B.W.'s Top Twenty Favorite Kung Fu Actors : The Top Ten

We're back, like a former 98 lb martial weakling, fully trained in secret combat techniques and prepared to avenge our father's/brother's/sister's/mother's/sifu's untimely death at the hands of a villainous bastard who's rubbing his mustache and laughing cockily, thoroughly unfazed by this latest challenge; unaware that we've mastered the ancient counter-style, thought lost for years, and he's in for some serious foot-eating, in grueling slo-mo. Movement eight'een, Peacock displays his fancy ass-feathers to Buddha! Here's my top 10.


  10) Liu Chia Hui  The youngest of the Liu's behind Chia-Yung and eldest Chia-Liang, Gordon "Master Killer" Liu's instantly recognizable even to those beyond the HK fight club, appearing in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series, after having a long and rich career in the Shaw Brothers productions of his older brothers and others; some of his best appearances coming in movies like Martial Club (1981), Heroes of the East (1978), Legendary Weapons of China (1982) and, of course,  The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978).


  9) Ti Lung  One of Shaw Brothers' early stars, the ever noble Ti Lung lends his unmistakable air of class to productions like The Deadly Duo (1971), Five Shaolin Masters (1974), and The Kung Fu Instructor (1979), as well as modern works such as John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) and Liu Chia Liang's Drunken Master II (1994) opposite Jacky Chan.

 
   8) Kuo Chui   Number Four, the Lizard. My favorite Venom, Kuo usually plays a drunk or a wanderer or a beggar...or a drunken wandering beggar... in iconic Shaw Brothers productions for Chang Cheh like Daredevils of Kung Fu (1979), The Flag of Iron (1980), Five Element Ninjas (1982), as well as the aforementioned Five Venoms.


 7) Liang Chia Jen  We've come to "Beardy" himself! Though he's always been technically excellent, dating back to early Shaw flicks like Five Shaolin Masters (1974) and Marco Polo (1975), I prefer repeat viewings of his work in later films like Warriors Two (1978), Sleeping Fist (1979), The Victim (1980), Thundering Mantis (1980),  and Knockabout (1979) these days. All of his stuff is worth checking out, really.



  6) Billy Chong The Indonesian Willy Dozan was often billed as "Bruce Lee of the 80's" and was number one on my list for a long time, too,  often sparking arguments among us before and after many a kung fu class back then, but I stood firm on my choice, using movies like Super Power (1980), Kung Fu Executioner (1981), and Crystal Fist (1979) as visual evidence. Still a favorite.


  5) Liu Chia Liang The mere screen presence of this fight choreographer-turned-director, the elder statesman of the genre bar none,  uplifts any production to a must-see status. Though those appearances numbered ninety-three at the time of his death in 2013, with many glorious fights that instantly spring to mind, one only need bear witness to the spectacle that is the final fight in his own Legendary Weapons of China (1982) vs. his brother, Liu Chia Yung, to see a perfect jaw-dropping illustration.


  4) Fu Sheng  My favorite Chang Cheh regular has to be "Alexander" Fu Sheng, hands down. His comedic abilities, mischievous spirit, and general likability are top notch, and only matched by his prowess as a pugilist, having long trained under the tutelage of none other than Liu Chia Liang. Were it not for a tragic car accident in 1983, his international star would have surely rose to more dizzying heights, transcending the martial arts genre into mainstream comedy, as evidenced by the success of Hong Kong Playboys (1983).


  3) Bruce Lee Undoubtedly the King of the Kung Fu movie, and the Gold Standard by which all cinematic martial artists will forever be compared to. The four movies completed at the time of the iconic little tough guy's death in 1973, are all required viewing, for sure: Big Boss (1971), Fists of Fury (1972), Way of the Dragon (1972), and Enter the Dragon (1973).


