The Clones of Bruce Lee

HA HA HA!!! Man, I wish they could move that gas mask or take those 70s shades off. Is that Bruce Lee times three?

This movie definitely was shoddily done, but the dubbing is kooky and the story is hilarious. At times, I think there were four Bruces. There is so much to say during the beach scene seeing two Bruce wannabes sporting speedos and one of them warning him to stay away from the naked babes on the beach and that they'll "eat you alive". WHY are they avoiding the women? Of course, throw in gratuitous nudity to attract attention. The kung fu isn't up to Shaw Bros. level, but it's decent. Dragon Lee is the best one as Bruce number one and swipes at his nose so often, you'd think he did lines in between takes. The scientist guy is played by guy who was head boss ("What I like, I get. And I want that restaurant!!!) in Way of the Dragon. Head Ham award gose to the evil drug lord who you have to credit him for being a big thinker. Not only does he want to be top drug lord, but be impressed by his "We will rule the world" speech.

This is far from being good in quality, but a lot of fights, very kooky premise, and high in kampiness value makes Clones a fun one to watch.

This movie is actually so bad. (Direction, acting, effects, even the fighting) that it has reached some sort of cult status over here. You should check it out. It's funny as hell.

I saw this film in the early eighties, so my memory of the plot details is pretty hazy. I do recall, however that the clones mentioned in the title not only didn't look very much like Bruce Lee, they didn't look like each other! Also, there was an army of overweight men in diapers who were covered with metallic paint and were supposed to be made out of bronze. Whenever these guys would get kicked or punched a metallic "bong" was heard on the soundtrack to enhance the illusion. The only problem that the effect was ruined by the way their flesh jiggled on impact. I went to a lot of lousy films in those days, but this one got by far the worst audience reaction of all of them(although the place was nearly full!). If they were dumb enough to think a film with a title like this would be good, they deserved to be disappointed. Personally, at the time I thought it was a lot of goofy fun.

THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE is perhaps the ultimate Bruceploitation film, featuring no less than three Bruce Lee imitators (and two of those are the hard-working Dragon Lee and Bruce Le). It starts off with the depiction of the death of the real Bruce Lee, only to have his body claimed by a mad scientist (Jon Benn, who starred in CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER and WAY OF THE DRAGON) who proceeds to replicate three clones from it.

This action-packed tale then follows each clone as he engages in training routines before being sent off on special missions, typically performing assassinations and the like. Eventually they turn on each other. The whole thing was brought to you courtesy of infamous exploitation director Dick Randall, whose CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER is a mini masterpiece of its type. THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE isn't, but it's still a must for trash fans.

There's no denying the slapdash nature of this film, which was shot in Thailand and the Philippines. While the plot is more involved than your regular kung fu outing, the fight scenes feel very laboured and predictable; the Bruce Lee imitators spend too much time copying Bruce Lee instead of showing much in the way of real skill themselves. I feel they did better work elsewhere. Still, on the other hand, the viewer does get treated to Bolo Yeung (DOUBLE IMPACT), gratuitous nudity, training scenes set to stolen ROCKY music, and a general air of ineptness and anything-goes cult appeal.

Some name / style exploitation films of the 60s/70s had sexist undertones / audiences,

others had political prejudist ones, etc,

others, like this one, had a pure exploit, in this case of a name,

and so are not excluded even moreso than the worst of the worst,

BUT,

also like some exploit films where they were likely just a bit of fun at the time,

it had aside from the usual, not much worse than a james bond film at the time baddies,

one memorably absurd and unique way of dealing with robot like under a mad scientists's control clones / baddies...

... feed them some weed!

:D

worth it just for that! Lol.

Maybe strap a bucket-bong to their heads and spin them around JC style?

Might've been too obvious? Lol.

Worked though, didn't it? Metallic man went down!

Brave. Compared to many exploit films, on-screen,.. weed makes metallic-man goes down... FEED YOUR MAN WEED... ethics, politics at the time,..

... yep. Brave. Production values are a joke,.. :D ... but brave nevertheless.

A wacky for-kids tibetan film style zoom-in on the metallic-men's faces contorting to the taste / experience of the weed, would've been a nice touch.

:)

worth it just for that. The rest is disposable.