Guilty Exploitation Pleasure!
Enter the Game of Death (a.k.a. King of Kung Fu) is really a bad film though one that's highly enjoyable for Bruce Lee, martial arts, action and Hong Kong movie aficionados! ;D There's plenty of references to films such as Fist of Fury, Enter the Dragon and Game of Death for those who care to decipher them such as the sub-plot from ETD about having the Bruce character agreeing to do a secret mission because of his female relative being attacked by would-be rapists.
Guaranteed, it's not really as good as some of the Bruce Li movies (e.g. The Chinese Stuntman, The Gold Connection a.k.a. Iron Dragon Strikes Back, The Lama Avengers a.k.a. The Three Avengers) nor is at as good as the official Game of Death movies, but nonetheless Enter The Game of Death has its moments and then some!
The film is probably most interesting for utilizing the same location Bruce Lee had intended for his unfilmed magnum opus/tour de force masterpiece Game of Death (which had also been used to good effect in the John Liu actioner Wu Tang Magic Kick a.k.a. The Mars Villa).
Bruce Le, at first, looks nothing like Bruce Lee (he appears in the opening credit sequence like an older Chinese version of Haley Joel Osmond
) then as the film progresses there's certain scenes, shots or rather frames that make you think or even say 'Is that Brucie?!' especially during the last fight Le has with Bolo and during his second to last fight scene with this black guy (in particular the beginning of the second slo-mo shot where he performs this kick and if you look carefully his face seems to resemble that of Lee's).
Bruce Le may lack the acting skills and presence of Bruce Lee
(not to mention immaculate performance of martial arts technique) but he manages to capture some of the movements and even the physique of Bruce Lee (physique-wise, he resembles the way Bruce looked when he did Enter the Dragon) even though his facial expressions are over the top (though perhaps not as much as Dragon Lee's :
.
This film was initially going to include a series of clips of Bruce Lee, from his movies (like the Game of Death ones did) as well as some unreleased footage from Bruce's original Game of Death. Filming began circa 1978, with Le being Bruce Lee's double. However, Raymond Chow threatened to sue and the project was dropped only to be revisited in 1981 by Filipino producer Joseph Velasco, who remade most of the movie and cast Le solely in the lead.
Given this controversial backdrop of events, it's very easy to see why the film has a slipshod nature as there's little consistency in the film's story (only a very basic plot which is vaguely linear).
The worst example of this consistency (or lack thereof) is the one concerning Bolo Yeung who switches between Japanese and Chinese costumes. He is depicted as working for both a Chinese boss and a Japanese one without no narrative recourse (Fists of Bruce Lee this ain't).
This is especially confusing when it's seen at the beginning of the film when both bosses appear to be in allegiance with one another.
A sub-plot would have been nice to explain such a rapid inconsistent moment of storytelling.
Speaking of allegiances, it's never told comprehensively much less convincingly how Lisa (who faintly looks like Chingmy Yau Suk Ching
- former starlet of Wong Jing) had become a double-spy for both the Chinese and Germans (this film is set prior to the World War II despite the fashions of Bruce Le and the Westerners he fights) and it's never really been stated as to why she tries to convince Bruce to join both causes (I guess to keep her cover but again it's not clear so as to make the viewer sure of what's happening
).
Additionally, when talking about female characters with strange motivations, Bruce's cousin (for whom he's avenging) asks for help after being raped
but then moments later bites her tongue
to commit suicide!
Why bother to call for help in the first place?
I know there's this adage of making the audience guess and to figure things out for themselves but this is just ridiculously lazy (on behalf of the filmmakers), inane (for the audience) and virtually insane (from the character's perspective).
Henceforth, as a result, this movie is the best (or worst - depending on which way you look at it) example of making a film where there is no genuine motivation but to set up a series of fight scenes.
At least in some of the lesser examples of the genre, there's a fairly substantial reason or reasonable excuse as to why the fights are there but this lacks logic (especially for the first encounter between Bruce Le and Bolo Yeung).
