One wonders if Bruce Lee might have laid off the painkillers, if only he could have known how sullied his good name would be by the Bruceploitation wave that took hold soon after his untimely passing in 1973.

Take The Dragon Lives Again, for example. It’s one thing for a film to dedicate itself to “millions who love Bruce Lee,” but it’s another thing entirely for that film’s first scene to depict their hero (played by Bruce Leong, The Clones of Bruce Lee) burning in hell and lying dead while sporting a massive boner. To review this supremely silly quasi-parody scoop o’ chopsocky — directed by The Crippled Masters’ Lo Ke, which this film is anything but — is simply to share what happens.

Bruce is awakened by the King of the Underworld (Tong Ching, Bat Without Wings) and told he’ll have to fight his way back to earth and his beloved spouse. So Bruce goes about his way and makes allies with the One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Li, Dragon on Fire), Kane (as in David Carradine’s character in the TV series Kung Fu, but here played by an actual Asian) and Popeye the Sailor Man (Eric Tsang, Infernal Affairs). Meanwhile, the king bides his time chasing his topless wives around the bathtub: “Ooh, what a lovely pair of breasts you have!”

At a noodle restaurant — hey, even the deceased get hungry — Bruce meets two of his opponents: James Bond (played by The Mighty Peking Man’s Alexander Grand, a chubby Jewish guy with lamb-chop sideburns) and Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name (The Tattoo Connection’s Bobby Cannavaro, clad in cowboy hat and poncho while chewing a thin cigar). They’re backed up by a team of goons in full-bodied skeleton outfits and all part of an evil squad whose members includes such ’70s film icons as Emmanuelle, the Exorcist and the Godfather (Shin Il Lung, To Kill with Intrigue).

The Exorcist wants to take over the underworld, so he gets Emmanuelle (played by a braless American woman named Jenny — that’s it, just “Jenny”) to try to fuck the king to death. “I’m such a silly pussy,” she seductively coos upon meeting him. As she attempts her fatal screw — fairly explicit for a kung-fu film — Bruce interrupts them and spills the beans on Emmanuelle’s devious plans. Shocked, the king replies, “Her pussy’s in this plot, too? She tried to use it to murder me!”

Out in the countryside, Bruce engages in an extended fight with Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman (Wong Kar Hung, The Oily Maniac). Each of their moves is helpfully denoted with a super; Zatoichi’s techniques include “Blind Dog Pisses,” while all of Bruce’s are named after actual Bruce Lee films. Later, Bruce returns to the outdoor site after donning his Kato get-up from TV’s The Green Hornet in order to do battle with Dracula (Hsi Chang, Mad Monkey Kung Fu).

Then the king causes an earthquake by shaking a pillar and creates an army of mummies to take on Bruce. Our hero is nearly defeated until Popeye conveniently finds a can of spinach half-buried in the dirt and busts out his good shit. Finally, Bruce gets to go home and flies into the sky, all while you’re left to rub your eyes and pinch yourself to make sure what you’ve just watched is real.

It is. —Rod Lott

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As Bruceploitation pictures go, Enter the Game of Death is hardly the craziest, but it still is semi-“out there.” Bruce Le (Challenge of the Tiger) dons Lee’s iconic yellow jumpsuit to play Chang.

After winning an arena kickboxing match (a nearly unbearable sequence at seven minutes), Chang is offered a job as a bodyguard. When he politely refuses, his would-be employer sics a team of shirtless fighters (reportedly including American Ninja’s Steve James) on him. Chang handily beats these wussy-dubbed hooligans, but then some Japanese guys rape his cousin, who’s so ashamed she kills herself.

So enraged at this turn of events, Chang joins the Blue Robe Organization and agrees to help its proprietors recover a stolen military document that will save his country. Said document is located at the tippy top of a pagoda, through each level of which he must fight:
• The first level finds him battling a bald guy who throws fistfuls of death marbles.
• Level two is inhabited by a guy tossing poisonous snakes. When he’s nearly defeated, he bites the head off one serpent and sprays Chang with its blood as if it were a water hose.
• On floor three, Chang spars with a white-haired fellow with nunchucks and lotsa candles.
• The gimmick of the fourth floor is a lame one: It’s all red.
• Finally, at the penthouse level, Chang tussles with the Asian version of Grizzly Adams.

