(VIDEO) GAME OF DEATH

Back on the old site William wrote an article about Bruce Lee in video games titled "PLAYING THE GAME".  Now I hate to step on his toes with another article about on the exact same subject, but I will do it anyway just because mine will be better.  Oh snap!

The other day I was at EB Games, Canada's version of GameStop and noticed a copy of BRUCE LEE: QUEST OF THE DRAGON for the XBox just sitting there for a mere $4.99.  Desperate for something to write about I grabbed it which wasn't the brightest idea.  Make sure to do some research first especially when buying XBox games because not all of them are compatible with the XBox 360.  Unfortunately, BRUCE LEE: QUEST OF THE DRAGON is not backwards compatible meaning I can't even play it.  That might be a good thing because after reading a few reviews for QUEST OF THE DRAGON it sounds like it sucks.  Since I can't deliver a game review, here is a list of all Bruce Lee games made to date.

BRUCE LEE (1984)

Developed by Datasoft and published by Datasoft, US Gold and Comptiq on a variety of platforms, half of which I've never even heard of such as Atari 8-bit family, MSX, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, MS-DOS and Apple II.  Apparently this game is one of the originators of the platformer beat 'em up genre which received favorable reviews when it was originally released.  In the game you play Bruce Lee fighting your way through twenty chamber collecting lanterns with the evil wizard appearing in the final chamber.  Somehow, I doubt it stands the  test of time.

BRUCE LEE LIVES (1989)

A MS-DOS based PC game developed by The Software Toolworks.  You play as Bruce Lee (of course!) as he battles his way though goons and thugs to the final boss, Master Po, and put an end to his destruction of Hong Kong Palace.  Forget about Valve's Virtual Director in LEFT 4 DEAD, BRUCE LEE LIVES features an AI engine that changes the difficulty of the game depending on the player's technique.  The game even includes the biography book "Dragon's Tale: The Story of Bruce Lee" written by Linda Lee.

DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (1993)
A fighting game based on the movie starring Jason Scott Lee which was developed by Virgin Interactive and published by Acclaim Entertainment.  The game somewhat mirrors the movie as Bruce fights thought scenes in the movie and if you die you must fight the Phantom, the personification of Lee's fear.  Apparently, the game was rather difficult, but did feature 3 player co-op.  The funny thing is that the additional players were just "clones" of Lee with different colored pants.  The game was available on a variety of systems like the Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, Atari Jaguar and Nintendo's Super NES.

BRUCE LEE: QUEST OF THE DRAGON (2002)
Bruce Lee has to save his kidnapped father AND retrieve a mystical artifact from the Black Lotus led by Dragon Lady Natascha.  As your progress though the 40 areas of the game you gather coins which can be used to purchase new moves.  Unfortunately, the game received less than favorably reviews due to it's bad controls, poor graphics and slow loading times.  The game was developed by Ronin Entertainment and published by Universal Interactive.

BRUCE LEE: RETURN OF THE LEGEND (2003)
A year later and Universal Interactive (this time with VU Games) is back at it with another Bruce Lee game exclusively for the Game Boy Advance and apparently it's actually supposed to be good.  A side scrolling beat 'em up has Bruce Lee playing the role of Hai Feng, a martial arts student out to avenge the death of his master.  I'm a bit confused here because it's a Bruce Lee game, but you are Bruce Lee playing a movie character?


BRUCE LEE DRAGON WARRIOR HD (2010)
The most recent Bruce Lee game from Digital Legends is a 3D fighting game for Apple's iPad.  IGN gave it a very nice review saying "it is a solid fighter with a great star."


So I haven't actually played any of those Bruce Lee games, but I could if I bought an original XBox, but I probably wouldn't want to because it sucked.  I'll probably never get an iPad unless I find one at the thrift store in about 10 years.  I might try and get my hands on Bruce Lee: Return of the Dragon for the GBA.  I've looked for it, but no luck yet, and if I do I'll let you know how it is.  With the exception of the iPad game all of these games can be found on eBay, although finding the systems to play them on might be a little harder.

