No Surrender Cinema: Bruce, King of Kung Fu
This summer will mark the anniversary of two incredibly important events of martial arts history; the death of Bruce Lee, and the posthumous release of Enter The Dragon, the most highly regarded and important film from the martial arts genre. It’s been 50 years since Bruce’s passing and the premiere of the film that earned him worldwide icon status, and this edition of No Surrender Cinema is going to focus on the aftermath of his death and the success of Enter The Dragon…an era full of imposters, and an industry looking to maintain the kung-fu craze that many attribute to Lee by cashing in on his success with film after film featuring an assortment of wannabe heirs to his throne. It’s time for some good ol’ fashioned Bruceploitation as I conquer Bruce, King of Kung Fu, aka The Legend of Bruce Lee (Chinese Chieh Chuan Kung Fu)!
Released in the year of my birth, 1980 (which shows you just how strong the kung fu phenomenon was, as Lee’s peak was seven years prior), Bruce, King of Kung Fu is purported to be the true story of the real Bruce Lee’s early years. It kicks off with a man claiming to be an astrologer telling Bruce’s parents that the meteor in the sky (which we only hear, not see) is shining for their son, apparently as an indication that Bruce would grow up to do great things. We know that was the case in reality, but here in Bruce, King of Kung Fu, this Bruce is a bit of a shit-stirrer, since the movie is barely several minutes old and he’s already been involved in two different fights!
A lot of people seem to have it in for Bruce, and honestly I can’t blame them. Bruce and his buddies Ah-Choi and Ah-Niu engage in things like petty theft (with Bruce being the one stealing the money!) and allowing a Peeping Tom the opportunity to spy on a couple who were about to get their groove on until they were so rudely interrupted by the klutzy voyeur. Also, according to this film, Bruce liked to hang outside of hooker’s windows and have them flash him, because that’s what Bruce Le does during one of the rare instances he’s not brawling with members of a rival gang (though a gang shows up during Bruce’s rendezvous, facing off with he and his friends in the alleyway like a kung fu West Side Story). Why spend all of your time exploiting Bruce Lee’s name when you can exploit women too!
Like anyone who is overly arrogant, Bruce ends up humbled, and by humbled I mean he’s beaten and hung upside down from his apartment complex, left dangling outside the building for all to see! Bruce’s recovery sees him studying under a master of the Snake Fist style (one of several masters he would seek out in the film), and that master encourages him to study how a snake moves and reacts so that he can get a feel for the style. This leads to an extended training sequence where Bruce antagonizes actual cobras as part of his training, and even gets one of them drunk! I sure hope Bruce Le carded that cobra before he brought it on set, or else PETA might have a case against him (then again, the constant slapping and whacking of the snakes to get them to strike probably wouldn’t go over well with them either).
Bruce might be somewhat reformed, but trouble still seems to find him. Several people still wish to do him harm, the main one being Master Kim (Kien Shih, who as Mr. Han tangled with the real Bruce in Enter The Dragon). It turns out that Kim’s son is one of Bruce’s many opponents, and hasn’t been the same since Bruce beat his ass. Master Kim swears vengeance and sends a bunch of his goons after Bruce, the most notable of which being another rival of Bruce Lee from Enter The Dragon, the one and only Bolo Yeung! Bolo’s battle with Bruce Le is fun, yet brief, and it ends in the most incredulous manner possible, where the brutish, intimidating Bolo simply backs off and flees from his opponent! Any of you wrestling fans reading this know what self-serving booking looks like, and that might be worse than anything Triple H ever did during his in-ring career!
