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The Important Cinema Club

#60 - That's Brucesploitation! Starring The Real Bruce Lee

The Important Cinema Club

Justin Decloux and Will Sloan

Tv & Film

4.7577 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2017

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

BRUCESPLOITATION refers to the practice on the part of filmmakers hiring Bruce Lee look-alike actors ("Lee-alikes") to star in many imitation martial arts films in order to cash in on Lee's success after his death. Justin and Will discuss Bruce Lee, Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Dragon Lee, Bruce Thai, Bruce Lai, Bruce Leung and all the other great Bruce rip-offs that have graced the silver screen. The Important Cinema Club has a PATREON. For five dollars a month you can get a brand new exclusive episode every week: WWW.PATREON.COM/THEIMPORTANTCINEMACLUB

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, my name's Justin the Kalu, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

0:09.2

And today we're talking about the man, the myth, the legend, Bruce Lee, and Bruce Foytation.

0:15.9

Bruce Lee, Bruce Lie, Bruce La, Dragon, Bruce Lung. Bruce Latt, Bruce K. L. Lee.

0:21.2

Who's to say who's better?

0:22.4

Just Bruce in The Young Dragon?

0:25.1

Also, Bruce Lee, just that name, which was applied to whoever it was who starred in True Game of Death.

0:31.6

And maybe one of them is Bruce Lee that's come back from the grave under a different identity as portrayed and Bruce Lee fights back

0:38.9

from the grave. So we decided to pick this topic because Will has made it clear that you are

0:44.3

a Bruceploitation fanatic. Maybe I should explain what Bruce Poitation is. When Bruce Lee died

0:50.2

in 1973 after making only four feature-length action movies that he starred in.

0:56.2

That left a bit of a box office void, which other people were more than happy to fill.

1:01.4

So for a couple of years there, unscrupulous producers were getting all sorts of Hong Kong bit part actors and stuntmen

1:08.3

and putting them in track suits and turning them into the next

1:11.6

Bruce Lee. So it's a vast genre, like dozens and dozens of these films. Probably like

1:18.3

more than a hundred of these films. Probably, yeah. And they all usually have Bruce Lee dot, dot, dot,

1:23.8

and the Iron Finger, the Invincible. They all start with his name. Yeah. Or their variations of other Bruce Lee film. Enter the game of death. Enter three dragons, fist of fury, two, like new fist of fury, lots of stuff like that. Fist of fear, touch of death. One of my favorites. But before we get to that section of movie history, let's talk about Bruce Lee himself.

1:45.5

Now, I got to be honest that when I was a kid, Bruce Lee had no place in my cinema watching history.

1:51.7

Interesting. Why is that?

1:52.6

I remember very vividly when my father rented Enter the Dragon and Blade Runner, these two VHSs, and he said, these are important films that we're

2:01.0

going to watch together.

2:02.0

And the only thing that stuck out of my mind for Enter the Dragon was that Bruce Lee

2:06.7

punched some people and killed other people.

...

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