Director: Joseph Kong Hung
Cast: Dragon Lee, Bruce Lai, Bruce Le

My biggest interest is with movies, though you have probably long concluded that if you have been reading my reviews for quite some time. You probably have to some degree an interest in movies as well, if not your greatest interest. But whether someone's interest is with movies or with some other thing, it's interesting to look at the person to try and figure out how on earth they got their great interest. But I think that with most people, it's hard if not impossible to figure out what about the subject matter got them interested. I must admit that I don't know why my great interest is with movies instead of other subjects like sports or astronomy. However, it is a little easier for me to explain how my interest in certain film genres originated. For example, take the spaghetti western genre, a genre that I have many times before for this web site expressed my affections for. My interest in spaghetti westerns did not start until I was in my 20s, and only because I was in a western art class that assigned me to write about a western artist of any medium. I chose to look at Sergio Leone's movies, and my subsequent watching of them instantly had me hooked on the genre. To this day, I continue to seek out and watch spaghetti westerns. Another movie genre that instantly grabbed my attention was Hong Kong martial arts movies. I got started with the genre when television station CITV out of the city of Edmonton in the Canadian province of Alberta all of a sudden started to show examples of the genre on their late night schedule. Since they were free to watch, I figured why not take a look? And like with spaghetti westerns, I was instantly transfixed by what I saw, liking them so much that I was encouraged to go to my local video stores to see what examples of the genre they had to offer.

But that is not to say that when I was hooked by a certain movie genre, it was always smooth sailing from that point on when I kept sampling new examples of the genre. Take spaghetti westerns, for example. While I usually find something about a spaghetti western that makes me glad I watched it, there have been some that even I have found tough to sit through, such as Django's Cut Price Corpses. And there have been things about Hong Kong martial art movies that have left me somewhat confused for years. For example, when I started to sample Hong Kong martial arts movies, I was confused as to why so many of them had stories that were set in the past instead of modern times. (I eventually concluded that since there were few to no guns available all those years ago, people using martial arts as a weapon would make more sense.) Another question that I often had with the Hong Kong martial arts movies that were available to me at the time was why Hong Kong filmmakers were so obsessed with Bruce Lee for many years after his death. There were a number of imitators that popped up with similar sounding names such as "Bruce Le" or "Bruce Li", though these actors didn't have anywhere the charisma or martial art talent that the real Bruce Lee had. There were also a number of movies that often had the flimsiest excuses to be tied to the real Bruce Lee, such as Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave and Young Bruce Lee And The Last Fist Of Fury. It seemed through the 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong filmmakers couldn't get enough of Bruce Lee. Some film historians have noted this obsession as much as I have, calling it "Bruceploitation".

Actually, it's pretty easy to figure out why Hong Kong filmmakers found it very difficult to move on after Bruce Lee died in 1973. There simply hadn't been a martial arts star as magnetic as Bruce Lee before he came along. As well, the Hong Kong film industry at the time was in some aspects still in its infancy; it wasn't as risk-taking and innovative as it is today. Anyway, I have to make a kind of admission at this point - despite my love of Hong Kong martial arts movies, I have never found in the past most of these "Brucepoitation" movies to be particularly entertaining. (The insanely entertaining The Dragon Lives Again is the one exception I can think of at this moment.) Among other problems, I've found them cheap, crude, and with actors lacking the real Lee's charisma and martial arts skill. So in recent years, when I have come across an example, I usually choose not to watch it. But recently I came across one that sounded so nutty that I felt it at least had to have some entertaining craziness to it. That film was, of course, The Clones Of Bruce Lee. It starts off with the death of the real Bruce Lee. The death of the famous martial arts actor quickly gets the attention of the Special Branch of Investigations, which is headed by a man known as Colin (played by Andy Hannah). Colin sees an opportunity for Lee to help fight crime despite being dead, and he enlists the services of Professor Lucas (Jon Benn, The Man With The Iron Fists). Professor Lucas gets a hold of Lee's body and takes from it samples of cells. With those cells, Professor Lucas (you guessed it) makes three clones of Bruce Lee, who are played by Dragon Lee (Ninja Champion), Bruce Lai (The Inheritor Of Kung Fu), and Bruce Le (Pieces). The three clones are then put through rigorous martial arts training so they have the fighting skills of the late Bruce Lee, and then are unleased to stop two criminals working in southeast Asia. While the three clones prove to Colin they are great at stopping those two criminals, they eventually find out they're in danger from a most unexpected party...

