VideoAsia and First Look Home Entertainment have compiled ten of these movies in a three-disc set called Dragon Immortal. Perversely but appropriately, Bruce Lee himself adorns the DVD cover - and it's listed on sites like Amazon as Bruce Lee: Dragon Immortal* - but he probably appears in less than two minutes of the roughly 14 hours worth of movies, and most of that consists of news coverage taken shortly before (and - gulp! - after) Lee's death.

Most of the films are mediocre to awesomely bad, but their occasional extreme tastelessness is part of the fun. Just how low could Asian producers sink, crassly cashing in on a long-dead movie star? Dragon Immortal offers a pretty illustrative, varied sampling. Disappointingly, the transfers are panned-and-scanned with one exception, bargain-basement jobs along the lines of Retromedia's similarly mediocre panned-and-scanned peplum releases.

Though he had appeared in Hong Kong-made films since childhood, and intermittently in Hollywood-produced TV shows (most memorably in The Green Hornet) and briefly but memorably in a James Garner movie (Marlowe, 1969), it wasn't until Lee got fed up with Hollywood and returned to Hong Kong that things finally began moving in his direction.

He starred in three popular Hong Kong productions: The Big Boss (1971), Fists of Fury, and Way of the Dragon (both 1972). Enter the Dragon (1973), the first largely Hollywood-financed martial arts film, premiered in Hong Kong just six days after Lee's death; the media circus and fury among the masses following his unexpected demise rivaled the state funerals of Evita Perón and Édith Piaf. After struggling for years to establish himself as a leading man, in death Lee became an overnight cult sensation.

In the wake of his death came a veritable tsunami of Lee imitations and imitators. Actors with stage names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee, Bruce Leon, and Bruce Thai began turning up. Some looked a little like Lee but couldn't act, or didn't look like Lee at all but had his signature moves down pretty well. A few of these ersatz Bruce Lee movies, most notably Game of Death (1978), utilized actual heretofore unseen footage of the real Lee, though for most of the running time a double was clumsily, unconvincingly utilized. Other titles like The Game of Death II (1981), desperate to sell itself as a bona fide Bruce Lee movie, went so far as to use film footage of Lee's funeral, complete with the dead actor resting in his open-casket coffin!

Dragon Immortal is a cross-section of various Bruceploitation. The films are: The Clones of Bruce Lee (1977), Fist of Death (also known as Jackie vs. Bruce to the Rescue, 1982), Bruce Lee's Deadly Kung Fu (also known as Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story and Bruce Lee's Secret, 1976), Bruce Lee Against Supermen (1975), They Call Him Bruce Lee (a Filipino production, 1979), Bruce Against Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1979), the fully animated The Story of Chinese Gods (1976), Bruce's Fist of Vengeance (also from the Philippines, 1984), Power Force (also known as Powerforce, 1983), and Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung-Fu (1982). As you might guess from these titles, several are not just cheap Bruce Lee knock-offs, but simultaneously imitation Jackie Chan movies as well.

The Clones of Bruce Lee is a typically loony example. In the film, movie star Bruce Lee dies on the operating table and local Hong Kong television news programs report his untimely death (thus allowing for archival footage of Lee and of his funeral). But wait - a mad professor (John Benn) using the latest technology (a few panels with blinking lights) creates three Bruce Lee clones, referred to only as Bruce 1, Bruce 2, and Bruce 3, and played by Dragon Lee, Bruce Le, and Bruce Thai, respectively. They are trained - to the strains of "Gonna Fly Now," the Theme from Rocky - by beefy muscleman Bolo Yeung, who memorably fought the real Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.

Bruce 1 becomes a martial arts actor to investigate a movie producer who's actually using his film studio as a front to smuggle gold (!). Later, Bruce 2 and Bruce 3 head to Thailand where they run into another Bruce Lee imitator, Bruce Lai, though strangely he doesn't play a clone, even though he resembles Lee somewhat. Anyway, in Thailand a super-villain - who laughs at everything he says, amused beyond words - has transformed a bunch of flabby Thai men into an army of flabby but seemingly indestructible bronze soldiers. Actually, they look like an army of sickly Asians with kidney failure, but instead of the usual "shwaap - shwaap - shwaap!" one usually hears during martial arts scenes, the sound effects are more along the lines of "shwaap - klank! - shwaap - shwaap - klank!" In one of the strangest action sequences ever devised, it's discovered that a local native grass will kill the bronze army, so Bruce 2 and Bruce 3 spend several minutes cramming big clumps of long grass and soil into the mouths of bronze soldiers. Then, at a point when you've more than had your fill of Bruce Lee clone action, the Professor back in Hong Kong, via his mind-control, orders all the Bruces to fight one another to the death. Somehow this will help him in his aim to conquer the world.

