User reviews

*Possible Partial Spoilers*

Originally entitled "The Stranger" and directed by Umberto Lenzi (under a Korean pseudonym), who helmed the infamous grossout cannibal flick "Make Them Die Slowly", "Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave" is the most hilariously awful installment in the Bruceploitation subgenre of 1974-80. It doesn't even star one of the three well-known Bruce Lee impersonators (Bruce Li, Bruce Le, and Dragon Lee). "Bruce K.L. Lea" is actually Jun Chong, a Korean taekwon do instructor based in Los Angeles. He's terrible as far as imitating Lee's mannerisms goes, but he's a fine kicker. You have to enjoy this for what it is. PLEASE don't expect a Bruce Lee movie! He only made four films--"Fists of Fury", "The Chinese Connection", "Return of the Dragon", and "Enter the Dragon" ("Game of Death" doesn't qualify)--and he wasn't identified by a name other than Bruce Lee in any of them. Not Li, not Le, not Lea, not Lai. The story has nothing to do with Bruce Lee fighting back from the grave, either. Jun Chong does not play Lee nor a character based on Lee, but rather a Korean martial artist who comes to Los Angeles to find out how his best friend died...only to discover that he's being stalked by a weird assortment of bad guys (a Japanese swordsman played by future "Revenge of the Ninja" star Sho Kosugi, a tall, bald black man with a cape and an earring, and a cowboy among them). As I mentioned, Chong does a kind of dimestore Bruce Lee impression during the fight scenes (thumbing his nose, going "waaaaahhhh!"), and the dubbing is truly hilarious--even for a martial arts movie. Particularly amusing is the evil cowboy's voice; he sounds about as masculine as the guy who wore the stetson hat in the Village People. Now that you know what to expect...enjoy! And look around for the original poster art for this film, too. The company that released the DVD is really doing its customers a disservice by not including this wild, cartoony art on the box!

What happened? When you went to the video store, did someone already rent Beast of Yucca Flats? Eegah was out? Doris Wishman films were all on a five day rental? This is a super low in the history of cinema. Bruce Lee isn't remotely in sight and although the opening title sequence is very, very promising in a Zombie Vs. Ninja sort of way, it quickly, quickly falls off.

The thing I remember most about this film were an Asian guy and a blonde American girl driving around LA trying to find a place to rent.

I think that's all this movie was about. Two people apartment-hunting. It could have been an interesting premise, if it was directed by Wim Wenders, but alas, this is just Z-grade, super lame terribleness that makes Alice in Acidland look visionary. Yikes.

The dubbing is atrocious and the acting makes Andy Warhol's stars seem like Sir Richard Chamberlin.

Watch anything else or better, observe paint drying on the wall, expand your mind reading the dictionary or telephone book or get an addiction. Whatever you do: AVOID BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE!

An oriental Kung Fu expert named Wong Han (played by Bruce K.L. Lea) travels to America at the invite of his long-time friend and former Kung Fu school training partner only to learn his friend is now dead, apparently the result of a suicide. Suspecting foul play, Wong Han sets out to bring down a gang of strange characters he suspects are responsible for his friend's death but when he attempts to do so, there's also quite a few unexpected surprises awaiting our hero.

Despite the title referring to Bruce Lee, he actually has nothing whatsoever to do with this movie apart from an extremely cheesy, silly opening introduction title sequence in which we see a man resembling Lee jump out of a grave with the headstone behind him bearing Lee's name. What this movie is actually about is a man coming to America trying to avenge his fallen friend while protecting his deceased friend's last belongings. There he befriends a beautiful young woman named Susan (played by the delectable Deborah Chaplin) who tries to help him in his quest. However, the gang of colorful thugs, a true assortment of weird characters if there ever was one, are after him and Susan for some reason unknown to Wong Han and go all out in their efforts to bring them down meaning Wong Han has to constantly fight for his own survival while also trying to protect Susan.

As you can tell, the basic plot for this movie isn't half-bad. The Kung Fu fighting scenes featuring Bruce Lea, who throws a mean-looking kick, also proved much better than expected although they fall rather short in comparison to the one and only Bruce Lee. The major problem here is that the movie seems to go on a bit too long, the pace feeling a little too slow, which isn't helped by the fact there's too much obvious filler footage of people simply driving vehicles from place to place. Also the colorful villainous assortment of characters Wong Han tries to bring down never evolve beyond anything other than one-dimensional caricatures.

