Should I Watch..? 'Game Of Death' (1978)

Game Of Death is an action martial arts film released in 1978 and is partly made up from scenes shot by its star Bruce Lee in 1972 before he died the following year. The footage was left incomplete after Lee's passing prior to the release of Enter The Dragon but director Robert Clouse took the footage and forged a new film with a plot to tie Lee's scenes together. The film was completed using stand-ins and lookalikes (mainly Korean martial artist Kim Tae-jeong) alongside the rest of the film's cast including Dean Jagger, Colleen Camp, Gig Young and Lee's friend and student, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Dispensing with Lee's original plot, the film sees a famous martial-arts movie star fighting back against a criminal syndicate threatening him and his girlfriend. Despite the controversy about the film's release and an underwhelming critical reception, the film managed a respectable worldwide total of $50.3 million and remains remarkably influential more than forty years after its release.

This synopsis is for the completed 1978 version of the film and not Lee's original ideas.

Popular Hong Kong movie star Billy Lo has got a pretty decent life. His latest film is a box office smash while his girlfriend Ann is starting to find success as a singer. Unfortunately, a criminal syndicate led by American racketeer Dr. Land is pushing its influence against a number of local celebrities and dignitaries and Lo is the latest target of their threats. Lo, however, is in no mood to accept their offers and turns them down, even though Ann and investigative journalist Jim Marshall feel it unwise to do so. Sure enough, an attempt is made on his life as one of Land's goons tries to shoot Lo on the set of his latest film shoot.

Lo recovers in hospital but has received serious facial injuries. Realising that he and Ann are both in danger, Lo decides to fake his death in order to throw the gangsters off his tail. Forced to put distance between himself and Ann, Lo decides to take the fight to Land's gang himself but all too quickly, he is exposed as still being alive and is forced to confront his worst fear when Ann is kidnapped...

Ignoring the difficult ethics behind its very existence for now, Game Of Death is almost solely reliant on its final scene which - tellingly - was the only real sequence featuring Lee in any great amount. The original premise had Lee's character climbing a pagoda and facing off against an opponent with a different style on each floor and these fight scenes are notably more dynamic and exciting than almost anything else in the film. Compared to those who are filling his shoes, Lee displays infinitely more charisma and energy and he reminds viewers of his unique talents as a star on screen. Many have tried (including in this very film) but there has never been a martial artist as watchable as Lee.

It's frustrating that so much of Lee's legacy - the distinctive battle cries, the yellow jump-suit and the iconic fight between the diminutive Lee and the towering Abdul-Jabbar - are wasted on a film that is almost dangerously incompetent at times. In fact, if it weren't for the final sequence then you'd have to question why the film was even attempted. Even by the standards of the time, this film is horribly ham-fisted and ill-conceived so fans of so-bad-its-good cinema might get their rocks off with this tosh. All the film achieved was making me wish I was watching something like Fist Of Fury or The Big Boss - films that were made during Lee's lifetime and are more entertaining, fun and exciting than Game Of Death thinks it is.

• Not only did Muhammad Ali, Steve McQueen and James Coburn refuse roles in the film, Chuck Norris threatened the filmmakers with legal action for crediting him for his "performance" (which was actually reused footage from Way Of The Dragon). Abdul-Jabbar refused to reprise his role from Lee's original shoot so a stand-in was used for him. Even frequent Lee impersonator Bruce Li refused to appear in this film as he felt it was disrespectful.
• The funeral scene features footage shot of Bruce Lee's actual funeral. The use of this footage was criticised at the time as being in poor taste. It's easy to spot Lee's original footage being used because there is a noticeable difference in picture quality.
• Perhaps realising that the film might prove controversial, Clouse wrote the script under the pseudonym 'Jan Spears'. His involvement with Lee wouldn't end with the release of this film as his 1989 biography of Lee was one of the sources used by filmmakers for the biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story in 1993.
• The scene where Lo getting shot on a film shoot is horribly reminiscent of the fate that befell Lee's son Brandon, who was killed by a prop gun during shooting for the film The Crow.