KUNG FU FEVER (movie review)

Year: 1978
AKA: Black Dragon Fever
Starring: Dragon Lee, Ron Van Clief, Amy Chum, Bill Stanley, Steven Chow (No, not that one!), Bruce Lee (clips...Classy isn't it!)
Directed by: Kao Ke


After the death of Bruce Lee various crime lords and gangsters are out to get their hands on Lee's Iron Finger technique book. It's up to Bruce's star student, Ricky Chan (Dragon Lee), to get to the book before they do and keep the Iron Finger technique safe. With two rival groups trying to get the book and a hot chick dressed in black leather thrown into the mix, Ricky doesn't have an easy job.

Before I watched KUNG FU FEVER it had been quite a while since I had watched a low budget old school kung fu flick. I had forgotten how bad they can be and it wasn't helping that the picture quality of my DVD was watching absolutely horrible. I almost turned the movie off as it started off pretty slow. Ron Van Clief just shows up to beat up some guy in some field and then he leaves after which Dragon Lee appears out of nowhere to console his fallen friend.  The movie took 30 minutes before Dragon Lee got around kicking ass, but when he finally did the movie turned around.

Dragon Lee looks pretty good here with lots of kicking and some impressive acrobatic flipping. He also pulls out all the stops in his imitations using all the gestures, taunts, howls, and yellow jumpsuits in the Bruce Lee repertoire. This is Bruceploitation!

During the opening credits there is a title card that reads the following:

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in the production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings and products is intended or should be inferred.

Okay, so they use actual footage of Bruce Lee, use footage from his funeral, refer to him by name, and still have the balls to put up a disclaimer up saying all names and characters are fictitious?! NOW THAT IS BRUCEPLOITATION!!

SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (movie review)

SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (1977)
aka The Tiger Strikes Again, Kung Fu Avengers, The Last Strike
Starring: Bruce Li(credited as Ho Chung Tao), Lo Meng, Carl R. Scott, Ku Feng, Kong Do, Lee Hoi San
Directed by: Hwa I Hung
Run Time: 91 minutes

Wong Wei Lung(Li), his girlfriend, and Shaosan(Meng) illegally immigrate to Hong Kong via a raft and end up working crummy small time jobs.  On day working at the port they save Tommy(Scott) from being beaten up by some goons who work for crime boss, Chien, which then gets Wei Lung and Shaosan get fired from their jobs.  Shaosan is tired of being poor and is always gambling, while Wei Lung becomes a competitive fighter and wins the championship.  Chien won't have anymore interference from wei Lung and sends his three goons to work him over which ends up with Wei Lung's girlfriend getting killed and Wei Lung put in the hospital.  The doctor tells Wei Lung that he won't be able fight anymore, but he is not having any of that and goes to his friend's country home to train.  In the meantime Shaosan meets girl who actually works for Chien and she turns Shaosan against Wei Lung.  Fully recovered Wei Lung sets out to take out the fighters who killed his girl, his ex-best friend and big boss Chien.

I had been putting off watching this one for a while, but was pleasantly surprised because I really enjoyed.  In fact I say this is now one of my favorite Bruce Li movies.  The story wasn't anything ground breaking, but it moves along a good pace with lots of good fights.  The fighting is fast and brutal, but unfortunately marred by some heavy editing.  I thought I bought the "uncut" version, but I was suckered, you can read my DVD review here.  Bruce Li is pretty good here too with some nice hand and feet work and some cool nunchuk scenes.  He totally destroys a watermelon!  There is only a little bit of comedy, but not the usually goofball stuff we are used to with some of the flicks.  The movie is mostly played serious with all Bruce Li's friends not even surviving to the end credits.

They even pay "tribute" to Bruce Lee a few times.  Wei Lung and Shaosan's apartment has Bruce Lee posters all over the walls and while Wei Lungs read a Bruce Lee book, I mean magazine, his girlfriend points out, "He went too high, too quickly and that's why he died so early in life."  Luckily, we won't have to worry about that happening to Bruce Li.  Then later on in the movie when Wei Lung wins the championship a reporter calls him the "second Bruce Lee", but then he says that Bruce Lee "is the Chinese I most admire".

Although, the movie is called SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU there is only one "brother" in the movie and that would be a very young looking Carl Scott.  But I guess they were brothers in spirit right?  What little comedy there is usually stems from Scott's antics and his t-shirts.  In fact there are lots of funny t-shirts on display here, my hats off to the wardrobe department.  Carl Scott mostly gets beaten up and thrown around and in the end strung up.  The only black guy in the movie and you hang him?  Not very PC.  Scott does has a very nice looking sparring session with Bruce Li on a rooftop, one of the best fights of the entire movie.

