Popular reviews

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  Review by Philip Ketchum ★★★½ 4

  Suck it you elitist pricks, this surreal martial arts mastapece is in the Criterion Collection now!

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  Review by Bryan Espitia ★★★½ 5

  Plenty of cleanly shot action that lets the incredible fight choreography shine, plus some weird flourishes like masked killers and a kung fu lion(!), culminating in an underground 80s sci-fi tower of death. Did not expect this to be awesome. Wild stuff, glad I watched it.

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  Review by Will Sloan 1

  The Story So Far

  Before his death in 1973, Bruce Lee shot about 30 usable minutes of footage for a project called The Game of Death. In 1978, his home studio, Golden Harvest, used about seven minutes of that footage as the basis for Game of Death, a movie that was marketed as Bruce Lee's last, and in which "Bruce Lee" was mostly mostly played by unconvincing doubles. The double who got the most screen time was Kim Tai-chung (aka Tong Lung), a South Korean martial artist who didn't look much like Bruce Lee at all, frankly. He spent a lot of the movie wearing big sunglasses, fake beards, and bandages to hide this fact. The film is an insult…

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  Review by Carlo V

  Kinda had me nodding off until this dude with crazy drug eyes shows up and has venison & deer blood for breakfast and then a bit later there's I guess an "actual" lion that does kung fu? Haven't seen all of em but gonna go out on a limb and say that this is the most fun Bruce Lee movie..........as soon as it's not about Bruce Lee anymore.

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  Review by HKFanatic ★★★

  It speaks to Bruce Lee's enduring popularity that, nearly a decade after his death, producer Raymond Chow was still exploiting unused footage of the actor for pseudo-sequels to Lee's films. Chow's Golden Harvest production company hadn't rested on its laurels in the meantime; they evolved the genre Lee helped popularize, and 1979 alone saw the release of future classics "Knockabout," "Magnificent Butcher," and "The Young Master." If you can get over the ghoulishness of Chow continuing to cash in on Bruce Lee's legacy, "Game of Death II" features some excellent fight choreography in that Golden Harvest tradition, courtesy of someone you may have heard of—Yuen Woo-ping.

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★½

  Forget it's a Bruce Lee film (just like the film does a half hour in) and remember this is a Yuen Wo Ping choreographed beat'emup that mostly stars (thanks to constant stunt doubling) Yuen Biao! Great, lengthy, and direct fights that don't have a lick of connection to the work of Lee.

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  Review by Jordan James Brooks ★★★½

  I never even knew there was a second Game of Death until Arrow Video’s recent (epic) release. Better still, I never expected it to be as well-made as it is - though it’s probably better suited under the title Tower of Death.

  During the first half, they manage to splice the real Bruce Lee in so well that it isn’t too distracting, and they get away with telling a substantial amount of the story with some satisfying fight scenes. It also helps that there’s a brother character that much of the plot focuses on. Of course - it’s difficult to view this and it’s predecessor as anything other than blatant cash-ins, with this particular film not even attempting to “complete” Lee’s…

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  Review by SubToretto ★★★ 2

  Completely distracting and ridiculous dubbing because the voices are so distinguished, it sounds like it's an audio-play. The "plot" also sounds made up in the dub despite the team having full control over it and the new footage from the start.

  🤜🤛The Yen & the Yuen: Innovation of Action by Yuen Woo Ping and Donnie Yen

  But it all seems like repurposed footage. Like a Godfrey Ho film, or the previous Game of Death: the pasted footage or visual tricks vary from entertainingly creative, cheekily sloppy or grossly immoral.

  The fights are fast-paced and well-crafted, finding a nice balance between Bruce's style and mannerisms and the more flamboyant tendencies the people in front of and behind the camera favour.

  It gets…

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  Review by Krautsalat ★★★★

  Woovember 2020: Film #13
  Watch a Bruceploitation movie to celebrate the addition of Game of Death II to the Criterion Collection

  Kung-fu fighters should be fierce like a lion and swift like a peacock, so I study their styles.

  Starring the back of some dude's head as "Bruce Lee". Once you get over the fact that this is not a Bruce Lee movie, this is actually completely awesome. The great Yuen Woo-ping was the fight choreographer and he brought his A game.

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  Review by Daniel Shillito ★★½

  Tower of Death - Hong Kong Cut

  Ultimately more a sequel in name only but if I can give Game of Death II one thing off the bat, it's that the incorporation of Bruce Lee footage is far less jarring here than it was in the Clouse film. While the footage there seemed shoehorned into the narrative, here the filmmakers attempt to try and build the film around the footage they have. However, it is still strange to think about how far Raymond Chow was willing to go in order to include this footage - it almost seems like he would have gone as far as digging up Bruce's grave if given the chance. If you can get over the…

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  Review by Yves Bouwen ★★★½

  International version.

  This movie would be better if it didn't "star" Bruce Lee in it. It wouldn't be good. There is no story at all. It is riddled with so-bad-it-is-good moments. My English isn't that good, but a tower of death upside down in the ground, that is a shaft, right? The sets have plywood feel to it. However they are from time to time colourful and imaginative. Some of the costumes are crazy. I don't know what those guys are doing in their silver overalls, but they look good. There is also a person in a lion suite doing kung fu jumps, which is kinda cool.
  The biggest selling point of this movie are the fights. The last act…

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  Review by Gentry ★★★

  “You will find only death here!”

  ❗ Watched the Hong Kong Theatrical Cut titled Tower of Death

  The first reason to watch this movie is for Roy Horan, playing the requisite white guy martial artist, but with a twist: he’s a sadist that boasts a tombstone scorecard, lives in an animal sanctuary, walks around with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and eats raw venison with a tall glass of deer blood for dinner.

  The second reason to watch this is for a scene involving a blonde nude named “Angel,” Kim Tae-Jeong jumping around the room like his pants are on fire, and a man in a lion suit.

  The third reason to watch this is for the final 20…