Game of Death (1978)

This film was released five years after Bruce Lee's death in 1973. It features scenes shot by Bruce Lee in 1972 where he fights opponents in the iconic yellow tracksuit. Lee's scenes were shot for a different storyline completely and only 11 minutes of footage from the original film were used in this 1978 version. The original story and the story in this version were very different but somehow I thought the film did hang together just enough to make sense and the score by John Barry was quite good. Despite the difficult challenge of using footage shot for a different film (with same title) and lookalike actors playing Lee's character, this was achieved. The 1978 version of the story is a very simple revenge story, where an actor who is an ex-martial arts fighter is threatened by gangsters led by an old man and he is eventually shot on the set of a film he is making. The gangsters and the girlfriend of the actor all think he is dead, the film even controversially uses actual real footage of Lee's open casket funeral to make this point. But the actor isn't dead, the shot just disfigures his face and he returns to exact his revenge on the gangsters. The last part of the film is the part using the footage shot for the original Game of Death, which was shot in the last surviving wooden pagoda in real life but is supposed to be the upper floors of the Red Pepper Restaurant in this version.
I thought some of the fight scenes were excellent, the original footage is great. The dubbing is not so great and some of the noises are frankly ridiculous but they may be the genuine audio. I didn't like a protracted motorbike scene in a warehouse, I thought it went on far too long and with little point. Other than that I enjoyed it pretty well and would recommend it to fans of Bruce Lee and martial arts films, just remember your not getting Lee's original vision for the story - he would probably hate this version.