  2) Jacky Chan In one instant, this former Peking Opera performer-turned-stunt man rose to the top by single-handedly revolutionizing the kung fu film with his own unique brand of physical kung fu comedy, performing all legendarily inhuman stunts himself along the way. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978), Drunken Master (1978), Project A (1983), Police Story (1985), Armor of God (1986)...his list of excellent action movies is lengthy. If you've never seen his early classics, you're really selling yourself short as a film fan.


  1) Wang Lung Wei  Johnny Wang, who is without a doubt, the epitome of villainy in Asian action movies, naturally tops my list of favorites. "Who else... coooooooooould be", to quote Hwang Jang Lee. To Kill a Mastermind (1979), Martial Club (1981), Shaolin Temple (1976), and This Man is Dangerous (1985) contain some of my favorite vintage Wang assholery.

"Way of the Dragon"(1972)d/Bruce Lee

We haven't even gotten to the big yearly day of L-tryptophan intake, and I've already irresponsibly slacked most of the month away, but I assure you, folks, it's only because I'm busy beating on your mother's uvula with me yahzick.And so we come to the very first Bruce Lee review here at the Wop, skipping over Big Boss(1971) and Fists of Fury(1972) just to get to his third film; the global box office record breaking 'fish out of water' martial epic as written, co-produced, overdubbed, directed by, and starring the Little Dragon himself.Hell, he even helped compose the soundtrack with Joseph Koo.Is there anything that Lee, the single most familiar martial arts icon in the world(don't listen to these 98 pound weakling sand-grilled nerds with their played out Chuck Norris crap on the interwebs tubes), born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco on November 27th, 1940, couldn't have accomplished, had he not suddenly perished on that fateful July 20th in 1973?From a martial artist's perspective, few things get the adrenaline flowing like one of Bruce's cat-like kiais that accompany his powerful techniques, almost too fast to be caught on camera, if you can believe that, and though kung fu movies have long since evolved into a more intricately choreographed ballet of brutality, Lee remains no less impressive with age, some forty years down the line.For his directorial debut, which was released in the U.S. as Return of the Dragon in 1974 to cash in on the success of his Enter the Dragon(1973) effort, Bruce enlisted the skills of Hapkido grandmaster Whang Ing-Sik, heavyweight kickboxing champion Bob Wall, and his sensei, eighth degree Tang Soo Do black belt and middleweight karate champion, Chuck Norris, in his acting(ahem) debut.Rounding out the cast here are Lee regulars, Nora Miao, Wei Ping Ao, and Bruce's lifelong friend, Unicorn Chan.

Insert risotto allo zafferano con petto d'anatra here.
Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) arrives in Rome(I swear this had no bearing on the Wopsploitation rating) to aid his friend's niece, Chen Ching Hua(Nora Miao), whose restaurant has been singled out by local mafiosi who've been using intimidation to try and force her to sell out to them.Chen, expecting one of her uncle's lawyers instead, is initially unimpressed by the naive bumpkin from the country, who's wary of banks and having difficulty with expressing himself in Italian and English to the point that he can barely order food or resist the advances of local prostitutes.At the restaurant, the workers clumsily practice karate out back to pass the time, since the gangsters continually frighten off potential customers, and even they don't think too much of Tang at first, or see how this small yokel could possibly improve their predicament.That is, until the thugs show up to do some more bullying in his presence, forcing him to take them out back, and humble them with his Chinese boxing.All comers are quickly immobilized by the the little man's fists, feet, bo staff, and dual nunchaku, from the obligatory soul brother to the Roman version of Wolfman Jack, amidst the cheers of his former detractors and skepticism of the unfortunately named Uncle Wang(Wang Chung-Hsin).The mob boss(Jon Benn), not a man easily swayed by speed-of-light spinning hook kicks, gets his flamboyantly garbed, effeminate lieutenant, Ho(Wei Ping-Ao), to send a gunman to dispatch the restaurant's new hero, but Tang nullifies his gun with wooden throwing darts and breaks his neck for his efforts.Tang warns the boss that he'll get serious if the thugs don't leave his friends alone, to which the boss responds by sending a message that he'll have Tang killed if he doesn't leave Rome pronto.Tang is unwavered by the criminal's empty threats, of course.

