Second in a series of posts reviewing Severin Films's box set Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Volume 1.

Sorry it's taking so long to get these things up. Life is a bit hectic and looks unlikely to get much less so soon. Hopefully, I can write these up a bit more quickly from here on out.

First and most importantly, gratuitous boobs. Nice gratuitous boobs, even. Because it's 1980.

That out of the way, here we have another example of pornography plotting. Things happen in the story because that's what the producers wanted to happen, and how it fits into any kind of story is, at best, a tertiary consideration.

So, Bruce Lee dies. His body is taken to a hospital, then brought over to a mad scientist (played by an American who played the bad guy in Way of the Dragon) so that he can make several clones of Bruce for the government. (Which government is not made explicit, but seems pretty clearly that of Great Britain, what with Hong Kong being a Brit colony at the time.) Why? Um, well, for "missions". Why can't they just have trained agents do these missions, why go to the bother of making and raising clones (yeah, no, no "raising", they're fully grown because low budget movie logic)? As the Critical Drinker would say, Don't Know!

So three clones are made, and two of them have a Bruceploitation track record, Bruce Le and Dragon Lee. Bruce Lai had done, maybe, two Bruceploitation flicks before this one, making him the rookie of the bunch. (And a fourth Bruce shows up in a mid-movie sequence, Bruce Thai in, of course, Thailand.) They get trained up, including by Bolo Yeung, and then get tasked to take out various criminals. The trip to Thailand includes the most gratuitous sidetrip ever, where the two Bruces go to a nude beach, see nearly a dozen topless Thai ladies posing for the cameras, then decide, nah, they're going to go do something else before taking down the drug lord.

So, after two or three random missions, Mad Scientist Guy decides to turn the Bruces against each other, so that the strongest one will be his sole servant so that he can rule the world. How? Don't Know!

Newest Bruce dies, the other two team up against Mad Scientist Guy, they win, the end.

As you might guess from the above description, the movie is bonkers, though not even close to the most bonkers movie in this set. The plot, such as it is, was clearly thrown together in haste, with a solid use of the assets the producers had at hand, and no concern at all for making it a coherent story. Again, the justification for creating three clones of Bruce Lee is, within the story, a bit thin. Your entire reason for making the movie, and you don't even work out a reason inside of the story? And then you make the entire second act random missions that could be anything, without any real tie to the characters or the plot? It's hilarious, and entertaining, doesn't make a lick of sense, and pretty clearly was written at speed to fit the elements available. Probably the night before each day's shooting.

First in a series of posts reviewing Severin Films's box set Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Volume 1.

(I messed up. I meant to go through the box set "in order," but accidentally put the third disc in rather than the second. After this film, I went back. Not that the selection of films in the set is in any particular order, unless it's "best prints are on the first discs".)

If you try to watch this as a movie, it will be maddening. First of all, it is a period picture that gives almost zero indication that it is a period picture. 

Supposedly (I eventually figured out), it's set in China prior to World War II, apparently after the initial Japanese coastal invasions. The main indications of this are later in the movie, plus the fact that most of the characters wear Chinese fashions that are, well, not from the 1970s, but are 1970s facsimiles of older styles. Also, nobody uses cars, because renting period cars costs money, so everybody walks everywhere. Hilariously, they walk through the woods most of the time, sometimes in dapper suits.

The other thing that struck me about this example of Bruceploitation is that, in the English dub at least, the writing is at the level of the writing for pornography. Details are unimportant, all you need is a vague notion of motivation to get to the next action scene. 

For instance, the motivation for the whole movie is a stolen secret document that is important to "the Chinese government". (Anyone who knows the slightest bit of 20th century Chinese history is either laughing uproariously, or confused wondering "which one???") What is in the secret document? Who cares, it's a secret document! (Late in the movie, the abstractness of the secret document is whittled down a tiny bit, when one character proclaims that it will help the Japanese take over all of China. How? Stop asking silly questions.) This does not rise to the level of being a MacGuffin, because MacGuffins, even when undefined, have some specificity within the story. Whereas in a porno, you've got an opening scene with one guy and a girl, then a second guy shows up telling his boss there's "an emergency" back at the office, that only he can take care of. If the actor asks what kind, the other actor just looks confused and repeats "an emergency", and "only you can handle it". Because nobody actually thought beyond "we need something to move the characters around for the Important Scenes".

