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!!