When wielding nunchaku in Rome, Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) knows the importance of malocchio.A good wifebeater doesn't hurt either.
The earlier gunman, now sporting a nifty neckbrace, is sent to Chen's apartment to snipe Tang, but receives more comeuppance from the proud Chinese.Chen gets kidnapped by the goons, but Tang and the boys quickly arrive on the scene to rescue her, with Tang jump kicking a ceiling light(!) and cracking his massive knuckles in the boss' face to illustrate his previous point.Ho calls on two of his friends, an American(Bob Wall) and a Japanese(Whang Ing-Sik), both of whom are martial experts, to handle the syndicate's problems, but their language barrier escalates into a fight that's only broken up by the arrival of Colt(Chuck Norris), the karate champ from America that happens to be the other American's sensei.Tang and company are lured to the country nearby to the Roman colosseum by Ho, where they are set upon by the two foreign experts, neither of which proves much of a match for Tang.While Ho goads him to give chase, the other workers exhaustedly fight the two karatekas until Uncle Wang surprises them with a knife to the kidneys, explaining that the boss had paid him well for his treachery.At the ancient arena, Tang encounters Colt instead of Ho, and the two men warm up together, achknowledging that they will battle to the death, with a small feral kitten watching in the wings.At the outset, Colt's powerful strikes overwhelm the small fighter, who increases his own quickness and fluidity to best the American, breaking his arm and one of his legs in the process.When Colt refuses to give up, Tang snaps his neck, sadly draping his gi over his battered, lifeless body out of respect, turning, and once again giving chase to Ho, who tries to sneakily escape.Meanwhile, Uncle Wang, who's shanked up all his nephews for cash, tries to shiv Tang, but gets shot along with Ho by the angry don, who arrives by car, only to see that his latest plan is another failure.Before he can shoot the tiny Chinese bane of his criminal existence, the authorities arrive and take him into custody.At the graveyard, Tang and Chen pay their last respects to their dead friends before the young man bids her adieu, finally returning home.Waaaaaaaassssssssaaaaaa!!!

"Your-ah Chinese Boxing is ah-squashing the ravioli!", says Chef Boi Ahr Di(Wang Chung-hsin).
It should also be noted that Yuen Biao also makes an early cameo here as one of Bruce Lee's whipping boys.Lee would go on to star in Enter the Dragon with Nora Miao again, ironically, his last completed motion picture before dying the same year.Unicorn Chan, who also appeared in Fists of Fury with Lee, would also meet a tragic end in a 1987 car accident in Malaysia, while Chuck Norris would again play a villain in his next movie, 1973's awful Slaughter in San Francisco, which is often packaged as a starring role for the wooden Irish/Cherokee actor of little renown, instead of the terrible Don Wong vehicle it really is.Norris wouldn't get his marquee turn until four years later with Breaker! Breaker!(1977).Lee's only directorial effort is an even-handed affair, with nice cinematography and excellent pacing that leave one pondering what he would have gone on to do should he have lived a longer life.On the scale, Way earns three solid Wops, and deserves its place on woprophiles' shelves as an exciting kung fu exercise and cult classic.Recommended.

...And with four rapid-fire kicks to the facepiece, Bruce Lee makes a Chuck Norris joke out of Chuck Norris.

