning, not mine.

Overall Mission Terminate is a lot of fun, mainly because it’s a parody of action movies without being a parody. It displays a level of incompetence which is somehow forgivable thanks mainly to the constant onslaught of hilariously bad lines, and their delivery, and frequent shootouts which never seem to be never more than a few minutes away. Le has clearly had his lines dubbed into English by a local Filipino, and as a result everything he says makes him sound like a constipated Mexican. This is particularly hilarious in his exchanges with the Aussie accented Norton.

By the time the finale rolls around, it’s Norton and Le, backed up by some good guy marines led by Franco Guerrero, himself a Filipino B-movie legend (check out One Armed Executioner!), against Wei and his camp of ninja terrorists. Amusingly before the showdown starts, the head of the camp pulls all the ninjas into a room and tells them that finally he can reveal their purpose, which is to hold a nuclear power plant to ransom. You can’t help but feel that what actually happened is behind the scenes the following conversation took place: Producer – “Ok we’re going to film the finale next… does the audience actually know what the terrorists are training for yet?” Director – “Hmmm. Did we overlook that detail!? (Flicks through script) It appears we did. Damn.”

Once the impromptu terrorist team meeting is over though, the bullets and explosions come thick and fast, with of course some obligatory fists and feet thrown in as well just for good measure. Le and Norton both face off again Wei in a couple of very brief scuffles, but the fun is mainly in watching the endlessly regenerating ninjas get mowed down in hails of bullets. In truth it’s probably the same five guys playing the whole army of ninjas, and it becomes quite fun to see if you can identify if you’re watching the same guy from the previous scene – there’s the guy who always dies by falling down in what can only be described as real time slow motion; the guy who always dies by waving his arms around frantically, even if he’s already laying on the ground; and the guy who always yells at the top of his voice whenever he’s been shot.

If you’re a fan of action B-movies, Mission Terminate does the job, made in an era when the macho action movie was still played 100% straight with no winks to the audience, it’s all the more entertaining for it. Now if only Sylvester Stallone would realize the same thing.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

"Future Hunters" VHS Cover

AKA: Spear of Destiny
Director: Cirio H. Santiago
Writer: Anthony Maharaj, J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Robert Patrick, Linda Carol, Ed Crick, Bob Schott, David Light, Paul Holmes, Peter Shilton, Ursula Marquez, Elizabeth Oropesa, Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin Long, Wong Kin Lung), Hwang Jang Lee, Richard Norton, Mike Abbott
Running Time: 96 min.

By Paul Bramhall

There are some movies which simple defy normal comprehension, and even before reading any sort of synopsis, just by looking at the cast you can tell Future Hunters is going to be one of them. Brought to the screen by the same team that would make Mission Terminate a year later, Future Hunters is helmed by Cirio H. Santiago, a somewhat legendary figure in the Filipino film industry. The son of Dr. Ciriaco Santiago, who founded the Premiere Productions studio in Manila way back in 1946, Cirio would go on to become one of the most recognized names in the world of B-movies, making everything from Blaxploitation, to low budget Vietnam war flicks, to kung fu movies.

Future Hunters somehow seems to escape fitting into any single genre, instead coming across as some kind of half baked version of The Terminator meets Mad Max meets Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I normally try to stay away from going into in-depth plot descriptions when I review, but in this case it’s the nature of the plot which essentially defines my opinion of the movie, so bear with me and we’ll see how things turn out.

Proceedings open in a barren desert landscape with one of the greatest voiceovers I’ve ever heard, which explains that the year is 2025 and the holocaust has wiped out all of mankind, leaving only the few to scavenge for what they can. However amongst the despair and desperation, there is one man who can put mankind back on track, that man’s name is – Matthew. For reasons never explained, the only way to get mankind back on track is to find the spear that pierced the body of Christ, which will allow whoever finds it to go back in time and stop the holocaust from ever happening.

Matthew, as it turns out, is played by everyone’s favorite Australian, Richard Norton. Yes long before he was in A-list Hong Kong productions facing off against the likes of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Cynthia Rothrock, Norton was making movies like this one. He bursts onto the screen looking like a bearded version of Mad Max, even driving an almost identical car, as a high speed car chase in the desert unfolds which eventually leads to Norton left with nothing more than his leather waistcoat and pants, oh, and his studded belt. Nothing says post-apocalyptic landscape like a studded belt.

Pursued by a small army of foot soldiers, a few tanks, and a fleet of cars, without saying a word Norton wipes out virtually a whole town full of bad guys using his fists, feet, and a machine gun, before thankfully stumbling across the spearhead in question, just before the whole building that he’s sheltering in is blown to smithereens. This whole sequence is the first 10 minutes, and the titles haven’t even rolled yet. Yes these types of movies are undeniably of the B variety, but you have to give them credit for fitting more action into the first 10 minutes than you find in a whole finale of an Expendables movie!

After the titles do roll, things go all Terminator-ish and Norton wakes up to find he’s in 1986, all be it in the exact same spot we last saw him. Displaying no signs of confusion whatsoever, he’s soon rescuing a young couple from a trio of rowdy bikers, with the couple in question being played by Linda Carol, you know, the actress from Carnal Crimes, and her boyfriend is none other than Robert Patrick. Yes, that Robert Patrick, as in the guy who 5 years into the future from this movie, would play the T-1000 in Terminator 2. Something strange is going on here. Back to Norton though, he’s no sooner appeared that he’s shot and mortally wounded, leaving him to deliver a completely incomprehensible speech thanks to his rather broad Aussie accent, but which we can assume is something along the lines of “Use the spear to stop the holocaust that wipes out mankind mate!”

Through some inconsequential exposition, the actress from Carnal Crimes and the T-1000 hightail it to Hong Kong, where they believe a professor resides who knows the secret to the spear. In this section of the movie things get really strange. The couple are picked up from the airport by a taxi driver, a taxi driver played by Bruce Le! Le explains to them some nonsense about how he may know someone that can help them called the Silver Fox who guards a temple. Wait, isn’t that the name of Hwang Jang Lee’s character in classic kung fu movies like The Secret Rivals? It is, but don’t worry about that as nothing much makes sense here anyway. Le also seems to have been dubbed by two different people, so half the conversation he sounds like the constipated Filipino that dubbed him in Mission Terminate, and the other half he sounds like a British gentleman with a stiff upper lip. It’s all a little disconcerting.

Soon they arrive at the temple, but when I say they, I just mean the T-1000 and Bruce Le, as the actress from Carnal Crimes has disappeared with no explanation. They meet the Silver Fox, and bizarrely, it is Hwang Jang Lee! He’s not so willing to give out information though, which leads to one of the most WTF moments in cinema history, as we’re treated to a 2-on-1 fight of the T-1000 paired up with a Bruce Lee imitator taking on the greatest kicker to have ever graced the kung fu movie world. Thankfully the fight is treated with a degree of reality, and the T-1000 is knocked out cold early on, leaving Hwang Jang Lee to unleash his kicks on Le, who, just like in reality, turns out to have a pair of nunchucks tucked away in one of his boots. Surprisingly, the fight is pretty good, Hwang unleashes his trademark triple flying kick, and there’s even a section which pits staff against nunchucks. It’s a definite highlight.

Somewhere in-between, it’s revealed that the person they’re after isn’t in Hong Kong at all, and that they need to seek out a place called the Venus Valley, which contains a race of “Amazonian female like warriors”, where they’ll find the staff which the spearhead belongs to. So after a brief car chase and an exploding car, it suddenly cuts to Manila Airport. It should also be mentioned that from this point Bruce Le and Hwang Jang Lee are never heard of again. Combined with Richard Norton, the movie just lost all of its genuine fighting talent at not even half way in! What we do get though, is an evil group of Nazis (is there any other type of Nazi?) who want to wipe out humanity and create a genetically engineered race of perfect humans.

