Review: Game of Death

Bruce Lee (kinda) plays a martial arts movie star named Billy Lo who needs to fake his own death after a crime syndicate sends an assassin (Mel Novak) after him, for refusing to go in cahoots with them. The syndicate also target his singer-girlfriend (Colleen Camp), continually trying to recruit her as part of their ‘clientele’. After extensive facial reconstruction surgery, Billy is able to go after the syndicate without them knowing his identity. By this time, however, they’ve gone so far as kidnapping the singer. Dean Jagger plays the head of the syndicate, Hugh O’Brian plays Jagger’s second-in-command, Robert Wall plays a kickboxer, Gig Young plays Billy’s journalist friend Jim Marshall, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (a student of Lee’s) is the fearsome-looking Hakim, whilst Sammo Hung (as Hung Kim Po) plays another fighter. Look out for Roy Chiao from “Bloodsport” as Billy’s uncle.

 

A really lousy film from director Robert Clouse (the awesome blaxploitation kung-fu flick “Black Belt Jones”) released in 1978, in which star Bruce Lee died before the film could be completed as originally envisioned. He had filmed several fights (back in 1972), before going off to make “Enter the Dragon” (also directed by Clouse, strangely enough). Unfortunately, he died before he was able to come back to work on the rest of this film. As a result, Clouse (who is credited as screenwriter under the pseudonym Jan Spears) was brought in to salvage the project. He ended up using stock footage of Lee (not to mention footage from his own funeral! Disgusting…), plus a couple of seriously unconvincing stand-ins for Lee (one of them being Yuen Biao, interestingly enough), as well as the footage Lee had already shot (including the infamous fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). The resulting film is a shoddy piece of piecemeal crap that frankly should never have seen the light of day (At least with Brandon Lee’s “The Crow”, most of the film was already shot, and it’s a seriously good piece of filmmaking). It’s also really creepy to see Lee in a film about a movie star who fakes his own death, when both he and his son Brandon both died midway through shooting a film (Brandon in an on-set accident, which is even creepier given there’s an assassination attempt here involving a supposed prop gun!). I’m sorry, but this was a really sour experience for me, I didn’t much enjoy it at all.

 

It’s in English, and has a predominantly American cast, but the English dubbing for the Chinese actors is pretty poor. In the case of the idiot dubbing Lee, it’s pathetic and insulting. He sounds so hushed and hesitant that it makes the film play like a sci-fi film where Lee’s character is actually a pod person, an alien in the body of a human being. The Lee doubles aren’t remotely convincing, and the idea of having him fake his death and then just wear the fakest facial hair of all-time to hide the fact that it’s not really Bruce Lee is just ridiculous. Yes, he also gets facial reconstruction surgery, but why not just leave it at that as an explanation for why he no longer looks like Bruce Lee? You can have Yuen Biao or whoever play the part without any of the trickery necessary. The fact that his doubles wear bad fake beards is just dumb. I guess they really needed to use Lee’s fight footage (and fair enough), but the whole film just plays so poorly. The fact that they name Chuck Norris in the opening credits is pretty crass too, considering it’s just footage lifted from the climax of “Way of the Dragon” (Chuck apparently threatened to sue Golden Harvest. I don’t blame him in the slightest). Chuck Norris is in this film even less than Bruce Lee. Chuck Norris is not in this film. The leather couch-beating sound FX, meanwhile, are the worst of any Lee film, I’m afraid.

 

I’m not going to deny that the film has its positive attributes. The non-Asian cast is a mixed bag, but there’s some pretty decent work by some of them. Colleen Camp, usually relegated to comedic films, looks like a late 70s-early 80s era Bond girl here, and the John Barry (“Goldfinger”, “Robin and Marian”) penned song that she sings over the end credits only enhances that impression. Hell, she would’ve made for a much better Tiffany Case in “Diamonds Are Forever” than Jill St. John, and is there anyone who would disagree with my assertion that she’s a much better actress than Maud Adams (who had two stints as a Bond girl, including “Octopussy”)? The film seems to kind of lose her towards the end, but whenever she’s around she’s good fun and really likeable. An ancient-looking Dean Jagger, meanwhile isn’t exactly in peak form but is eccentric fun. I’m not entirely certain if he’s all there mentally, but he’s certainly a hoot. Martial artist Bob Wall actually gets to be heard in this one in English…and probably shouldn’t have been, if that’s indeed his real voice. He gets to be seen as a bit of a bad arse in this one, and his fight with ‘Not Bruce Lee’ is actually pretty good. I do find it a bit disconcerting that Wall looks a lot like a member of the Australian cricket team circa 1977 or so (There’s a bit of a Max Walker vibe about him). Less effective are Mel Novak and a wooden Hugh O’Brian, the latter of whom is a very poor man’s Charles Napier. Neither belongs in a martial arts fight scene, either, and they represent two of the weaker fights in the film. Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has his moments, when seen as an intimidating henchman throwing people around he’s perfectly effective. When involved in martial arts scenes with Lee, he’s a gangly, awkward-looking mess. The film also contains a particularly distressing appearance by the late Gig Young in his final film. Young was unhappy at this point in his life and committed suicide. He spends the entirety of his scenes in this seemingly legit drunk and frankly looks like he hates life.

 

The fights are clearly the best thing in this film, with a good fight using nunchuks, that Lee himself does appear in. The sound FX for this scene are beyond silly, however. The most worthwhile scenes in the film and the bulk of the Bruce Lee footage comes at the climax, which plays like a series of ‘Boss fights’ really. It’s not Lee 100% of the time, but he’s there for most of it, in the iconic yellow jumpsuit that QT and Uma Thurman would pay homage to in “Kill Bill vol. 1”. These scenes are a lot of fun (aside from the fight with O’Brien and Lee’s double), and Lee sure does prove to be dominant in these scenes. In a David vs. Goliath way, Jabbar vs. Lee works as a spectacle…kinda. Jabbar looks awkward as hell, but it’s certainly interesting.

 

This isn’t a boring film, but with precious actual Lee footage in either dramatic or fight scenes, and a lot of shoddy attempts at deception, this feels like a sleazy rip-off. The cast of familiar faces occasionally helps, and I appreciate the predicament everyone was in (the story is surprisingly coherent, all things considered), but this is actually really scummy and I wish it was never released. 

 

Rating: D+