"Ip Man"(2008)d/Yip Wai-Shun

If you know anything at all about the late Bruce Lee, international martial arts movie superstar, you know before developing his Jeet Kune Do style, or the "way of the intercepting fist", he studied traditional Wing Chun kung fu under the grandmaster of that particular style, a quiet little old fellow named Ip Man.If you're having trouble imagining just how adept at the pugilistic arts the guy who taught Bruce Lee had to be, wonder no further, thanks to the semi-biographical cinemagic of director Yip Wai-Shun.If you only see one kung fu movie for the rest of the year, this one has gotta be it.With Jackie Chan's portly pal, Sammo Hung, an action star/director in his own right, on board as the fight choreographer, and star Donnie Yen, who'd already appeared with Michelle Yeoh in a Wing Chun origin picture of the same name in 1994 directed by Yuen Woo Ping, starring as the Chinese aristocrat responsible for the propagation of Wing Chun to the outside world, Ip is an amazing ride, packed with jaw dropping fights and the raw nationalist emotions evoked by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, and subsequent Chinese misery under the jackboots of the Japanese Imperial Army at the time.To be honest, I haven't paid much mind to recent kung fu fare outside of Chan/Biao/Hung, and wire fu has always been a drag to me, but this flick opened my eyes towards the new wave of martial arts movies.Naysayers will cite the glaring historical inaccuracies in the story, but face it, hairsplitters, it's not a documentary, it's a movie, and a kung fu movie, at that.In fact, Ip is arguably the best kung fu movie since Liu Chia Liang's Drunken Master II(1994).Yeah, it's that good.

Master Liao's(Chen Zhi Hui) phoenix eye fist doesn't compare to Ip Man's(Donnie Yen)Wing Chun.
1930's Foshan is a bustling community of competitive southern style kung fu schools, but the most skilled martial artist in the region is top Wing Chun proponent Ip Man(Donnie Yen), an unassuming, independently wealthy man with a wife and small son, who couldn't be bothered with taking in disciples or opening a school for himself.His wife, on the other hand, is often frustrated by the frequent duel challenges that interrupt their family life.His latest challenger, Master Liao(Chen Zhi Hui), sits down to dinner with Ip and his family before being rendered humble and helpless by Ip's close quarter locks, grabs, and devastating rapid fire gaitling gun multi-punches.Though Ip vows to keep his hasty pummelling of Liao a secret, the match is witnessed by a young local retrieving his kite from Ip's property.His commentary causes a commotion in town, forgotten when a group of cocky northern style masters stroll in looking to challenge all the masters in Foshan.Their leader, Master Jin(Fan Siu-wong) brutalizes most of the other school's teachers, planning to open his own school in the area, when a local waiter reminds him to be the best, you have to beat the best, and in Foshan, that is Ip Man, of COURSE.Lin rudely barges into Ip's home, using insults and character attacks to spur the man into a duel, which Ip's wife even agrees to, so long as her house remains in one piece.Unarmed, Lin's northern fists and kicks are easily countered by Master Ip, and when he frustratedly draws his sword, Ip wields a feather duster to embarrass the young hothead, and return the region's martial pride and respect as Foshan's hero...that is, until the Japanese invade in 1937.

Master Lin(Yu Xing),a zealot from the north, gets (feather)dusted up by Master Ip.
Under the tyrannical rule of the imperial army, Foshan is thrown into a dark period of hunger and poverty, with Ip forced to seek gainful employment as a coal mine coolie when his family finally runs out of priceless antiques to pawn for sacks of rice.General Miura(Hiroyuki Ikeuchi), an expert karate practitioner, sets up an arena where Chinese can fight their hated Japanese masters and winning a match means a sack of rice for your family.Ip's friend, "Crazy" Lin(Xing Yu)agrees to fight the general with two others, and is beaten to death in the process, leading Ip to volunteer for the next day's matches.He watches Sifu Liao catch a bullet in the head when he fails to defeat three Japanese at the same time, and requests not three, but ten black belts(!) to fight when his turn comes up.With his dead Chinese friends in mind, he violently breaks and batters the ten experts in a matter of moments.After he helps his friend Chow Ching-chuen train his cotton mill workers in self-defense when Master Lin and his gang reappear looking for easy payoffs through bullying, he has a rematch with Lin and easily defeats him, warning him afterwards never to return again.Miura grows impatient while waiting to see Ip's flawless skills in action, and when Ip thrashes a group of his soldiers when they harass his family at home, he sends more to the cotton mill to voice his threat:Either Ip teaches Wing Chun to the Japanese army or he will forfeit his life.Not only does Ip refuse the offer, he challenges the general to a duel, which the military leader cannot refuse due to the impending Japanese humiliation if he did so.The general sets up a ring in the town square, where both men square off in front of the whole province.Ip promptly uses Miura's limp body as a makeshift Wing Chun training dummy in front of the cheering Chinese masses, spurring Miura's deputy, Sato to shoot the victorious expert.A melee ensues, during which Chow and Ip's wife gather up the wounded hero and flee to the less dangerous climate of British-owned Hong Kong, where Ip would famously teach his kung fu to many famous disciples, one of which being the movie star, Bruce Lee.But that's another story...