Soon the Nazis are pursuing are heroes again (the actress from Carnal Crimes has now reappeared). After trying to trick them into meeting for a pleasant evening meal, the T-1000 senses something is wrong, and a foot chase gives way to a night time car chase. About a minute later, we can only assume they’ve been chasing each other for around 8 hours, as it’s inexplicably become daylight. A little later, a night time gun fight also suddenly becomes broad daylight, for no logical reason whatsoever. By the end of the movie it’s safe to assume that most of the characters haven’t slept for 48 hours straight.

By the final half hour, things have descended into Twilight Zone territory.  Captured by the Nazis, our fearless couple are held at their camp in the jungle, only to be attacked by a group of what look like post-apocalyptic Filipino bandits on horseback. The attack goes on for about 10 minutes, and at no point do we have any clue who the group that are attacking them are. It’s only when, after they escape, events end up in a cave which is home to a significant population of brown robe wearing dwarves. This kicks off a completely unnecessary sub-plot involving the dwarves. The T-1000 explains that in a private meeting with the head dwarf (that not even we got to witness), the dwarf told him they’re always getting attacked by the post-apocalyptic Filipino bandits, but they also know the location of Venus Valley. So, help them get rid of the bandits, they’ll reveal the location of the valley.

What this means is that, what was minutes earlier a movie with Bruce Le and Hwang Jang Lee, suddenly becomes about an army of hatchet wielding dwarves in brown robes, disguising themselves as walking cardboard boxes.  The boxes then proceed to attack the bandits, who’ve already just been involved in a lengthy action scene minutes before, with the only difference being that we now know who they are.  Worst of all, when they do attack, the actress from Carnal Crimes and the T-1000 hardly help at all!  They’re so useless that at one point one of the dwarves actually saves them from being attacked. The little guys should have just told them the location of Venus Valley to begin with and be done with it. But then we wouldn’t have a dwarf action scene.

Eventually the dwarves prevail, and they give them directions to the Venus Valley, which finally gives us a glimpse of those “Amazonian female like warriors”! What this translates to onscreen of course, is a large group of young well endowed Filipino females (I won’t say actresses) decked out in fur bikinis and bottoms. But the action isn’t over! The Queen Amazonian wants the T-1000 for her own lustful needs, so the actress from Carnal Crimes finally has her chance to shine when she has to fight above a crocodile pit with the tribe’s strongest fighter (strongest i.e. most well endowed). Needless to say, the scene ended with me being quite envious of those crocodiles.

Will they find the missing piece of the spear the pierced the body of Christ and save humanity, or will those pesky Nazis catch up and ruin everything? If it wasn’t clear already, Future Hunters is a truly bizarre slice of Filipino action cinema, one which isn’t afraid of using the likes of Bruce Le and Hwang Jang Lee in little more than extended cameos. However, if you’re a fan of the post-apocalyptic jungle warfare kung fu dwarf action Jesus related genre, then Future Hunters may just be the movie for you. Of course, it would be a real spoiler to give away the actual finale, so I’ll leave it at that.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6.5/10

"Bruce's Deadly Fingers" Chinese Poster

AKA: Bruce’s Fingers
Director: Joseph Kong
Writer: Joseph Kong
Cast: Bruce Le, Michael Chan Wai Man, Lo Lieh, Nora Miao Ke Hsiu, Cheung Lik, Chu Chi Ling, Bolo Yeung Tze, Kong Do, Tong Tin Hei, Li Chao, Kok Lee Yan
Running Time: 90 min.

By Matthew Le-feuvre

The “MacGuffin” or “suspension of disbelief” (a reference term coined by Sharon Stone’s femme fatale character from Basic Instinct) has neither been a celluloid problem for the Bruce-exploitation cinema: in fact, while the component of “suspense” will always be obviously absent, “disbelief” otherwise is hardly an amiable or befitting word to describe this trashy genre once purposely formulated to capitalize on Bruce Lee’s star attraction. Although financiers undoubtedly earned substantial amounts from box office receipts, it was the performers who had too contend with harsh criticism, typecasting and generally bad working conditions churning out utter rubbish, and catering to the demands of over-zealous directors knowing full well that their film contributions would not only symbolize an unflattering legacy; but, they – themselves would also become objects of derision.

The passage of time, however, has been somewhat a little magnanimous in respect to all, but, a handful of these performers – formerly monickered as “pseudo androids,” whose signature onscreen idiosyncrasies transpired to be negligible to say the least; yet astonishingly withstood conventional disparity by being socially relabeled as “tribute entertainers” replete with facsimile hairstyles, oversized tinted sunglasses and the obligatory Game of Death jumpsuit: all trademark accountrements enough to assault or insult viewers’ senses.

Incredulous as this may appear, the masses indeed continually laugh on, howling at the absurd perversity of such schlock material as Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (1976) or The Clones of Bruce Lee (1977) for alternative visual recreation. Why? And what was the need?! How can anyone justify the psychology behind the deeper aspects of such a grotesque premise(s): cloning Bruce Lee to combat a multitude of nefarious, badly dressed drug peddlers; or resurrecting Bruce Lee in a martial arts struggle against Satan himself as epitomized by a lanky black dude in a red cape. C’mon!

In any event, misappropriation of scientific genetics or esoteric occultism do not interbreed with the extant philosophies of Bruce Lee or the martial arts in general! However, production aesthetics nonwithstanding, it was almost as if there was an internalized shame (collectively) projected towards Lee’s passing, and these films were a metaphor for (an) emotional purging, designed simultaneously to lift audiences out of despondency while striking below the belt, virtually endorsing the paranoid whims of conspiracy theorists – at least that’s how it was in the beginning with the likes of Ho Chung Tao (aka Bruce Li ), a former P.E. instructor/ stuntman who reluctantly excepted ‘The Bruce Lee’ mantle and fought very hard to reclaim his identity.

One can understand, even sympathize with the administrative conventions of Tao’s decade long career having too persistently vie for superior scripts to match his own distinctive qualities, unlike other emulators’ who usurped opportunity through perfunctory means, eagerly surfing head-on towards the heart of a tsunami instead of riding the break to cult stardom.

Heung Kim Lung (aka Bruce Le ) was in the calibre of the former. With a vague resemblance to the late maestro, Heung was an excellent martial arts tactician, but rarely took advantage of his full range. Although lithe and physically chisled, his onscreen fighting style tended to be very rigid and paced to a timed response with each opponent throwing out a repeititive stream of basic techniques: an old school approach which in comparative terms evinced a type of singular artificiality not conspicuous in Tao’s work.

Indeed Tao’s choreography was probably more structurally realistic, whereas Heung’s arrangements – though powerful in application – bordered on theatricalism in lieu of grace or fluidity.

Many feel Heung had no personal qualms about being tagged as “an imitator,” unlike Tao – who has publically denounced his former profession. Heung, on the other hand has neither spoken – at least in the west – in any forum about his questionable film choices; whether in self criticism, promotion or even his own thoughts on Bruce Lee! What is surprising, even shocking in some instances was the sheer volume of actual ‘Bruce Lee’ co-stars, friends or colleagues willing too appear in these obtuse, artless forms of oriental expressionism: Bolo Yeung, Nora Miao, Jon T. Benn, Shek Kien, Lo Lieh, Carter Wong and Chan Wei Man by example – all manifest with embarassing regularity, especially Bolo who has inordinately wrestled against Heung for the duration of a moderate career spent in the shadows of others before his own untimely confinement (in)to obscurity.