There's no getting around the fact that apart from those final scenes, the rest of the film is an absolute car crash. Not only does Lee's stand-in bear little resemblance to the late star (forcing them to use fake facial hair, poor lighting and oversized sunglasses to help the disguise) but the dubbed voice sounds nothing like him either. It's comically bad, not helped early on when Lee's stand-in sits in front of a mirror that literally has a cardboard cut-out of Lee's face positioned in the right place. It's the sort of amateurish production that should be rightly mocked and even back then, it was inexcusable. The other side effect of having Lee's footage appear at the climax is that it makes the rest of the film look lumpen and devoid of his star power. Whereas Lee was constantly moving during fight scenes with his charisma shining through the screen, his stand-in feels little more than a prop in comparison. The rest of the cast don't help - Jagger feels like a stereotypical baddie complete with tropical fish, O'Brian and Wall are instantly forgettable and Young's role feels oddly out-of-place with no real definition, something that affects many of the characters if I'm being honest. Only Abdul-Jabbar displays any real presence but again, this is because he only really features in Lee's original footage from 1972.

The film also struggles to escape from the shadow of Lee's death, which hangs over every frame of the film. At no point does it feel anything other than a shameless cash-grab on Clouse's part - granted, Lee's image and style was endlessly imitated in the wake of his death but this is arguably the most egregious example. It honestly reminded me of the notorious Plan 9 From Outer Space, director Ed Wood's legendarily bad sci-fi film that was supposed to feature Bela Lugosi but relied on hopeless stand-ins obscuring their face with a cloak when the venerable star passed away during the shoot. Game Of Death is not quite as shonky as Wood's magnum opus but the motive behind its existence clouds one's opinion of it. From a technical standpoint, Game Of Death is marginally better but it's still a boring and laughably inept martial-arts film. It's as if Clouse believed that his success on Enter The Dragon was down to him and not his legendary lead actor but if anything, this film suggests that the opposite is true.

Even Lee's most ardent fans will struggle to enjoy this morbid exercise. The final fight scenes are the only ones worth watching as nothing else in Game Of Death comes close to them in terms of entertainment, excitement or quality. It is Lee and not this film that should be remembered in the future when considering the star's legacy and while this film continues to be influential (that yellow jumpsuit is practically unavoidable), in no way does it deserve this good fortune. This is amateurish and almost cruel in its treatment of the late star. Stick with Lee's completed films and mourn what might have been, had he lived. Some things are honestly best left alone, as this film proves.

Great For: cashing in on Bruce Lee's legacy, pure cinematic weirdness, anyone who enjoys so-bad-they're-good films

Not So Great For: low-to-moderate expectations, Bruce Lee's fans, Robert Clouse's career and reputation

Lee's death in 1973 caused a vacuum to emerge at the head of martial-arts cinema, at a time when the genre was never more popular. So studios instead cast a number of lookalikes, rename them something similar (Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lai, etc) and simply cast them in your standard martial-arts flick. Even Lee's sometime co-star Jackie Chan was sometimes billed as the next Bruce Lee early in his career although he was able to break out on his own in films like Police Story and Snake In The Eagle's Shadow. Even today, Bruce Lee's look and style continues to influence countless imitators in film, comics, video games and other mediums. Even juggernauts like Marvel haven't been afraid to mine at the coal face - consider the look of the character Shang-Chi in their film Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.

It is not unusual for films to be cancelled, either during the shoot itself or late in post production and even later. Recent examples include the heavily criticised decision to shelve Batgirl by HBO who felt the film simply wouldn't work and included it in cost-cutting measures, despite already costing $90 million. But sometimes, such films still manage to see the light of day. A great example is the animated film Nimona which was shelved after its production studio was closed down but was eventually realised on streaming services to tremendous acclaim, even securing an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. A less-heralded example is Terry Gilliams's long-gestating The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a film stuck in so-called 'development hell' for almost thirty years. With budgetary issues, an ever-rotating cast, a shoot beset by problems and numerous attempts to get the film made, the film almost became an in-joke among cinephiles before it was finally released in 2018. Unfortunately, the film didn't exactly set the world alight so one wonders what the point of it all was - not unlike Game Of Death. I can only surmise what Clouse was trying to achieve but other than cashing in on Lee's legacy, I have no idea what he felt a film like Game Of Death would do for his so-called friend.