Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

Also, that's probably the most accurate movie poster I've posted on this thread. True to the letter and the spirit of the story.

There are...sites.


That being said, while the state of DVD releases for vintage hardcore is pretty dire on the whole, a few companies (like Vinegar Syndrome and Distribpix) have put out releases with nice transfers and special features. That's been hugely beneficial to my exploration (lot easier to see the artistry in a nice HD transfer than a blurry VHS rip).

Will this page be classier than the last one?


Hmmmm.... we'll see.

True Game of Death is considered possibly the worst example of the Bruceploitation genre, so of course I decided to check it out. To give a bit more context, I'm currently going through These Fists Break Bricks by Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali, about the martial arts movie craze in America, which is proving to be a fascinating and highly entertaining read. (Having followed Hendrix's Kaiju Shakedown column when it was still going and enjoyed his featurettes for the Criterion Collection, this was no surprise.) The book includes a fairly in-depth look at Bruceploitation, a genre defined by its shamelessness. Having enjoyed a few examples of the genre in the past (Game of Death II, The Dragon Lives Again, Challenge of the Tiger, The Chinese Stuntman), I immediately perked up when I saw this movie described as "a real freakshow". If a movie where Bruce Lee fights Dracula, the Godfather, James Bond and others in the afterlife wasn't considered shameless enough, what would a real absence of artistic ambition look like? Every once in a while, I like a challenge.

From my understanding, the most notable scene in this movie is a reenactment of Lee's death, wherein the hero screams and writhes around in pain while in the throes of passion with his girlfriend while "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" blares on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, the copy I watched on Youtube (less than pristine and in the wrong aspect ratio, but not unwatchable in the grand scheme of things) was truncated and seemed to have excised the bulk of this sequence. We do get some "Bruce Lee" screaming and writhing to dramatic music, but the effect is like watching the TV edit of Scarface. You can still have some fun, but it's not the same. (I actually suspect this was a TV edit as well, as the movie would cut to black at regular intervals, as if it were stopping for commercial breaks.)

The book points out that the plots and dialogue of many of these movies would be vague and underdeveloped, and this is no exception. The hero here is actually not meant to be Bruce Lee, but another character, although the movie equates the two with liberal use of actual Lee footage, including a press conference, the funeral footage that seems to be a genre trope, and fight and training scenes from The Way of the Dragon. (A scene where "Lee" begins to make love to his girlfriend cuts to the scenes from the Chuck Norris fight in Way, with Lee repeatedly punching and kicking in the direction of the viewer. What this implies about their lovemaking I'd rather not speculate.) The movie implies that the real Lee was poisoned by some evil gang who intends to do the same to the Lee analogue here. This is roughly the plot of Game of Death, but if you tore out half the pages of the script and threw any concept of narrative coherence to the wind.

Of course, as a Game of Death ripoff, this restages some of the action scenes from that movie. These are arguably provide the highlights of this one, although that might erroneously imply that they're actually good. We get a lower rent, entirely boring remake of the motorcycle warehouse fight, although the movie does get a chuckle from a shot of children's toys which fell out of one of the boxes knocked over during the carnage. The climax restages the three-step pagoda scene from the original, one of the few sequences of actual Lee footage in that one (and easily the best part as a result). I'm a sucker for the video game boss battle concept of this sequence that I found even a bargain basement take on it mildly diverting. Most novel about this movie's take is that it actually gets less exciting as it goes along, starting with a stick-wielding Dan Inosanto knock-off, then moving to a pair of slow moving sumo wrestlers, and finally landing on a guy with a cape who does limp-looking boxing moves but briefly throws his cape over the hero. Folks, I laughed.

So yes, this is very, very bad, but if you think you're sufficiently desensitized to the moral and artistic bankruptcy of this genre, it might be of some interest. Not recommended unless your brain has been sufficiently fried to a crisp.

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The answer is no.

We all knew the question was rhetorical.

You seem to be into kinky stuff from the US and Europe. You have to watch more kinky stuff from Asia! There's so much to choose from!

As a person that knows nothing about nothing, the Bruceploitation phenomenon has always fascinated/confused me.

I understand the role that "ripoffs" fill in pop culture. The first Silverchair album came out the year after Kurt Cobain's death. So if you're a less-than-discerning Nirvana fan, here's something that sounds like that thing you like. Molly Hatchet arrived shortly after Skynyrd's plane crash. (I wish my examples were more up-to-date but it is what it is.) Point is, these replacement acts do all the things the original did, but they do not pretend to actually be the original, or to have any connection to it/them. Why would a Bruce Lee fan want to watch someone named Bruce Li remake his films? With footage of his dead body, no less. Why not just find another martial arts guy and support him? (Back in '95 I should've adopted the stage name Kurt Kobane and remade Nevermind. Dang, missed opportunity.)

Some of the grotesque nonsense surrounding Elvis would be the only comparable thing I can think of here in the West. Which makes sense I guess, because they were at about the same level of celebrity. I don't really have a point here, it's just something that's always fascinated me.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Got any recs?



I plan to grab a bunch of Synapse/Impulse's pinku / roman porno titles next time they have a sale.

Yeah, it's pretty wild, and I think there are a few factors to keep in mind:
1) Bruce Lee was a movie star but arguably more than that (although I suppose that applies to some of your examples)
2) Bruce Lee died right as his stardom was hitting its peak, leaving audiences hungry for more Bruce content in any form



Soon after Bruce Lee died, Golden Harvest released a documentary covering his funeral called Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend (which is where the funeral footage comes from), and a few episodes of the Green Hornet were edited together into a feature length movie. Both of these made a ton of money, basically signalling to anyone willing to try that they could also make a fast buck by cashing in on Lee's death. Why this resulted in a bunch of people pretending to be Bruce Lee rather than just inspired by him is maybe beyond me, but it helps to remember that martial arts movies were big at this time so it was likely a way to tap into the Bruce-specific dollar by going this route.


