Bruce Lee was the first international golden god of martial arts films. He has received a legendary status thanks to an untimely death just before his star really began to soar. The man is talked about in mythic terms thanks to this. The real amazing thing, when you look at his life beyond the reverential tones and dig deeper to the truth, he actually led an exemplary, amazing life guided by a rare confidence and innate desire to succeed and innovate.

This box set features the first Golden Harvest films that led to his fame and two posthumous films, cobbled together from stock footage and scenes from uncompleted projects, using body doubles to fill in the gaps. Excluded is his most famous film, the US co-produced Enter the Dragon.

The Big Boss (1971). Bruce plays Cheng, a man who moves in with his large group of cousins. They all work at a large ice factory where he also gets a job. However the factory is also the front for some gangsters smuggling drugs within the frozen blocks of ice. Two of his cousins uncover this and are quickly silenced by the gangsters. The cover-up isn't very convincing, so the workers revolt. The gangsters, in turn, satiate the group by making Cheng the new ice factory foreman. He is briefly sidetracked by this position and all of its perks before he comes to his senses and goes to take on the gangsters face to face for all of their ills.

The Big Boss is a bit hit and miss. I've never been a big fan of Lo Wei, who was pretty slipshod as a director. Lee's character is a man who, at first, is holding back on fighting. The intent was probably to make it all the sweeter when he finally starts kicking some butt, however it makes the bulk of the film a bit of a drag while we wait for him to finally strike out. Once that happens, the film really clicks and the finale is a Lee marathon duking it out with the bad guys. His aggressive, economical, pure power style was very different from the more fluid formed martial films and stars of the time (the swinfu of Jimmy Wang Yu, for instance), and knowing your kung fu film history, it is clear to see why he won audiences over.

Fists of Fury (1971, aka. The Chinese Connection). 1930's. Martial Student Chen Jun returns to his masters Shanghai dojo only to find that his master has supposedly been killed after he bested some Japanese fighters from a rival school. They, in turn, poisoned him. Though he tries to get the law on his side, Chinese authorities will not listen and the Japanese continue to get away, literally, with murder. Determined to seek revenge, hunted by the law, and outnumbered, Chen begins a one man war against the Japanese schools and all of its leaders.

Now, this is the one. Unlike The Big Boss, this one begins with Lee kicking ass all over the place from the very start. He has a freakout at the funeral, screaming, clawing at the fresh dirt on his sifu's casket. It is such a huge meltdown the priest has to knock him cold. You just know from the start that anyone in his sights is in some serious trouble. It is such a brilliant move, forsaking the usual "guy must train" or hold back plotting and making him a formidable fighter from the very start. In a genre known for its revenge set-ups, Fist of Fury dominates as one of the best. Bruce is dynamite here, a raging mad dog, and he just bulldozes through every frame of the film. When I first saw the film as a kid, I actually felt sympathy for the bad guys because Bruce's character is such a venom-spewing maniac. A Five Star Classic.

Way of the Dragon (1972). Lee plays Tang Lung, a bumpkin from the Chinese mainland who is sent to Rome to aide a friend of the family who is having problems with the mob. The mob is trying to force their little restaurant out of the area, and Tang Lung proves to be too good of a fighter for the mob enforcers. The gang is forced to up the stakes by hiring a formidable henchman (Chuck Norris) to get rid of Tang Lung

Bruce's first directorial effort does smack of a small, unsteady project. I love Bruce, but this is a film filled with many clunky sequences. There are some amateurish stumbles- exposition that was voice over recorded and a reliance on a lot of location footage just for the sake of including some Rome scenery. The film has a lot of jokey stuff, rube in the city gags, which get pretty tired. The real standout in the film is the coliseum face-off between Chuck and Bruce. Even that has a weird directorial choice, a kitten that seems to be watching them throw down.

Game of Death (1978). Martial arts actor Billy Lo (stock footage Bruce Lee, including crudely pasted stills and cardboard cutouts, and various live doubles in lots of shady lighting, a motorcycle helmet, and big sunglasses) wont succumb to the pressure being put upon him by a syndicate of gangsters. After repeated assaults against Billy and his girlfriend, a singer named Ann (70's-80's genre fave Colleen Camp), the actor concocts a plan to fake his death and go undercover to defeat the syndicate. But, really it is all about trying to pad out the running time with some gangster razzle dazzle and a few fight scenes before we get to the real stuff, some footage from Bruce Lee's uncompleted 1972 film project which was abandoned temporarily because he had to go shoot Enter the Dragon.

Following Lee's death the "Brucesploitation" genre flourished with a number of lookalikes and imitators. Some were actually decent guys only to have their talents diminished when their films got the Bruce makeover in their marketing. This film probably saw the greatest use by using the never-completed footage, namely the notorious, awesome face-off between Bruce and his student/NBA legend Kareem Abdul Jabar and working it into a movie. It also had a better pedigree behind the scenes with the likes of Bruce's Enter the Dragon (co-) director Robert Clouse behind the camera and John Barry composing the score. Game of Death is twofold, the theft of a life, trying to glean some dollars out of Bruce's legacy, yet it is also a love song and a celebration of some great footage that he left behind.

