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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