Game of Death (1978)

Tagline: Bruce Lee challenges the underworld to a Game of Death.

Curiosity: It’s actually the first Lee film I ever saw; one night I caught the fight scene between Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar soundtracked by RJD2’s Deadringer back in college, courtesy of City Paper editor Drew Lazor.

Plot: Billy Lo (Lee… but mostly stand-ins Tai Chung Kim and Biao Yuen) is a hot shot action movie star with a smokin’ American girlfriend (Colleen Camp). But when gangsters try to coerce him into serving them, Billy finds himself leaving the Hollywood game behind for… THE GAME OF DEATH.

Thoughts: I cannot believe Game of Death exists. Lee paused production of the film to accept a role in Enter the Dragon, his breakout hit. He died before filming could resume, but director Robert Clouse stepped in to finish the movie. I get that Lee was popular, but given that his total screen time in Game of Death is maybe 20 minutes (including recycled footage from Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon), it’s a wonder anyone involved thought this project would fly.

Clouse uses every trick he can to pad out 100 minutes of a movie without its star. He covers Lee’s doppelgangers in shadow. He edits in close-ups of Lee from other movies constantly. He uses footage from Lee’s actual funeral. He even gets so desperate as to tape a picture of Lee’s face over the reflection of his stand-in. Clearly he was counting on people to be so racist that they couldn’t tell Asian people apart.

Unfortunately, I can tell Asian people apart, so it’s painfully, awkwardly obvious which scenes feature Lee and which ones don’t. Still, though, whenever Lee shows up for real, it’s pretty awesome. He completed three out of a proposed five scenes meant to be Game of Death’s centerpiece, in which he fights opponents with a variety of skills, ranging from nun chucks to slam dunking skulls (in the case of Abdul-Jabbar). These were meant to showcase Lee’s philosophy of “no way as way,” a belief that fighters must be fluid and not rely exclusively on any one style. This sort of comes across during the Abdul-Jabbar scene, but it mostly gets lost in Game of Death’s parade of stupid Hollywood ideas. Yeah, the last 15 minutes are pretty great, but everything leading up to them reeks of exploitation.

Reflection: No really, they tried taping Lee’s face over someone else’s body and they thought no one would notice. Wow.