This black belt karateka will be taking a lengthy sabbatical from kicking with that leg, courtesy of Master Ip.
Sammo was chosen as fight choreographer due to his earlier works, Warriors Two(1979) and Prodigal Son(1982), both films detailing the creation of Wing Chun kung fu.Director Wong Kar-wei vocalized his intent to do a biopic on Ip Man himself, but it spent ages in development hell while producer Raymond Wong's effort here, had full consent from Ip's sons in researching then recreating elements of Ip's life.A sequel, Ip Man 2, which we'll be examining here at a later date, was released two years later.As for this movie, everything's in place for total satisfaction from martial arts movie enthusiasts, and I can hardly envision anyone screening it and disliking it.On the scale, it merits a perfect four wop score and comes with my highest recommendation.You won't be disappointed.

You don't wanna meet either of those cinder block triphammers up close.

Lee Jun-fan(Bruce Lee)

May your tea hold the sweetest leaves,Little Dragon.


27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973

The Real Bruce Lee(1979)d/Larry Dolgin,Jim Markovic

To effectively balance the yin and yang of the cinematic universe,we've gotta offset the recent string of Four Wop scores with a real asspie.This one will do nicely.The exploitation one-two knock out punch of producers Serafim Karalexis and Dick Randall decided to piece a film together around some ancient footage from Bruce Lee's childhood HK films,which on its own,grainier than a fifth of Everclear and bereaft of anything remotely resembling a fight scene,wouldn't entertain the Lee family on home movie night.So they added some clips of Ho Tsung Tao(Bruce Li) kicking around some karate proponents,and an entire feature centered around Korean Lee imitator,Dragon Lee.They would have been better off with an hour and a half of six year old Bruce Lee being cute.In the days before video rentals,Video Gems asked sixty-five bucks for this atrocity.Nowadays you could skim the bottom of a budget dvd bin and score a copy for a buck.Either way,the price is too high.As the announcer proudly exclaims,"The rest will be history!"

Don't concentrate on the finger,or you will miss Dragon Lee kicking oversized polyurethane boulders.
Dragon Lee is practicing kicking giant foam boulders into bullseye targets in the cold Korean winter air when his long silver haired sifu interrupts him for a pensive moment."Don't call me teacher.Call me father."Okay....creepy?Dragon's martial arts school is the focus of jealous Japanese bullies.These aren't your average evil Japs,mind you.The vast majority of these guys proudly rock the Hitler moustache like nobody's business.If I was the martial arts choreographer here,I'd be hiding behind a lion dance costume until you left.At first,Dragon dispatches clusters of sorry samurais trying to cop some surprise sex off of his sifu's daughter,then another amalgam of angry Asians who ambush him in the forest.In a classic moment of movie don't-know-how,Lee flies at two half-beaten Japanese on a slow wire about seven feet off the ground in a transitional shot that takes about two minutes to transpire.His kung foolery is being overseen by a white ninja,who's camoflage skills are on par with Lee's sloppy wire fu,as he sticks out like a martial paint splash in the colorful fall foliage of the forest.He bounces away in slo-mo on trampolines.The Japanese are beside themselves at their failed bullying,as always.

