Goodbye, Bruce Lee (1975)
His Last Game of Death
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Bruce Lee and Jan Spears (Game of Death)
Directed by Pin Lin, Harold B. Swartz
Starring Bruce Li (as Lee Roy Lung), Bruce Lee, Fei Lung, Mung Ping, Robert Kerver, and Roland Brown.

Features:

• Theatrical trailer
  

Released by: Anchor Bay
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Round up those responsible and put them in camps.

The death of Bruce Lee brought all sorts of wanna be replacements out of the woodwork in the HK film industry, as we have discussed before. Dying as he did in the midst of production on his final film, Game of Death, it is little surprise that some enterprising filmhouse decided to grab a look-alike, snag some footage, and "complete" the work on Bruce Lee's behalf. Of course, they wouldn't want the hassle of dealing with the studio that actually owned the film, so they'd just reshoot everything with the new guy.

The result, which hit theatres three years before the original studio got their act together, is presented here as Goodbye, Bruce Lee. The plot, such as it is, involves a movie studio approaching Bruce Li to finish Lee's film after his death. This setup takes about twenty minutes to really get in place. The remainder of the film consists of Bruce Li sitting in a studio exec's office watching the "existing footage," which is basically a ripped-off and mangled version of Game of Death, only with Bruce Li standing in for the real deal, and without any of the decent fight choreography that Lee's flawed final product contains. Within the "footage," the plot is pretty straight-forward, but has little in common with the real film. The chief point of comparison lies in the pagoda at the end, wherein Bruce (Li or Lee) must fight his way up the building past a handful of master martial artists, one per floor of the pagoda.

The plot? Bad. The acting? Non-existent. The fights? I'd rather watch paraplegics joust. Now that this flick's surreal awfulness has been adequately discussed, I can move on to the bright spot, such as there is one. For those whose stomach for really, really lame kungfu films is stronger than my own, this is easily the best-looking DVD offered to date. Features are nonexistent, but the video and audio are amazingly crisp. I'd be surprised if the film looked this good in theatres. I'm not certain what would possess someone to lavish such careful transfer attention to this pile of shite, but lavish they did. I only wish that people would spend this much time making old Jackie Chan flicks or any of the old Wu Tang movies look this good. I'd pay good money to see other 70s kungfu films in a transfer like this.

In short, the only redeeming thing about this DVD is the quality of the DVD itself. The content is utter bollocks and not worth the scant 90 minutes or so of your life that you'll never get back. But it sure is pretty.