A documentary about post-Bruce Lee martial arts movies in the 1970s, Enter The Clones Of Bruce also captures a cinematic era we’ll never see again.
Bruce Lee was so successful, so charismatic, and so globally recognised, a section of the film industry refused to let him die. And so it was that, within months of his passing in July 1973, aged just 32, a generation of Bruce Lee imitators emerged: Bruce Li, Bruce Leung, Bruce Lai, and dozens more besides.
All tried to imitate the late superstar’s athleticism; most tried to adopt the same haircut and shades; some even tried to nail his mannerisms, right down to the wipe of the nose or the trademark shriek as he pulled off one of his moves. The movies they starred in rather unscrupulously tried to pass themselves off as genuine Bruce Lee flicks, and occasionally even carried photographs of the star on their posters.
Often released with titles that echoed Bruce Lee’s most famous films, The Way Of The Dragon and Enter The Dragon (the latter becoming a global smash after the actor’s death), they were prevalent enough to be given their own subgenre: Bruceploitation. It’s a brand of quickly-made, low-budget filmmaking that director David Gregory (who also made the incredible Lost Soul, about the doomed production of 1996’s The Island Of Doctor Moreau) entertainingly dissects in his 2023 documentary, Enter The Clones Of Bruce. It’s an affectionate 93-minute film that not only interviews the actors and producers that made those Bruceploitation flicks, but also explores the unique cultural circumstances in which they emerged.
Bruce Lee’s celebrity rose in the midst of what was essentially a factory environment; by the early 1970s, the Hong Kong film industry was putting out dozens of martial arts each year, most shot on tight budgets using a repertory cast of actors and stunt performers. At the time, production company Shaw Brothers dominated the industry, but its tight-fistedness saw Bruce Lee – turned down by the studio because he asked for a fee of $10,000 – snapped up by the smaller, rival firm Golden Harvest.
Beginning with The Big Boss, directed by Lo Wei in 1971, Bruce Lee quickly became a movie star. Unusually, his screen presence endeared him not just to Asian audiences, but also globally – the 1970s saw martial arts movies join the various other subgenres that played in grindhouse cinemas and drive-ins across America. On Manhattan’s 42nd Street, you were as likely to see the marquees covered in names like Five Deadly Venoms and Kung Fu Massacre as you were Blaxploitation or cannibal movies.
When Bruce Lee died, the race to find a replacement became a global effort; Bruceploitation movies hailed not just from Hong Kong, but all over the world. Physically adept 20-somethings from the Philippines, Japan, Korea and elsewhere were plucked out of obscurity and given new names, mostly beginning with ‘Bruce’. African American martial artist Ron van Clief, purportedly dubbed the Black Dragon by Bruce Lee himself before his untimely death, went onto star in multiple films that carried that name.
In France and Germany, martial arts films were such a big deal that they became two of the biggest markets for knock-off Bruce Lee flicks. As German distributor Uwe Schier, one of the French contributors to Gregory’s documentary puts it, Bruce Lee quickly stopped being a movie star – he essentially became a brand: “A synonym for great martial arts fighting.”
As a result, audiences didn’t always necessarily mind that the movies packed into cheap cinemas didn’t star the real Bruce Lee – his legendary status was such that, as another fan of the genre puts it, he became a kind of mythical figure. Not that this excuses the often brazen graverobbing that went on in the genre; one distributor even went as far as to put a photo of Bruce Lee, lying in his coffin, on its poster for The Death Of Bruce Lee.
Even Golden Harvest, which had helped launch Lee’s movie career, didn’t hesitate to jump on the same bandwagon. Producer Andre Morgan recalls his Golden Harvest superiors telling him to take a camera crew to Lee’s funeral; the resulting footage was later released as a documentary, if you could really call it that – Bruce Lee: The Man And The Legend, rushed out the year Lee died. Then there was Game Of Death, a movie cobbled together despite the studio only having around 30 minutes of Bruce Lee footage, captured shortly before his untimely death.
All told, there are said to be 80 ‘official’ Bruceploitation films, but their rate of production was such that it’s thought there could have been as many as 200. Ghoulish though they sometimes were, it’s difficult to judge them too harshly – particularly the actors who starred in them, who were largely poor, working class young men desperate for their big break. Enter The Clones Of Bruce catches up with several of them, now in grey late middle age, and it’s quite moving to see how much these once spry guys have changed in the intervening decades. Several express regret that they spent their careers impersonating someone else; they had their own athleticism and strengths as performers, yet they were essentially anonymised beneath their Bruce moniker.
Eventually, audiences moved on from Bruceploitation movies, partly because filmmakers had milked the subgenre dry – Bruce clones were fighting Egyptian mummies and even Dracula in later movies – but also because a chap named Jackie Chan helped usher in a new era of fresher, more comedic martial arts films.
Pop culture has now changed to such an extent, and is so dominated by corporations, that the climate that gave rise to the genre simply couldn’t exist in the 2020s. The scuzzy cinemas – or in the UK, independent VHS rental stores – are long gone. Likewise megastars like Bruce Lee; in 2024, it’s largely brands or comic book characters that draw in audiences. Even the most money-grabbing of low-budget film producers would be reluctant to rip those off for fear of litigation.
David Gregory’s documentary therefore captures a vibrant, anything-goes bygone age – one almost unrecognisable from the current cinematic landscape, and perhaps even unimaginable to those too young to experience it first-hand.
Enter The Clones Of Bruce is available to stream now on Prime Video, or you can buy a copy on disc from Severin Films.
