Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1980)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Just perfect...

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Outside of NYC's Madison Square Garden, Adolph Caesar is told by karate expert Aaron Banks that Bruce Lee was killed by a Touch of Death. Adolph is covering the World Karate Championship inside the Garden and Bruce Lee's successor could be anoited. He is joined by Fred Williamson who is constantly being mistaken for Harry Belafonte. Using old film scenes, Adolph recount Bruce Lee's life. There are so many things wrong with this movie. It borders on being disrespectful to the dead. That's saying alot with so many Bruceploitation films floating around taking advantage of his name. This one has multiple issues. First, Bruce's dubbed voice sound foreign to the man. It sounds wrong when the man actually spoke perfect english. They obviously needed the dubbing to change some of the dialogue but they could have used a better impersonator. Second, the disrespect comes from the Touch of Death. If the movie insists on doing a conspiracy theory about his cause of death, the movie should probably drop the faux documentary production and stay solidly in fiction territory. Third, there is a constant confusion between Japanese and Chinese. While Bruce competed against other fighting styles, he was never dismissive of their cultures and he certainly never confused them. It's insulting to say the least. Lastly, the middle of the film uses scenes from other movie to portray Bruce Lee's early years and his family origins. It is a complete failure of confusion. Again there is bad dubbing. I don't follow the chaotic filmmaking. The only positive is seeing footage of a young Bruce Lee although having another guy play Bruce playing Green Hornet's Kato is a meta mind bend. I'm guessing that they couldn't license any Green Hornet footage. Despite the chaos and the incompetence, these are people who are actual friends and fans of Bruce. That is its only saving grace. They may be bad at making movies but their admiration of Bruce is never in doubt.

Where to begin with this one? It's so bad, so unintentionally hilarious, in so many ways, that I am almost paralyzed with indecision about what to address first, and how to keep this review under 1000 words. OK, I know. The real problem with this film is that the writer and director were apparently on acid when they put this together. It's just a mess. Several real life celebrities play themselves; a couple of minor martial art luminaries get to act out their Bruce Lee fantasies; there's some archival footage from an early Chinese soap opera where a young Lee played a supporting part; this is mixed incoherently in with footage swiped from an old time Chop Sockey film, claiming that this footage is the back story of his "grandfather"(????). There's a Madison Square "title bout" to determine who gets to be Lee's successor (or sometimes his "title', despite the fact that Lee didn't compete in tournaments after his movie career took off,and never had a "title" that I knew about, and his "successors", if any, would be members of his Jeet Kune Do training group....none of whom appear in this film) There's several badly mangled pieces of Lee interview footage where someone dubs over Lee's actual words so it looks like Aaron Banks (or the TV announcer)is interviewing him. BTW, the dubbed speeches use the terms "karate" and "kung fu" interchangeably,and it's obvious that whoever wrote and dubbed the footage didn't know the difference.There are other extremely odd choices. Fred Williamson is in here for a bit, playing himself, and the movie wastes about 10 minutes following him as he oversleeps, tries to catch a taxi, and verbally spars with the announcer (who gives him a lift to the Square). Ron Van Clief appears (as himself) in an interview while he works out (which sort of makes sense) and then rescues a couple joggers from a gang of thugs on HIS way to the Garden (apparently the interview camera followed him out of the gym). Aaron Banks (in real life a promoter and sometime karate competitor) babbles on about the "death touch" and then demonstrates it for the camera (anyone with a smidgen of martial arts background will recognize what Banks is doing as a variant of Lee's "one inch punch", NOT a "death touch".) Some guy dresses up in a Kato costume and also rescues some girls by beating up a some thugs, and the inclusion of this footage makes so sense whatsoever in terms of the story or the milieu. Add did I mention the actual bouts? At one point one the competitors rips the eyes out of another one! I'm pretty sure that counts as a foul and a disqualification under most events that would occur at Madison Square - not to mention prison time for aggravated assault and a million dollar lawsuit. It just goes on and on like this; nothing connects to anything else, and the feeble "framing device" of the TV interviews doesn't even begin to make up for the weird stuff the producers just made up. If Bruce Lee had come back from the dead, the first thing he would have done would be to pulverize the director and producers responsible for this movie. I am very surprised that his family and estate didn't sue. The only reason to see this is a) the footage of the soap opera with the adolescent Bruce (which I had never seen before) and b)to see just how bad an exploitation movie can get.

Only in the presence of this movie can Gigli and Glitter be called cinematic masterpieces without a trace of irony or sarcasm. When they have a karate tournament (of which only the "finals" are shown) to succeed Bruce Lee culminate in a boxing match with a few kicks thrown in, you know God Himself will have a hard time elevating this movie from the bowels of hell to putrid. Over and above the relative absence of martial arts, there was barely a hint of a plot, what plot existed was completely disjointed, and there was abysmal acting (if that's what you want to call it), Aaron Banks' scenes with Bruce Lee, where they took turns telling each other how great they are (shoot me now), didn't even look close to being in the same room. After watching this movie, if I didn't know better, I would've thought Bruce Lee had been forced to an advance screening and applied the Touch of Death to himself.If I had to bring up pluses for the movie, it would have to be the exhibitions of some of the true martial artists. The old chop-socky film that introduced Bruce Lee's grandfather in between Lee arguing with his dad over steak (?!) was funny in the sense of watching someone get repeated hit in the groin. It featured a little person and a guy that uses an abacus as a weapon. And if this movie wanted to be the worst ever, it succeeded admirably. If you want a new appreciation on any movie (including Santa with Muscles and Napoleon Dynamite), watch Fist of Fury, Touch of Death. All others, avoid.

In the hype for a big karate championship bout between Louis Neglia and John "Cyclone" Flood at Madison Square Garden, a TV Anchorman named Adolph Caesar tries to tie the match into the controversy stirred up with regards to the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Bruce Lee and whether or not this karate match-up will crown his successor.I gave this a rating of 4, one point each for the ways in which this succeeded in entertaining me. Point # 1 was awarded for the karate championship match itself which was exciting if a little too short-lived. Point # 2 was for the archival footage featuring Bruce Lee which was cool to see even if it was horrendously dubbed. Point # 3 was for the footage taken from the "Samurai" film which amused me with its utter lack of convincing effects combined with some otherwise intense and gory fight scenes. Point # 4 was for this film's sheer audaciousness as it preposterously tries to tie itself and a straightforward karate match at Madison Square Garden to the enduring legacy left behind by Bruce Lee succeeding in making me laugh and shake my head in utter amazement at this ludicrous presentation unfolded before my eyes.