Armed with one of the most irritating swaggers in cinema history, as well as an effectation for extremely tight vests/oversized sunglasses and incongruous facial mannerisms far exceeding the need to advertise constipation. From the outset, Heung was a walking travesty, and in a manner of speaking deserved to be ridiculed for abusing his inherent talent to the level where even he eventually outstayed his welcome; yet in that brief period achieved something (?) quite marginal before excepting an unwise career relocation to the Philippines, destroying what, if any, credibility he had remaining by attaching his name to dire oddities such as: Bruce: The Super Hero (1979), Bruce: The King of Kung Fu (1981 ), Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzmen (1981) and so forth. How it came to this is an enigma in itself?!

Born (and educated) in Ragoon to a Burmese mother and Chinese father, Heung – at the tender age of eleven – had familiarized himself with the harsh disciplines of white crane kung fu, Hong Quan and numerous styles of Karate prior to inaugurating his own martial arts kwoon in Macao. It was here under (the) Portuguese administration he was first introduced to studio director, Wang Feng – a Shaw brothers alumni who was scouting for new talent from authentic martial arts backgrounds.

After an impromptu demostration, Feng immediately requested him to attend a screentest for the Shaws in Hong Kong. Hestitant at first, he obliged and was soon awarded minor support roles, varying from contemporary productions (Hong Kong 73, The Teahouse, Big Brother Cheng, Super lnframan) to one traditional feature (Rivals of Kung Fu) before being offered his debut lead as Cheng Chao Ah in The Big Boss Part 2 – a direct sequel which continues the exploits of our protagonist following his prison release.

In stark contrast, Bruce’s Deadly Fingers was altogether a different animal, that; although produced the same year as Ho Chung Tao’s superior Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger, marked the beginning of Heung’s decline into anarchic repugnance. Firstly, the script was so utterly forgettable; it actually made the cinematography look stylishly gritty, showcasing familiar Hong Kong locales – infamously blighted by destitution, economic squalor and congestion. Unsurprisingly, photographing poverty stricken ghettos or shooting in less than desirable exteriors: trashy nightclub dives or recreational parks, etc. became something of a recurring blueprint for Heung’s (then) prospective film additions. However, instead of Hong Kong, Bangkok/Manila again became regular haunts for Heung to grimace and over exaggerate his snake fist style under the prosaic direction of Joseph Kong (aka Joe Velasco).

Despite flagrant imagery of degradation, torture and brutality – Bruce’s Deadly Fingers was an audacious move, creeping into darker avenues of exploitation where even Ho Chung Tao refused to venture, with exception of his first lead in Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story (1974). The world on offer here, stringent and morose, opens to some very impressive psychedelic visuals – backed by the twangs of a Spaggetti Western-type soundtrack. It probably was (I), as Hong Kong cinema was once famous for appropriating other musical scores for added dramatic tension: i.e. John Williams’ Star Wars theme was unconvincingly overdubbed on a print of Jackie Chan’s Magnificent Bodyguards (1977).

In this case, recognizing hybridized cultural references is the least of critics’ anxieties, particularly as film buffs are woefully subjected to the eponymous Bruce Wong’s (Heung Kim Lung) return to Hong Kong on a single minded quest to discover the truth of his late mentor (Bruce Lee), who passed away under super-extraordinary conditions… sounds familiar! An insipid subplot involving Wong’s missing sister throws a proverbial spanner in the works as the remainder of the storyline initially preocuppies itself with the search for an alleged manual written by Bruce Lee before his untimely exit.

In spite of sparse production values/budgetary limitations and capriciously, it’s a race against time with customary nemesis Lo Lieh and interpol agent Chan Wei Man – both fading in and out of each scene with distinct flamboyance. Naturally, their goals coincide. Meantime, Wong hopelessly stumbles from one situation to another contending with inept kidnappings, murder, incarceration, liberation – though conceptually vacant – and finally prolonged training sequences where suspended mannequins are unflatteringly jabbed and prodded in typical robotic Heung Kim Lung mode. What ensues – after demostrating his inner techniques on a Wing Chun wooden dummy – is nearly twenty minutes of incremental punching, varied kicks, grappling and some dynamic nunchaku encounters against a battallion of ineffectual bodyguards, climaxing with Heung’s furious implementation of iron finger kung fu to the synthesized bass rifts of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

Verdict: Between frenetic pacing, as well as a dismal catalogue of sour dialogue pertaining to ridiculous discussions about rice bowls, which is neither inspirational or philosophical enough to warrant appreciation; especially as this verbal exchange features Bruce Lee’s former real-life wing chun sifu, Wong Shum Leung: veritably, one could ponder as too his intentions for appearing in such total nonsense. The same should apply to Nora Miao, who exhibits an aura of discomfort throughout. However, Chan Wei Man otherwise looks sedate under a great maine of hair until decisively venting a flurry of idiosyncratic strikes on the obligatory man mountain that is Bolo, while the King Boxer himself, Lo Lieh, embellishes his role with a kind of demonic gusto that only he was privvy and qualified to express.

Matthew Le-feuvre’s Rating: 5/10

“Black Spot” Chinese Theatrical Poster

AKA: Earth & Fire
Director: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long)
Producer: Joseph Kong, Dick Randall
Cast: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Lo Lieh, Kong Do, James Ha Chim Si, Ho Pak Kwong, Cheng Yuen Man, Wong Hap, Andre Koob, Elizabeth Gordon, Fanny Hill
Running Time: 98 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Bruce Le has always been the Bruce Lee clone that can. From starting off as a Shaw Brothers bit player in the 70’s, his resemblance to the departed megastar saw him spend the latter part of the decade thrust into starring roles of such low budget Bruceploitation efforts as Enter the Game of Death and Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu. Often shot in the Philippines and Korea, due to the cheaper locations and crews, Le’s output seemed destined to have history view him as the weakest of the Bruce Lee clones. However the guy persisted, and during the 80’s took greater control over his career, starring in such globe-trotting adventures as Challenge of the Tiger and Bruce Strikes Back, as well as getting in on more grand scale Filipino action movies, such as Mission Terminate alongside Richard Norton.

By the time it was the 1990’s, Le had also established himself as a director, and to kick off the decade made both Ghost of the Fox, a Chinese Ghost Story inspired tale of the supernatural, and Black Spot, the movie that delivers Le’s final action performance in front of the camera. In many ways Black Spot can be considered the swansong for the original wave of Bruce Lee imitators. Bruce Li had retired from filmmaking in the early 80’s, and by 1990 Dragon Lee had long since returned to Korea and moved away from the period kung fu movies he was known for. While Le had also long stopped aping the mannerisms of Bruce Lee by the time Black Spot was released, the story, wardrobe, and just about everything else still safely mark it as the Bruceploitation genre.

Le’s last effort as an ass kicking kung fu man owes much to his 80’s collaborations with B-movie maestro Dick Randall and Filipino director Joseph Velasco (who’s also on-board here as producer). The globe-trotting element is still firmly in place, as Le plays a former drug kingpin trying to lead a quiet life, but is ultimately dragged back into the game by the police. They’re determined to find the location of The Golden Triangle, the source village where all the opium is coming from, and they know they can leverage Le’s connections to get close. The results see Le travel from France, to the likes of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and finally Thailand.

