The Dragon Dies Hard

I recall seeing a film in the late 70s called "The Dragon Dies Hard." Now, what with all the title-switching on martial arts movies of that day, this may or may not be the one I saw, but it sounds close enough. The one I saw rose to new heights of bad-osity. From that day to this, I remember it with a shudder.

In my town anyway, this gobbler was touted as a "biography" of the recently-dead Bruce Lee. Now, I can forgive a "biopic" for being fictional; most are. But this one first centered around a racist "turf war" between Lee and some Japanese martial artists, with a finish implying that Lee was murdered by the mob. Fair enough, but the actor playing Lee not only resembled him about as much as I resemble Russell Crowe, but didn't even fight in Lee's style. And to say that this crap-socky piece of yak doody had none of Lee's melodramatic flair as well as none of Jackie Chan's slapstick fun, is an understatement. Between the strong anti-Japanese sentiment, a script too weak even for a kung fu movie, and martial arts scenes played with all the excitement of a T-ball squad on Ritalin, it's no wonder this kung bomb remains in the murky past.

This is a great martial arts movie! It tells the story of a young man who is saddened upon finding out his idol, Bruce Lee, is dead. He then goes about trying to uncover the "conspiracy" involving his death. Highlights include Bruce Lee's ghost guiding our hero on his search for justice, and possibly the greatest death scene ever filmed! (by great, I mean really funny!) If you love martial arts films, especially cheesy ones, you need to see this movie!

I first caught this little film a while back when a local independent channel created "Kung Fu Theater" during the summer. They aired this in all it's glory.

It's not a bad film: there are fights in between a lot of pointless dialogue, but the plot boils down to the ghost (!) of Bruce Lee inspiring some guy to fight some bad guys. That's it. As soon as the fight is ended, the movie ends.

Not a good film; yet not a bad film. One of the other mediocre kung-fu chop-socky films you can watch. Hopefully some company will take this and "Clones" and put it onto DVD...release it, somehow!!

First off, this movie serves as a standard for classic Bruceploitation.

It's kind of like Hamlet with the ghost and the warning...except not very good. I love scenes where Bruce Li gets hammered to ease the pain. That's the realness of these movies! From the start, Bruce boast of his fondness (aka 'extreme obsession') over Lee and then someone runs in and informs him "Bruce Lee is dead". Watch his face...no one pulls off facial expressions like him! His search for the truth leads Bruce to random fighting, avoiding lusty women (damn vixens!), and lots of vengeful rage. There is the great bus fight where camera decides to show a closeup of the bridge over water before the big "SPLASH!". Film school, BAH!! Nothing much gets answered and mediocre battles ensue. Oh man, it's a riot seeing Bruce plastered and hallucination scenes. How much did he drink?? Plus, the fateful flashback of Bruce's last night is so wrong, but another highlight of this one. I didn't know he wore shades while guzzling down Cuervo.

Note: This is NOT Bruce Lee. Bruce Li, my fave in the Bruceploitation genre, helps pull of a fave kampy pleasure here. Watch it for sheer delight.

The movie opens with Ho Tsung-Tao doing some kicks and punches over the opening credits. After the first opening fights, Ho Tsung-Tao gets a role in an action movie. At about the 19 minute mark is a big continuity error. Our hero disarms a swordsman yet the sword is instantly back in his hands in the next frame.

It was odd to see so many non-Asian extras and stunt men. In 1974, as far as fights go, there probably wasn't a non-Asian stunt man in the world who was a match for any Asian stunt man. That's one reason the fights are below average in this movie.

This is another movie exploiting Bruce Lee. The events in the movie relating to Bruce Lee's life are certainly not accurate. The movie was packaged for the VHS rental boom with Bruce Lee's name and likeness. This was not a deliberate search by movie makers to find another martial artist to replace Bruce Lee. It was simply deceptive advertising to sell a VHS of a movie made a few years ago.

These exploitation movies are well known as bad. This one is not the worst and that's about all I can say good about it. Ho Tsung-Tao is the lead. He is Lebanese and appeared as a stunt man in some Lebanese movies. He then appeared in Hong Kong and Taiwan movies as a stunt man. This movie is his first lead.

My copy is a digital file that plays on a HDTV in 4:3 format with English dubbing similar to the old VHS format. It looks as if recorded from a TV broadcast.

Today I think the only person watching this movie would be a hard core fan of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984. That fan would find this movie to be as expected - a movie exploiting Bruce Lee's life with action sequences all below average and overall bearing only passing resemblance to Bruce's life. I am such a fan and I watched this movie once to write this review and I am sure I will never watch it again.