A martial arts film star named Billy Lo who refuses to fight for gangsters is nearly assassinated, but returns for revenge.

Game of Death is the ultimate Bruceploitation film. Golden Harvest took fight footage Bruce Lee had shot for the uncompleted film before his untimely demise and shot a new movie around it with Enter the Dragon helmer Robert Clouse directing. They even got the great John Barry (Goldfinger, The Lion in Winter) to compose a decent score. But that’s not all. They also snagged former Bruce Lee student Dan Inosanto who is featured in the original footage and former co-star Robert Wall (Way of the Dragon) to take part in the new production. Finally, Sammo Hung was called upon to co-star and choreograph the new action scenes with regular HK stunt actors like Yuen Biao, Casanova Wong, Yuen Wah, and Whang Ing-sik contributing. What is most striking about this film is the lengths to which the producers went in order get Bruce into new footage. They used several doubles, edited and dubbed archival footage, had the character’s face disfigured in the story, and even planted an amateurish static picture of Lee over a live actor’s face!

The finished Game of Death no doubt bears little resemblance to Lee’s vision for the film. From what is known about the footage he shot before starting Enter the Dragon and notes related to it, Lee had intended to make a martial arts film that would explain his philosophy of, “no way as way.” For the film’s epic finale, Lee takes on fighters of various martial arts styles as he ascends a pagoda’s many levels. His friend and student, former professional basketball star, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the final adversary in what has become one of the most famous screen fights in history. Rather than exulting in one supreme technique, Bruce adapts to each fighter’s style in order to exploit their weaknesses. This is the original 40-minute footage that exists today and can be seen more or less complete in the 2002 documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey.

Now for the Game of Death as it was released in 1978. The film starts with a cool James Bond-like montage for the opening credits with Barry’s thematic music attached. Then the film begins and everything goes downhill. The producers do pretty much everything imaginable to exploit Bruce. They create a story about a martial arts film star named Billy Lo being harassed by gangsters who want him to fight professionally for them. Real scenes from Way of the Dragon and Fist of Fury are interspersed with new shots of film crews and doubles on set. After several tussles with the gangsters, they finally decide to get rid of him. In an eerie scene that foreshadows the real death of Lee’s son Brandon, Billy is shot on set by a bullet that was supposed to be a blank. He recovers, but for his protection Billy is declared dead and real scenes of fans mourning Bruce are tossed in. The film really stalls here for a while as the focus shifts to his girlfriend (Colleen Camp) who goes slightly insane and plots to kill the gangsters. Having been conveniently shot in face, Billy’s slightly different appearance is explained. But this doesn’t make any sense because the character simply dons elaborate make up to infiltrate the gang in Macau. His face also continues to be obscured by dark lighting, sunglasses, and a motorcycle helmet until we finally reach the actual Bruce Lee footage from Game of Death nearly 80 minutes in.

The real Bruce Lee footage is incredible and features excellent fighting. Lee’s nunchaku duel with Dan is a treat while the Bruce versus Kareem match is more gimmicky, but definitely memorable. The rest is filled by doubles, including Yuen Biao, who cannot hope to recreate Lee’s speed or grace. They ape his movements and mannerisms and some of choreography isn’t bad at all. Sammo is a huge fan of Lee who also fought him onscreen in the opening to Enter the Dragon. It seems reasonable that the producers would get Sammo involved, but it’s certainly not his best work. In fact, he pays much better homage to Bruce in the humorous Enter the Fat Dragon. There is also a motorcycle brawl with some good stunt work (and extremely thin walls). The featured attraction apart from Lee’s real fighting is a ring match between Robert Wall and Sammo Hung. But I take big exception to a few scenes. Early on, Billy gets whipped twice by mere thugs and I seriously doubt Lee would have let himself be represented in such a way. Lee was never really the underdog in his films, rather a predator waiting to be unleashed.

Game of the Death probably would have been a classic had Bruce lived to complete it. Unfortunately that task unnecessarily fell into lesser hands. What remains is mildly entertaining, but still a cheap bastardization of Lee’s work and his legacy that was created to profit from his popularity. Now that Lee’s original footage has been released in a more complete and unmolested form (see Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey) there is less reason to see this hack job.

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