Oddly enough, Bruce Li is considered one of the more respectful Bruce Lee imitators, and actually turned down Game of Death (the most "official" Bruceploitation movie) because he found it disrespectful. From his work, I've seen Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth, which is mostly classy if childlike until the last few minutes when it wheels out the funeral footage and suggests that Lee is actually still alive and will return in 1983 (ten years after his death), and The Chinese Stuntman, which is not really Bruceploitation but seems to be channeling his anger at being exploited by a venal film industry. The latter is worth seeking out, even if it will resonate more after having seen at least a few Bruceploitation entries.

Right, that's why I brought up Elvis. Janis Joplin was popular but she wasn't Elvis-popular, so there were no "is this really Janis in disguise" acts after her death. (See: Orion) In order to inspire this kind of craziness you need to be at Bruce or Elvis level. I'm sure growing up in China in the 70s would give me a better perspective also.


Didn't mean to single one out specifically, so my apologies to Mr. Li. Again, I'm mostly ignorant of it all. But yeah, the fact that a suburban American kid with no real interest in martial arts films not only knew who Bruce Lee was, but also that Bruceploitation was a thing , only shows how huge this all was at the time. I was 2 years old when he died, which means this stuff lingered for many years. Fascinating.

Hundreds of years ago, a sinister hooded figure known as the Crimson Executioner was executed for enjoying his job a little too much and taking the law into his own hands. Now, in modern day, a bunch of anonymous lame-os show up at a castle to shoot covers for their trashy horror paperbacks. They knock at the door. Nobody answers. So they decide to sneak in. But then they're greeted by Mickey Hargitay and a bunch of muscular dudes in tight striped t-shirts. Hargitay tells them to leave, but then after spying on them through a two-way mirror, changes his mind. The lame-os get to work, but are then tortured and killed off one by one by another sinister hooded figure. Could it be the same Crimson Executioner?

Now, the first thing that will stand out to viewers is that for someone named the Crimson Executioner, he does a lot of torturing. Indeed, this seems to have been the reason for his execution hundreds of years ago. Were he named the Crimson Torturer, one wonders if he would have met a different fate. An executioner is supposed to execute, not torture. Whereas if a torturer ends up killing somebody, that's just part of the job. Without spoiling the movie too much, it's worth noting that when the Crimson Executioner reveals his identity, he does so while oiling up his shirtless torso and decrying the perils of spending time with women for fear of ruining his perfect body. Most people get over their fear of cooties once they leave grade school, but it seems this guy did not. Considering the multitude of buff guys in tight t-shirts, one wonders if the Crimson Executioner takes the concept of "bros before hoes" a bit too far.

Much of this movie's interest comes from it being a mid-'60s Italian horror movie. It has a bright, pleasing look, fun castle sets, and a Scooby Doo tone that suggests it would have been fun to see in a matinee. There's even some comic relief from the photoshoot sequences, mostly from the photographer's inability to lift any of the supposedly heavy props, and his squabble with one of the models over how much shoulder to show during one of the setups. But it also contains more blood and skin than one would associate with a movie with such an aesthetic, with a number of fetishistic torture sequences featuring scantily clad women (the highlight involves a mechanical spider and a roomful of arrow boobytraps). While by modern standards these aren't particularly shocking (the effect is akin to a Bettie Page photoshoot, ostensibly kinky but too genial to really offend), but there is a certain charge from seeing the candy red blood or flash of nipple in this campy context. While I wish the characters exhibited even an ounce of personality (the only face I recognized aside from Hargitay is Femi Benussi, a regular of '70s Italian genre movies), there is enough to enjoy here if you're partial to this kind of movie.

True. I think it bears comparing to the "Chansploitation" subgenre that popped up later, which wasn't nearly as big, likely because Jackie wasn't a larger than life figure the way Bruce Lee was.



This youtube video is pretty good primer, although I'd definitely be interested in reading a real deep dive on the subject.

Nice, I'll check it out. Thanks

That screen shot looks 1000 times better than the print I saw. I take it there's a BluRay out there?
I agree that this is fun, if not exactly "good". If you can find Pupillo's Terror-Creatures From the Grave, I enjoy that one also. It's less garish; it's B&W and I don't recall any cheesecake, but it's still got some stuff that's gnarlier than you expect from this era. For example, we're treated to a closeup of a guy's face after being trampled by a horse. Spoiler alert: This being an Italian film, his eyeballs didn't fare well.
Plus Barbara Steele and some skeletons and the expected amount of cobwebbery.

Bruce Lee obviously was a guy with a truckload of charisma, but I have never really seen how that has translated into the kind of worship he receives. Like he's good....but the films he's in aren't even close to the top tier of martial arts films I've seen. Enter the Dragon barely even scrapes itself into the second tier.

Sold!


(Bloody Pit of Horror is on Tubi in a nice HD print.)

Sure, but I'd be interested in seeing what you can find without my help.

Well, I guess it's just one of those cases where the most popular example of something is not necessarily the best, sort of like how McDonald's is by far the most iconic restaurant chain in the world, regardless of the actual quality of the food. But yeah, I do agree with you, and to keep the food analogy going with these Martial Arts movies, I'd say that Enter The Dragon is like a "tasty burger" to the filet mignon of something like Crouching Tiger, you know?

I feel agreeing with you would make it sound like I don't think McDonalds is the perfect calibration of salt and grease and sugar to improve any day, and that I am a fan of Crouching Tiger. But I agree with what you are getting at in general.


#bigmacsforever