The Imitators of Bruce Lee and the Bruceploitaion movies
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| Bruce Lee |
So many new "Bruce Lees" appeared, some looked a little like him others not at all they simply copied his style and his movements. They were given names that sounded similar to Bruce Lee such as Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei, Bruce Leung, Bruce Ly, Bruce Thai, Bruce Pak, Bruce Chen, Bruce Lai. The marketing was usually misleading, advertising them as genuine Bruce Lee films and confusing the public who wanted to see Bruce Lee in more films and learn about his life.
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| Bruce and the Iron Finger |
They presented the protagonist as the real and true successor of Bruce Lee and many times better, stronger and faster. The themes of the movies are about Bruce Lee's life that usually had nothing to do with his real life, the loves he supposedly had, the battles he fought. The hero is often Bruce Lee himself or a hero interpreted by Bruce Lee and other times a student or friend of his who is looking to find the causes of his death and his killers in order to take revenge.
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Bruce Li
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Several films are remakes or sequels to his films while in many films the cases and eras have nothing to do with Bruce Lee other than the title. The protagonists imitate the movements, grimaces and screams of Bruce Lee, wear the same clothes, sunglasses, have the same scratches on the body and face from blows they have received and the scenes copy scenes from his films.
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| Dragon Lee / Bruce Lei |
These films were produced mainly from Hong Kong, Taiwan and America, their budget in most films was low and quality was poor, they dominated for a whole decade from 1974 to 1984 where they slowly started to dwindle. The number of these films is huge. For many film critics and experts, fans, friends and associates of the real Bruce Lee, these films were considered, in addition to "trash", offensive and disrespectful to his memory, nevertheless these films were a huge success worldwide, gained many fans and were quite entertaining. The paradox is that although these productions received huge criticism we notice that several of Bruce Lee's entourage were involved such as Danny Inosanto, Bolo Yeung, Nora Miao, Wong Shun Lung, Shek Kien, Lo Lieh, John Benn, Carter Wong, Chan Wai Man. Betty Ting Pei.
There are basically four types of Bruceploitation. The first category includes films that purport to present biographical elements of Bruce Lee's life.
Movies in this category are:
Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story (1974) with Bruce Li
Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth (1976) with Bruce Li
Bruce Lee and I (1976) with Li Hsiu Hsien (Danny Lee)
Bruce Lee's Secret (1976) with Bruce Li
The Dragon Lives (1977) with Bruce Li
Bruce - King of Kung Fu (1980) with Bruce Le
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| The Big Boss part 2 |
The second category includes films that attempt to continue the character played by Bruce Lee in his five films. These films are usually remakes or sequels to the five Bruce Lee films.
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| Bruce's Fingers aka Bruce's Deadly Fingers |
Movies in this category are:
Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death (1975) with Bruce Li
The Big Boss Part 2 (1976) with Lo Lieh
Fist of Fury 2 (1977) with Bruce Li
Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu (1977) with Bruce Le
Fist of Fury 3 (1978) with Bruce Le
Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu (1978) with Bruce Le
Enter the Game of Death (1978) with Bruce Le
Return of Fist of Fury (1978) with Bruce Pak
The True Game of Death (1979) with Bruce Hsao Lung
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| Dragon Bruce Lee part 2 |
The third genre includes films where the character of the film is a student or friend or fan of Bruce Lee who is shocked by his death and tries to investigate the causes of his death, which according to the scripts has been murdered by some crime syndicates.
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| Bruce's Fingers aka Bruce's Deadly Fingers |
Movies in this category are:
Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976) with Bruce Li
Bruce's Fingers (1976) with Bruce Le
Bruce Lee, We Miss You (1977) with Bruce Li
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| Bruce and the Iron Finger |
The fourth category includes films where the plot of the film has nothing to do with Bruce Lee and the character who looks like Bruce Lee is a fighter or a policeman, but there are scenes sometimes strongly and sometimes less strongly that copy fight scenes from the Bruce Lee movies. In several of these films the title of the film alone has something to do with Bruce Lee.
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| Soul Brothers of Kung Fu |
Movies in this category are:
Return of Bruce (1977) with Bruce Le
Bruce Lee in New Guinea (1977) with Bruce Li
Dynamo (1978) with Bruce Li
Deadly Strike (1978) with Bruce Li
Edge of Fury (1978) with Bruce Li
Fists of Bruce Lee (1978) with Bruce Li
Soul Brothers of Kung Fu (1978) with Bruce Li
Blind Fist of Bruce (1979) with Bruce Li
Bruce The Super Hero (1979) with Bruce Le
Bruce and the Iron Finger (1979) with Bruce Li
Challenge of the Tiger (1980) with Bruce Le
Bruce Strikes Back (1982) with Bruce Le
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| Return of Bruce |
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| New Fist of Fury |
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| Return of Red Tiger |
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| Golden Dragon, Silver Snake |
It was common for the posters of these films to feature Bruce Lee as well as for the same film to be re-released with a different title.
Although the Bruce Lee movies were low-budget, they had a huge impact on the public, even among die-hard Bruce Lee fans, perhaps because his four films were too few and the public was hungry to see more of Bruce Lee in the film. screen. The term bruceploitation was coined many years later since they were playing in cinemas all over the world. Bruce Lee impersonators are also often referred to as Bruce Lee clones, this term may have originated from the movie "The Clones of Bruce Lee" with: Dragon Lee, Bruce Le, Bruce Lai and Bruce Thai.
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Strange as it may seem, in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the bruceploitation subgenre of martial arts films. On the internet one can easily see information about these movies. Interest is growing, and there are serious researchers and collectors who either collect films on VHS, DVD, 35mm film, posters, photographs, or try to shed light on how these films came to be or even justify the existence of these films.
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Some brave people are trying to track down some of the clones for interviews and some even braver ones are making valiant efforts to save the films because the 35mm films are old enough and have been altered by time, with proper processing to bring back the color. of the image and sound, add any cut scenes and transfer them to BLU RAY discs with the quality that befits these now collectible films.
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