Bruce Lee, the man who defined martial arts for Western audiences, died unexpectedly more than 50 years ago. His untimely passing shook the world. At the time, the film industry had just started to sink its teeth into the new action paradigm Lee had built in a few short years. His death didn’t change that: Hong Kong cinema would continue to put out martial arts films and Western audiences would continue to eat them up. What his death did change was that, well, Bruce Lee was gone. Forever. To many, he was the face of kung fu. Without him, what was there?
It took mere months for filmmakers worldwide to pillage Lee’s legend and memory for easily marketable knockoff films that promised audiences immortality for their dearly departed star. Bruceploitation, as it’s known, starred actors brought in to imitate the late Lee’s mannerisms, playing him in biographic contexts but also in a mythological sense. These actors became stars of sorts in their own right, at least among fans. Enough films were released to form a substantial sub-genre of kung fu cinema in its own right. Unethical? Indisputably. Legally actionable? Rarely. Fascinating? Extremely.
Enter the Clones of Bruce, a new documentary directed by David Gregory, is a thorough primer into the Bruceploitation craze and the film industry that spawned it. Gregory and his colleagues dive into the Hong Kong film industry of the 1970s, featuring interviews with filmmaking luminaries, like Godfrey Ho, David Chiang and Sammo Hung, as well as historians like Mike Leeder.
If you’re at all a fan of Hong Kong exploitation cinema, calling Godfrey Ho a “luminary” might turn some heads. Putting aside Ho’s past as a cut-and-paste filmmaker (his name synonymous with the Southeast Asian practice of slicing and dicing two movies together to form something new and often incoherent) he’s also a scholar, and his insight into the Bruceploitation phenomenon provides a grounding context in the first portion of the film, which takes a heavy look at Lee’s cultural effect.
The talking heads support the film’s real meat — substantial interviews with three of the most prominent actors to play the legend: Taiwanese actor Ho Chung-Tao (stage name: Bruce Li), South Korean actor Moon Kyoung-soek (stage name: Dragon Lee), and Burmese performer Bruce Le, each of whom had very different experiences and feelings about their time portraying the silver screen’s most famous fighter in the years after his death. We also get interviews with performers who followed up Lee’s success under their own names, like Angela Mao (who retired decades ago and returns here, happy to share stories) and Ron van Clief (aka The Black Dragon)
It’s worth noting that the Bruceploitation craze wasn’t limited to films: Marvel’s character Shang-Chi, the focus of the 2021 blockbuster Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, came into existence as a straight-up riff on Lee’s character from Enter the Dragon. The original run of Shang-Chi books, written by Doug Moench with art primarily by Paul Gulacy and Mike Zeck, is a crown jewel of the genre, encompassing every possible trope you can find about Lee and his legacy. Shang-Chi is a secret agent, a zen master and a deadly weapon. Essentially nothing of his origin has stayed consistent over the years as Marvel has desperately tried to move past his culturally questionable origins, and it’s a shame: Shang-Chi’s first big-screen outing really could’ve used some of the creative spark seen in even the wildest Bruce Li pictures, if not Lee’s actual films. Shang-Chi isn’t covered in Enter the Clones of Bruce — it has plenty of other things on its plate — but those books were my own introduction to this strange little sub-genre.
Enter the Clones of Bruce is pure pleasure for any fan of 1970s action cinema from Hong Kong or the surrounding countries, but it’s also entertaining enough to serve as an introduction to the vast, off-kilter world of exploitation cinema. No stone goes unturned, and the movie does a damn good job leaving audiences with a whole list of films to hunt down. Back in the day, finding decent copies of these movies would require poorly dubbed VHS copies, often bootlegged. Fortunately, Severin Films (which produced the documentary) is releasing its first volume of Bruceploitation films this summer. That set contains many of the most famous works in the genre. This particular film serves as the first disc in that set. Until its release, Enter the Clones of Bruce will play as part of a road show at Alamo Drafthouse locations nationwide. If you’re the least bit curious, check it out.