This movie is a underground martial arts cult classic (as with fantasy mission force), although this movie does not star Bruce Lee, it is about him, and stars the look-alike bruce le , who has portrayed lee in other films. This is about bruce lee making a pact with the dark angel, and he has come on earth to get his "revenge" on the people that tried to kill him. For Bruce Lee fans this can be a funny film or a film they hate , i found this film funny though.

rated R for action violence and mild brief nudity.

The film begins with a very, very fake tombstone with Bruce Lee's name on it. Then the title appears. Other than these two things, there is NOTHING about Bruce Lee about the film despite the title of the American release being BRUCE LEE FIGHTS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! In the 70s, lots of crappy film makers tried adding Lee's name to lousy films he had nothing to do with in an effort to sucker people into seeing them. Part of the problem is that Lee died at the height of his fame and only made a few films--people were eager for more. Considering that I have seen all of Lee's films, I knew right away this was the intention of the film, but decided to watch it anyways on a lark.

The film stars a guy who isn't all that good at martial arts (Jun Chong), though because this is a rip-off film, they rechristen him 'Bruce K. L. Lea'! When you see his acting and especially is fighting, you know right away that this is no Bruce Lee--just some third-rate wannabe.

So apart from poor martial arts, it there anything to recommend this film? Well, no....absolutely nothing. There are many dumb scenes--including a cremation that takes only 3 seconds (they must have used a microwave) AND immediately after the bones came out of the oven, they were cold to the touch! There was also a stupid (and pointless) scene involving a cab driver who got beaten up by Lea. Minutes later, he had crappy bandages all over his face--like in some bad cartoon! Some of the rottenness might be the fault of the company producing the horrendous English language dubbing (usually a very bad sign when a martial arts film isn't subtitled). The voices were all wrong, though it was enjoyable to hear Black American men with Asian accents! The soundtrack was also just god-awful--with it being often too loud and of dubious quality. However, I did get a chuckle at the stupidity of the music dubber who used the marine song "The Halls of Montezuma" for a Christmas parade! Seeing Santa on his sled as this song played was simply beyond words!! Oh, and I guess I forgot to mention that the print was very, very, very grainy.

So in the end, this is a tremendously dull and badly made film--even if you DON'T consider the dubbing. Only watch this film if you want a laugh. It's just very sad that such a horrible product has cynically had Bruce Lee's name affixed to it!

I wanted to see this movie because of the amazing poster image. I was aware that the actual film doesn't have any chance to be as cool as the poster. My worst fear was that the movie would be totally boring. So, when it was only partly boring and even somewhat entertaining, that was more than I dared to expect.

Everybody probably knows that there's no Bruce Lee here. But I was a little bit disapppointed that there's no fighting back from the grave either. The movie has absolutely nothing to do with the title or the poster - except that the poster image is shown in the opening. That's something I've never ever seen before... poster appearing in the movie! That's amazing.

So, the story is about some martial arts dude who is searching for some missing guy in Los Angeles. He teams up with a girl and fights bad guys here and there. The tone is almost serious but there also seems to be intentional camp and self-aware comedy added.

The directing and especially editing is really crazy. The fighting scenes are full of weird angles and random cuts. But somehow the amateurish style feels refreshing and exciting! Then there are scenes with very strange lighting which probably is due to low budget but it accidentally looks kind of cool. In general there is potential for an accidental art masterpiece. If only it was just a little bit more crazy...

Overall Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave isn't quite as amazing as you'd wish for but it's not terrible either. Very much recommended for fans of cheesy bad movies!

At the beginning of the movie, Bruce Lee rises from his resting place to kick some butt of bad guys. Although, it hasn't anything to do with the plot, because leading role of the movie is played by (in)famous Lee-clone Bruce Le.

So, Le travels to London to see his old friend, but soon finds out that he has just committed suicide. So, it's up to Le to return to Hong Kong with the package that he is meant to give to man's family. But it doesn't be so easy as it seems to be and thing get pretty rough, when Lee is attacked by mysterious black guy.

The Plot is quite stupid and predictable, characters are barely believable and there is too much talking and circling around. Even the fighting scenes are not as great as in many Le's movies, but had to admit that the slow-motion kicking-scenes are just beautiful to watch. However, there is only few of those.