An intentionally funny scene happens after Lo Meng meets a girl in a club and outside they are jumped by some thugs.  Lo Meng beats them up all and one guy ends up with his pants split up the ass.  I didn't even notice it at the time, but when I was doing some screen captures I saw and it's pretty funny.  Keep your eyes peeled if you watch this, it is classic!

A good movie, entertaining, lots of wacky 70's t-shirts to laugh at and you don't fall asleep between fight scenes.  This one has got it all!  I also counted five ball shots and it should've been more, but my "uncut" version had them cut out.  What the hell?! Don't cut out my ball shots!

SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (DVD review)

Distributor: Bonzai Media
Region: ALL NTSC
 
I bought this disc because it was billed as being "UNCUT", but unfortunately that is completely false.  The back of the case says that when the movie was originally released in 1978 it was rated X and parts had to be cut for a theatrical release.  It then goes on to describe where the cuts were made and what was cut out.  I don't why they did this because now we know exactly what we are missing as most of these cut scenes aren't even in the "uncut version."  So why is it called "uncut" then?  Just watching the fights the edits are pretty obvious which really sucks.

Picture Quality: 
The video is wide-screen 2.35:1 and looks not to bad.  Definitely better than VHS, but not up to grade with regular DVDs, but I don't think we are going to get much better than this.  The picture is solid, so you won't have to worry about static or running picture like some old kung fu movie converted over from VHS.

Sound Quality: 
Stereo, as in dual mono!  I didn't notice any audio dropouts or fuzzy audio, it is clear and I didn't have any problems hearing the dialog.

Extras: 
Following the end of the movie there is the uncut version of the ending, but unfortunately it is full screen and the video is a bit faded.  The uncut ending shows a gorier end to Ku Feng when Bruce Li literally uses his Iron Finger to perforate his heart.  We actually get an internal view of the heart with the finger in it and when the finger is removed blood seeps from the wound. In the uncut ending Carl Scott's character Tommy lives, but in the edited theatrical version, he dies.  Visit the Bruceploitation YouTube Channel to watch the uncut ending.

There is a also quite a long trailer for the Chinese Bruce Lee TV series, Legend of Bruce Lee.  The trailer was obviously just taken from the internet as it has the Sina watermark embedded on it and even though it's only a few years old the video quality is worse  than the feature film which is 30 years older, it suffers from lots of compression looks very blocky.

Other: 
Menus are awful as there in only one main menu where you can either play the movie or play the Legend of Bruce Lee trailer.  Not even having a menu for chapter selections is pretty lazy. Also, having the option to play the alternate uncut ending would be nice instead of having to go to the end of the movie.

The artwork is fairly uninspired with pictures of the three main heroes against a funky multi-colored background.  The back is most text with some screen shots on the side.  The movie is released under their "the fake bruce lee series...BRUCEPLOITATION" banner and for some reason I bet it's the only one.

Wrap up:  
I was pretty disappointed that I bought this "uncut" edition only to discover that it is indeed edited, in fact make that heavily edited, but what do you expect from a bootleg.  I still enjoyed the movie though(read my review), but if you are looking for the definitive uncut version then keep looking.  If I ever find it then I will immediately be disposing of this DVD.

BRUCEPLOITATION Fights Back From the Grave!

Kind of...sorta...not really...maybe...I don't know.  I first started the Bruceploitation website years ago, so many years ago it was back when Geocities was still kind of neat.  Geocities pretty much got left in the online dust and eventually was taken over by Yahoo which recently shut it down completely.  After nearly 10 years online Bruceploitation was history.  I'd really like to get the website back up, but that would require a lot of know-how of which I have none and a lot of work of which I dislike.  This blog is just a test to see if I can manage to get stuff up and online on somewhat regular schedule, unlike the one update per year Bruceploitation was getting.  If I can pull this off some how maybe I'll get the original website back and running because I know the fans really miss it, all five of you.  Thanks guys.

As for content I still have several movies to review that never quite made it up on Bruceploitation as well as some DVD reviews, toy reviews, and nonsensical rants in general.  Hope you enjoy them.