Naturally, this five-story sequence is where director Joseph Kong (The Clones of Bruce Lee) rips off the real Bruce Lee’s Game of Death; naturally, this is where the film gets fun. Then it’s outside for even more punching and kicking more bad guys, including big bad Bolo Yeung (Bloodsport). You could do worse! —Rod Lott

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Sorry, folks, but Macho Man is neither a biopic of wrestling’s Randy Savage nor the Village People’s follow-up to the flop Can’t Stop the Music, but a straightforward kung-fu extravaganza with a little bit of bloodletting and a whole lotta fighting. Plus, its original title is Duel in the Tiger Den — a moniker I could see adorning the label of a Village People 12-inch (pun intended), but still.

The titular Macho Man (Tien Te Hui, The Fatal Flying Guillotine) is a drifter who, in his first scene, snaps the necks of four hoodlums with ease and a smile, as if he were buying chocolate bars for orphans. With his goofy smile and semi-lazy eye, he looks exactly like how I would envision Brendan Fraser, had the Mummy man been born Asian.

Our hero is out scouting for the king’s stolen seal (not the animal), which has been stolen by not-as-macho men, who try to kill him with construction equipment. They do not succeed, but they are able to hit him with a log and stab him with a forklift. Later, director You Min Ko (better known as a prolific performer in this genre, including the immortal Fantasy Mission Force) stages a fight atop a moving train, which is more elaborate than the usual battles in the chopsocky films of this waning era. Scenes like these — and an utter obliviousness toward its humor — make Macho Man worth a watch. —Rod Lott

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Of all the post-death Bruce Lee cash-ins — and Lordy, there are many — Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave is among the most notorious, all likely because of its title. That and the 15 seconds that open the movie are all it has going for it. In that quarter of a minute, a lightning bolt strikes the grave of “Bruce Lee,” who then leaps out of it, looking remarkably fit, trim and non-rotting for a dead guy. The title comes up and thus ends any and all connections, references and insinuations related to the deceased screen legend.

What follows is a cheap and tired story of Bruce Lee Wong Han (L.A. Streetfighters’ Jun Chong, credited as Bruce K.L. Lea), who travels from China to L.A. to visit his kung-fu instructor friend. Arriving to find his pal has been killed, Wong does what any one of us would do: Drape a box around his neck bearing a handsome headshot of his slain chum and walk all over town with it, vowing to avenge his death.

During his stroll of vengeance, Wong meets, befriends and romances a skank in a tube top (Deborah Dutch, 976-EVIL II), and kicks the asses of countless white guys, very few of whom wear shirts. Although directed by one Lee Doo-yong, this mess has been erroneously credited to Italian sleaze magnate Umberto Lenzi, renowned for the controversial, vomitous Cannibal Ferox. Regardless, the mind aches for a crossover. —Rod Lott

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Roving good guy Iron Umbrella gets his name from the umbrella he uses not only as a weapon, but also as a method of flight. Repeat: a method of flight. Even without all that, viewers learn right away he is a badass because, in the first scene, he flicks one finger to hurl sword tips into the skulls of a few ruffians at a local inn.

Iron Umbrella is out to avenge the death of his parents and teacher. His chief nemesis is a scar-faced baddie who dons a black hood for most of the movie, but there is no shortage of enemies! They are everywhere, including the man known as Poison Dragon.

You know exactly how Swordsman with an Umbrella gets from Point A to Point B, but with all the bloody swordplay action at, um, play, martial-arts fans will have a lot of fun getting there. Of particular greatness is the end battle, in which the two foes laughably attempt to make you they’re kung-fu fighting in midair and slow motion! They’re not. Did no one on the crew teach first-time director Hung Shih about wires and undercranking? —Rod Lott

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