In all, I'll give this piece of junk 3 out of 10 (I could give even 4, but bad dubbing and quality of the copy I had reduced it to 3). Only for hardcore Le-fans.

Lightning strikes Bruce Lee's grave and his spirit is reborn. Wong Han (Bruce K.L. Lea) arrives in LA and is attacked. He finds his brother Ji-Hyeok Han killed. When he's attacked at the studio, the police arrests him instead. He's bailed out by sinister Scott Li who proposes a missing person job but he rejects Li. He's walking the streets of LA in mourning when he rescues waitress Susan Clark from an attacker. She turns out to be a follower of his late brother. She recalls a large lawsuit which destroyed his brother's business and five mysterious strangers who met him right before his death.

Lea has the look of corporate middle management. He's definitely copying many of Bruce Lee's mannerisms including his patented tasting his own blood move. At the time after Bruce Lee's death, this is one of many copycat exploitations. The problem is that Bruce Lee has nothing to do with most of this movie. Only the lightning strike opening and the Bruce Lea name suggest the great martial arts legend. While it's not a crime, it's close to a misdemeanor to fight film culture. The plot itself is solid B-movie material until it becomes boring. There are jarring disjointed elements and unbelievable convenience. I don't know how Susan can afford that big house as a waitress. The actors are amateurishly overacting at times that is when Mr. Lea can actually emote. The villains remind me of the Village People. The first half is able to draw me in but the second half fails to maintain any momentum.

I picked up this movie as part of a "10 classic kung fu movies" DVD pack, from the start i knew it would not have the real bruce lee in the film, i at least thought that it would contain a story based upon him and then maybe one of the more better bruceplotation doubles like li or dragon lee.

Was i wrong, his movie has the first scene and only that scene to do with Bruce lee... his grave stone hit by lightening.

The movie itself is badly done, the camera work, dubbing, lighting, acting, amongst man other things is terrible, the plot is weak and sometimes difficult to follow, either that or boredom was sinking in and i missed it. I feel that the real bruce lee would be turning in his grave if he ever thought that his name would be put to something like this.

Some of the Kung fu was good, though some obvious missed kicks and punches were noticeable and the camera work and angles spoiled it.

What else can i really say, i don't think this movie was any good and think that i will not be getting my hour and 25 minutes back.

2 out of 10

People hate on this movie like it is their job. I found it for $3.99 at a TOPS grocery store in Upper Tupper, Adirondacks, NY. Worth every penny!!!

While how much the movie has to do with the title can be debated, the fight scenes are pretty awesome. Better than this, though, is the incredible acting. I instantly fell in love with the dubbing (usually does not happen) and have watched this film several times since. Show it to all your friends. This is an excellent kick-off to a kung-fu party as it sets the mood and gives a light tone before you get into more legitimate films.

Highly recommended, especially at 3.99 for the DVD!!! Bonus: the DVD comes with a quiz!

I bought this movie years ago at a local dollar store for the title alone and once I got around to watching it, I was pleasantly surprised how entertaining it was. It's been years since I've seen this film, so I'll have to go digging through my archives and watch it again - but don't believe the crap people say. It's an enjoyable movie, though as best as I can recall it didn't have much ( or anything?) to do with Bruce Lee returning from the grave. It's not a zombie movie or anything, just an enjoyable and entertaining kung fu B film from the 70's. I myself am a huge Bruce Lee fan, but I don't initially hate a movie because it tries to capitalize on the death of a legend by using his name in the title...I believe there's an entire genre of that - bruceploitation. I'd definitely recommend this film to fans of B films or old kung fu films. The copy I got was pretty grainy...but I bought it for a dollar, so...I didn't exactly go in with the highest of expectations. So if you buy it cheap or see it for free, read the title, and know the star is bruce lea, go in with your expectations set low - you might like it.

This is a film with one of those great exploitation titles that promises so much more than it eventually delivers. At first glance I was expecting to see some extreme kung-fu horror flick with a mad sorcerer reviving Bruce Lee from his death and turning him into an unstoppable zombie killer, with only a young novice martial artist to stop him. Sadly this was not to be. Aside from the cheesy opening shot, in which a guy pretending to be Bruce Lee jumps straight out of a grave and a drawing of such a scene follows on quickly, we're in the middle of a run-of-the-mill fight flick that has nothing to do with Bruce Lee at all. In fact, he's not even mentioned!

