Game of Death

Don't be misguided by my tag line, but the last 15 or 20 minutes of this movie are worth of keeping Bruce Lee fighting Kareem Abdul Jabbar in the pagoda is a thing of beauty, the stand ins and an overclothed and irritating Collen Camp are laughable and unnecessary. Check out Sammo Hung in one of his early appearances."Bruce's" fight scene with Bob Wall is vastly underrated. Not a bad movie.

lee didn't manage to finish this film but director robert clouse (of e.t.dragon fame) manages to pick up the pieces left behind and make a film out of it which is where the film falls down. you see they had to bring in stunt doubles to replace Lee so everytime he's wearing shades or has his back to you you just know that it's not really lee. for the scene in which lee is shot they reused scenes from the superb fist of fury(it is sooooo obvious because the colour quality is different)!!! apart from the fun of spotting which scenes lee failed to complete, the changing room scene is fantasticly good fun to watch, your jaw will drop open at lee's two final finishing moves the penultimate kick is compareable to lee's complete bicycle kick in e.t.dragon. overall this film is well worth the mere £5.99 of which it costs in england

"Game of Death", a frankenstein concoction of bits and peices of Bruce Lee's final performance in a movie originally shot in 1972-73 and a later filmshot in 1978 after Lee's death is really two movies in one.

The first, a crime/revenge caper helmed by Robert Clouse is not as bad as you may have heard. The scenes are intercut badly and Lee's many doubles do look bad, but as a movie on it's own merit it isnt that bad.

The film concerns a young movie star, Billy Lo (played by several uncredited doubles) and a crime syndicate headed by evil Dr. Land (Dean Jagger who is good) His henchman (Hugh O'Brian, Mel Novak, and Bob Wall) won't let our hero rest until he signs an exclusive contract with them, which will put Billy under their control. Colleen Camp and Gig Young Co-star. Camp is benign as Billy's voluptuous girlfriend and Young looks like he wants to be anywhere else. The score is excellent courtesy of John Barry's music which sets a mood for the picture. The second part of the movie is the final fight scenes in a pagoda which include Bruce Lee himself in some magnificent fight scenes with several worthy advesaries including Kareem Abdul Jabbar(!) and Danny Inosanto. The last 15-20 minutes are the only to feature the real Bruce Lee, but watch the locker room fight, it is very good on it's own merit. In summary, a cheesy 70's Kung Fu movie that wraps around some spectacular footage of Bruce Lee in his "final performance", but which also has some charm of it's own.

Game of Death, Bruce Lee's most ambitious project to date, was designed to fully showcase Jeet Kune Do, the unique, fluid fighting style developed by its star; the story was to revolve around a martial artist's deadly mission to retrieve a valuable object from the top floor of a five storey pagoda, defeating a different foe in order to progress to each new level.

Although filming on Game of Death began shortly after completion of The Way of the Dragon, the production was put on hold when the star was offered the lead role in Warner Brothers' Enter the Dragon. Before the kung fu legend was able to resume work on the project, he had suffered a massive cerebral edema that tragically ended his life.

Bruce's sudden and unexpected death unsurprisingly threw a major spanner in the works of Game of Death: with 40 minutes of test footage and actual fight action in the can, but little else of use, the film sat on the shelf for three years before Enter The Dragon's director Robert Clouse was enlisted to somehow finish the film without the benefit of its main attraction.

Taking the audacious decision to radically alter the script, using 'doubles' to stand in for Bruce in most of the new scenes, Clouse eventually completed the film, which was released in 1978, five years after its star's demise. With Bruce's original storyline replaced by a dumb plot in which martial arts movie star Billy Lo (played by Lee and his stand-ins) is forced to take action against an evil racketeering syndicate that is keen to cash in on his success, and the tasteless inclusion of real footage from Lee's funeral, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that much of the movie is a total mess.

But even though Game of Death is far from the film that Lee had originally envisioned, it is still recommended viewing for kung fu fans thanks to one or two decent scraps amidst the mundane first hour or so (the bout between Sammo Hung's Lo Chen and bad guy Carl Miller, for example, is a lot of fun), excellent production values, a spiffing Bond style score courtesy of John Barry that enhances the action, suitably Bond-like opening credits, the iconic yellow tracksuit, and of course, the existing footage of the legendary pagoda sequence that makes it into the film's finale. It's definitely worth persevering through the poorly edited and exploitative dross featuring badly disguised stand-ins to witness Lee's incredible fight action at the end of the movie, the stand-out scenes being an awesome nunchuk duel and the unforgettable battle between Game of Death's diminutive star and 7'2" basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

It is these undeniably great moments that makes one wonder what might have been if only Bruce had lived to finish what he had started.

Game Of Death is a mess of a film,and that's putting it lightly. Nothing to do with Bruce Lee's original conception for the film in 1973,the filmmakers here took the fight footage {somewhat edited down} that he shot for that proposed film,placed it at the end of the film,and than decided to pretend that the rest of the film also features Bruce Lee. Badly. In fact the sheer ineptitude of this aspect of the film is extraordinary,as well as several doubles,none of whom look like Lee and usually wear sunglasses to try to hide the fact,there are also shots and brief bits from previous Lee films edited in and even a scene with a guy wearing a Lee mask!

Nonetheless,there is a certain fascination to the film. The plot is kind of interesting and even has a scene in which Lee's character,a movie star, fakes his own death by being shot whilst filming a scene,this being disturbingly similar to the way Lee's son Brandon died many years ago. There is loads of fighting,not all of it great,but it's pretty constant and contains at least two good sequences {a fight in a changing room and a battle with some motorcyclists}en route to the 'real' Lee stuff at the end,which is certainly worth the wait. The duel with Kareem Abdul Jabbar is almost as good as the famous one with Chuck Norris. Dean Jagger is a great slimy main villain,and John Barry {an odd film for him} provides great musical backing,even if the main female star Coleen Camp is not really good enough to sing his lovely theme song.

Game Of Death is undeniably a piece of exploitation and sometimes leaves a bad taste in the mouth,as when a funeral scene is interspersed with shots of Lee's real funeral. It's really a bad movie and for the most part a badly made movie too, but it's certainly not dull and is kind of fun, as many bad movies are.