After a recent number of challenges, Billy Lo (Bruce Lee) and his friend Chin Ku (Huong Cheng Li) begin to suspect that someone wants them dead. Billy later visits his younger brother Bobby (Tong Lung), who is studying with Billy's former teacher, and leaves him a book on Jeet Kune Do. Chin is soon killed and Billy goes to Japan to find his stepdaughter, May. May tells him that Chin had visited just before his death, and left a film for her. They are suddenly attacked, but Billy manages to escape with the film.
A few days later Billy attends Chin's funeral, where he is turned away from viewing the body. A helicopter arrives during the burial and steals the coffin away. Trying to prevent the theft, Billy is carried up with the casket but falls to his death. Bobby Lo is told of Billy's death by their father, who tells him to find a man named Sherman Lan and avenge his brother. Sherman gives him the film, which shows Chin Ku at the Palace of Death. The Palace of Death is run by a crazed martial arts expert by the name of Lewis (Roy Horan). Any challenger who fails to defeat Lewis is fed to his pack of lions. Bobby decides to meet Lewis, who is impressed with Bobby's abilities. While investigating the Palace, Bobby is attacked by a masked man. Then he informs Lewis that someone is trying to kill him. Later that night, a woman is sent to Bobby's room to seduce and assassinate him. When she fails, one of Lewis' lions attacks Bobby. During the fight, the masked man appears and kills Lewis.
Game of Death scaricare film
Well, I've always loved all things trashy, and GAME OF DEATH II is undoubtedly trash. A well-made piece of trash perhaps, but trash all the same. Now, it's rather incredible that Bruce Lee was still making movies nine years after his death, and I was rather incredulous as to how a sequel to GAME OF DEATH could have been produced. In the first film they were struggling with unbelievable doubles and inserting left-over footage from Lee's unfilmed work but just about managed to create a believable (and very popular - hence the sequel) movie.Thankfully GAME OF DEATH II dispenses with the Lee character around halfway through, and I say thankfully because the efforts to which the makers of this movie go to convince us that Bruce Lee has a starring role are incredible and in vain. They even resort to footage of Lee as a child in one segment (a flashback)! The greenhouse fight from the previous movie is reused as are lots of close-ups of Lee's face and the back of a double again. In one scene we see an abbot in a yellow robe in (newly filmed) scenes for this movie, in the next an abbot in an orange robe is acting with Lee from a previous film (ENTER THE DRAGON)! Supposedly they're the same person although the actor and clothes are completely different. You'll have to see it to believe.The reason I love this movie is all the incredible stuff going on in it. It's like the makers weren't even trying to make a realistic film. For instance, at the funeral of his martial arts master, Lee sees a helicopter come down with a cage to steal the coffin! After jumping on to the cage he is shot with a poisoned dart and plummets to his death. Just one incredible scene out of many. Of course this also means we get to see footage of his funeral once again, dragged out of the cupboard since its last airing. At last the use of stock footage is finally over.Enter the film's real hero, Tong Lung. Apart from having an amusing name, Lung lacks Lee's natural charisma but more than makes up for this in his athletic fight scenes which are very enjoyable to watch. The first half of the film has some street fights and assassin attacks which are fairly typical for the genre. The second half sees Lung travelling to a remote palace where he befriends a westerner known as Lewis. Lewis is forever being challenged by other fighters (must get tiring...) and feeds their bodies to his pet lions. Well, one night, Lung is seduced by a naked woman who turns out to be an assassin with a poisoned needle in her ring. At the same time one of the lions jumps through the window to attack and Lung has to fight it. Great stuff.Meanwhile, Lewis is violently murdered by being hanged and stabbed and Lung believes his scarred, one-armed servant is responsible. At around the hour mark he travels to the 'Tower of Death' and from then on the film just becomes constant action, one long martial arts fight after another. After fighting and beating all of the guards above ground (including the servant who has two arms after all - don't ask), Lung ventures into the secret underground lair where he takes part in some fantastic kung fu fighting. After violently beating a room full of trained killers by breaking their bones (cue one scene which rips off ENTER THE DRAGON by having Lung brutally kill a bad guy then pulling a twisted face like Lee did) Lung goes on to fight a warrior credited as "Wildman" dressed in leopard skins (!), then has to traverse a corridor with an electrified floor, battle a hulking guard in orange robe, and finally take on the chief villain, a drug runner who faked his own death in order to get Interpol off his back! I admit it, the film has little plot and is identical to lots of other '70s kung fu movies. What I loved were the well-choreographed martial arts fights with lots of impossibly fast movies and violent bone-crunching action (one enemy is dispatched by having his legs cracked!). The film lovingly slows down at one point to watch Lung jumping through the air, kicking through a huge crate to smash a man's face in. You wouldn't get that in a western film. I love the setting of the computerised underground lair and the way that the fights take place in one interesting setting after another. I like the cheesy dubbing with unrealistic British accents and the trite dialogue the actors are given. If you're looking for a wealth of martial-arts action and not a lot else then I recommend that you give this film a try, as for me it was an unexpected surprise and even more enjoyable than the first!