It’s understandable that Le doesn’t want to leave his peaceful life in France, as he seems to be running a kind of health retreat, which has leotard wearing blondes perform somersaults in front of the camera, while others bathe topless on the veranda. However when he’s reminded of how many lives his former activities ruined, he feels morally obligated to get involved, he is Bruce Le after all. It has to be said that despite there being no mistaking that Black Spot is a Bruce Le movie, it’s a world away from the productions he was making only 10 years prior. While it doesn’t consist of non-stop action scenes, the story actually holds up as an engaging tale of the drug trade and those it involves. Black Spot also sports a script that clearly wasn’t made up on the fly, as the story spans a number of months, with the date regularly appearing onscreen to provide a timeframe of the events that are unfolding. Never mind that one of the dates is 30th February.

There’s also plenty of familiar faces in Black Spot to keep the HK film aficionado happy, with cameo appearances from the likes of Lo Lieh and Kong Do, both of whom play drug kingpins that Le used to be associated with. While Le fights both of them, the highlight fight belongs to when he has to square off against a massive monster of a man, who must be about 7 foot tall and just as wide. The fight takes place within a cage covered in barbed wire, and when one fighter decides against stepping into the cage, instead a completely random sheep is thrown in. Before you have a chance to contemplate where the sheep came from, the man mountains lifts it above his head by the legs, partially rips it in half, and lets its insides and blood pour all over his face, which he eagerly laps up. It’s a disturbing scene which I hope wasn’t real, or at least it wasn’t alive at the time, however what’s just as disturbing is that Le barely comes up to the guys chest in height, making for a genuinely tense showdown that ends on a suitably gory note.

There are other factors that make Black Spot an interesting footnote in the Bruceploitation genre, one particular being that Le was 40 at the time he made it, which makes him a full 8 years older than when Bruce Lee died at the age of 32. At this point Le had spent 14 years under a name created to cash-in on the death of kung fu’s most successful star, starting with Bruce’s Deadly Fingers in 1976, so there’s certainly some irony in just how long his career lasted compared to the man who he wouldn’t exist without. Le himself has acknowledged this, however the hard graft he put into those low budget 70’s productions arguably paid off in the long run, as Black Spot comes with a surprisingly high budget.

This is no more evident than in the final 20 minutes, when Le has infiltrated the small rural Thai village that’s the source of the opium, and discovered that the drug is being purified and distributed via an underground lab built in a cave beneath the village. If you ever wanted to see a finale that can be summarised as Rambo meets Enter the Dragon, then you’ve come to the right place. Apparently Le was able to enlist the cooperation of the Thai army for the finale, and as a result, it contains a significant number of extras, a military helicopter, 4 tanks, and more machine guns than you can shake a stick at. The scale is truly impressive, as the village is decimated with explosions, and Le takes to running through the cave, armed with a machine gun of which his finger barely comes off the trigger. Bullets, punches, and kicks are liberally thrown, as Le and his entourage shoot seven shades out of anything that moves (and stuff that doesn’t).

I’d gotten so used to the Bruceploitation genre being derivative of other more popular HK movies, that I couldn’t help but admire how the movie was successfully able to copy the grand scale of the action found in the likes of Bullet in the Head, until I realised it was released the same year. Likewise the village where the showdown takes place looks remarkably similar to the one from Police Story 3: Super Cop, and again it wasn’t until I stopped and thought about it, that it hit me Chan’s movie didn’t come out until 2 years later. In that respect Black Spot can be considered to be Le’s true epic, which is a line that even I confess to never imagining I’d write. Le has stated that the production took 3 years to complete in total, which may explain why his last movie prior to this was the Fist of Fury inspired 1987 production, Fire on the Great Wall, and for the most part the effort shows. Le even broke a leg during the production while performing a stunt, and reportedly directed the remainder of the movie on crutches.

However as ridiculous as it may sound, it wasn’t the action that left a lingering impression after the credits rolled. Le clearly wanted to convey a message on how the drug trade profits off the poverty of those in places like the rural village growing the opium, and in the movie he befriends a family that make their money from growing it. He realises that the family have no idea how much harm the drug is doing overseas, they simply grow it as a means of supporting their children and elders. Perhaps it was due to Le’s own upbringing in Burma that he felt a close connection to such a story.

At the end, when the army gathers all the opium and plans to set it on fire, the villagers beg them not to destroy their livelihood, which is met with dire consequences. While witnessing this, Le is sent over the edge, culminating in a surprisingly powerful final scene of a man powerless to stop the death of innocents, even though seemingly all of the bad guys have been wiped out. A Bruceploitaion flick with a finale that delivers a surprisingly emotive punch? Who would have thought, but Black Spot does indeed to exactly that.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10

“Bruce – The King of Kung Fu” VHS Cover

AKA: Legend of Bruce Lee
Director: Bruce Le 
Cast: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Chan Kwok Kuen, Jeng Kei Ying, Fung Hak On, Fung King Man, Hon Gwok Choi, Kong Do, Benny Lai, Sek Kin, Wong Chi Wai, Lee Hang, Wei Pei , Yeung Chak Lam, Law Keung, Bolo Yeung
Running Time: 90 min.

By Paul Bramhall

Spend enough time down the rabbit hole that is the Bruceploitation genre, and you’ll come to understand that there’s two types of Bruceploitation. Those flicks that claim to be biopics of Bruce Lee’s life, and those that attempt a continuation of a character the Little Dragon played in his 5 most famous movies. Of the former, during the peak of Bruceploitation it was Taiwan’s Ho Chung-Tao that had the monopoly. Going under the guise of Bruce Li, between 1974 to 1978 his physical similarities to Lee saw his cast a whopping 5 times in various biopics spanning the Little Dragon’s life. Even Danny Lee, who’d become Hong Kong’s go-to guy to play a cop in the 80’s and 90’s, had a crack at playing Lee in 1976’s Bruce Lee and I (or as I prefer to call it by its alias – Sex Life of Bruce Lee).

During the 70’s, another of the Bruce Lee clones – Bruce Le (real name Huang Kin-Lung) – didn’t get a look in when it came to actually playing the Little Dragon. At best, you could expect to witness him traipsing around Manila trying to find Bruce Lee’s secret deadly finger kung fu manual. At worst, well, you were spoilt for choice. However in 1979 Le decided to take the reins, and helmed his directorial debut, Bruce the Superhero. Sure, he was still stuck in Manila, but it proved Le to be more ambitious than some of the brain numbing tripe he’d been starring in. It was with his sophomore production as a director that Le would finally cast himself as Bruce Lee for the first (and last) time, in what would become Bruce – The King of Kung Fu.

Although it was made only a year after Bruce the Superhero, 1980 was the year that Le finally got out of the Philippines and South Korea where he’d filmed many of the titles he headlined in the 70’s, and found himself back in Hong Kong, where he’d started as a bit player for the Shaw Brothers. Bruce – The King of Kung Fu focuses on Bruce Lee’s late teens attending college and learning kung fu in Hong Kong, and ends with the decision to send him back to the U.S. to complete his studies. Well, actually it ends with a freeze frame of Le performing a slightly gangly legged flying kick in the middle of a field, à la the famous freeze frame that closes out Fist of Fury. But let’s just assume that he goes to the U.S. shortly afterwards, and Le knew his audience were smart enough to not need to see him actually board a plane.

