Kung Fu Theater: Legends of Kung Fu Fighting Review

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(More customer reviews)With the re-release of Video Asia's finest Bruceploitation sets in one(The Ultimate Dragon Collection) it was only appropriate that Kung Fu Theatre/EPI give us their best 5 in one Bruceploitation set(Legends of Kung-Fu). For the record, as becomes most films from the Bruceploitation era, the movies are cheesy, tend to borrow from familiar Bruce Lee works, and in some cases, are out there, so in no way am I suggesting that these are martial arts classics or masterpieces, they're for die hard fans of Bruceploitation who watch these films for the fun of it:
Bruce Le's Greatest Revenge: In a nutsehll, a rehashing/rip of Bruce Lee's Chinese Connection/Fist of Fury at best. The kung-fu is good(although Bruce Le insists on dishing out and redishing the same old 'Snake fist' setup for virtually ALL of his films, the fight scenes are quite convincing, he does more than mimick Bruce Lee's facial expressions and Brucisms...at times he does remind you of the real mccoy and there's a fight with Bolo Yeung toward the end). Only downsides of the movie are obviously the shortcomings in action and plot(ie, after Le knocks off Bolo, he goes on to fight the Boss, who retreats by diving into the water, swimming ashore and getting killed by 2 of Le's fellow students...ending the movie), then there's the swordsman(obvious rip of Robert Baker's Russian character). Enjoyable if you focus on the action instead of the cheese.
Bruce Li in New Guinea: Ho Chung Tao stars as a scientist who ventures out to New Guinea to search for the Snake Pearl and encounters several tribaes on the way, particularly The Great Wizard who oppresses the people with a tyrannical rule, Ho is poisoned by the Wizard's ring, is romanced by the princess-to-be(who puts a logve spell on him), they conceive a child, the Wizard puts a spell on the child, Ho must fight his way up to the Wizard. Simply put...the action makes the movie. To try and figure out the rest will make you sick from the psychadelic 70's-ness of the film. I'm not even going to acknowledge the "ape" that guards the princess...lol. But the kung-fu is pretty good, and the fight scenes between Ho and the Wizard and Bolo Yeung are impressive.
Superdragon, the Bruce Lee Story: This film was also released under the title,"Bruce Lee, A Dragon Story"...only this version is actually a better cut as there are more scenes available. This was one of the darker attempts to portray Bruce Lee's life as it begins with his college exploits, progresses to his break in the martial arts film industry, and then darkens when he starts to become involved with betty Ting Pei, resulting in an all-out affair which culminates in his dying in her apartment(Bruce Lee is portrayed as cold and calloused toward his wife and kids as things get sticky between he and Betty).
Bruce Lee We Miss You: One of the better Bruceploitation films...Ho Chung Tao portrays Stone, a martial artist and a fan of Bruce Lee who investigates the circumstances behind his death. As with many other such films, this one plays toward the syndicate/crime boss/conspiracy theories as Stone gets in touch with Betty Ting Pei and fights his way through syndicate figures "involved in Bruce Lee's death." The use of actual personalities (ie, Betty Ting Pei, Low Wei,etc) may not suit everyone's tastes, but the action is there.
The Kung-Fu of Tae Kwon Do: not Bruceploitation, I kind of neglected this one as being filler, but, unless I'm mistaken...the lead actor is also known as Bruce Pak and starred in the Return of Fist of Fury (a sequel to Bruce Le's Ching Wu & Shaolin 1 & 2).
One qualm that I have with this set is with the 15-30 second black screen "breaks" in some of the scene changes.

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