Although this is best viewed as a curiosity piece, it still manages to pack in some fun martial arts fights during the running time - most of which take place within the last twenty minutes. Up until then, the "entertainment" comes from watching a poor double of Lee trying to hide his face from the camera in any way possible (wearing hats, helmets, huge dark sunglasses, and a fake beard), scenes which are occasionally interspersed with poor stock footage and clips of Lee from other movies to make it look as it he is in the film...at one point his face being pasted onto another actor!Inevitably, due to the fact that Lee was dead before this film was made and that they had to base the story around 11 minutes of fights he had previously filmed, it's a muddled and disjointed affair, but considering what they were up against, I think the editing guys did a fairly good job with this. The best that they could have, at least. Robert Clouse (who had already made his mark with ENTER THE DRAGON) isn't a particularly good director, but he keeps the action flowing smoothly and ensues that things never get boring.Kicking off with some neat self-referencing (Lee fights a young Chuck Norris, in a scene actually filmed for an earlier movie of his yet ripped off here), we are immediately introduced to a diverse group of multi-cultural bad guys for Lee to fight. Yes, the plot is simplistic in the extreme and consists of mostly action-orientated scenes, but it's a solid basis for what is basically a martial arts movie like this. The actors and actresses drafted in to make sense of the plot are totally wasted - Colleen Camp appears and disappears as Lee's on/off girlfriend - yet the fact that they have never actually acted with Lee is quite well hidden.For the first hour, things are pretty average, including the martial arts scenes. The viewer sits arounds waiting until Bruce Lee himself shows up, battling a couple of experts before fighting the basketball star Kareem Abdul Jabbar (the difference in their sizes is incredible), which is a superb fight scene and the best part of the movie. After this, Lee reverts back to a double for the ending. Fans with a morbid interest in Lee's death will be interested to see a brief-but-real shot of his corpse in the film - he had a public funeral with an open coffin, and you might have guessed that somebody with a camera would happen to be there at just the right time.
Let me explain the above comment. In the horrible movie PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, writer/director Ed Wood, Jr. incorporated some footage he'd shot of Bela Lugosi just before Bela's death. While the footage had nothing to do with the script for PLAN 9, Wood decided to "cleverly" use this film and hash out Lugosi's role by having a much taller guy (a dentist by the way) hold a cape over his face in all the Lugosi scenes not available in the original reel of footage! The result, not surprisingly, is horrid. Now all of the reason for PLAN 9 being named the worst movie ever made wasn't all due to the Lugosi footage, but it was one of the main factors contributing to the pure crappiness of the film.In the case of GAME OF DEATH, some initial footage had been shot back in 1972 but was temporarily shelved in order to finish another Lee film. But, Lee's untimely death left about 30 or 40 minutes of unusable footage. So, the studio big-shots decided to "pull an Ed Wood" and use the old footage and write an entire movie around it--using extras and irrelevant footage to make a "coherent" film. Well, the result wasn't great but at least it was a good bit better than PLAN 9! As far as integrating a dead guy into a movie, the results were often pretty pathetic. Now I am NOT saying they shouldn't have made the movie. Instead, they should have just admitted that they were using a double and not even bothered trying to fool the audience--it just wasn't possible! Having an extra wearing sunglasses inside and out just looked stupid and playing the part straight, without stupid tricks, would have been better. A couple other stupid "tricks" they tried to make a coherent film included cutting closeup shots of Lee into scenes where he obviously wasn't acting! His clothes and the backgrounds just didn't match the double! The worst case was near the beginning when Lee was supposedly almost killed by a falling light. The close up was of the Real Lee--standing outside against a brick wall. But, the scene was filmed INSIDE and there was no brick wall! This was true Ed Wood editing!!! Even worse was one scene where they literally pasted Lee's face over another person's face for a very brief scene! Clutch Cargo episodes were constructed better than this! Probably the creepiest aspect of all this was that Bruce's son, Brandon, also died prematurely while filming THE CROW and the studio did pretty much the same trick (though with modern computer techniques it did look better). In addition, to add another creepier element, Brandon was killed in an on-set accident where he was killed by a prop gun---something that is in the plot of GAME OF DEATH--when a bad guy pretends to be using a prop gun but really shoots Bruce in the face!!!! This is just so surreal and sick. Also surreal and sick is seeing Gig Young in his final film--just months before he killed himself and his partner! This truly seemed like a cursed production! While I am trashing the film, I may as well point out a few other things before I actually go on to praise the film. First, while I greatly enjoyed watching Chuck Norris BRIEFLY at the beginning of the film, somebody should have told him to shave his back hair!!! Chuck just looked like some sort of missing link with all that hair--a major turn off and something I am surprised made it into both this film and another Lee picture, RETURN OF THE DRAGON. Second, the female co-star Colleen Camp very ably sang the final song in the film but when they show her singing earlier in the movie, she's obviously out of sync with the music.Now apart from the MANY serious flaws with the film, let's talk about the good. While a tad cheesy, the overall production values were pretty good (apart from the way they dealt with Lee)--especially for a kung-fu movie. Seeing the American supporting actors (especially a foul-mouthed elderly Dean Jagger) was pretty interesting and the music for the film was exceptional. The opening titles were highly reminiscent of a James Bond film and the recurring strains throughout the film were very clearly inspired by the music from ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Plus, the effects and fight scenes were pretty good throughout.Despite occasionally seeing tiny glimpses of Lee in the first 2/3 of the film, he is the clear star of the final portion of the film--the only portion of the movie that should have included Lee in my opinion. Here, he does perhaps his best stunt-work ever and the battles are well worth seeing for fans of the genre. In particular, seeing Lee fight Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was majorly cool. It really is a shame that such great material was never used the way it was originally intended. For fans of Lee, this is STILL a must-see film, but for most others it's a mixed bag--a lot of good and a lot of really, really, REALLY bad editing.FYI--In the wonderful kung fu comedy, SHAOLIN SOCCER, the goalie is clearly meant to look and act just like Bruce Lee. In fact, his yellow outfit is a copy of Lee's in the finale of GAME OF DEATH. This was a cute little homage to Lee. 2ff7e9595c
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