Movement number three,Dragon flies across the shot on a wire at about a half mile an hour.
The head of the rival Japanese school,a sickly thin Asian Hitler lookalike,sends a spy to infiltrate Dragon's school,but the wily Lee shows up at the Jap dojo with the spy in a net,stripped down to his knickers soon afterwards.I don't even wanna know what the Chinese did to the poor guy over there.A fight ensues between Dragon and the Japanese master,who's swordplay isn't up to par with Lee's overdone Bruce Lee imitation,when he unleashes his deadly extend-a-sword on our hero.Dragon kicks some flower pots at him and the evil master dies,with some daisies sticking out of his belly(!).The Japanese enlist the help of a man named Gruber,who's half Japanese,half German(what else?)to eradicate the Chinese.Gruber fights the unmasked white ninja(Dragon's teacher,shocker.)to a martial draw until the foreigner unleashes his deadly flying speaker diaphragms of death(!) on the old man.When Dragon hears of his teacher's untimely death,he goes to the Japanese school and takes out every last one of those damned Japanese students,distorting his face in a Bruce-ish manner the whole time.Even Gruber's speaker diaphragms of death are no match for the Bruce lookalike,as he again takes to the slo-mo flying wire,and catches the discs in his teeth,before breaking the pesky weapons in his bare hands.He sticks his fingers through the German/Japanese man's stomach,then picks up his kung fu jacket for a Bruce-esque freeze frame,where the announcer returns to apologetically remind us that there will only ever be one Bruce Lee,but his memory(despite the hour and half of pissing the film's makers had just done on it!) will live on forever.

Not evil enough simply being Japanese,our antagonists grew collective Hitler moustaches.
If Liu Chia Liang is the Chinese Martin Scorsese,these guys combine to form the Korean Ed Wood,Jr.The usual god-awful dubbing and sound effects(but worse,if you can comprehend that)added to sloppy choreography which overcompensates for lack of martial arts with assininely outrageous fictitious weapons,and a threadbare plot should equip copies of this entry with a package of diapers and a box of tissues,as you're bound to laugh til you cry and/or piss your pants at its ineptitude.When I first bought this ages ago,we rewound the forest wire shot no less than twenty times in a row in disbelief.For Bruce Lee enthusiasts,the real Dragon completed four kung fu movies in his life.Everything else is Brucesploitation.Some of it,like this,is just so bad,it's actually hilarious fun for your whole gaggle of miscreants on movie night.On the scale,The Real Bruce Lee slowly flies into the finish line with a score of:

Even Dragon Lee thinks breaking "speaker diaphragms of death" on camera is silly.

Clones of Bruce Lee(1977)d/Joseph Velasco

I paid forty bucks for this on Beta in the eighties while you safely nursed on your mother's lactating teats.
Here it is,the ultimate piece of Brucesploitation ever filmed!When the Little Dragon joined the choir invisible on July 20th,1973,filmmakers in Hong Kong tripped over themselves to churn out hundreds of celluloid stinkpies with countless imitators trying to capture the on screen energy of Bruce Lee and cash in at the box office.There was Bruce Li,Bruce Le,Bruce Lai,Bruce K.L. Lea,Dragon Lee,Bruce Ly,Bruce Liu...by the gods,it was neverending for a while there!Though some of these exploitation films aren't all THAT bad to sit down to,this is arguably the worst one of the lot.Seriously.And that in itself makes it highly entertaining!

