The "MBDS Showcase" is a cult movie podcast which aims to provide an introduction to cult and obscure cinema, while inviting my guests to share their own cult movie obsessions.
Youtuber and cult cinema fan Brandon Tenold (Brandon's Cult Movie Reviews) returns for an ass kicking double as we look at the overlooked Bruceploitation movie "Challenge of the Tiger" in which Bruce Le directs and stars as a CIA Agent paired with Richard Harrison's swave womaniser as the pair try to locate a super-sterility drug
We also get to see Doug McClure team up with Peter Crushing for "At The Earth's Core" as he fights dinosaurs, seduces cavewomen and solves problems by punching them!!
All this plus Canuxploitation, movie ratings and the appeal of bad movies, plus much more!
Title: The Dragon Lives Again / Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu Director: Kei Law Released: 1977 Staring: Bruce Leong, Sin Il Lung, Tong Ching, Jenny, Alexander Grand, Eric Tsang, His Chang, Fu Lai, Mei Wong, Kah Wah
Plot: After his untimely death, Bruce Lee (Leong) wakes up to find himself now in the “Underworld”. Having decided to set up a gym to allow him to continue to share his martial arts skills, he soon finds himself under attack from some familiar faces, who are plotting to take over the Underworld, while drawing equally unwanted attention from the King of the Underworld (Ching).
Review: Yes that’s right boys and girls it’s another “Bruceploitation” movie! The genre which proves, that just because your leading man has suddenly died, that it shouldn’t stop you making money off their legacy, by hiring either actors who look like them or using actors with similar sounding names. This however is possibly the most insane Bruceploitation movie I have seen to date, seeing how not only is Bruce in Hell, but also facing off against Zatoichi (The Blind Japanese Swordsman played here by Mei Wong) which might not sound too random, until you find out that he also set to fight James Bond (Grand), The Godfather (Il Lung), Dracula (Chang) and Emmanuelle (Jenny), while gaining support from The One Armed Swordsman, Kain (from “Kung-Fu”) and Popeye and yes I mean the same spinach eating sailor that we all know and love.
Having thrown plausibility out of the window, director Law takes full advantage of the surreal situation by essentially pushing it as far as he can, as Bruce also fights a bunch of Mummies as well as skeletons, yet still keeping a familiar Kung Fu framework from within which the action unfolds, hence we have Bruce opening a gym, only for it to come under attack, with the more traditional rival school here being replaced by a gang of famous pop culture icons, everything else though is just good old Kung fu right down to it’s quarry based fight scenes.
Leong might not look anything like Bruce Lee, but that doesn’t really matter seeing how in this version of Hell, no one looks like their former selves an idea which basically writes off the fact that no one looks anything like any one of the pop culture icons they are supposed to be playing and hence why we also get the Asian versions of Clint Eastwood (Wah), Dracula and more interestingly Kain, a role which was originally meant to be played by Bruce Lee in a concept he was working on while he was working on "The Green Hornet" called “The Warrior”, only for the idea to be stolen by Warner Bros and turned into “Kung Fu”, so it was especially interesting to see this role, finally being played by an Asian actor. Still Leong does randomly don the “Kato” costume from “The Green Hornet”, but like so much in this film no real explanation is given for it’s appearance here.
The tone of the film is clearly being played for laughs, rather than any kind of seriousness, atleast that’s what I hope Law was aiming for, especially as unlike other Bruceploitation movies which atleast had some element of paying tribute (largely though it was more to do with making as much cash as possible) to Bruce Lee’s legacy and the mystery behind his much discussed untimely death. This like “The Clones of Bruce Lee” however is a much more surreal kind of film. Still it hard to say that’s not amusing to see Bruce Lee fighting James Bond or a group of skeletons, which essentially resemble a bunch of guys in cheap Halloween costumes.
The alternative argument however is in terms of the tastefulness of releasing a film like this, a few years after Bruce Lee's death, let alone the fact it opens with Bruce sporting what would appear to be a monster erection, only to then be revelled to be his nunchuck's (easy mistake to make), much less to have Bruce apologising reflectively to Linda for his cheating ways. Meanwhile Bruce’s penis does seem to be a source of great interest to the King’s Concubines, which also gives us the great line “When a man’s endowed like Bruce, the girls are bound to want him.”, something which is never revelled even though we do get to see a move called “The Third Leg of Bruce Lee”.
Like so many Kung Fu movies of the 70’s the moves on display here all come with their own colourful names, none better seen than during the quarry showdown between Bruce and Zatoichi were the names of the moves explode onto the screen in huge white letters, with Bruce’s moves all being named after his films hence we get “Way of the Dragon” & “Enter the Dragon” were as Zatoichi shows us the colourfully named “Blind Dog Pissing”. Still this quarry setting you’re best getting used to seeing how nearly every fight takes place here. Still the fight scenes are all enjoyable enough, with Leong fighting with nowhere near the ability of the real Bruce Lee, but certainly with enough skill on show here to make for exciting brawls, even when taking on multiple opponents, while even the usually non martial arts trained of his foes all seem remarkably skilled usually after failing to shoot him at seemingly point blank range!
