Bruceploitation Reviews

[sifu iron perm]

2 hours ago, NoKUNGFUforYU said:

My custom of Fists of Bruce Lee, with Ho Chung Tao, Lo Lieh, Yang Kwan Moon and Charles Bonet with an awful blond wig. Pretty good attempt to do a Bond style spy movie with zero $$$ in comparison.

 

I would like!

 

= )

[Duel to the Death]

Just watched Bruce Lee, The Man, The Myth. I didn't realize Bruce ran into so much trouble on the sets of his movies. Here i thought he was some big movie star but people were challenging him right and left treating him like scrub. This is an actual depiction of real life events right? 

J/K lol

I remember watching this movie as a kid. Even though i knew it was just a bunch of bologna, i wanted to believe Bruce was gonna come back in 1983. I can't say for sure but i may have seen the movie on tv right around 1983. Give or take a couple years. I have not seen the movie in years. I never realized Fung Hak-On, Lee Hoi-Sang and Yuen Biao were in it. I can't recall seeing Yuen Biao's face so he may have been that guy you only see from the back when he's fighting the 3 of them. 

LOL at the tubby guy who trying to move the barricade. And the dude with the spikes wrist guards groaning too much. I like the fancy equipment he uses to work out like the machine that lights up when he punches into it.  Overall the movie is ridiculous but in a fun way. I really enjoy watching it.

Lastly i like use of the song Winchester Lady by Bob James. That is a favorite of mine.

 

 

[saltysam]

19 hours ago, Duel to the Death said:

 

LOL at the tubby guy who trying to move the barricade.

 

 

Tubby guy was on of the thugs in Way Of The Dragon i think.

Edited July 9, 2020 by saltysam

[One Armed Boxer]

I recently got through watching Bruce Le's epic masterpiece 'Ninja Over the Great Wall', a production that rivals Kurosawa in its scope and depth.  Ok, that last part isn't true, but I did give it the full review treatment over at COF, check it out via the link - 

https://cityonfire.com/ninja-over-the-great-wall-aka-fire-on-the-great-wall-1987-review-shaolin-fist-of-fury-great-wall-fighter/

[Drunken Monk]

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

I found another Bruceploitation movie I hadn’t seen on Prime Video this afternoon: Bruce Takes Dragon Town (1974).

The title is a complete cash in as the original name of the film is Dare You Touch Me (very porno-ish) and it has no Bruce Lee elements in it whatsoever. The lead character is called Alan, for fuck’s sake. How do we know? His name is said once every eight seconds.

The movie makes little sense. Bad guys want Alan to do their dirty work and so they kidnap his mother. Instead of beating the shit out of the bad guys (which he can obviously do), he bends to their will. That is until they kill his mum accidentally and everything goes tits up.

The subbing on this one is bizarre. It sounds like a bunch of stoned guys recording a voiceover in 1996. It doesn’t sound “retro” at all. Very odd.

So how’s the action? Surprisingly good. Alan may not be Bruce but he definitely has some moves. Obviously, due to the year, it’s a basher but it’s a good one. And there are plenty of fight scenes. Loads of them. Even a super young Li Yi Min gets involved. In one scene, a fight starts at night and then it cuts to a scene with a cockerel crowing and a subset suggesting they’ve fought all until dawn. Then it cuts to broad daylight to suggest they’ve fought even longer. It’s super funny.

Despite being only 85 minutes long, it did feel a bit overly long to me. Take this with a pinch of salt though because I had to keep pausing into to answer my wrk phone. To everyone else this might feel nice and breezy.

A very worthy watch despite having flaws.

[DrNgor]

8 minutes ago, Drunken Monk said:

A very worthy watch despite having flaws.

I did not hate this one when I saw it late last year.

 

8 minutes ago, Drunken Monk said:

In one scene, a fight starts at night and then it cuts to a scene with a cockerel crowing and a subset suggesting they’ve fought all until dawn. Then it cuts to broad daylight to suggest they’ve fought even longer. It’s super funny.