As you saw at the top of this web page, The Clones Of Bruce Lee was an early 1980s production, made at a time when Hong Kong martial arts movies were moving from "old school" styles of martial arts to the more modern styles found in productions today. Though my tastes lean more to modern martial arts styles, I have still enjoyed many movies with older styles. I was curious to see what style would be in this movie. As it turned out, the style wasn't to my liking. I feel I should first point out that the DVD of the movie I watched was in full-frame/pan and scan mode, and with the audio not quite correctly synced up to what was happening onscreen. All that did hurt the fight presentations, but I think that even an edition in widescreen and proper audio would not be enough to have made me enjoy the fights. Most of the fights came across as more mechanical than usual to my taste, with the participants often making slight but noticable pauses after making a particular move before making their next move. Because of this, it didn't seem to me most of the time that any of the martial artists (including the actors playing the three clones) were fighting for their lives. In real life, most life-or-death struggles are relentless. Had things been speeded up and been more smooth, it would have seemed that they were giving it their all and were trying desperately to come out on top. Another problem I had with the martial arts sequences is that the majority of them seem interchangeable with each other. The participants seemed to be making the same particular martial art moves over and over, and it didn't take long for me to get quite bored while watching these fights. In fact, at times I was hoping for some dramatic relief to come by and spare me from having to watch any more of a particular fight sequence.

As for the actors playing the three Bruce Lee clones, I will say they do seem to have some advanced knowledge of martial arts, and with the right production and direction could have possibly stood out and made a name for themselves without aping Bruce Lee. But this production gives them no favors. They are given no names except for "Bruce 1", "Bruce 2" etc., and they aren't given any dialogue that gives them any real personality or difference from each other... or any other kind of dialogue. Things are even worse for the two main Caucasian characters in the movie. Special agent Colin and scientist Lee probably only appear for a few minutes of running time in total, even though their characters are key for all the nonsense in the movie to be happening. Scripted problems like that certainly hampered director Joseph Kong Hung with what he could do with what was given to him, and he was obviously given a pittance of a budget judging by the often-cheap feeling of the entire enterprise (though some of the movie was filmed on location in Thailand.) But the only way that Hung was able to bring life to this movie was with one beach scene where several women on a Thai beach are displayed totally nude for a few minutes. Apart from that scene, The Clones Of Bruce Lee chugs along at a very slow pace. There is pretty much no spark in the storyline. We don't feel that the villains that the clones are tracking down are real criminal scum who are dangerous and should be eliminated. There is no feeling of urgency, that the villains have to not only be stopped, but stopped immediately. And when the villains are stopped, the movie immediately forgets about what just happened and moves on to something new, not dealing with the consequences (positive or negative) that would inevitably come up.

While watching The Clones Of Bruce Lee, I was desperately trying to find something to enjoy about it. I admit that in all of my digging, I would occasionally find a small nugget of enjoyment, though most of this limited material was of an unintentionally humorous vein. As you probably guessed, the core story is pretty ludicrous. Why, for example, go all of the trouble to make three clones and train them instead of hiring three already accomplished agents? And if the three clones are clones of Bruce Lee, why does nobody during the course of the movie think any of the clones look like Bruce Lee? As the movie progresses with this silly premise, there are equally silly moments, such as when a female would-be assassin is knocked unconscious, and immediately after the two protagonists in the room have a casual conversation as if nothing happened. Also, like many other Hong Kong action movies of the period, there is occasionally some really dopey dubbed dialogue, ranging from, "You'll pay for that, you dirty kid!" to "We have no time to lose - kill!" And inevitably, there are a lot of "Hahahahahaha!" moments, which always has made me think that Hong Kong must be a very amusing place to live. I could list a few other comic nuggets that are to be found, but that might give you the wrong idea of the movie. For the most part, The Clones Of Bruce Lee is a routine, dull, and shoddy affair that even fans of kung fu movies of the period will find hard to get enjoyment out of. If that isn't enough of a warning for you, let me do some cloning of my own, thanks to CTRL+C and CTRL+V on my computer keyboard: This is not a good movie! This is not a good movie! This is not a good movie! This is not a good movie!

(Posted November 10, 2022)