I mention the final freeze frame of the flying kick, because kicks and fists are really what Bruce – The King of Kung Fu are all about. Sure, on paper it may read like a genuine biopic, focusing in on a specific period of Lee’s life, but onscreen it quickly becomes clear the plot (or indeed, any semblance to the events in Lee’s actual life) are not the key priority here. When I say quickly, the opening credits are set over Le performing a drunken snake fist routine, complete with a bottle of Chinese wine in hand. It’s fair to say that while the framework of the plot may use Bruce Lee, the content is very much based on the trends of the time. Only 2 years earlier Jackie Chan starred in Drunken Master which became a megahit, cementing comedic kung fu as the new box office gold.

Here Le feels like he’s also looking to put his own stamp on the genre, but knows that to have a chance to do so he needs to use the Bruce Lee connection, so simply uses the guise of Lee’s tumultuous late teens to make his own Seasonal Films influenced kung fu flick. This makes Bruce – The King of Kung Fu both an entertaining and frequently hilarious (albeit unintentionally) experience to watch, often awkwardly mixing the more light-hearted elements of a kung fu comedy, with the over-the-top ferocity of the Bruceploitation genre. What’s definitely enjoyable though, is to see Le’s action direction turn away from imitating the Bruce Lee aesthetic of short, brief busts of action, to more intricate and lengthy exchanges that show off all the performer’s skill. Indeed Le allows himself to have his ass handed to him in more than one of the fights, which gives him the motivation to start visiting various kung fu masters and learn their ways.

One such master is clearly modelled after Ip Man, as Fung Ging-Man portrays a Wing Chun teacher who Le visits, and ultimately ends up learning from. Watching the 30-year old Le visit Ging-Man as a teenage Bruce Lee with his nearly coiffed hair and tidy college attire looks every bit as wrong as it sounds, however it only adds to Bruce – The King of Kung Fu’s slightly surreal charm. Jeet Kune Do may not get a single mention, but Le does go on to meet a blind cookie seller who happens to be an “expert at blindfold fighting” (surprisingly), and another kung fu master who practices snake fist, all of whom he endeavors to learn their respective styles from. All of this is hung on a very loose narrative that basically involves Lee constantly getting into trouble with the local youths and other kung fu school students.

This is demonstrated from the get go, when in the opening scene Le leaves his house to go to college, and is immediately set upon by a gang lying in wait to ambush him. Before you can let out a high-pitched battle cry Le has already lost his shirt, and is knocking seven shades out of his attackers. Having floored the lot of them, he’s barely taken a couple of steps before a 2nd different group of riled up attackers run into frame to demand a fight, and we rinse and repeat. This is kung fu genre visual storytelling at his best, I mean why use exposition to explain that several groups are unhappy with Le, when you can use a scene of them trying to attack him one group at a time? Le never really gets to put his shirt on again, and proceeds to spend the duration either walking around Hong Kong bare chested, or wearing it unbuttoned. Who knows, maybe Le was making a sly poke that he doesn’t think Bruce Lee was capable of buttoning up his own shirt?

Le is joined by a pair of comedic acquaintances in the form of Hon Kwok-Choi (The Gold Connection) and Shaw Brothers regular Chan Kwok-Kuen (Opium and the Kung Fu Master). Thankfully any detours into grating comedy, all of which are fleeting, are handled by the pair, who do an amicable job of bouncing off Le’s attempts to look like a fresh-faced teenager. The closest Le gets to anything gratuitous is when he visits the window of his favorite prostitute, who obliges by unbuttoning her top and allowing Le to fondle her breasts through the window grate. However even this slice of nudity is interrupted by the arrival of yet another gang who want to give Le a beating (and apparently knew just where to find him – another subtle poke at the Little Dragon?), and quickly segues into an alley way fight scene. When you’re Bruce Lee, there’s no time for breasts, whether they be through a window or otherwise.

To Le’s credit, he’s enlisted some top tier fighting talent to populate the cast of Bruce – The King of Kung Fu. Fung Hak-On turns up as a thug who Le goes up against twice, once empty handed, then again pitting Le armed with a pair of Wing Chun knives versus a pole wielding Hak-On. Some performers are so high level that they couldn’t look bad on screen even if they tried, and Hak-On is definitely one of them, making it a pleasure to watch him pit his moves against a skillset such as Le’s.

A couple of Enter the Dragon luminaries are also in the mix, with Bolo turning up for a cameo solely for the purpose of having a fight against Le (although let’s be honest, Bolo turned up in almost every Brucepolitation flick!), and Sek Kin clocks in for what most resembles the villain of the piece. Kin’s role in Enter the Dragon was an epic disservice to his skills, so suffice to say his fight here blows the lame hall of mirrors finale out of the water. Kong Do, another familiar face from the Bruceploitation genre turns up as part of Le’s cannon fodder, and his scene seems to indicate that Le forgot at least once that he was supposed to be filming a Bruce Lee biopic, as their fight ends with Le crushing his throat and leaving him dead on the floor! I guess old habits die hard. While such anomalies would be enough to make the casual film fans brain melt, for the discerning kung fu fan Bruce – King of Kung Fu has plenty to offer.

Featuring training scenes surrounded by very real cobras (one of which ends up being force fed Chinese wine, but still, that’s getting off lightly compared to the snake in Eastern Condors), fights aplenty, above average choreography, and a kung fu teacher referring to Bruce Lee as “a very dangerous little man”, you can tell that Le didn’t set out to do anything half-heartedly. As a director he’d really hit his rhythm with the likes of Bruce Strikes Back and Ninja Over the Great Wall, but as his one crack at playing Bruce Lee, Bruce – The King of Kung Fu is an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

“Return of Red Tiger” Theatrical Poster

AKA: The Return of Bul-bom
Director: Nam Gi-Nam
Cast: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Eagle Han Ying, An Tae-seop, Lee Kang-jo, Kim Jin-hui
Running Time: 94 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

As a kung fu movie fan, have you ever asked yourself if there’s a kung fu flick out there that’s so bad, it could put you off the genre for good? I have, and I’ve kept my fingers crossed that it’s a movie I’ll never find. However all that changed when I watched Return of Red Tiger. The tragic part is that I brought this dire situation upon myself. I have one rule when it comes to Bruce Le movies, and that’s not to watch anything pre-1980. In the world of Bruceploitaiton, Le’s 70’s output is like staring into an abyss from which you can’t return, like Ken Watanabe at the end of Inception. I had my own Watanabe moment when I sat through 1977’s Return of Bruce many years ago, a Philippines shot travesty that put my love of kung fu flicks on life support for longer than I care to recall. I made it back though, and it wasn’t until 2020 that I had a relapse.

While unassumingly browsing the contents of one of those many 50-DVD kung fu packs that have been gathering dust on a shelf, I came across Return of Red Tiger. I should have known better, but my defences were down, perhaps thanks to the good will I’d garnered towards Bruce Le’s latter day output in the years passed since that fateful day. So it was, I began the mind-altering journey that would rattle my love of the kung fu genre to its very core.

Just a year earlier in 1976, Huang Kin-Lung debuted in Bruce’s Deadly Fingers under the new name of Bruce Le, after supporting roles in a handful of Shaw Brothers productions. While this particular outing was shot in Hong Kong, he’d spend the majority of the 70’s starring in either Filipino or Korean productions (or co-productions in some cases). 1977 appears to be a year that Le spent mostly in Korea, as apart from Return of Red Tiger, he’d also star in Bruce and Dragon Fist and Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu (and its sequel). While none of them are particularly memorable, Return of Red Tiger takes the cake when it comes to the sheer amount of will power required to get to the end.

