← Back to Reviews
in
The Dragon Lives Again (1977) N
So Bruce Lee is dead and wakes up in the Underworld. The place is ruled by an incompetent king. There's also a group of villains who seek to overthrow the monarch and take control for themselves. It gets little weird once we learn that these bad guys include people like James Bond, Clint Eastwood, Emmanuel and Dracula. They're lead by an exorcist of some sort and it doesn't take too long for these scum to get into collision course with Bruce Lee.
Dracula with his zombie minions.
First of all I give the film thumbs up for its completely insane plot. It gives that rare WTF feel when you're watching it without any prior knowledge. Unfortunately it fails to keep things interesting outside of the initial confusion and soon becomes very boring. There are nice concepts like Dracula and his zombies but there's almost zero effort to utilize them in any interesting or funny ways.
If the story drags severely then so does the action. I'm not a particular fan of the old kung fu films but the fights in The Dragon Lives Again are very badly choreographed, often too long and completely uninteresting. Only decent moments are the stupid gimmicks like zombies and mummies. Cinematography sucks as well and it completely fails in its attempts to mimic the styles of the villains (like the spaghetti western close-ups during the fight with Eastwood).
Great concept ruined by unimaginative script and terrible technical execution. A film like this should be fun, not boring.
So Bruce Lee is dead and wakes up in the Underworld. The place is ruled by an incompetent king. There's also a group of villains who seek to overthrow the monarch and take control for themselves. It gets little weird once we learn that these bad guys include people like James Bond, Clint Eastwood, Emmanuel and Dracula. They're lead by an exorcist of some sort and it doesn't take too long for these scum to get into collision course with Bruce Lee.
Dracula with his zombie minions.
First of all I give the film thumbs up for its completely insane plot. It gives that rare WTF feel when you're watching it without any prior knowledge. Unfortunately it fails to keep things interesting outside of the initial confusion and soon becomes very boring. There are nice concepts like Dracula and his zombies but there's almost zero effort to utilize them in any interesting or funny ways.
If the story drags severely then so does the action. I'm not a particular fan of the old kung fu films but the fights in The Dragon Lives Again are very badly choreographed, often too long and completely uninteresting. Only decent moments are the stupid gimmicks like zombies and mummies. Cinematography sucks as well and it completely fails in its attempts to mimic the styles of the villains (like the spaghetti western close-ups during the fight with Eastwood).
Great concept ruined by unimaginative script and terrible technical execution. A film like this should be fun, not boring.