The film is almost indescribable. Bruces 1-3 just appear, fully grown and sentient with no explanation at all, some of the time acting like robots under the professor's control, at other times like ordinary Bruce Lee wannabes. In Thailand the two Bruces come across a beach populated by man-hungry, naked Thai women busily jumping up-and-down and oiling one another. After about ten minutes, one of the Bruces says, "C'mon, lets go," and the women are never heard from again. The women in this sequence are gorgeous, so I will refrain from complaining about the utter gratuitousness of this sequence.

Most of the films are more along the lines of Bruce Lee's Deadly Kung Fu, which shamelessly steals story components from all three of Lee's Hong Kong vehicles. The basic story, about a Chinese martial arts school at odds with racist thugs at a rival dojo mirrors Fist of Fury (aka The Chinese Connection), while the climax resembles The Big Boss and an early set-piece set at a Chinese restaurant recalls Way of the Dragon. Bruce Lee's Deadly Kung Fu (a meaningless title) is unconvincingly set in Seattle though obviously filmed entirely in Taipei. Bruce Li stars as Bob (yes, Bob) Lee. (Best line: "Bob, we had you all wrong - you're a good guy!") He and pal Chang Ming work at a restaurant in Chinatown, where (mostly) white gangsters pick on everybody, calling the Chinese a bunch of cowards. After a big fight Bob and Chang find new jobs as dockworkers, but the conflict with the gangsters follows them there. Bob opens a kung fu school and invents Jeet Kun Do, the martial arts philosophy actually conceived by Bruce Lee. Typical of these cheap films, the fight scenes are lively if occasionally ridiculous (the climatic battle is almost good), but the rest is just boring filler designed to burn up 70 minutes or so of film between all the fighting.

Another weird permutation of this subgenre turns up in Bruce Lee Against Supermen, with Bruce Li this time playing Kato, the Green Hornet's manservant! Copyright infringement? What's that? Of course, this being a cheap knock-off, the Green Hornet himself is off-screen for most of the film, tending to "an injury" and the Green Hornet's car is a Chevy Impala with worn tires and missing hubcaps. If that weren't enough, some of the story takes place in the Arabian Desert, faked none-too-convincingly in the lush tropical terrain of Hong Kong. Bad as this is, Bruce Lee Against Supermen has one big advantage over the other titles in this collection: it's the only one in 16:9 enhanced widescreen. The print is worn, the transfer is still well below average, but at least you get the entire widescreen image.

The odd man out in this collection unquestionably is The Story of Chinese Gods (produced sometime between 1976 and 1980, according to sources), a Hong Kong-made feature-length cartoon that resembles Japanese anime from Toei Studios circa about 1963. It's not awful and someone ought to release the original Cantonese version. A cartoon Bruce Lee (with a third eye, but otherwise unmistakable) appears in the last-third of the film.

Video & Audio

Dragon Immortal presents ten films on three discs; two of the discs are double-sided, dual layered with two films on each side, while the third disc is single-sided, dual layered. The film elements sourced all look worn with much speckling, etc., though this is nothing compared to the digital artifacting, which is all over the place. In the panned-and-scanned titles, the artifacting during the action scenes make it hard at times to tell what's even going on. Most of these transfers are derived from tape masters (probably pre-recorded VHS tapes from the mid-1980s in some cases), and video wrinkling is commonplace. All are English-dubbed, with the historical fantasy Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung-Fu especially ludicrous with its thick, modern Australian accents.

The Clones of Bruce Lee, Fist of Death, Bruce Against Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Bruce Lee's Deadly Kung Fu, The Story of Chinese Gods, and Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung-Fu (1982) are all 4:3 panned-and-scanned. Ghosting and digital break-up on Fist of Death and Bruce Against Snake in the Eagle's Shadow are especially atrocious. Bruce Lee's Deadly Kung Fu has an "SC" burned into the corner of the frame for some scenes. Someone flipped the wrong switch for the animated The Story of Chinese Gods which, after a second or two, momentarily reverts to the DVD menu from which this transfer was swiped.

They Call Him Bruce Lee, Bruce's Fist of Vengeance (both from the Philippines) and Power Force (Euro-financed, apparently) are full frame but appear to have been meant for 1.85:1 or 1.66:1 cropping, so in this case there's actually more picture information on the top and bottom of the frame. Power Force has bad video distortion that makes the film look like it's being projected onto a funhouse mirror.

In contrast, Bruce Lee Against Supermen almost looks good, a 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer about par with Retromedia's 16:9 transfers of Euro-titles.

Extra Features

None.

Parting Thoughts

Except for the 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer of Bruce Lee Against Supermen, Dragon Immortal is pretty much bargain basement junk, except to those with a fascination for this oddly popular subgenre of inept filmmaking and occasional extreme bad taste. If the "acceptable meter" on the transfers had a batting average of higher than .100, this would get a better rating. Instead, it's recommended only for the curious and highly tolerant; all others will want to Skip It.

* ...And not to be confused with Bruce Lee: Immortal Dragon, a Passport Video release from 2001.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's latest book, The Toho Studios Story, is on sale now.