The biggest problem with Return of Red Tiger, and one which may have made it entirely more enjoyable if removed all together, is Le himself. His role here has nothing to do with Bruce Lee, and instead he plays a mute beggar, clocking in a performance that’ll make you want to gauge your eyes out and ram chopsticks into your ears within 10 seconds of him being onscreen. Due to a childhood trauma he’s devolved to take on the persona of a feral cat, and spends the whole movie communicating via high pitched meowing and wild yowls. It’s infuriating.

His behaviour makes no sense. In one scene we see him hyperactively running down the street, the happiest mute in the world with his bottle of milk, then in the next scene he sinks into a corner and starts traumatically yowling at the sky. When he runs out of milk, he visits a café where the owner gives him a bowl full, which he proceeds to down while half of it spills all over himself. I know its kind of a kung fu movie trope for characters to have some kind of mental impairment (who can forget Casanova Wong’s mute character in Magnificent Wonderman from Shaolin!?), but this way too extreme even for me. Preceding Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow by a year, even his fighting style is based on a cat, but we’ll get to that later. Needless to say his performance here makes even his most bombastic of Bruce Lee impersonations seem like a subtle masterclass in method acting.

The actual plot involves a singer whose boyfriend is in possession of a microfilm (the most sought after item in 70’s cinema?) and is on the run from the mafia. Played by Kim Jin-hui (Osaka Godfather – which was released by IFD films as Ninja Operation 5 – Godfather the Master) and An Tae-seop (Secret Agents II), while it’s never precisely clear what’s on the microfilm, the main crux of the plot is that Le has the hots for Jin-hui, and has since they were childhood friends. In one cringe inducing sequence, we see Le imagining himself and Jin-hui running towards each other in a field in slow motion. Well, Jin-hui is running, Le skips. I kid you not. Anyway, so blind is his love that he ends up giving up Tae-seop to the mafia out of jealousy, which doesn’t sit well with Jin-hui. After more cat like yowling and crying, Le realises the error of his ways, and the trio team up to take on the dastardly gangsters in a horrendous final fight.

What can be said is that the plot in the English dub has been drastically altered from the original version, not only with the dubbing, but it’s also clear whole scenes have been removed (and added – a random scene from the James Nam 1974 actioner The Fierce One is inserted at one point, adding nothing). Not that I expect it’d make it any better, but the actual story is a classic tale of Korea vs Japanese, with Tae-seop playing an independence fighter who comes to Seoul to receive funding he’ll take back to Manchuria. Le plays an orphan whose parents were killed by the Japanese, and cut his tongue out. The unrequited love angle remains the same, with the main differences being the mafia are the occupying Japanese, and in the Korean version Jin-hui dies after successfully rescuing Tae-seop, allowing him to complete his mission.

At least that version sounds better on paper. Even with the bastardized story and dubbing (which makes everyone sound like they’ve just stepped out of the wild west) though, its clear that Return of Red Tiger is an unsuccessful attempt to mix the popular Korean ’dajjimawa’ genre, which basically translates to tough guy action flick, with the equally popular kung fu genre. Tae-seop delivers powerful punches and can throw a mean kick with the best of the dajjimawa guys, but the genre was far apart from the more choreographed exchanges of the kung fu world. Quite how importing a Bruce Lee clone, and having him play a mute beggar who acts like a deranged cat, was supposed to be a recipe for success is beyond my comprehension.

Which brings us to the fight action. If nothing else, it’s like nothing which has ever been seen before, and thankfully ever been seen since. In what I’d loosely call choreography at best, it mostly comprises of Le (with the obligatory high pitched meowing) scampering around on the ground on all fours, pausing to scratch at it with his hands, before ’attacking’. Said attacks mainly comprise of scratching peoples faces, which seems to immediately kill them. It’s horrible, and one of the greatest example of car crash fighting I’ve ever seen, as no matter how horrendous it gets, the sheer bizarreness of it makes it impossible to look away from. Return of Red Tiger was the debut of Eagle Han Ying, in a small role as an one of the mafia lackeys, and his charisma comes off the screen even buried under the horrendous dubbing. It’s an undignified first screen appearance, as he dies from Le giving him a cat hug. Yes, a cat hug.

Directed by Nam Gi-Nam, a journey man director who helmed many genres over his almost 40 year career (other kung fu flicks include Leopard Fist Ninja and Evil Hits Evil), Return of Red Tiger was his sophomore feature after the 1972 drama Don’t Cry My Daughter, and frankly it’s surprising he ever worked again. However somehow everyone involved with this travesty did go on to work again, and in many cases it was on to bigger and better things, although that’s mainly because the bar couldn’t be set any lower.

We do get a final fight which pits Le against the mafia boss played by Lee Kang-jo (Fury in Shaolin Temple), and after he does the honours proceedings end in ear drum splitting fashion, as Le proceeds to yowl at the sky for a disproportionate amount of time. The yowling is juxtaposed with Tae-sop and Jin-hui having a romantic exchange at the river bank, in which they muse on how they’re now free to go anywhere together, and even during these scenes they can still hear Le’s endless yowling in the distance. To be honest, several hours after watching the movie I can still hear it too, and I was hoping that writing this review would make it stop. It hasn’t.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 0/10

Note: COF likes you so much that we present you with the full film below:

“Ninja Over the Great Wall” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Fire on the Great Wall
Director: Bruce Le
Cast: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Li Ning, Yu Hai, Leung Yim, Shikamura Yasuyoshi, Cheng Yuen Man, Xue Bai, Gao Jian-Hua, Ma Zheng, Yang Li-Xin
Running Time: 90 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

After spending 10 years playing various incarnations of Bruce Lee within the infamous Bruceploitation genre, Huang Kin-Lung (or Bruce Le as he’s more commonly known) directed what could be considered his first production which didn’t rely on the connection to the Little Dragon. Out of all the clones that sprung up in the wake of Bruce Lee’s death, it’s Le whose filmography most represents someone attempting to take control of his own career. Originally hired by the Shaw Brothers studios and cast as a supporting player in the likes of Rivals of Kung Fu and Big Brother Cheng, Le quit before being given a shot at lead role, and subsequently found himself inadvertently cast as a Bruce Lee clone. What was the job of a Bruce Lee clone? To put it simply, it was to have a passing resemblance to Bruce Lee, some martial arts training, and be cast in Bruce Lee-esque movies to try and fill the massive void the stars passing left behind.

Compared to his contemporaries – the likes of Bruce Li and Dragon Lee – Le featured in some truly bottom of the barrel fare. Usually shot in the Philippines, watching titles like Return of Bruce and Treasure of Bruce Le are often touted to be more effective torture techniques than waterboarding. However in the 1980’s Le seemed to take more control over his career, and began directing as well as starring. Seemingly aware that the Bruce Lee schtick was his money maker, if you’re going to be a clone, you may as well try and be a good one. So it was the likes of Bruce – King of Kung Fu enlisted Sek Kin as its main villain, a role he’d also played in Enter the Dragon, Challenge of the Tiger saw him battling a bull (and Hwang Jang Lee) in Spain, and Bruce Strikes Back saw him rampaging through Italy and Paris. Le’s movies began to feel more like they’re inspired by Bruce Lee rather than blatantly copying him, and they became fun!

After 1982’s Bruce Strikes Back Le went quiet for 5 years. Maybe he went up a mountain to find himself, or simply tired of the global gallivanting, but it wasn’t until 1987 that he’d return with Ninja Over the Great Wall. Le’s return was an unexpected one. In 1987 Bruceploitation was essentially a thing of the past, at least in the form of actors attempting to be passed off as Lee, or playing a character he’d portrayed. Bruce Li had wrapped up his clone career with 1981’s The Chinese Stuntman, and Dragon Lee concluded his Bruce Lee phase with 1983’s Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple. The world was no longer interested in seeing impersonations of Bruce Lee, with stars like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao representing the new faces of Hong Kong action cinema. For a Bruceploitation star, to attempt a comeback didn’t make a whole lot of sense on paper.