The soundtrack mainly consists of snippets of the “Enter the Dragon” theme, while we also get a Kung Fu reworking of the James Bond theme, while even more bizarrely the opening strains of Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” also makes an appearance, with seemingly no purpose outside of cramming in another pop culture reference and raising a cheap laugh.
This film is without a doubt one of the craziest films I have seen in a long while and despite having a plot which is beyond implausible, but it atleast sticks with it’s ideas down to it’s insane final showdown which see’s Bruce squaring off against the king of the underworld and his army of mummies, while being backed up by Popeye and the One Armed Swordsman, which is the sort of fight I never fought I would be writing about, yet at the same time reminds just how much fun, can be found in writing about such obscure and random classics such as this, which would be unlikely to be found if I was writing about purely mainstream cinema, as I’ve a feeling that one is going to take some beating to knock it off the top of the weirdness totem pole.
Title: Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger Director: Tso Nam Lee Released: 1976 Staring: Bruce Li, Chang Yi, Lung Fei, Shan Mao, Kam Kong, Got Siu Bo, Cheng Fu Hung
Plot: After Bruce Lee mysteriously dies his friend David (Li) sets out to find out why.
Review: Bruceploitation is a strange subgenre of Exploitation cinema, seeing how it’s essentially based on cashing in on Bruce Lee’s legacy and fame and is unique in being the only Exploitation sub genre based around a person rather than a theme or setting. The majority of these films featured actors of varying martial arts ability, with most hired for their resemblance to Bruce Lee which again varied greatly between those with an uncanny resemblance to those who bore absolutely no resemblance to the great man whatsoever! Bruce Li thankfully is one of the better ones.
Opening with Bruce Lee (also played here by Li) having a premonition of his own death, which he shares with his friend David aka Tiger, with the setup it would seem being that Tiger is the true predecessor to Bruce, as further highlighted by the title sequence in which he gets to show off his skills while being sound tracked to Issac Hayes’s groovy “Theme From Three Tough Guys”, which shares more than few similarities to the “Enter The Dragon” theme. Still I don’t think I’ve seen a film so keen to make sure that the audience gets the message than this film, as nearly every wall in the film seems to be covered with posters of Bruce Lee, well those which aren’t covered with pornography which for some unknown reason doesn’t seem to faze anyone. The DVD cover is none the less insane, I mean look at it, let alone the fact that David seems to have a tiger growing out of his armpit! I also love the quote on the back cover “See Bruce Lee choose his successor!” almost as if the studio are trying to make out that this film is some kind of biopic, but then it’s this sheer randomness which makes the Bruceploitation genere like so much exploitation cinema so much fun.
With the sudden death of Bruce and shameless use of stock footage from his funeral, David returns from Hong Kong and sets about conducting his own investigation, essentially consists of hanging around GoGo Bars, harassing assorted members of The Baron’s gang and generally kicking alot of ass, with David eventually discovering that The Baron was attempting to use Bruce to help him smuggle heroin, which has to be one of the most batshit insane theories about his death, since the theory that he faked his own death so he could work undercover for the Hong Kong police to bust up drug rings, but no doubt a theory explored further in another of these films.
The plot is pretty straightforward and is consists pretty much of David switching between detective mode and ass kicking mode, while the second half of the movie David for some reason suddenly starts referring to himself as Tiger, but then are really trying to make sense of a film with a film as insane as it is. Out of the two modes, his ass kicking one is certainly provides the more enjoyable parts of the film, even though they do suffer in places from some sloppy editing which sadly takes away from these scenes which are otherwise great and frequently inventive, while for some they may go on alittle too long, but seeing how tedious some of the non fighting scenes are I was actually happy that these scenes went on as long as they do. The final beach showdown is certainly great to look at cinematically, even if it does bring once again into question the health and safety regulations of Hong Kong film sets.
Li whose real name is Ho Chung Tao, was given the name of Bruce Li by producer Jimmy Shaw spent most his career making Bruceploitation movies, with this film being the one which would truly launch his career, even if he hated his screen name citing that “I don’t like it, because I can act like him, but I can’t be him”. In an alternative reality I have no doubt that Li, much like the equally overlooked Conan Lee and could have been a much bigger star had the studios not been so keen to pass him off as a replacement Bruce Lee.
“Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger” is one of the better films in the genre and while there are certainly more random titles under the Bruceploitation label (see “The Clones of Bruce Lee”) this isn’t an overly bad film if judged on its fight scenes, while the rest of the film can be slightly testing to get through, while it still shame that we never got to see Li reach the same heights as the man he imitated.
Basically this is my love letter to the cinema I adore, with the main focus being to look away from the mainstream and instead look more in the direction of Cult, Foreign and Obsure cinema and everything that comes in between. This blog is also about keeping movie going fun and embracing the randomness, that can often be found, while also uncovering the occastional hidden great, often in the most unlikely of places.
I try to add somthing new atleast once a week, but I'd rather keep this blog fun to write and so i'm not neglecting commitments outside of this blog.
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