Enter The Clones OF Bruce

Li Loh
Multipass

Enter The
Clones OF Bruce
Directed by David Gregory
USA 2023 Severin Films
Screened 27 August at FrightFest, London

Directed by David Gregory, one of the managing directors of the wonderful US boutique Blu Ray label Severin Films, Enter The Clones Of Bruce is a documentary look at the many actors who rode the wave of the Brucesploitation genre after Lee’s death in 1973 and the films they starred in. When I originally booked a ticket it was called Enter The Clones Of Bruce Lee but, sometime between then and the screening, the title was shortened to what it is now so, I’ve no idea if that was due to some kind of legal challenge or an aesthetic decision. Whatever reason, however, it’s a pretty fun and informative documentary, for sure.

The film, in its current cut at least, starts off with a lengthy pre-credits sequence which gives us a short history of Bruce Lee from his birth in San Fransisco, his career as a child star in Hong Kong, his rise to fame playing Kato in The Green Hornet TV show and his subsequent career including his death and funeral in 1973, the same year his most famous (in the west) film Enter The Dragon was released.

Other little nuggets of information are also given throughout the documentary but, after this initial sequence, we finally get the opening titles and then, the rest of the documentary follows the onslaught of various Brucesploitation pictures and their little subgenres within what is already a subgenre. It goes from country to country and interviews various Bruce Lee stand ins, who became the central stars of these movies, getting their take on the phenomenon, while simultaneously having a blast with excerpts from some of these movies. Some of these are sadder stories than others and, in the course of the talks with these people as they are now (crosscut with what they were like in their hey-day of the early to late 70s and early 80s), it does come out that, while they were making good money headlining these kinds of pictures (although not nearly what they were worth, by the sounds of it... they were also being somewhat exploited), most of them regret that they had to imitate the mannerisms and fighting styles of Bruce Lee to get the gigs.

Gregory has somewhat ramped up the entertainment factor by providing clips with their ridiculous English dubs and this enhances the unintentional comedy element of some of these movies. I don’t know how much of that was because he just wasn’t able to get the respective native dubs from the countries of origin for each clip or if there were any negative factors regarding this but, either way, it’s a shrewd choice to play these versions and the audience I saw this with at FrightFest were laughing their heads off at some sequences, which are obviously supposed to elicit that response.

There were some surprises here too. For instance, the electrical contraption like an overlarge TENS machine that Bruce Lee used to use to shortcut the hardening of his body sounded terrifying. I think I may have heard about this once as a young ‘un in the 1970s but it sounds pretty awful.

Another big surprise is that, along with some of the Bruce actors of the films such as Bruce Le and Bruce Li, there are also people who were not imitating Bruce such as Bolo Yeung and the main villain from Enter The Dragon, Kien Shih, who were also, in some ways (especially in the case of Bolo), riding that same wave in their own right. Plus, people I never considered to be extensions of the Brucesploitation genre such as the great Jim Kelly, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, are also given substantial shout outs.

I was also intrigued that there were different stages of the phenomenon. Starting off with films where the actors were playing Bruce himself, in varied fictionalised accounts of his life (including, in at least one instance, changing his birth country to China) and then continuing into sequels to the original movies and films where Bruce Lee’s death had to be avenged, etc. There was a great little nugget of a montage that showed one of the titles I’d never heard of which I wish Gregory would have spent more time on, namely Bruce Lee VS Frankenstein (which I’ve now found out also has at least two more titles, Bruce Lee VS Chinese Frankenstein and Bruce Lee VS The Walking Dead).

Still, it’s a really great documentary and, although I can’t figure out why such a film is included at FrightFest (other than by association with the wonderful Severin Films, perhaps), I would say Enter The Clones Of Bruce was one of my favourites of this year’s August Bank Holiday FrightFest and I came away a little wiser than I was before. Especially since I’ve not seen any of these movie although, I strongly suspect that this documentary has been crafted to end up as a disc in a future Severin release of Brucesploitation films (maybe one of this year’s Black Friday titles?) so, depending on the price to import such a thing to us poor UK fans, I might be in luck before the year is done.

Either way, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about this documentary and, if you are a fan of Bruce Lee but have been ignoring the 200 plus movies made in the wake of his death which trade on his ‘brand’, then you might well want to check out this documentary. It’s informative but really fun too.