Yeah, the stamina of these people to fight that long!!!!

 

8 minutes ago, Drunken Monk said:

That is until they kill his mum accidentally and everything goes tits up.

I understood it was the rival gang that killed his mum, so he just went all Yojimbo on both gangs.

[Drunken Monk]

2 minutes ago, DrNgor said:

I understood it was the rival gang that killed his mum, so he just went all Yojimbo on both gangs.

I may have missed that plot point. While I never fast forward these movies, I do get distracted when my daily duties call.

One thing I do know: if you do a shot every time someone says the name "Alan," you'll be dead twenty minutes in.

[Drunken Monk]

I think Prime Video have added more Bruceploitation! Just stumbled across Bruce Lee - Hero the Great (weird title) and Bruce's Fists of Vengrance. Maybe I missed these first time around.
There's also Revenge of Fist of Fury and Return of Fist of Fury. The well has not run dry!

[saltysam]

Fists Of Bruce Lee

Ho Chung Tao goes secret agent in this entertaining flick, with Paul Wei and Lo Lieh along for the ride. The great Robert Kerver also has a decent role here and is a formidable opponent,unlike the punchbag he was in Bruce Lee's Secret. An excellent subbed widescreen print courtesy of NOKUNGFUFORYOU, it's great to see excellent prints of these films still exist. Also Charles Bonet is supposed to be in this, did i blink and miss him?

[saltysam]

Image Of Bruce Lee

The first appearance of Bruce Li in this one is him scaling an apartment block in a variation of the famous yellow tracksuit, turns out he's a serious minded cop on the trail of money laundering plates. This one should really be better considering it's got Bolo, Han Ying Chieh and John Chang. It's ok but lesser tier Ho Chung Tao. In the space of 8 years Han Ying Chieh, the Big Boss himself went from going toe to toe with Bruce Lee to getting a swift kick in the nuts from sexpot Dana here.

[ShawAngela]

Chinese stuntman : I had the English language dvd for years and never got the opportunity to watch it.

I recently got the uncut German dvd and watched it this evening.

It's a great movie, full of action, with furious fights and Wei Ping Ao plays a more serious role than usual here, even if it's a small role.

Ho Chung Tao is great, and Sze Ma Lung plays a jealous guy who becomes vicious after Ho Chung Tao gains fame.

I'm not really a fan of Sze Ma Lung, though I appreciated him a lot in One Foof Crane, but there is something that I don't like when I see him, and I don't konw what it exactly is...

I noticed that in all the few movie he played in that i watched, he uses the "shaking eagle style" : does anyone knows if this style really exists and if he was a real practitioner of it.

I took a look at his wikipedia page and discovered that he died in 2012. ALos, hkmdb only lists a few movies in which he played, but wikipedia, though listing also a very few movies, lists him in movie as soon as 1959 ! And it appears that he was nicknamed the "evergreen actor" or something like that...

[Liersi]

The other day I popped in Dynamo, courtesy of the Pearl River BD. I've never been a huge Bruce movie fan, and thought even less of a genre where people try to be like Bruce. But screw that prejudice, I should see these films and judge for myself. Now could you fine folks tell me where this film ranks in the bruceploitation canon? First my impressions:

Dynamo was a hoot. It had qualities I wasn't expecting. The script isn't half bad, and probably the best way I can think of for having a character who isn't Bruce act like Bruce. No 4th wall here, the actual plot revolves around a feud between marketing agencies trying to profit from the death of real Bruce by supplying a replacement. Which is the same reason the movie exists. Neat. He Zongdao (Ho Tsung-tao) basically plays himself, a guy with a strong physical presence who can muster some of the aura of Bruce. He's a regular Joe driving a Taxi, with a steady girlfriend whom he adores enough to ditch the odd fare just to look in on her. Cute guy. He's quickly sucked into a high-stakes poker game between advertisement agencies trying to brand a new Bruce Lee. Lured in by the money, He Zongdao has to learn how to fight from an aging alocoholic (great: Gu Feng), learn languages and manners from a team of pros, bang that hot actress to make the tabloids and become a sensation, all while literally fighting off the opposition.