Also there's a tournament sequence (that has a nice documentary feel to it) which even though features characters from the main storyline, it's not been properly established as to why Bolo is fighting contenders in the ring. No explanation has been given afterwards, either.
A Caucasian from the event looks like Jimmy Carr.
The opening credit sequence features a funny and almost self-mocking portrait of its star Bruce Le ;D which has two funky themes playing throughout. The last one which sounds like a retro version of the James Bond theme which I don't think was ever used in any of the '70s Bond movies or even the Dr. No-inspired Enter the Dragon - a missed opportunity for the latter (it would have made it seem less of a rip-off of the former as the usage of the music cue would imply that the similarities were intentional, almost referential
).
This credit sequence is strange because when the screen pauses each time a credit pops up, a virtually different music cue pops up (seemingly from different films altogether e.g. Drunken Master and The Hot, The Cool & The Vicious); distractingly, some of the same cues are used to encompass the credits towards the ending duration of the credit sequence.
For the last half of the film, music cues have been ripped off from Enter the Dragon.
But for some reason, it never seems all that out of place or shamelessly derivative given the nature of the film. I guess it would have been sloppy if this had been done in a film where there hadn't been such an exploitative nature and if it didn't have so many references towards Bruce Lee.
The score features a strange airplane-esque soundtrack (I don't mean Airplane the movie but the actual vehicle itself) which encompasses some of the slow motion segments of the fight scenes, not only is it overdone in their singular segments but just when they're repeated in other fights.
What made me give this film a 4 rather than a 1 or no rating at all, is that the film is great cheeky fun and the fight scenes are surprisingly very good (especially the pagoda sequence) and are worth a rental alone. Nice use of weaponry and different exponents of different styles.
The snake fist exponent who fights with cobras is a nice tongue-in-cheek inventive touch but the best fight has to be the nunchaku duel which only has 50% of the talent Bruce and Dan had when they shot their nunchaku duel in the real Game of Death.
My favourite fight is the one where Bruce takes on these Westerners in the forest as he's going for a jog - the choreography is crisp but the unintentional humour of the whole affair (courtesy of the dubbing and Le's reactions) is priceless and worthy of rewinds. ;D One of the black guys looks like Michael Winslow from the Police Academy movies.
The only bad thing about the fight scenes is that it's obvious when the audio changes from the English dub to the Chinese one as the war cries sound more authentic and the sounds have a more crisper and fresh-sounding quality to them.
Of course this film doesn't have the level of depth and symbolic metaphors which was a part of Bruce's intended vision for his version of Game of Death, nor does it have the Kubrick standard of perfectionist filmmaking, subtlety and pacing which Bruce would have brought to the finished version of Game of Death.
What's also noticeable is that rather than Bruce Le climbing onto tougher levels, he graduates through easier ones. The only explanation I can think of is that the filmmakers reasoned that if you wanted to protect something you'd have the toughest fighter on the bottom floor so that IF any intruder had actually passed the first floor then they wouldn't be able to defeat the most tedious of fighters due to the sheer energy spent on the first floor.
Another reason to seek this film is that it serves as a historical document - not just as a retro reminder of the times but of how widely known the Game of Death project was even before John Little had found the script notes and extra footage that he was to use for his documentary 'Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey'.
For example, the way Lee Hoi San (famous Kung Fu actor who also appeared as one of the temple guardians in Tower of Death) had blocked the entrance for Bruce to pass onto the next floor is eerily reminiscent of Kareem's refusal in the footage the real Bruce had shot.
Also just like Chi Hon Joi, one of the exponents in the pagoda is also lying down on a bed in a room where a red light means danger. This should serve as a reminder as to why John Woo and Jackie Chan never use storyboards when they make movies.
Overall, good fun if you don't take it too seriously. As a piece of trivia, the Game of Death style rip-off called The New Game of Death (a.k.a. Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death) has a theme song called King of Kung Fu (which, if you remember, was the alternative title for this movie).
4/10