- The Bruce Lee biography -The Bruceography so to speak- that aims to tell the "true story" of Bruce Lee
- The unofficial sequel or remake (or you could argue official remakes)
- Films that usually only have the connection of having one of Lee's imitators as the main star going under his Bruceploitation name, probably the loosest defined Bruceploitation films.
- The just plain odd!
- The movie that seems to dig up Bruce Lee's corpse then rape it a dozen times.
There's probably a few more and a Bruceploitation film can be more then one of these types of film.
Some of the main imitators included Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lai, Dragon Lee, Bronson Lee, Bruce Chan, Bruce Lei, Bruce Thai and Bruce Lang.
So now for the second week running, I present you another Bruce Li film --- Fist of Fury II, which is the unoffical sequel to the 1972 Bruce Lee original (there is an actual sequel New Fist of Fury, which stars Jackie Chan in his only Bruceploitation film) that either dates from 1976, 1977, 1978 or 1979 (or earlier or later) depending on what source you want to believe.
Anyway for now let's go back to the original Fist of Fury. Fist of Fury is probably my favourite of the Bruce Lee films. Bruce Lee seems to be angry right from the get go and seems to run on rage rather then getting rather, it kind of reminds me of Homer in that Simpsons episode "Dead Putting Society" and there is some great fight scenes in that movie including when he takes that entire class out. I know some people prefer Enter the Dragon but it's Fist of Fury all the way for me.
SPOILER ALERT FOR FIST OF FURY***
With Bruce Lee's character probably dead at the end of Fist of Fury, after all he was dying a flying kick in a bunch of people shooting at him. I tuned into Fist of Fury II unaware of what link (if any???) it would have to the previous movie...
The link is Bruce Li plays the brother of Bruce Lee's character (one character observes he even looks like him, which I'd argue his wrong, Li never looked like Lee), anyway before I get onto the film, something I noticed about the cover --- and actually was nothing to do with the Bruce Lee picture --- is Bruce Li and his nunchucks, well Bruci Li and nunchuck ends, or his he just holding too little sticks, the mystery continues to this day...
Bruce Li and the case of missing Nunchuck chain...
Anyway Fist of Fury II, starts of with the funeral of Bruce Lee and the apparent suicide of Nora Miao's character from FOF, I say apparent suicide of her character, because it's meant to be her but you never see her face --- more then likely they couldn't afford her fee --- and it as the Japanese (who are constantly referred to as the Japs in this movie) bullying and taking over Lee's school as their place of residence, about 20 minutes in Li shows up at his brother's grave then everybody goes around acting like he's as good as fighter as his brother.
It is similar to Fist of Fury in some ways. The Japanese opressing the Chinese, the fights done in retalation of each other, and the fights are good, not superb, there are a lot of fights and they well choregraphed but Li is clearly not even in the same league as far as Lee goes.
I'd heard some criticism of the final fight that it was a let down, but I liked it, it had a good series of events where the bad guy was clearly getting the better, you could almost feel, especially with how the original ending that Li could get beat.
Overall, you could argue that this isn't true Bruceploitation, because many people have their own definition - I prefer to define it as any film that tried to cash in on Bruce Lee, which I feel this was made to - I recommend this to 70s kung fu fans, not just Bruceploitation fans cause the fights are pretty good and the story carries fairly well.
Probably have a new Bruceploitation Corner up around Christmas or New Year, unless something comes my way before then.
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