The film is insane. Thanks to the plot devices it's completely believable as a lurid time capsule of late 70s HK trying to recover from the loss of an idol that no one could replace. It's also trying to recover the strength Bruce projected to the world, as kung fu is once again challenged by karate (awesome: George Yirikian). Gu Feng's character adds a melancholy note to an already somber picture. His master persona is cleary out of time and out of touch, despite his immense skill. Like the embodiment of a nation that's lost its new soul, he drinks so as not to feel, and finds real hope for redemption in his pupil.

The fights are a bit strange. He Zongdao possesses awesome physical presence. He is a lot like Bruce in this respect. His style is a bit rigid and tense. It's like he's all power and no flow. That doesn't mean he's bad, I enjoyed his fights. The choreography is notable for featuring the Yuan-clan behind and in front of the camera. Yuan Xiangren (Yuen Cheung-yan) receives choreo credit, and is featured in front of the camera as a taxi robber if I saw that correctly. It was either him or Yuan Richu (Yuen Yat-chor). With them is Yuan Xinyi (Yuen Shun-yi). Their contributions are obvious and appreciated, but stick out a bit against He's stiffer power moves. There's some obvious doubling work that adds immense flow and speed to parts of the fights. All-time favourite Li Haisheng gets his own full fight against He, and he puts him to the test. This is nothing like classic fu choreography, it's not meant to be. This is Hong Kong 1978, and they fight like it. Special mention to Steve Sander, who goes up against He in a parking garage wearing the ultimate beany hat. He's just as rigid as He, which actually makes the fight more harmonious, and he's fast, accurate, and well-timed.

Overall very enjoyable, if not mainly for the fighting. The attitudes, times and places worked well. Most of all I appreciated that this didn't try to pass off anyone as Bruce.

So...where does this leave the other bruceploitation offerings in comparison?

[One Armed Boxer]

14 minutes ago, Liersi said:

So...where does this leave the other bruceploitation offerings in comparison?

The best answer to this is probably to say, check out the previous 25 pages!  But as a healthy alternative, I'll defer to fellow forum member @Drunken Monk, who in recent months completed a Ho Chung Tao marathon and is now the defacto Bruceploitation expert on the forum.

[Drunken Monk]

5 hours ago, Liersi said:

So...where does this leave the other bruceploitation offerings in comparison?

Simply put, Dynamo is in the upper echelon of Bruceploitation. Definitely one of the best.

I do have a caveat, however. Bruceploitation, for me, is a very unique sub genre because while the certified classics are classics for a reason, you might just find yourself loving a film no one ever talks about. For me, that was Fist of Fury 3.

Dynamo is a top tier gem but it’s definitely worth continuing to dig deep into the wacky world of Bruce Lee knockoffs.

[Duel to the Death]

Just like i have nostalgia for Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth. Loved it as a kid. I'm still waiting for Bruce to come out of hiding in 1983

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Duel to the Death

[Liersi]

13 hours ago, One Armed Boxer said:

The best answer to this is probably to say, check out the previous 25 pages!  But as a healthy alternative, I'll defer to fellow forum member @Drunken Monk, who in recent months completed a Ho Chung Tao marathon and is now the defacto Bruceploitation expert on the forum.

 

8 hours ago, Drunken Monk said:

Simply put, Dynamo is in the upper echelon of Bruceploitation. Definitely one of the best.

I do have a caveat, however. Bruceploitation, for me, is a very unique sub genre because while the certified classics are classics for a reason, you might just find yourself loving a film no one ever talks about. For me, that was Fist of Fury 3.

Dynamo is a top tier gem but it’s definitely worth continuing to dig deep into the wacky world of Bruce Lee knockoffs.