Even though Bruce promised his father he’d refrain from fighting, he and Ah-Niu become aggressors after Ah-Choi succumbs to injuries suffered in one of their brawls. Bruce swears vengeance rather matter of factly, but sometimes a man just needs a reason to fight. Despite learning from a few different masters early on in the film, Bruce’s offense consists mainly of the Snake technique. There’s not even a hint of Jeet Kune Do here in this supposed Bruce Lee story, so the Snake style becomes Bruce’s most relied upon martial art when it comes to defending himself against Master Kim’s various lackeys. Bruce dispatches the lot of them with relative ease, setting up the final showdown (would it be considered an Enter The Dragon rematch in the Bruceploitation Universe?) between he and Master Kim.
Bruce, King of Kung Fu suffers from an identity crisis, and I don’t just mean Le’s attempt to portray himself as the genuine article. This is a film that can’t seem to decide if it’s a light-hearted comedy, or a gripping drama. The now-classic Drunken Master kicked off a whole new subset of kung fu films filled with humor, and here we have Bruce’s two buddies acting as the Curly and Larry to his Moe. On the flip side, we’re to believe that Bruce Lee couldn’t stay out of trouble and was a bit of a hooligan, and it wasn’t until his father urged him to visit a master that he began to learn true discipline. None of this is accurate in relation to the real Bruce’s life story, and as a plot it causes the film to bounce all over the place. Even Ah-Choi’s death comes from a fight that was filled with more silliness than vicious intent.
Speaking of fights, there are plenty of them here, and they’re what makes Bruce, King of Kung Fu a worthwhile watch. The film wastes no time in getting right to the action, and Le allows himself to be humbled on more than one occasion, perhaps so we the viewer will sympathize with him as an underdog and root for his tormentors to get their comeuppance. The cast is filled with fighters who certainly know their stuff, and the plot bounces along briskly enough, with the story in between fights usually consisting of Bruce and his pals getting into some kind of shenanigans, Bruce training, or the villains of the film swearing their revenge. The story is definitely not as consistent as Mean Streets of Kung Fu, which I reviewed last month, but this is Bruceploitation, baby! All you need is someone to slightly resemble Bruce Lee (and even that’s not a requirement) and a whole lot of fighting. If you film it, they will come!
I own this movie on a VHS that was produced by Goodtimes (a company whose specialty was manufacting cheap, discount VHS tapes that you’d usually find on a 3 for $10 rack at your local department store) under the title Legend of Bruce Lee (Chinese Chieh Chuan Kung Fu) and even as a young kid, I knew that this wasn’t the Bruce Lee that I had already seen in Fist of Fury. That didn’t stop me from watching this one over and over, because I was mesmerized by the fights, but as the years went on and I was exposed to more and more from the martial arts genre, it became one of those films I had all but forgotten about. After all, why watch a guy pretending to be Bruce Lee when I owned the filmography of the real deal? Over time, I realized that Bruceploitation was awesome, that’s why! Sure, there are absolutely some misfires that didn’t do the memory of Lee or anyone involved any justice, but then you have films like this that are enjoyable despite (or some might say due to) their quirks. Films like Fist of Fury and Enter The Dragon saw Lee’s characters facing insurmountable odds, and sacrificing his own beliefs in the name of justice. In this slice of Bruceploitation, we get blood feuds that end with mutual admiration and a “let bygones be bygones” reaction. Don’t worry though, what we do get is a nice freeze frame jump kick to close things out, because that’s what Bruce Lee would have done, right?
The alternately titled version of this film is also an alternate cut (the hooker scene was not on my VHS copy, so my assumption is that that cut was done for the younger audience such as myself at the time) which is available on YouTube, In fact, in true Bruceploitation fashion, the cut version is also on YouTube posing as the original Bruce, King of Kung Fu version! It looks like if you want the full movie, under the original title and as it was meant to be seen, Amazon’s FreeVee app (which will also enable you to view the film via Amazon Prime) is the only place to find it as of this writing. Bruceploitation can be one hell of a rabbit hole to find yourself down, but this is one of the entries that was entertaining from start to finish. If you’re looking for some Not Quite Bruce Lee kung fu to kick back and enjoy, check out Bruce, King of Kung Fu!
