Fist of Fear, Touch of Death

When you look at the cover of this dvd there's a giant pic of Lee on it.

So you'll think this is going to be a great martial arts flick, but its not.

You don't even see him fighting!!!! They talk about a great karate championship, but the only thing you see is the finale and they don't do karate they are BOXING! Everything here is a lie, they even try to let you think that Lee's great grandfather was a famous samurai...this movie has nothing to do with martial arts, avoid it at all costs! if you see it in a store, hide the box so no one can buy it, this is total crap!!!!

What a hoot! No one could watch this without falling off the chair laughing! There are scenes of one guy supposedly plucking out eyeballs! Talk about huge amount of ridiculous stereotypes with confusion between one fighter and Harry Belafonte by the hotel.

There are scenes from lots of old kung fu type movies as well as an early Bruce Lee movie. There are also some terribly dubbed Bruce Lee interviews with poor voice acting.

There is no plot, just a poorly threaded 'broadcast' by an actor who wouldn't even put his real name on the part! (Or too unimaginative to come up with a name for the part! You have to laugh while watching this one or you are taking life all together too serious!

Caution, never buy a movie as cheap as $5.99 or else you're going to be scammed! I saw this movie sitting in a bin with other rediculous B-Movie genres but what caught my attention obviously was Bruce Lee. I read the commentary, it didn't explain much about Bruce except only about some martial arts event in New York's Madison Square Garden? At first I was confused, was this an actual event where Bruce appeared, it sounded like it did. Plus the movie mentions real live clips of Bruce in action. Bruce in action at Madison Square Garden? I've never seen this before ever, this I got to see! This sounded too good to be true, and sadly I was devastatingly fooled. I watched this movie(actually with DVD I breezed through in minutes) and to my surprise no Bruce, no real footage, nada, nothing. The film, according to my martial arts knowledge, contains a bunch of has beens, never was, or complete unknown practitioners and fighters. Without a doubt the biggest crock film ever in an attempt to profit off of Lee and whoever put this garbage together should be locked up!

The film takes place in Madison Square garderns for a bout that is for the Bruce Lee title. (even though the markee on the arena said Karate demonstration) The Late Adolf Ceasar plays himself talking about Bruce's death, and how fight promoter Aaron Banks claiming Bruce Lee was murdered by "the Touch of Death". Aaron even showed a demo of the move by breaking a board into two, even though Mr. Banks tells us the hit will slowly kill you, it sure kill the board on contact. Fred Williamson, Ron Van Clief plays themselves in series of skits. Bill Louie does Kato in one skit. Massive stock footage several good Kung-Fu film is also shown as Adolf tells us this is footage of Bruce's great grandfather (yeah right!), who is a Samurai warrior (he's Chinese!). in the end, this so called Bruce Lee title was Joe Cyclone Flood vs. Louie Negira, and it was a kickboxing match, which look to me like a regular bout that the producer filmed and claimed it was Bruce Lee title for the film. Lots of funny gags with Williamson, and lots of music lifted off other films. This film seems to be in lots of label lately, so Aquarius films must have not put a copyright on it. I think this film could've been a cult classic because it's so bad, but I am surprised Bruce Lee's family did file a lawsuit making Bruce into a wimpy, arrogant, jerk in several dubbed over fake stockfootage interview Adolf conducted. Oh yes, there is some footage of Bruce from a old soap opera he did in Hong Kong, and they did dub it over into a comedy.

... then movies like this would never have been made.

If you've ever seen a Bruce Li/Le/Lai/ or Dragon Lee movie, then you should know what Bruce-ploitation is all about. "Fist of Fear, Touch of Death" takes Bruce-ploitation several steps further, and to a new low. The basic plot of the movie is apparently centered around a martial arts bout to determine Bruce Lee's successor.

Most of the movie follows interviews with Bruce Lee, dubbed and spliced with Aaron Banks and Adolph Caesar. Fictional scenes of his family depict Bruce Lee as a martial arts-obsessed teenager ("Mother, I can kill a man with my bare hands - you don't understand me!", yet later calling someone else crazy...), randomly spliced with scenes from an old chopsocky movie supposedly depicting Bruce Lee's great-grandfather as "19th century China's greatest samurai" - can't have been too hard, I don't think there were many. These scenes take up most of the movie - I nearly forgot about the whole determining Bruce Lee's successor thing, and when they finished, I was so happy thinking that the movie was over, only to realize there were another twenty minutes. Damn. It seems as though the writers (if any) forgot what the basic plot was about and went off on same bizarre rant about Bruce Lee's heritage (the one they made up, not his real heritage).

This movie does not have cult-status in any way, nor does it give the cheesy-laughs you'd expect from a regular chopsocky movie. The only thing it manages to do is insult Bruce Lee and his legacy (even Fred Williamson says the same thing in this sad excuse for a movie). Avoid at all costs.

1/10