The film instead concerns a young Bruce Lee lookalike named Bruce Lea (see where the confusion can arise?). It turns out that an old buddy of Lea's has died, so he goes to investigate and find the killers responsible. It turns out to be, apparently, the Village People! Yep, a Japanese man, a black man, a cowboy and a white man were last seen with the deceased and soon Lea finds himself battling the criminal gang in a succession of largely unimpressive fights. Things are tied up with a very unsurprising twist ending, a touch of tragedy and lots of very bad dubbing and worse acting. Lots of running time is taken up with scenes of human bonding which occur between Lea and would-be girlfriend Deborah Chaplin and the will-they-or-won't-they relationship which develops between them.

Interspersed with the light plot are some fairly average scenes of kung fu which are nothing to get excited about. They are okay, but Lea is no Bruce Lee or even Bruce Li. In fact, Bruce Lea is a better actor than he is a fighter, which is unusual considering the proliferation of good fighters/poor actors that fill our screens year after year! Chaplin is also not bad in a developed part, although the bad guys are little more than clichés waiting to be cut down by our hero.

The film is quite slow and uninteresting, let down by poor production values and a somewhat gloomy atmosphere. The photography is always dark and the editing looks like child's work, with silly slow-motion inserts for no reason (the moves aren't even that impressive to begin with). For some reason, some prints of the film claim that Umberto Lenzi is the director, but I believe this to be a simple case of mistaken identity; also, why on earth would Lenzi leave his beloved cop films in Italy to go globetrotting for a low budget kung fu trash oddity? A guy named Doo-Yong Lee appears to be the real culprit.

Five minutes into this movie and you will know exactly how great it is! Starring the incredibly talented Bruce K. L. Lee (who can act every bit as good as he fights!) and the absolutely gorgeous Deborah Chaplin (good to know that old Charlie's genes are still out there doing good work) and a host of kung-fu-practicing baddies... this movie is not to be missed! I always found the original Bruce Lee's movies to be incredibly hokey and slow-paced. This movie never seems to let up for a second. B.K.L. Lee can't even get himself a cab without having it turn into a demonstration of his kicking prowess! The tentative romance between Lea and his buxom female lead is very well handled... her breathy sigh as he leaves her to go off and avenge his dead friend... magnificent! Even though the movie is dubbed, the voices are so well-matched to the lip movements that you probably won't even tell it's not the actors' real voices. To cap it all off is the devastating, heart-breaking finale. No, you can't practice kung fu without casualties... even the good must die in service of the art.

At first glance, "Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave" seems to be indistinguishable from other 1970s martial arts movies, though there are two differences. The first is that it was filmed in the United States, and the second being that it was made by Koreans instead of Hong Kong filmmakers.

But apart from those differences, the movie doesn't really stand out from the pack. As you may have expected, while the movie's title promises a resurrected Bruce Lee - and the opening sequence shows that title action - the movie quickly forgets what it promises and makes no further actions to be "Brucey". What follows is a long and hard slog through a really thin and boring story, with occasional martial art sequences that are badly directed, badly choreographed, and badly edited.

Is there any saving grace? Well, there is some really awful dubbing that occasionally provokes a chuckle, and the Korean filmmakers' occasional misconceptions of America and American people also is unintentionally funny at times. But there are not enough unintentional laughs to make this worth a look. Even aficionados of martial art movies will find this particularly tough to sit through.

If you answered Lee as in the name of a jeans maker, BZZZZ!!! I got tricked out of the film's long title, but I expected that. The title has nothing to do with the movie at all, even if I'd still be addicted to seeing bodies get blown. Just what in the hell was Umberto Lenzi doing in directing this thing anyway? The legend surrounding Bruce Lee prompted many folks in making movies years after his untimely death in '73. Here, you will be disappointed. If you watched carefully, you will have noticed that Aquarius Releasing did a take on promoting the title with a scene that had a martial artist jumping out of the grave. Then, in the opening credits, the cast included a name sounding similar to Bruce Lee (Le, in this case). It looks like the loyal fan base will have a mass identity crisis out of this one. Le (pronounced "lay") isn't as solid as Lee, but he still manages to fight dirty. Check this out if martial arts is your cup of tea. Otherwise, it's just a classic '70s chop-socky show!

