A shameless grave-robbing unforgiveable movie
GAME OF DEATH (1979)
Okay, this is definitely not the opus Bruce Lee was planning on making (and part of which he had filmed) before he dropped the project to go make ENTER THE DRAGON for Warner Brothers. What we have here is a shameless piece of grave-robbing, Raymond Chow took the fight sequences Lee had completed, edited them poorly and used them as the final twenty minutes of a film he dared call GAME OF DEATH. Since, of course, the star had been dead for six years by then, director Robert Clouse had to use four different stand-ins to impersonate Bruce (here called Billy Lo).
Still, back in 1979, this looked like the only way we would ever get to see the footage Lee had shot and so we endured the flick just to watch the final twenty minutes when the man himself appeared on screen to rumble with Dan Inosanto, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and that Korean Hapkido master whose name I always have to look up. We had only a vague feeling just how hacked up and out of context what we saw was. Nowadays, all the surviving footage is available in the fine documentary BRUCE LEE: A WARRIOR'S JOURNEY (which we will later review in detail), so there is little reason for his fans to ever sit through this again.
Here's a funny thing, though. GAME OF DEATH uses so many clumsy inserts from real Bruce Lee films (mostly quick reaction shots in grainy close-up) and incredibly poor tricks (I'm not kidding, in one scene they have a guy sit in front of a mirror on which has been glued a cut-out photo of Lee's head...!*ack*) that the movie defies forgiveness. In an amazingly tasteless moment, they use authentic newsreels of the crowds watching Lee's coffin, and we get a glimpse of the poor guy himself lying there. 'Rest In Peace' obviously didn't mean much to Clouse and Chow!
However, if you could edit the distracting inserts out and just leave the new footage, you would actually have a pretty good Hong Kong kung fu movie of that era! It would be the story of action star Billy Lo, who refuses to pay protection money to a bizarre little gang of international extortionists. They shoot him in the face and, although he does survive, Billy lets the world think he has been killed. In disguise, he starts tracking down the gang members to wipe them out. (Hey, I get it -- 'the Game of Death', right?
The fight scenes are the wild, way exaggerated duels of that time, still lots of fun to watch. This was before excessive wire-work turned all Hong Kong fighters into Peter Pan, so we get real kicks, punches and throws. Even the flips and somersaults are actually being done by the performers and it's refreshing. None of the fights are classic, but they're entertaining.
The eclectic cast is interesting; Colleen Camp sports enormous breasts, but aside from that, all she contributes is getting in the way and little bouts of hysteria. Gig Young as a maudlin reporter sure looks as if he had to be dragged away from the bar for each shot. The great Sammo Hung also has a brief fight scene in an ring. But GAME OF DEATH has a very cool line-up of villains. Dan Inosanto shows for a few scuffles. Bob Wall (O'Hara from ENTER THE DRAGON) as sneaky karateka Carl Miller provides the best action in the new material - a duel to the death in a locker room with Billy Lo. There's also Mel Novak as a sneering gunman, and Dean Jagger as the antedeluvian crimelord, Dr Land. (This guy is so old his phone number was 9!)
The bad guy I enjoyed seeing most, though, was Hugh O'Brien. I liked him in the classic TV Western THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP, and he was also a star of the short-run but underrated show SEARCH (you remember, where the investigators wore little gadgets that kept them in constant two-way communication with a team of experts?). He makes a very dapper villain, too, with his sword cane (maybe his father was Ham Brooks?)
Finally, GAME OF DEATH has great opening credits, scenes from genuine Lee movies superimposed on gambling symbols - playing cards, roulette wheels, slot machines. The theme music by John Barry is absolutely terrific. It's ominous and exciting, it really has that James Bond feel. Too bad Barry couldn't have given it to a more deserving movie......
Okay, this is definitely not the opus Bruce Lee was planning on making (and part of which he had filmed) before he dropped the project to go make ENTER THE DRAGON for Warner Brothers. What we have here is a shameless piece of grave-robbing, Raymond Chow took the fight sequences Lee had completed, edited them poorly and used them as the final twenty minutes of a film he dared call GAME OF DEATH. Since, of course, the star had been dead for six years by then, director Robert Clouse had to use four different stand-ins to impersonate Bruce (here called Billy Lo).
Still, back in 1979, this looked like the only way we would ever get to see the footage Lee had shot and so we endured the flick just to watch the final twenty minutes when the man himself appeared on screen to rumble with Dan Inosanto, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and that Korean Hapkido master whose name I always have to look up. We had only a vague feeling just how hacked up and out of context what we saw was. Nowadays, all the surviving footage is available in the fine documentary BRUCE LEE: A WARRIOR'S JOURNEY (which we will later review in detail), so there is little reason for his fans to ever sit through this again.
Here's a funny thing, though. GAME OF DEATH uses so many clumsy inserts from real Bruce Lee films (mostly quick reaction shots in grainy close-up) and incredibly poor tricks (I'm not kidding, in one scene they have a guy sit in front of a mirror on which has been glued a cut-out photo of Lee's head...!*ack*) that the movie defies forgiveness. In an amazingly tasteless moment, they use authentic newsreels of the crowds watching Lee's coffin, and we get a glimpse of the poor guy himself lying there. 'Rest In Peace' obviously didn't mean much to Clouse and Chow!
However, if you could edit the distracting inserts out and just leave the new footage, you would actually have a pretty good Hong Kong kung fu movie of that era! It would be the story of action star Billy Lo, who refuses to pay protection money to a bizarre little gang of international extortionists. They shoot him in the face and, although he does survive, Billy lets the world think he has been killed. In disguise, he starts tracking down the gang members to wipe them out. (Hey, I get it -- 'the Game of Death', right?
The fight scenes are the wild, way exaggerated duels of that time, still lots of fun to watch. This was before excessive wire-work turned all Hong Kong fighters into Peter Pan, so we get real kicks, punches and throws. Even the flips and somersaults are actually being done by the performers and it's refreshing. None of the fights are classic, but they're entertaining.
The eclectic cast is interesting; Colleen Camp sports enormous breasts, but aside from that, all she contributes is getting in the way and little bouts of hysteria. Gig Young as a maudlin reporter sure looks as if he had to be dragged away from the bar for each shot. The great Sammo Hung also has a brief fight scene in an ring. But GAME OF DEATH has a very cool line-up of villains. Dan Inosanto shows for a few scuffles. Bob Wall (O'Hara from ENTER THE DRAGON) as sneaky karateka Carl Miller provides the best action in the new material - a duel to the death in a locker room with Billy Lo. There's also Mel Novak as a sneering gunman, and Dean Jagger as the antedeluvian crimelord, Dr Land. (This guy is so old his phone number was 9!)
The bad guy I enjoyed seeing most, though, was Hugh O'Brien. I liked him in the classic TV Western THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP, and he was also a star of the short-run but underrated show SEARCH (you remember, where the investigators wore little gadgets that kept them in constant two-way communication with a team of experts?). He makes a very dapper villain, too, with his sword cane (maybe his father was Ham Brooks?)
Finally, GAME OF DEATH has great opening credits, scenes from genuine Lee movies superimposed on gambling symbols - playing cards, roulette wheels, slot machines. The theme music by John Barry is absolutely terrific. It's ominous and exciting, it really has that James Bond feel. Too bad Barry couldn't have given it to a more deserving movie......