Episode 44 - Bruce, King of Kung Fu (1982) AKA The Legend of Bruce Lee
Never has a movie presented such a challenge to the Grindbin. There are so many twists and turns involved in creating this episode you could probably make a movie out of it.
Despite the poor quality of the film we are touching upon an important sub-genre of the kung fu era in film: Bruceploitation. After the death of Bruce Lee in the 1973 various production companies in Asia cast Bruce Lee "lookalikes" to make movies - the most famous of which is a man named Bruce Li.
The movie today stars Bruce Le - another famous Bruce Lee "lookalike" at the time. But before we get into the movie and it's background, let's start from the begging.
A couple months ago a listener contacted us on Twitter and asked if he could send us a Bruceploitation movie. The DVD arrived and we noticed the name and the cover of the film was not accurate. Labeled as "The Legend of Bruce Lee" using a poster ripped off from another film and containing completely inaccurate information about the cast and crew.
Even in the age of the internet it was a challenge to figure out anything about this movie or where the hell this DVD even came from. Finally, after noticing someone in the cast from a different film, we were able to track down the real name of this movie and follow it's tale from the streets of Hong Kong to the offices of Ocean Shores Video LTD and finally into the official DVD player of Grindbin.
As for the movie itself, it's worse than you could ever imagine. An absolute mess of a film that we theorize was either cut heavily from it's original version or simply dubbed by a group of guys who's only knowledge of Chinese is from a takeout menu.
Major plot points happen off-screen, actors with British and Australian accents are used to dub Chinese citizens, a musical score that is bizarre and completely out of place; it is pretty much to the worst thing that could ever be called a movie.
So welcome to the weirdest and wildest episode of Grindbin yet. Hope you enjoy!
Next Week's Film - The Killer Kid's Series:
Mikey (1992)
Director: Dennis Dimster (as Dennis Dimster-Denk)
Writer: Jonathan Glassner
Stars: Brian Bonsall, Josie Bissett, Ashley Laurence