 

Thanks guys, that's what I needed to hear. I'll go back through this thread for recommendations on what to watch next, and I'll keep in mind that I've probably seen one of the better ones. @Drunken Monk, I see what you mean about unexpected appeal, so I won't dismiss anything. We all have peculiar preferences, and who knows which movie might strike our fancy. Having seen Dynamo I've already had a taste of unexpected qualities. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention one of the best things: the opening music! It doesn't get any groovier than this. The movie had me at hello.

[Killer Meteor]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:29 PM, Drunken Monk said:

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

I found another Bruceploitation movie I hadn’t seen on Prime Video this afternoon: Bruce Takes Dragon Town (1974).

The title is a complete cash in as the original name of the film is Dare You Touch Me (very porno-ish) and it has no Bruce Lee elements in it whatsoever. The lead character is called Alan, for fuck’s sake. How do we know? His name is said once every eight seconds.

The movie makes little sense. Bad guys want Alan to do their dirty work and so they kidnap his mother. Instead of beating the shit out of the bad guys (which he can obviously do), he bends to their will. That is until they kill his mum accidentally and everything goes tits up.

The subbing on this one is bizarre. It sounds like a bunch of stoned guys recording a voiceover in 1996. It doesn’t sound “retro” at all. Very odd.

So how’s the action? Surprisingly good. Alan may not be Bruce but he definitely has some moves. Obviously, due to the year, it’s a basher but it’s a good one. And there are plenty of fight scenes. Loads of them. Even a super young Li Yi Min gets involved. In one scene, a fight starts at night and then it cuts to a scene with a cockerel crowing and a subset suggesting they’ve fought all until dawn. Then it cuts to broad daylight to suggest they’ve fought even longer. It’s super funny.

Despite being only 85 minutes long, it did feel a bit overly long to me. Take this with a pinch of salt though because I had to keep pausing into to answer my wrk phone. To everyone else this might feel nice and breezy.

A very worthy watch despite having flaws.

The dub was done in the 80s for the Ocean Shores video, the music in those scenes comes from later films like Carrie.

 

The VHS I have has Bruce Le on the front, and a plot synopsis from the Bruce Li film Deadly Strike!

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

On 5/12/2020 at 7:35 AM, DrNgor said:

Little Godfather from Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1974: Ng See-Yuen) - aka Godfather Squad - 

Almost two years after Way of the Dragon, producer Ng See-Yuen gave us The Little Godfather from Hong Kong, aka The Godfather Squad. The film was an early lead role for choreographer and supporting player Leung Siu-Lung, who would go under the moniker of Bruce Liang  during much of the 1970s. The film wisely doesn’t follow Way of the Dragon’s story too closely, opting for something much bigger, and ultimately more absurd. The Italian mafia is lashing out against Interpol, killing their agents all over the map. They try to kill an agent based in Hong Kong via an exploding dog(!)—I swear I’m not making that up—who is saved at the last moment by David (Leung Siu-Lung), a martial arts expert. David becomes a local celebrity and is even invited to Rome to make a kung fu movie. Naturally, the Mafia isn’t happy with David having spoiled their plans and puts out a hit on him, which gets violent very quickly.

The one thing that The Godfather Squad has in its favor is Leung Siu-Lung, who’s a fine martial artist. A student of both Northern style kung and Wing Chun—Bruce Lee’s style—Leung was easily the most physically talented of the Brucesploitation actors from the 70s. He was especially impressive as a kicker, for which he’s most well known by fans today. Leung choreographed his fights, and refreshingly did his own thing, rather than just copy Bruce Lee’s moves. He also packed more power and snap in his moves than Cliff Lok did in Chinese Kung Fu Against Godfather, another Way of the Dragon clone, and was indeed one of the best martial arts actors of the early 1970s, when the genre was already saturated with actors of varying degrees of talent. Sadly, the big fight finale, where Leung squares off with Japanese heavy Yasuaki Kurata, consists of the two running all over Rome and even into the snow-capped hills outside the city, only occasionally trading punches and kicks.
     