But Le had other ideas. Ninja Over the Great Wall ditches both the European and South East Asian filming locations (and Hong Kong itself for that matter), and moves things to the Mainland. Taking place during the Japanese occupation in the 1930’s, after his village is raided by the Japanese army Le flees to Beijing, where he meets other patriots eager to get rid of them. The opening credits are preposterously bombastic, with onscreen titles like ‘LEE NING – THE WORLD CHAMPION OF GYMNASTICS’ and ‘LEUNG YIM – THE FAMOUS VOLLEYBALL PLAYER’. Lee Ning was actually a famous gymnast, and had a brief film career that also saw him star in Ching Siu-Tung’s Wonder Seven 7 years later. Here he appears as a kung fu instructor in little more than a cameo that gives him a (literal) stage to bust out some gymnastics moves, but at least he looks good doing it. Shamefully, I have no idea who Leung Yim is or who he (or she?) was playing.

Arguably the best thing about the Mainland setting though, is the casting of Yu Hai, the Praying Mantis champion who at the time was hot on the heels of featuring in Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple trilogy (Martial Arts of Shaolin was made the year prior). Hai’s one of those martial artists who, even if you only saw his silhouette, once he starts busting out the mantis boxing you’ll immediately know its him from the fluidity of his movements. A joy to watch in everything he’s appeared in (yes, even Man of Tai Chi), here he plays the archetypal Chinese master who’s goaded into a duel with a Japanese master played by Yasuyoshi Shikamura (God of Gamblers, Casino Raiders). It’s a great fight, and the kind that makes you do a double-take to make you remember you’re watching a Bruce Le movie.

Foul play ensues, throwing in some clear nods to Fist of Fury (US distributor Ground Zero went so far as to amusingly retitle it Shaolin Fist of Fury), sending Le into beast mode and gate-crashing the wedding of Shikamura for some serious beatdowns. After letting Shikamura know that if he ever sets foot in China again he’ll kill him, the tail whipped groom makes his way back to Japan, where he immerses himself in the ways of bushido. The more he trains though, the more he increasingly becomes obsessed with returning to China for a rematch. Le himself spends his time practicing kung fu in the Yalu River to learn its “greatest secrets”, until eventually the stage is set for the inevitable showdown, pitting the principles of bushido versus those of kung fu. Or in other words, another tale of the Chinese taking on the Japanese.

Ninja Over the Great Wall is a great little kung fu flick. There, I said it. Not something I’d imagine ever writing about a Bruce Le flick. It’s lean and mean, and I admit I like the look of the older more mature Le. He’s ripped as anything, but his face has a few years of experience etched on it, making him look like a legitimate bad ass rather than a D-movie version of Bruce Lee. The choreography, also handled by Le, is notably several steps up from any of his previous work. I don’t want to say that as too much of a compliment, because at the end of the day it’s 1987, so its contemporaries are productions like Armour of God and Eastern Condors. The bar had been lifted on action choreography for a number of years, so if he’d come in and performed like he was still in a 100 peso production from the mid-70’s, of course that wasn’t going to fly. So while the fights may not be as complex as the top tier stuff of the era, they’re still damn good.

Le gives himself plenty of opportunities to let loose, and in terms of fights Ninja Over the Great Wall can definitely be considered his swansong more so than 1990’s Black Spot (which is entertaining for other reasons). One particularly gratuitous scene has the Japanese send a whole army of ninja after him, which translates to Le walking around various environments, then constantly have a small army of ninjas jump out of nowhere to take him down. Knock them all out, cut to the next scene of him strolling somewhere else, and repeat the process. The sequence goes on for so long that even the seasons seem to change, with the last one being set in snow-covered countryside. A highlight of this sequence involves a ninja that gets set on fire, and when I say set on fire I mean he really goes up in flames, but then continues to fight Le despite his imminent incineration. I guess you could call it the bushido way.

Considering the plot Le also doesn’t squander the opportunity to put his spin on the dojo fight from Fist of Fury. I mean is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy 1 vs many dojo fights? (Not withstanding the awful one from Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen). Events eventually culminate with Le and Shikamura agreeing to a one on one fight on the Great Wall of China. Ninja Over the Great Wall is also known as Fire on the Great Wall, and in the lead up to the fight you can really tell why, as there seems to be a cast of thousands lining several miles of the great wall with lit torches. The helicopter tracking shots go on just long enough to drop the hint that yes, this must have been expensive, so we’re going to spend a few mins just looking at it. In fact the production values overall are surprisingly decent, and one particular shot at the start showing war torn fields full of skulls had me almost expecting an endoskeleton to turn up.

The final fight delivers a satisfyingly brutal ending, starting off with Le armed with two metal batons vs Shikamura’s katana, it eventually segues into an empty handed beatdown, with Le throwing in the animated x-ray shots to show the impact of certain blows that he first utilised in Challenge of the Tiger. It’s noticeably undercranked, but not to the point that it spoils the enjoyment of the fight, and if anything it only adds to the ferociousness of it. Sure Bruce Le has made plenty of trash in his time, but don’t let that put you off some of his later work. If you’re in the mood for a straight-faced kung fu flick that delivers where it counts, Ninja Over the Great Wall more than fits the bill.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10

“Challenge of the Tiger” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Gymkata Killer
Director: Bruce Le
Starring: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Richard Harrison, Nadiuska, Hwang Jang-lee, Kong Do, Bolo Yeung Sze, Brad Harris, Dick Randall, Pei Ju-Hua
Running Time: 86 min.

By Ian Whittle

(Note: Every online source I’ve seen says this film is from 1980, which is contradicted by 1982 being mentioned in the dialogue, and a sequence taking place at an event that took place in that year!)

Although it features no martial arts, the opening sequence of Challenge of the Tiger must rank as one of my favourite martial art movies intros ever. Two scientists discover the secret of making men infertile, declare that it must not be used for the wrong purposes, then embrace passionately. Seconds later, masked men burst in and shoot them.

Genius. I defy any film to top that!

Challenge of the Tiger is the third of three films Bruce Le made in Europe for producer Dick Randall; the others being Le starring in Ninja Strikes Back, and Le’s bizarre cameo in the bizarre slasher Pieces, which is, let me assure you, very bizarre. Le also wrote and directed Challenge, so you know exactly who to thank/blame. Le plays agent Huang Lung, assigned to track down the missing formula. Because this is an international movie, he can’t do it without a white guy, so we have agent, Richard Cannon (yes, Dick Cannon) played by Richard Harrison. 

Harrison is a funny case. Originally a 50s pinup model and muscleman, he started making films for AIP (you can see him, topless naturally, piloting Vincent Price’s airship in Master of the World) and married the daughter of AIP’s head honcho James H. Nicholson. He later ended up in Italy starring in sword-and-sandal movies and spaghetti westerns (allegedly turning down Fistful of Dollars) and by the 70s ended up in Taiwan appearing in two films for Chang Cheh: Marco Polo and The Boxer Rebellion. His appearance in Challenge of the Tiger is probably also an one-off, but only a few later he was stuck making endless ninja movies for Godfrey Ho, immortalised forever in that clip of him using a Garfield telephone in Ninja Terminator.