This movie escaped me for years. Several times I watched the first five minutes and every time I stopped thinking: This isn't Bruce Lee, this is some cheesy rip off. Anger and hatred soon followed, shortly before my ejecting the tape and throwing it once again to the confines of my shelf. One day however, during an early Jackie Chan fest we ran out of videos. In the Kung fu mood we stumbled across none other than BL fights back ftg. What a film. From the very beginning you soon realise this films true potential, not as a serious Kung Fu movie but as one of the funniest films of all time. The hilariously dubbed voices are funny but if that's not enough check out the wacky editing of the fight sequences, 300 songs on one soundtrack, impossible scene changes, you name it. Plus a list of characters you'll never forget. Cigar smoking man, pipe smoking man and his accomplice eye candy, the cab driver, Susan, and most of all: The Cowboy. I'm gonna show this film to my grandkids!

I happened to see this film once when it was broadcast on a smaller channel in Sweden. It must've been over two years ago. I think the movie is so funny, it has no relevance to anything or has a dialogue worth five cents. But hey, if you cut out the martial arts stuff, that's what kung-fu movies are all about. I recommend this movie. If you manage to get a hold of it, then don't hesitate. It's all good fun and a great laugh once in a while makes your life longer. If you're still not satisfied, Bruce Le(e) will fight back from the grave and have a terrible revenge on you. :o)

So the plot makes little to no sense and sometimes involves strange critiques on American democracy and capitalism and whose dialog is clearly translated into English by a non-native speaker, there is only one dubbed voice for all of the male characters, half the movie contains scenes of people walking or free footage from parades and such (there's even a scene where there's people waving and giving the peace sign to the camera), and you can tell when the lines of the movies are plagarized and pieced together from other movies, but its unintentionally comedic value is immeasurable.

The bad guys consist of (and I quote) "a Japanese, a white man, a black man (who is 15 seconds later described as "tall, kind of thin, a flashy dresser, with an ear ring"), a Mexican, and a cowboy (yes, a cowboy)" and a mysterious cigar smoking man. If you go into this movie taking it seriously, your not going to like it. But if you go into the movie realizing its absolute trash then it has the potential to be absolutely hilarious.

Well, you have to be in the right frame of mind to watch this, I guess... I have seen it about 5 or 6 times and always marvel at what the people who made this thing might have been thinking. Was that really bad imitation-Bruce yelping in the original dub or was that just done for the American version? This movie has absolutely NOTHING to do with Bruce Lee... or graves... except for a glaringly out-of-place opening shot of a shadowy figure suddenly bursting out of a grave marked "Bruce Lee", followed by a still shot of the movie's poster (some kind of weird image of Bruce Lee that kind of looks like Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" cover). Then we cut to a plane landing... and the actual movie begins... complete with the hackneyed dialogue and mismatched voices that these old kung fu movies are known for. Bad acting, bad choreography, bad directing... this movie has it all... and I love it!

I just know about this film... I saw many time the poster, but Robert Lee (brother of Bruce) is assistent director and the cast include Philip & Simon Ree, also Sho Kosugui, just for that reason need check the film...

Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (1976)

1/2 (out of 4)

The movie opens on the tombstone of Bruce Lee, which is struck by lightening causing the dead start to bust up through the dirt. From here "Bruce Lee" (Bruce K.L. Lea) seeks revenge on his former trainer who has been killed.

Brucexploitation is a sub-genre that really took off after the death of Bruce Lee. It was clear the Martial Arts genre needed something to keep those cash registers ringing so countless producers made in-name-only Bruce Lee movies. I'm slowly making my way through them and I really hope I don't come across one as bad as this one.

If you're a fan of bad movies then you'll get a couple laughs out of this sucker, which contains the typical bad dubbing and laughable sound effects. There's no question that the greatest thing about this picture is the American title, the opening credit sequence and how the title and this sequence are pretty much the only thing that deals with "Bruce Lee fighting back from the grave." I'm sure a zombie Bruce Lee movie with this title could have been awesome but sadly that's not what we got.

If you've got a Martial Arts movie with awful action scenes then you're pretty much dead in the water as far as entertainment goes. There are a couple funny action scenes including one dealing with a taxi cab driver but there's certainly not enough to keep you entertained throughout. The performances are all rather laughable and there's certainly nothing fresh or entertaining about the story.

BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE is a great title but it's certainly an awful film.