Where The Godfather Squad really goes wrong is the script, which is far more amibitious than Bruce Lee’s film. Conversely, that means that when this film stumbles, it falls hard and gets goofy really quickly. The mafia killing a person with an exploding dog is absurd enough. But this mafia is led by an Italian man with two adopted sons, a German Nazi (played by sword-and-sandal film veteran Gordon Mitchell) and a Japanese karate fighter (the aforementioned Kurata). It’s practically China vs. the Axis Powers in this movie! You have machine guns with noticeably neverending clips of ammo; assassination attempts in front of the Vatican; hitmen who have a clean shot at their target, but still feel the need to walk up until they’re within kicking distance to take a shot; a woman who tries to run down a villain with her car, and despite being several yards away, still takes almost a minute to get close to him; and all sorts of lapses of logic and good sense.
     
Way of the Dragon, on the other hand, had a simpler premise and worked because of it.  The mobster want the restaurant, but the owner won’t sell. They try to use force, Bruce fights back. Now they want to kill Bruce, but he’s too strong. So they hire people worthy of his talent, leading to the climax. The actors acquitted themselves well to their parts and everyone knows how their characters should act in the circumstances presented. When a traitor shows himself at the end, his reasons make sense, as does the logic behind his waiting until the last second to betray his friends. Compare with The Godfather Squad, in which more than one character betrays our hero, but given that the aim of the Mafia was to kill him from the beginning, you can’t help but notice that they could’ve knifed him or shot him when his guard was down at any moment, but never did.

Some other observations:

- the machine gun at the end has an unlimited clip of bullets;
- Shirley Corrigan's face after she gets shot is goofy;
- Did Gordon Mitchell stash a sub-machine gun atop the tower *knowing* that they might get engaged in hand-to-hand combat that would eventually lead there?
- I wish the film had explained better the fact that both female characters had been hired to betray Leung at some point;
- When Bruce Leung steps off the plane in Rome with Maria D'Incoronato on his arm, she looks fairly attractive in that 70s way, but then she dons the ugliest pair of BIG 70s glasses I've had the displeasure of seeing.

Leung was a devoted Goju practitioner.

[DrNgor]

11 hours ago, NoKUNGFUforYU said:

Leung was a devoted Goju practitioner.

Could you get me a source on that? That was mentioned on his Wikipedia page, but there's no footnote for it.

In his HK Cinemagic interview, he mentions learning a Northern style from his uncle:

http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/page.asp?aid=208&page=1

[ShawAngela]

On 7/31/2020 at 11:50 PM, ShawAngela said:

Chinese stuntman : I had the English language dvd for years and never got the opportunity to watch it.

I recently got the uncut German dvd and watched it this evening.

It's a great movie, full of action, with furious fights and Wei Ping Ao plays a more serious role than usual here, even if it's a small role.

Ho Chung Tao is great, and Sze Ma Lung plays a jealous guy who becomes vicious after Ho Chung Tao gains fame.

I'm not really a fan of Sze Ma Lung, though I appreciated him a lot in One Foof Crane, but there is something that I don't like when I see him, and I don't konw what it exactly is...

I noticed that in all the few movie he played in that i watched, he uses the "shaking eagle style" : does anyone knows if this style really exists and if he was a real practitioner of it.

I took a look at his wikipedia page and discovered that he died in 2012. ALos, hkmdb only lists a few movies in which he played, but wikipedia, though listing also a very few movies, lists him in movie as soon as 1959 ! And it appears that he was nicknamed the "evergreen actor" or something like that...

I'm a little bit surprised that my post has been moved in this section, since I wasn't really writing a review here but just telling what was the last classic martial arts movie I had watched with a few comments but not a complete review...

[Drunken Monk]

14 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

I'm a little bit surprised that my post has been moved in this section, since I wasn't really writing a review here but just telling what was the last classic martial arts movie I had watched with a few comments but not a complete review...

This happens a lot.