And if you thought John Saxon got an unfair share of the action in Enter the Dragon, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Harrison’s first scene is him arriving at his palatial mansion to be greeted by a LOT of naked babes, some of whom play slow motion tennis, and accompanied by the strains of “Montego Bay” by Jon Stevens. Throughout the movie, Harrison will sleep with every lady going, whilst barely lifting a finger to help fight-wise. Which is good because I really don’t fancy seeing Harrison getting the best of Hwang Jang-lee, never mind Bolo!

So our heroes start off in Spain… where Bruce Le does not one, but two Sonny Chiba tributes: he fights a bull (ala Karate Bullfighter) and smashes its skull, represented with crude x-ray animation (ala The Street Fighter). Harrison gets friendly, if you know what I mean, with Miss Spain 1982 Maria who is in possession of the formula and is a secret agent played, not by the actual Miss Spain 1982 Ana Isabel Herrero García (can you tell I had to look that up?) but by Nadiuska, who played Conan’s mother in Conan the Barbarian the same year. Meanwhile, Bruce tries to distract her dog, which growls like a cat. Yes, you read that right!

Oh, right, the formula! So Le retrieves it from Maria, only to discover it’s Spanish Fly. The real formula is en route via Hong Kong to a international cadre of villains (headed by Dick Randall, appropriately enough) whose assortment of hired goons includes HK regular Chiang Tao and Brad Harris, the latter of whom can best be described as a Western version of Bolo Yeung… who is also in this movie as a member of a group of Vietnamese freedom fighters/terrorists/I’m really not sure which and neither is the movie. The Vietnamese group is headed by Hwang Jang-lee, in a rather subdued performance for him, and they also want the formula. And one of their number is a gorgeous lady (Pei Ju-Hua) who’ll be all over Richard Harrison like remoras on a shark. I could question why all these girls are ignoring Bruce Le, but then here, more than ever, he looks like Mowgli from Disney’s The Jungle Book on sterioids. Richard Harrison may not be Dolph Lundgren, but yeah, I’d be going for him too given the choice!

Just when you thought, OK this movie is pretty wacky, you realise you underestimated it. Le and Harrison end up in Macau, at The Macau Trotters’ Association’s Second Anniversary celebrations no less. And for some reason, US tv vets Jack Klugman, Jane Seymour (hey, Dr Quincey and Dr Quinn in the same movie!) and Morgan Fairchild were in attendance there, so of course footage of them chatting with Le is stuck into the film in the same manner Bruce Lee was into Fist of Unicorn! I can’t say whether such shenanigans are typical of Dick Randall’s non-HK product, but I wouldn’t have put it past him, and god bless ‘im for it.

On the martial arts side of things, Le shows considerable improvement from his earlier movies with more dynamic kicks and less of the silly Bruce-isms. I also give the film credit for not trying to pass off Harrison as a martial arts master (unlike, well, a lot of other movies!) so he relies more on his fists, and takes a heck of a lot of blows to the groin! Who needs a formula to make men infertile when Hwang Jang-lee can do that with his feet? Disappointingly, Le doesn’t get to fight Bolo here, and the final fight between Le and Hwang is curtailed unnecessarily shortly in a car chase, but hey, thankfully we got Enter the Game of Death and Ninja Strikes Back to address those issues respectively. And as a madcap combination of the best HK and Euro exploitation had to offer in the 80s, this madly entertaining flick is well deserving of more attention.

And just what was Bruce Le saying to Jack Klugman?

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 7/10

“The Big Boss Part II” Chinese Theatrical Poster

Director: Chan Chue
Cast: Lo Lieh, Wong Ping, Lee Kwan, Michael Chan Wai Man, Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Krung Srivilai, Preeya Rongernaug, Hung Wang, Shan Shan, Chiu Lik
Running Time: 107 min.

By Ian Whittle

It’s weird that The Big Boss Part II is as obscure as it is. You’d think being a semi-official sequel to a Bruce Lee movie, it’d have been all over numerous VHS and DVD re-issues in the manner of the same year’s Fist of Fury Part II. And yes, there was a Big Boss 2 doing the rounds on home video, but that was a retitled Dragon Lee film that was a Fist of Fury knock-off if anything else!

Around the mid-00s, an English language trailer showed up on a DVD collection – which didn’t look very inspiring, with especially lame dubbing and narration. A South African collector claimed to have a print and did indeed upload some of it online, as did a relative of the film’s producer – the latter’s upload is indeed still on Youtube. But seeing the full film seemed an elusive prospect, until a print (possibly owned by Quentin Tarantino) started appearing at special screenings around 2020. And now, about a year after the longer version of the 1971 original made its Blu-ray debut, we can now watch The Big Boss Part II on Blu-ray in its OAR and Mandarin with subtitles! Wonders never cease!

Following a bizarre title sequence – in which clips from the first film are mixed with new footage that doesn’t match in any way – we meet up with the hero of the original, Cheng Chao-an, now played by Bruce Le (Huang Kin Lung) in his Bruceploitation debut. Despite a ton of mascara, Le doesn’t really resemble the Bruce Lee of The Big Boss in the way he sought of resembled the Lee of Enter the Dragon – the hair cut is too different for a start – and somewhat unfortunately for the movie, Cheng is stuck in prison, meaning all he can do is overact. But this is the movies, land of coincidences, and Cheng gets a visit from his brother he never knew he had, Cheng Chao-chun (Lo Lieh) who has the same “never get into fights” medallion, but is more than happy to take vengeance on Cheng’s behalf. And, as luck would have it, their conversation is overheard by a fellow prison visitor who arranges for Lo to get a job in Thailand.

Once in Thailand, Lo falls in with a bunch of gangsters who are in a gang war with the new boss of the ice factory, played by Chan Chue, the director of this movie. Chan has played the manager in the previous film and has been assistant director. His character’s disappearance near the end (apparently due to breaking glasses during the filming of the party scene) meant he survived the bloodshed and could return for this movie – how convenient. And wouldn’t you know it, but the girl Lo falls in love with (Wong Ping) also happens to the daughter of the new Boss… well sort of, but that’s hardly a spoiler as the trailer we’ve all seen for years told us!

One of the highlights of The Big Boss Part II is the fight choreography (courtesy of Yuen Cheung-Yan of Dragon Missile), which is, dare I say it, better choreographed than the original, where Bruce Lee moved like lighting against slow and unwieldy extras. Lo Lieh was never the most dynamic of fighters, but here looks especially fast and brutal. The film does lose some points for an endless and slow boat/underwater chase, clearly copying those in the recent James Bond films… not least because of the use of the Bond theme. It’s a wonder they didn’t put a fat Southern sheriff in it (although it might explain why Lee Quin, a returning actor from the original, is doing as a weird Thai witch doctor… clearly he is this film’s Baron Samedi).

The final battle in the ice factory gets to use the location in a similar manner to that later seen in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story – hey, maybe Tarantino got his print from Rob Cohen? – with the machinery put to good use. It does get a bit silly though, when Chen Wei-man suddenly appears out of practically nowhere to take on Lo in a fight that is clearly suddenly in Hong Kong instead of Thailand (with a cow prominently in the field next to them!), and most of Chan Chue fighting Lo features an obvious stunt double with a old mop for a wig.

But, after all this time, I’m happy to say that while this is no masterpiece, it is a much more entertaining movie that that naff trailer suggested. Thank you very much, Severin, for releasing this obscurity!

So that’s the uncut Big Boss, Big Boss Part II, and the forthcoming release of the longer version of A Man Called Tiger. What’s next…Tiger Boy? It could happen!

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 6/10