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Authors: Ric Meyers
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but I am not one of them.
Quite possibly the most blatant, shameless exploitation came with I Love You, Bruce Lee , known in America as Bruce Lee : His Last Days, His Last Nights (1975). Sold as Betty Ting Pei ’s own statement about her alleged lover’s fate, it was actually the esteemed Shaw Brothers Studio’s sneering, shabby “settling of accounts” with the “star that got away” and the ex-employee, Raymond Chow , who had the audacity to make it on his own. Starring Betty herself with Li Hsui-hsien (aka Danny Lee ) as Bruce, it was helmed by lean, mean action thriller maker (Johnny) Lo Mar as the most obvious of sore-loser-hack jobs, made all the more sad by Ting Pei’s willingness to degrade herself. The film pictured her as a hopelessly self-delusional, constantly nude gold-digger with a self-worth issue, and Bruce as an immature, egomaniacal rapist who occasionally gripped his skull in pain.
After trotting out mean-spirited caricatures for ninety minutes, the sympathetic bartender to whom Betty has been pouring out her memories beats up some thugs who want to punish the girl, and tells them to respect Bruce’s memory … which is more than this movie did. But the worst was yet to come. As howlingly bad fun as I Love You, Bruce Lee was, the ultimate indignity came from Bruce’s own studio, Golden Harvest . With about a hundred minutes of footage Bruce had completed before he died, Raymond Chow announced to the world that The Game of Death would premiere in 1978.
They had Bruce Lee ’s notes. They had Bruce Lee ’s hand-picked co-stars, James Tien and Chieh Yuan . They had the footage. Using the co-stars, they could have created a framing story, and fashioned a film that honored Bruce Lee ’s wishes. Instead, they jettisoned all but eleven minutes of Bruce’s work, and hired Robert Clouse to create what was essentially an entirely new movie … a patently ludicrous and shameful one.
Using several obvious stand-ins, and some of the most labored camera tricks imaginable (including positioning a stand-in so that it looks like his body is coming from a cut-out picture of Bruce’s face pasted on a mirror), Clouse tells the labored, laughable story of movie star “Billy Lo” fighting for his freedom against a crime syndicate who wants to control him … or something equally absurd. Rather than being a brilliant treatise on kung fu, in Bruce’s so-called collaborators’ hands, it becomes the stupid story of “Brewce Leigh” fighting an insane actor’s agent.
Markedly better was 1981’s Tower of Death, known in the United States as Game of Death II. Directed by Ng See-yuen , who also directed Bruce Lee , the True Story (U.S.: Bruce Lee , the Man and the Myth , 1976), it starred Kim Tai-chung in the leading role of Bobby Lo, the brother of Billy Lo (Bruce’s Game of Death character) . This time the actual Bruce Lee footage came from scenes edited out of Enter the Dragon , with all new dialogue dubbed in. The “real” Bruce Lee appears in only the first half hour, “playing” Billy, who is mysteriously killed, allowing Bobby to investigate. Bob-o is then given a series of eight, increasingly more ambitious, fights, until he reaches the top of the pagoda, where he has an excellent battle with Huang Jang-li , one of the screen’s best “leg fighters” (i.e., kickers). In a bunch of dreadful movies, this one reigns supreme, which, of course, isn’t saying much.
Some fans seem to think that Game of Death would have been Bruce’s ultimate kung fu statement, had he lived. But given that Lee wanted to continue making movies, that opinion is doubtful. After all, he had yet to realize his full potential as an actor, filmmaker, or even as a martial artist. But there is no doubt Lee’s honorably realized Game of Death would have been far superior to what Clouse, Golden Harvest , and Warner Brothers came up with.
Fred Weintraub put it in perspective. “I miss Bruce. I liked him. We fought, but it was
Quite possibly the most blatant, shameless exploitation came with I Love You, Bruce Lee , known in America as Bruce Lee : His Last Days, His Last Nights (1975). Sold as Betty Ting Pei ’s own statement about her alleged lover’s fate, it was actually the esteemed Shaw Brothers Studio’s sneering, shabby “settling of accounts” with the “star that got away” and the ex-employee, Raymond Chow , who had the audacity to make it on his own. Starring Betty herself with Li Hsui-hsien (aka Danny Lee ) as Bruce, it was helmed by lean, mean action thriller maker (Johnny) Lo Mar as the most obvious of sore-loser-hack jobs, made all the more sad by Ting Pei’s willingness to degrade herself. The film pictured her as a hopelessly self-delusional, constantly nude gold-digger with a self-worth issue, and Bruce as an immature, egomaniacal rapist who occasionally gripped his skull in pain.
After trotting out mean-spirited caricatures for ninety minutes, the sympathetic bartender to whom Betty has been pouring out her memories beats up some thugs who want to punish the girl, and tells them to respect Bruce’s memory … which is more than this movie did. But the worst was yet to come. As howlingly bad fun as I Love You, Bruce Lee was, the ultimate indignity came from Bruce’s own studio, Golden Harvest . With about a hundred minutes of footage Bruce had completed before he died, Raymond Chow announced to the world that The Game of Death would premiere in 1978.
They had Bruce Lee ’s notes. They had Bruce Lee ’s hand-picked co-stars, James Tien and Chieh Yuan . They had the footage. Using the co-stars, they could have created a framing story, and fashioned a film that honored Bruce Lee ’s wishes. Instead, they jettisoned all but eleven minutes of Bruce’s work, and hired Robert Clouse to create what was essentially an entirely new movie … a patently ludicrous and shameful one.
Using several obvious stand-ins, and some of the most labored camera tricks imaginable (including positioning a stand-in so that it looks like his body is coming from a cut-out picture of Bruce’s face pasted on a mirror), Clouse tells the labored, laughable story of movie star “Billy Lo” fighting for his freedom against a crime syndicate who wants to control him … or something equally absurd. Rather than being a brilliant treatise on kung fu, in Bruce’s so-called collaborators’ hands, it becomes the stupid story of “Brewce Leigh” fighting an insane actor’s agent.
Markedly better was 1981’s Tower of Death, known in the United States as Game of Death II. Directed by Ng See-yuen , who also directed Bruce Lee , the True Story (U.S.: Bruce Lee , the Man and the Myth , 1976), it starred Kim Tai-chung in the leading role of Bobby Lo, the brother of Billy Lo (Bruce’s Game of Death character) . This time the actual Bruce Lee footage came from scenes edited out of Enter the Dragon , with all new dialogue dubbed in. The “real” Bruce Lee appears in only the first half hour, “playing” Billy, who is mysteriously killed, allowing Bobby to investigate. Bob-o is then given a series of eight, increasingly more ambitious, fights, until he reaches the top of the pagoda, where he has an excellent battle with Huang Jang-li , one of the screen’s best “leg fighters” (i.e., kickers). In a bunch of dreadful movies, this one reigns supreme, which, of course, isn’t saying much.
Some fans seem to think that Game of Death would have been Bruce’s ultimate kung fu statement, had he lived. But given that Lee wanted to continue making movies, that opinion is doubtful. After all, he had yet to realize his full potential as an actor, filmmaker, or even as a martial artist. But there is no doubt Lee’s honorably realized Game of Death would have been far superior to what Clouse, Golden Harvest , and Warner Brothers came up with.
Fred Weintraub put it in perspective. “I miss Bruce. I liked him. We fought, but it was
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