ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE

Enter the Clones of Bruce (director David Gregory, 2023) is a fascinating documentary about the Bruce Lee clones that erupted in a spate of films after the real Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong in 1973. 

Various martial artists not only from Chinese speaking countries, but also from Korea and Japan were positioned as the new Bruce Lee in what seemed to be an unending stream of low budget kung fu films. It was in effect, a market driven sub-genre in a supply-side film economy because in his time, the real Bruce Lee only made four and a half kung fu films which was obviously insufficient for the huge demand created during his action career and especially after. It was also an exercise in homonyms - Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei for example.

 

Many smaller companies with Bruce Lee clones rushed to fill in the gap. For a while, the studio that discovered Bruce Lee – Golden Harvest – held off on releasing a posthumous Bruce Lee movie but eventually following the tidal wave of clone films, Golden Harvest finally put together and released THE GAME OF DEATH which contains the last sequences that Bruce Lee directed and starred in (the famous ascending fights in the pagoda - which was in Korea - that climaxes in the tournament with the 7 foot two inch tall Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. For linking sequences, Golden Harvest used doubles, matte process images etc. One could debate the wisdom and quality of all that but it’s true that some parts of the film are as cheesy as some of the clone movies. One wonders what the film would look like with today's technology.

 

What we learn from the documentary is somewhat tragic, if not sad. By becoming Bruce Lee clones, these actors sacrificed their own careers as themselves – many of them were good martial artists, and some of them had acting ability in their own right. But the need to survive in an exploitation film industry, and the need in some cases to feed families, led them to make a career being in essence someone else. 

 

A couple of them survived but more often than not, many of them disappeared. So it’s a great credit to this documentary that the Bruce Lee clones are given their due, and they turn out to be a sympathetic group. Of course the Bruce Lee clone tide ebbed once Hong Kong’s Jackie Chan appeared with a more action comedy kung fu style, and China's Jet Li with his wushu style.

Twenty Years Later

"These hands speak"

 

The recent enthusiasm for EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE with its Asian inspirations (and references to Hong Kong cinema of the past) reminds me of the similar widespread embrace of films that normally don’t make it to the mainstream, that greeted CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON which was released in 2000 after a runaway success at the Cannes Film Festival and then Oscars.

Although I admire the work of the directors and the impact of the two films, I have less enthusiasm for either of them. The motivation of each film seems weak in the context of their pedigrees and in relation to their varied sources – King Hu, Li Hanxiang, Chau Sing-chi, Hung Kam-bo et al. The insertion of a character driven melodrama into the Matrix-style cyclonic action of CTHD veers on the mechanical unlike say a Chor Yuen film like THE SENTIMENTAL SWORDSMAN where the point of the character is to carry the action not emotion. Similarly with EEAAO, which is almost a text book demonstration of the “montage of distractions,” showy without point, and more important lacking the surprising unconscious of  incongruous and abrupt changes in personality in a movie like Stephen Chow's KING OF COMEDY !999). Simply put, EEAAO seems to me the product of deliberate eccentricity, not a true mise-en-scene of creative freedom.

 

But what is impressive throughout all of these two films, no matter how one sees them, is the presence of Michelle Yeoh. The measure of time is seen in the grace of her movements, the inscription of her face. It is in effect, timeless in its expression and gravity. Michelle Yeoh confirms that she is an actress for the cinema, she defies time as much as she defies gravity.

Already in CTHD she is the aging veteran, living in the Jianghu world that is not too different from the Western – there is always someone ready to defeat you for your position as top dog. The question is not if, and not even when, but HOW. Zhang Ziyi’s (CG-ized) skill in the film as she sprints over rooftops is the signifier of a new world where innovation will displace old school practices. I think this is a question that Wong Kar-wai grapples with in the underrated THE GRANDMASTER where one could contemplate and speculate what that film would have been like with Michelle Yeoh instead of Zhang Ziyi.   

 

PARANOIAC PSYCHO

Hammer studios in the UK are best known for their horror films especially with directors like Terence Fisher and stars like Peter Cushing. 

PARANOIAC made in 1963 by cinematographer Freddie Francis is shot in black and white and features an upcoming actor Oliver Reed. 

Reed's brother died in his teens but a villager who is also the son of the village lawyer and therefore has access to a range of secrets and wills - has found a lookalike of the brother whom he uses to claim an inheritance. 

But the plan runs up against Oliver Reed (the surviving brother and therefore legal heir), his older aunt (who has a thing about Reed), and the sister who thinks she is going mad when she first sees the lookalike. Reed himself is mad and careens his Jag around the family mansion's well manicured driveway. 

The movie's horror mechanism is above average though not exceptional. It's more interesting for its reflection of the impact of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO which had been recently released by the time of PARANOIAC's production (the title alone should give some clue to its debt to Hitchcock's ground breaking movie). 

The essential elements are there - the dead brother preserved (badly) in the basement as a reference to the mother in PSYCHO; a double undercurrent of incest - the aunt lusts after her nephew, the lookalike brother falls in love with the sister; and most notably, Reed as a beefy psychopathic version of Anthony Perkins. 

Reed however plays it without the subtle creepiness of the original and more like a volatile and raging libertine who broods and roars in equal proportions. 

As with all comparisons, the re-interpretation and "edits" from the original are key. The transformation of the closeted Perkins to campy Reed is a market choice - a more blustery pervert could better impress the audience. 

The omission of stuffed animals and voyeurism is notable. The former is understandable but the latter - the scopophilic gaze that is central to PSYCHO - is puzzling until one realises that Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM released around the same time as PSYCHO, was panned and invoked the British censor's wrath.

There were probably more films around the world that were influenced by PSYCHO. Maybe they constitute a simmering sub-genre like the Bruce Lee clone films, that will at some point erupt!