Professor Lucas(Jon Benn) and a very colorful super computer indeed.
When Bruce Lee dies,the BSI takes matters into their own hands.Aided by the brilliant Professor Lucas(Jon Benn,the Roman gangster in "Way of the Dragon"),they manage to clone the martial arts master not once,but three(four?) times!Amazingly,none of the clones resemble Lee all that much,and even more incredibly,the identical clones don't even look like each other at all!First on the agenda,Lucas controls their minds with a state of the art combination spaghetti strainer/mind control device,and gives them each ingenious names of their own:Bruce Lee Number One,Bruce Lee Number Two,and Bruce Lee Number Three...must have lost hours of sleep deciding on those,huh.Next up,he incorporates Yang "Bolo" Sze and Chiang Tao to train the clones in the martial arts,making sure that all three kiai like a horny cat in a back alley dumpster every two and a half seconds,lest we forget these guys are supposed to be Bruce Lee!As if the giant seventies-tastic sunglasses and gold pimp medallions weren't giveaway enough already!The Lee three are given separate missions:Dragon Lee is sent to take on a gold smuggler,and Bruce's Le,Lai,and Thai are sent to shut down an evil mad scientist in Thailand.Where'd the fourth Bruce Lee come from?Ah,nevermind...

The aptly named "Bruce Lee number three"(Bruce Lai)and a combination mind control device/spaghetti strainer.
Dragon Lee is successful,no doubt due to the seven hundred and fifty three times he thumbs his nose during his fights(was he cutting himself some rails of booger sugar in between takes?).And the three other Bruces also succeed,but not before two of them take to the beach in speedos(!)and purposely avoid a bevy of horny naked Asian women playing with each other's tits in the frothy surf."They'll eat you alive." warns Bruce Le.What's wrong with that,exactly?Next they take on a hoard of slightly overweight bronzemen in underwear,who they defeat during the battle by feeding them poison grass(?).Yeah.Anyway,when they get back to Lucas,he turns them on each other in a huge rumble to the death,so he can have the strongest one to do his bidding.The prof's assistants manage to unplug the big colorful box of lights,effectively ending his mind control over the imitators,and the three clones(what happened to the fourth one?)win the day!

Three Bruce Lees,three pairs of friggin huge sunglasses.
Anytime a kung fu movie travels to Thailand,you know what to expect:floral print shirts with butterfly collars,bellbottom slacks,platform shoes,and a sleazy low budget feel.Add to the equation four Bruce Lee imitators,hokey movie science and technology,flabby bronzemen who are allergic to grass,sub par fight choreography,atrocious dubbing,gratuitous nudity,music culled from "Rocky" and "The Warriors" and you have Clones of Bruce Lee,the most entertainingly idiotic chopsocky movie of all time!But it still gets:

Dragon Lee and Bruce Le square off to see who's the best Bruce Lee clone.Nobody wins on screen,nobody wins in the audience either.

"Tower of Death"(1981)d/Ng See Yuen

In 1979,Golden Harvest sifted through rushes Bruce Lee had shot seven years earlier,came up with eleven minutes worth of usable stuff,shot an entirely different movie around said eleven minutes of film,utilizing two Lee imitators(Kim Tai Chung and Tong Lung) and random shots and frames of Lee from his other films(including Lee's actual funeral footage) to piece the whole,confusing mess together and called it "Game of Death".Two years later,veteran Hong Kong director Ng See Yuen(Snake in the Eagle's Shadow)decided it would be a good idea to film a SEQUEL to a movie never made starring a man who had been dead for eight years.The end result is one of the greatest pieces of exploitation ever seen in the history of cinema.

