GAME OF DEATH (1978) One-and-a-half stars
After Bruce Lee’s death in 1973, a new genre of exploitation films came into existence, “Bruceploitation.”

Actors in this genre included Bruce Li, Bronson Lee (combining two action stars), Bruce Lai, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei, Bruce Lie, Bruce Liang, Saro Lee, Bruce Ly, Bruce Thai, Bruce K.L. Lea, Brute Lee, Myron Bruce Lee, Lee Bruce, and Dragon Lee, while Jackie Chan was touted as the next Bruce Lee until he found his own groove with SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW and DRUNKEN MASTER (both 1978).

“Bruceploitation” films often included some variant of “Enter,” “Fist,” “Fury,” “Dragon,” and “New” in their titles. BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE, that’s my favorite title and VHS cover art.

The films were nearly all garbage.

That leads us to GAME OF DEATH.

Lee started filming GAME OF DEATH after WAY OF THE DRAGON and he finished a few dazzling fight sequences, including the most famous one against NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a matchup pitting the 5-foot-7 Lee and 7-2 Abdul-Jabbar. GAME OF DEATH had all the makings of Lee’s masterwork.

Alas, it never came to be.

Lee stopped filming GAME OF DEATH to go make ENTER THE DRAGON, the film that helped break martial arts films in the international market.

Unfortunately, Lee died on July 20, shortly before the release of ENTER THE DRAGON, and he never completed GAME OF DEATH.

A few years later, director Robert Clouse built a theatrical version of GAME OF DEATH around Lee’s three fight scenes (totaling 11 minutes), with all sorts of subterfuge used to “cover” for the fact Lee died and left a major hole in the production. Clouse, under the pseudonym Jan Spears with Raymond Chow, concocted an entirely different plot leading up to the fights and changed Lee’s character from “Hai Tien” to “Billy Lo.” Amazingly enough, two former Academy Award winners found their way into the cast, Dean Jagger (in his penultimate theatrical film) and Gig Young (in his final film).

This insulting subterfuge includes multiple Lee stand-ins who hide behind shades for the majority of the movie, stock footage beginning with Lee’s fight scene from WAY OF THE DRAGON against Chuck Norris, a superimposed towel over stock footage, a cardboard cutout, cuts to “fake” Bruce from “real” Bruce, and finally footage from Lee’s actual funeral.

You can differentiate stock footage from the body of the movie, because of its grainy quality.

Abdul-Jabbar even refused to participate in the reshoot and so they filled the “Hakim” part with somebody who does not even closely resemble the basketball star.

In other words, none of it’s well done.

Not that it should have been done at all.

Heart of the Matter: The 11 minutes of the real Lee are the only reason GAME OF DEATH gets more than one star for a rating and these scenes are the only reasons for watching. Lee deserved better, a lot better, than a cynical slapdash exploitation film like the first 80 minutes directed by Clouse.

In those 11 minutes, however, we remember what a dynamo Lee truly was, a marvel of modern man. Just dazzling.

Thankfully, after technological advances, viewers can skip all the bullshit and cue up the good parts, as Phil Hartman’s Telly Savalas said (about different movies, lol, but yeah, we don’t have time to fast-forward).

Still, it’s tempting to speculate what could have been.

They could have taken all of Lee’s completed footage and built around it with interviews from Lee himself, Norris, Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Wall, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, et cetera. Or just used only the completed footage.

Nearly anything would have been superior to what they did for the first 80 minutes in GAME OF DEATH.