Game of Death 2 (1981, aka. Tower of Death). Not really a Bruce Lee film. Director Ng See Yuen and crew apparently set out to make another Game of Death-ish film using stock footage and doubles, but I think halfway through they decided to change the plot and have the Bruce Lee-looking character killed because there was only so much mileage they could get out of the stock footage and shooting their actor from behind. Still, the long distance shots and dark scenes used to mask their non-Bruce Lee actor remain.

Best regarded as a guilty pleasure because it is perversely fun in the best b-grade, "what were they thinking?" sense. The plot- excuse me while I giggle- concerns Billy Lo (stock footage Bruce Lee and a double) and his buddy, master Chin Hu, who keep getting attacked by rivals. Eventually Chin Hu is killed under mysterious circumstances and Billy starts to investigate. Billy is killed at Chin Hu's funeral when a helicopter tries to make off with the casket. Enter Billy's brother Bobby Lo (Tong Lung), who picks up the trail where his brother left off. This leads him to his brothers friend, the nefarious looking Lewis (Roy Horan), who runs a mountain compound where he has peacocks of death and feeds his defeated challengers to lions. Actually once the film gets to the Lewis stuff, it is a deliriously fun martial b-film, complete with gratuitous nudity, an attack by a lion which is clearly a guy in a suit, and a big twisteroo finale that takes place in a villain's lair that is straight from a 60's British/Euro/Japanese spy flick.

The DVD: Fox/Fortune Star. Now, there have been numerous DVD releases of these films, from other US Fox and grey market editions, to UK's HK Legends, and HK Mega Star editions. While not perfect, in terms of print image quality, the Fox/Fortune Star editions are a slight grade above those releases.

Picture: Anamorphic Widescreen. When comparing to the other DVD releases of these films, the Fox/Fortune Star prints reveal overall crisper details. The prints are fairly clean, a tad worn and showing signs of their age with some lines/dirt and a high grain level, but nothing too severe. The contrast and color details are where they really shine. Contrast is nice, bible black, yet revealing good shadow details. The colors are vibrant, though very naturalistic, with good flesh tones. Technically there are some compression problems and quirks like motion blur and some minor edge enhancement.

So, it is a mixed bag. Pristine, perfect transfers still elude these films, however this is the best I've seen so far. The roughest of the lot, Way of the Dragon, has some diminished quality purely because of its low budget source woes. For Big Boss and especially Fist of Fury, these prints are quite good compared to previous releases, but I'll still be on the lookout for a definitive release (with perfect image/sound quality and detailed extras) of them someday.

Sound: Big Boss, Fists of Fury, and Way of the Dragon have English DTS, 5.1, and 2.0 Stereo Cantonese or Mandarin tracks. Game of Death 1&2 have English DTS, 5.1, or 2.0 Stereo tracks. Optional English subtitles for every film.

One only needs to compare the title theme song differences between the cheesy guy singing on the English version of Fist of Fury to the choir on the Mandarin/Cantonese tracks to determine which one is best. The original theatrical releases of the first three were Mandarin Mono, moderately reworked here into decent faux-stereo tracks. Again, some weakness sourcewise, a bit of muffle or tinniness, but nothing that is not unexpected.

The English tracks have remixed/redubbed action fx. It is absolutely ridiculous, with much of the added action fx jammed into the rear and side speakers, making it too loud, and it sounds like they just laid new sounds over the original fx. As a result, the sound of Bruce's nunchuks in Fist of Fury is laughably grandiose and overblown. It is a real shame they waste so much disc space with these remixes when a cleaned up version of the original tracks would have been just fine.

Extras: All of the films have: Original & New Trailers (plus trailers for other Fox/Fortune Star releases)-- Bruce Lee Slide Show & Still Gallery photo options.

Specific to each disc the extras are: The Big Boss- Interview with director Tung Wai (2:37). Fists of Fury- Interview with actor/stunt performer Yuen Wah (9:39). Way of the Dragon- Interview with HK stars/directors/performers Sammo Hung, Simon Yam, Paul Pui, Wong Jing, Flora Cheong, Clarence Fok, and Rocky Lai (6:50). Game of Death- Rare Outakes (10:33). Game of Death 2- Game of Death NG Shots (2:30).

The interviews are pretty fair. The best being the extended talk with Yuen Wah, an HK character actor veteran, who reveals tales of the stunt industry and how he doubled Lee. Mostly it is just the usual lavish praise stuff, a bunch of Lee glorifying soundbites. In terms of the Game of Death 1&2, the Outtakes and "NG Shots", there two extras are some of Bruce Lee's surviving Game of Death footage set to some techno underscoring. These two extras are nullified by John Little's documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey which covers some great bio info as well as a more comprehensive look at the history and footage from Lee's version of Game of Death.

Conclusion: For me, an unabashed Bruce Lee fan, I'm grateful for the prints of Big Boss and Fist of Fury. I really only like the finale fights in Way of the Dragon and Game of Death. As for Game of Death 2, I regard it more as a "Brucesploitation" novelty rather than a Bruce Lee film, so it is in a different class altogether. For this box set, even if you are double dipping and already own other editions, the price is right. Other editions may have more extras, but at a MSRP of around $10 bucks a film, for the print quality alone, it is hard for any Bruce fan to beat.