Wong Cheng Li smiles as the back of Kim Tai Chung's head makes its first appearance.
Billy Lo(Bruce Lee,but really Kim Tai Chung) visits his friend Chin Ku(Wong Cheng Li) just in time for a martial challenge by an angry white guy in black sweats.Chin dispatches the kung fu honkey,then Billy tells of a martial challenge HE'D received in a greenhouse from a Korean(Casanova Wong).Both men laugh and part ways.Bobby visits a Shaolin abbot(Roy Chiao) to discuss the problems he's been having with his younger brother Bobby(also Kim Tai Chung),who seems more interested in dirty Chinese penetration drawings than kung fu.Billy leaves his personal kung fu manual and a letter for his sibling,explaining there'll be time for girls later(!).At this point,Bobby hears of Chin Ku's untimely death,then visits Chin's daughter,who's the Asian equivalent of Karen Carpenter,badly lip-synching Chinese easy listening tunes in a bar.She gives Bobby a cigar box full of film when her dressing room is suddenly broken into by a group of machete-wielding masked assassins.The ensuing martial battle piles out into the Hong Kong streets where Lo dispatches all disguised comers and runs off.He then attends Chin's funeral,where a helicopter swoops down and steals Ku's swasti-coffin as Billy is killed with a dart as he tries to stop the casket's theft in mid-air.

"You're just talking crap!""No I'm not,I'm Lee Chien Chung."
After more footage of Bruce Lee's actual funeral,Bobby Lo visits his father to discuss revenge for his brother's death,watching footage from the film Billy had obtained of another white kung fu guy, named Lewis(Roy Horan),and his "palace of death".Bobby deducts Lewis' kung fu "doesn't look that hot" and decides to sniff around the palace for clues.

Lewis wonders,"Bobby Lo? Could he be Billy Lo's younger brother?"
At the Palace of Death,Lewis proves a gracious host,showing Bobby his Lions of Death("They love the taste of freshly killed human meat."),his specially trained Peacocks(!)of Death("Kung-fu fighters should be fierce like a lion and swift like a peacock so I study their styles.")
,and remarks about abbot Hung Kwang's fabled Tower of Death...built UNDERGROUND.Two caped intruders appear,challenging Lewis to a martial duel,losing miserably,and are fed to the Lions of Death.Bobby decides he likes Lewis and stays the night at the Palace of Death.As he is about to play hide the spring roll with a white prostitute,a lion(man in a ten dollar lion costume) crashes through the window,killing the hooker,but not before Bobby dispatches the beast with his martial skills.Elsewhere in the Palace of Death,someone assassinates Lewis by hanging him in his own bed and gutting him like a fresh carp.Bobby suspects Lewis' one handed valet who has disappeared,then makes off for the fabled Tower of Death.
Bobby finds the valet outside the Tower,the two have a martial contest where the valet reveals he's been hiding his other hand up his kung fu jacket sleeve all along.Bobby dispatches the former one handed valet with both of his own hands behind his back and enters the Tower of Death.A well-guarded fortress,the Tower serves up silver-disco jumpsuited henchmen and a Chinese strongman in a leopard print Tarzan suit.Bobby dispatches these adversaries in a martial struggle,before taking the elevator past some impressive papier mache cave walls,ultimately finding out that Chin Ku faked his own death,had Billy Lo murdered,and resides in the lowest level with his swastika-adorned pine box.Bobby dispatches Chin in a twenty-five minute martial battle then leaves.

"Huuuuuuaaaaaaaaah!""Heyyyyyyyyaaaaaaahhhhh!"
This chop socky-soaked Bruce-sploitation epic(also released as "Game of Death II,go figure...) has everything going for it.Banal dialogue badly dubbed by familiar British voice over actors,ridiculous plot,piss-poor attempts to tie the late Bruce Lee into the storyline,homicidal men in lion suits,footage of real lions eating chunks of steak off the hood of a Range Rover,terrifying peacocks...well,you get the idea.If you can get past all of that,one thing this film does offer is splendid martial arts choreography,and the fights are nothing short of spectacular.Kim Tai Chung may not look like Bruce Lee unless his back is to the camera,but he can fight.Wong Cheng Li,Li Hoi San,and Roy Horan all turn in good battles in front of the lens.It doesn't get much better(or worse) than this,and isn't that really what it's all about?
Four out of four B.W.'s