(1980, US, Aquarius Productions)
Dir. Matthew Mallinson; Pro. Terry Levene; Scr. Ron Harvey; Cast Bruce Lee, Fred Williamson, Ron Van Clief, Aaron Banks, Bill Louie, Adolph Caesar.
85 min.
Even if Mallinson’s outrageous Bruce Lee ‘mockumentary’ started life with the best of intentions, there is no hiding from the filmmaker’s complete lapse in concentration as this barmy movie slowly unfolds. The more bizarre scenes work in the film’s favour; the objective being to tell the life story of Bruce Lee with dubbed archive footage and a list of B movie actors as they watch a big fight between Louis Neglia and John ‘Cyclone’ Flood at the 1979 World Karate Championship.
This genuine footage is intermittently disturbed by running commentary from Adolph Caesar – a sort of blaxploitation Dr. Spock – who reads his lines directly from a script as if he had been handed them two minutes previously. This only adds to the film’s glorious ad-hoc sensibility. Interviews with Aaron Banks (who seems disturbingly convinced Bruce Lee died from a fatal Oriental death touch) and Fred Williamson (who is the only one talking sense when he describes the set up as an “insult to Bruce”) arrive like ringside encroachments on their viewing time. Their additional back story skits are even funnier, with Williamson waking up late for the tournament after sleeping in with a mistress (“Ain’t five times enough for you?”). Then Ron Van Clief arrives following a strange damsel-in-distress scenario.
The Bruce Lee element, which takes up the majority of the film, is fabricated with footage stolen from Lee’s early Cantonese film The Orphan and clips from The Invincible Super Chan, which shows Bruce as “Karate mad” living in a repressed household and wishing he could break out and become a kick-ass fighter like his “Samurai ancestors”. Anyone who can tell their arse from their elbow will be able to see through the film’s glaring factual inaccuracies. As a purely ironic novelty, the film is far too confused to ever be called insulting. And in some scenes, they even make it look like they’re talking to the real Bruce Lee – brilliant!
AKA: The Dragon and the Cobra
