Black Dragon's Revenge (1975)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

As martial arts movies go this is a pretty solid offering, hardly original or surprising, but nonetheless offering a pleasing action-boredom ratio (about 5:1 in my view) and plenty of amusing incidental moments – after all, this was made in the mid '70s, where wide-collared shirts and flares were all the rage, where guys wear vivid tanktops and skin-tight t-shirts for all the world to see and where the hero has a huge afro and lamb-chop sideburns bigger than a normal man's hand. Yep, the hero of the piece is the unlikely-monikered Ron Van Clief, a big, brooding kind of hero who displays his admirable martial arts skills in a series of violent punch-ups and show-downs in a range of street locations. The resulting movie is a fitting combination of the blaxploitation and martial arts genres.As is the case with a small handful of films, the low budget actually works in this film's favour, giving it a street vibe of sweaty realism missing in bigger and slicker offerings. Although the Bruce Lee angle of the plot has obviously been tacked on by producers in a hope to sell it to a wider audience (thus adding it to the surprisingly large sub-genre of "made to cash in on his death" Bruce Lee films), the straightforward plot is just an otherwise excuse for a series of fights, battles and open street wars. Despite the ill-defined characters, the inaudible accents (dubbed or not dubbed? that is the question) and the less-than-impressive acting, this is for the most part worth watching. The second half of the film is by far the better, featuring as it does a lot more action than the fairly slow opening, and the excellent climax involves a series of violent showdowns resulting in the death of one or more characters.Watch out for a nasty eye-gouging moment which comes as an unpleasant surprise, and see if you can spot the homosexual subtext between Van Clief and his best "buddy", a guy who closely resembles Jools Holland and who spends most of his time hanging around half-naked with his pal. The ante is upped for the film's finale, in which a nasty snake woman lobs a venomous adder at the good guys. The final one-on-one fight is actually very well choreographed, taking place on a lonely beach and very exciting with it. But for the most part this film just offers straightforward martial arts action – not great but definitely better than average and that means its not bad at all.

I saw this as a part of THE RON VAN CLIEF/CLEEF COLLECTION, which also has WAY OF THE BLACK DRAGON included. DEATH OF BRUCE LEE is absolutely hysterical in terms of its cruddy presentation. The print used on the DVD seems to be close to the definition of "worst imaginable." As wrecked as possible while still telling some semblance of story and having images accompanied by sound --- barely. It is filthy, scratched, faded, littered with brutal jumpcuts, and at some point was transferred over to video, which is what was used for this DVD. You can see tape damage rolling in some scenes! On top of all of this is the spastic, nauseating panning & scanning throughout. The operator was REALLY INTO IT and whips his lens all over the original frame, often LOSING TRACK of characters, or unsure of where to focus, especially during conversations when a character unexpectedly begins speaking and the lens bangs over to frame right only to jar suddenly back left to capture the response (often too late). The panner also exhibits moments of squeamishness and will often pan AWAY from a moment of violence on screen! The print's audio track was also at some point clumsily edited to exclude all spoken references to "Bruce Lee," resulting in jarring jumps in dialogue, bad grammar, and general plot confusion. All the characters seem to be investigating the death of "Bruce," or "Him." It is almost impossible to tell if the film was well-made to begin with. I somehow doubt it, if the corny cackling villains and absurd zooms in-and-out are any indication. But the cast, especially the 2 male leads, are magnetic and charming, and super cool. This is the first "Ron Van Clief" (spelled "Cliff" in the credits and "Cleef" on the box art!) film I've ever seen, and it makes me wonder why he is not more famous; he's a cool dude who looks like he could break me in half. He's fast and HUGE and dresses like a pimp crossed with Hunter Thompson. His fight scenes and honestly his mere presence light up the screen and demand attention. His final confrontation with the bad guy was truly remarkable and savage. The fact that the film's merits can survive the ravages of abuse and technician interference noted above should be compelling evidence enough to give it a shot if this is the kind of thing you like.

Ace martial arts champion Ron Van Clief is paid $100,000 dollars by some rich guy to find out exactly how the legendary Bruce Lee died. Fellow karate champ Charles Bonet, the star of the hilariously horrible cheapie "Death Promise," helps Van Clief out. Moreover, several other folks also investigate Lee's death. Of course, a bunch of evil people lead by a wicked bald guy try to stop our heroes. Director Chin-Ku Lu maintains a constant snappy pace throughout and stages the copious exciting fight scenes with a reasonable amount of flair. The villains are a truly mean and hateful bunch of no-count individuals; my favorite was the nasty lady who brandishes poisonous snakes. Van Clief's likable and charismatic presence rates as another plus; the engaging chemistry between Van Clief and Bonet really keeps the picture humming. The fairly polished cinematography, a generous sprinkling of brutal violence, the urgent, driving, wildly dramatic score, and the inevitable amusingly cruddy dubbing are among the other goodies to be relished in this hugely enjoyable chopsocky exploitation outing.

This movie was one of many to supposedly offer theories as to the mysterious death of the ultimate kung-fu superstar Bruce Lee, and undoubtedly for him just another reason to roll over in his grave.This movie contains a popular theory that Lee was killed by greedy film producers, and from there the film is simply a springboard for countless fight scenes with then rising Kung-Fu hero Ron Van Clief (The Black Dragon)Boring after awhile, but entertaining in the nostalgic sense which envokes memories of all the wild conspiracy theories surrounding Lee's death at the time, and of all the martial arts hopefuls who wished, in vain, to fill Lee's shoes in the movies.