Anyway, the movie opens with a "German" speaking with a Chinese and a "Japanese" (the actor is clearly also Chinese, at least to my eyes; but then, I did live in China for a time) about the stolen secret document, declaring that China is very important to Germany. (Again, zero time context is provided, making this conversation very strange if you went in presuming it was the 1970s.) Then, Bruce Le is running through the woods, and gets attacked. For no apparent reason. Then we see a martial arts tournament of some sort, without explanation.

As things proceed, a secret Chinese society attempts to recruit Bruce, he turns them down, but eventually accepts. Everything leads up to Bruce fighting his way up a pagoda, level by level, to find the Secret Document. Which happens in the middle of the movie.

This sequence is the entire reason the movie exists. Bruce Lee's concept for Game Of Death was widely known, as the idea and some production stills were released before his death. So, yes, Bruce Le gets into the yellow jump suit, which further makes the period-ness of the movie weird, because were there even yellow jumpsuits in the 1930s? In mainland China? I don't think so.

Anyway, he fights his way to the top, finds the Secret Document already gone, and the third act is martial arts fights in the woods over the Secret Document. Bruce Le and China win, the baddies lose, the end.

Is it a good movie? Oh god no! Even by kung fu movie standards, the story is misshapen, the characters aspire to one-dimensionality, and there aren't even any bare boobs.

Is it entertaining? Oh hell yes! The fights are middling, but even when you ask yourself "WTAF is happening?" you are not bored. The WTFness of it is, in fact, fairly low compared to many of the movies in this set and genre.

I am in the process of getting iktaPOP.media set up and, once that's done, this Locals will become somewhat less about my publishing, and more about my own interests, as well as my own writing. (I'll still make books available for subscribers, same as over at iktaPOP.)

As part of holding myself to that, I'm going to blog some movies, starting with the Brucepoloitation epics contained on Severin Films' Game Of Clones: Bruceploitation Vol. 1, which is an amazing boxed set.

I confess that, as a lifelong kung fu movie fan, I have always been more than a bit sniffy about Bruceploitation.  The genre's very existence was tacky and, at least at times, insulting both to Lee's memory and to his fans. I remember pointedly giving Bruce Le videotapes a wide berth in the rental stores I haunted as a teen.

So when Severin announced this box set, my reaction was "Really?"

Then I listened to Severin's podcast about the genuinely impressive project that the box set (and documentary) was, and I started figuring out how to scrounge the money to pre-order it.

A few things sold me on it. First, they made a good argument that the people who actually worked on the films, not least the "clone" actors, did work that deserved better than to vanish into the ephemeral pop culture ether, whatever other factors might make the films disreputable.

Second, something the podcast got more detailed about than the set itself (at least so far), they appealed to my archivist nature. One of the reasons I republish public domain pulp, even the bad stuff, is that I think if something has been created, it should be preserved. The producers of Bruceploitation movies, for the most part, did not even respect what they had made enough to preserve them, some of them destroying their film negatives once the films had a video tape copy. (I about had a heart attack at that tidbit.) That made me realize that I had to have this set.

The cherry on top was one movie on the bonus disc: The Big Boss Part II, starring the man who would soon take the stage name Bruce Le. Not only is it one of the few Bruceploitation films that is a direct sequel to an actual Bruce Lee film, but it is a film that has never been released on any home media, anywhere in the world(!!!). No VHS release, no DVD, no BetaMax, nothing, ever, anywhere. And if you think that didn't act like catnip to my archivist's nature, think again.

I have now watched the documentary, Enter The Clones Of Bruce, as well as four and a half of the actual movies (out of fourteen). Likely I will post thoughts on each movie first, re-watch the documentary, and then post on that.

So, more to come. Not necessarily every day, but more often than to date.