[DrNgor]

Bruce Lee, We Miss You (Taiwan, 1975: Li Kuang-Chang) - aka Dragon Dies Hard; Golden Sun - Fairly early Brucesploitation film that's set in the "real world." Bruce Li plays Stone, a martial arts instructor who's both a big fan of Bruce Lee and happens to look a lot like him, according to the rest of the cast. When Stone finds out that Bruce Lee has died, he goes on a quest for the truth. This requires him to befriend Betty Ting Pei (Chen Pei-Ling of Two Assassins of Darkness). As soon as he does this, thugs start accosting him and his school at every turn. Finally we learn that Lung Fei killed Bruce Lee with a (poisoned?) knife hidden in his golf club. The reason: I guess Lung Fei wanted Bruce Lee to go to Europe on the martial arts tournament circuit, but the latter refused. The fighting is pretty basic basher stuff. The finale goes on for ten minutes, with Lung Fei swinging a golf club at Bruce Li, who has a vision of the real Bruce Lee and goes into imitation mode. Notable for a bizarre sequence in which Betty Ting Pei recounts the "story" of Bruce's death, and we see Bruce-Li-as-Bruce-Lee doing fell-fledged acrobatics on a bed as he's expiring. Also, Bruce Li "dresses up" as Bruce Lee and fools the bad guys into thinking he's a ghost. Very "meh" in the end.

Edited March 10, 2021 by DrNgor

[DragonClaws]

14 hours ago, DrNgor said:

Bruce Lee, We Miss You (Taiwan, 1975: Li Kuang-Chang) - aka Dragon Dies Hard; Golden Sun - Fairly early Brucesploitation film that's set in the "real world."

 

Apart from some really bad 70's shirts/fashion, the only other thing I can recall from this is a brawl on top of a moving bus. Where Ho Chung Tao's character takes out some thugs.

[DrNgor]

3 minutes ago, DragonClaws said:

Apart from some really bad 70's shirts/fashion, the only other thing I can recall from this is a brawl on top of a moving bus. Where Ho Chung Tao's character takes out some thugs.

Yeah, I was surprised at how well photographed that scene was. I was expecting them to do lots of close-ups to hide the illusion, but it seems they were indeed fighting atop a moving bus. Kudos to them!

[DrNgor]

Enter the Panther (Taiwan, 1975: Han Bao-Chang) - aka Conspiracy - According to Ho Tsung-Tao himself, this was his first lead role after his friend, Wu Tong-Chiao (the film's action director), told a producer that Ho looked like Bruce Lee when viewed from the side. Before that, Ho had mainly appeared in small roles in Joseph Kuo movies--Kuo had been Ho's teacher at the Taiwan acting academy. Judging by the release date, the film was shelved for a year and didn't get a US release until 1981, when it got a new Brucesploitation title. The film itself is a shoddily-made basher film with crappy fighting and a simple story that's hard to follow due to bad storytelling and even worse dubbing.

A bunch of miners discover gold in a coal mine. The mine owner's nephew (Dragon Inn's Pai Ying) wants to take over the mine and cash in on this new discovery. So his father and brother(?) poison the old man and make it look like an allergic reaction to alcohol. They still have to contend with the man's daughter (Chinese Boxing's Chi Lan, in her last film role), who's away studying kung fu. When she receives a letter asking her to return home, her teacher's top student (Bruce Li) drives her back to her house. It's clear that her uncle and younger cousin have nasty designs on her, and that Bruce Li is the only one who can protect her.

The fighting is some of the worst basher fighting I've seen. The first few fights are slow, sloppy, choppy, and completely lacking in power (and no amount of exaggerated sound FX can hide that). Then Bruce Li steps onto the scene, and the fights are undercranked so much they make Donnie Yen's early 90s films look dignified in comparison. Then we reach the 15-minute finale where Bruce Li faces off with Pai Ying. In order to not embarrass the latter, the choreography transforms into the silliest punching bag choreography I've yet seen.

There are some skinless sex scenes courtesy of a prostitute played by Legend of Lust's Lin Chi, who sleeps with all three male antagonists. But yeah, there's nothing to recommend this film on an action, exploitation or artistic level. Utter crap.