Fist of Fear, Touch of Death: The Jeffreview

I'm kind of bored here at work, so let me tell you about another DVD in my incredible 4-movie set, "A Tribute to Bruce Lee." It's a pseudo documentary called Fist of Fear, Touch of Death. I actually saw this in one of those run-down kung-fu movie theatres, in the ghetto part of town, probably right by the porn theatres. This would have been in 1980 when the movie was released, and as a young, impressionable Bruce Lee fan, I failed to detect the now-obvious campy silliness that is the only possible justification for this movie. Nostalgia is the thing that made this movie a must-have, and in fact it is the only movie I still own on the long-dead Beta format. (Don't ask.)

The disc itself is rife with extras. Pretty darned impressive for a cheapie DVD. In addition to the obligatory "Scene Access" menu, there is the stunning "DVD Dictionary," a glossary of words such as Digital and Pan & Scan, for DVD neophytes. Right. But that's not the only extra! No, indeed. There are many extras! There is a Movie Trivia Game, an additional short featurette, and even DVD-ROM extras! So I took a look at the "Movie Trivia Game." I approached this one excitedly, eager to test my knowledge of Bruce Lee. By some odd coincidence, there were no questions about Bruce Lee. Instead you get such questions as "What was Marilyn Monroe's dress size?" "Which Tom starred as Mozart in Amadeus?" and "What is the top-grossing movie of all time?" (14, Hulce, and Titanic, if you're wondering) Yes, this is a movie trivia quiz. General movie trivia, nothing to do with Bruce Lee or Fist of Fear, Touch of Death. Have just as little to do with Bruce Lee, there is the "Short Subject," the featurette. What was it? A Behind the Scenes documentary? Some pointless drivel about Bruce Lee? NO! It was a Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon. I hope by now that you are as bewildered as I was. Why a Casper cartoon? Well, I'll tell you. I have no frikkin' clue. And clearly, neither did the DVD producers. Finally, the DVD-ROM features were a Director interface to the same movie trivia quiz, with a weblink to the company's website so you can play even more exciting movie trivia games! Ooooh! So I was surprised that there were extras on the DVD at all, then stunned that the extras were so pointless and random. But who cares about the extras, we're really here for the movie, right?

Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is hosted by Adolph Caesar, of A Soldier's Story and takes place, supposedly, at the 1979 World Karate Championship. It begins with a promoter explaining his theory that Bruce Lee was killed by the mystical "Touch of Death" because he was revealing too many secrets of Chinese martial arts. There are numerous cutaways to interview footage of Bruce Lee, dubbed over in a terrible, terrible voice, saying things like "the Touch of Death is positive energy, emanating from the palm of the hand" that I am virtually certain that he never said, especially not on camera. There is even a terrible interview segment which was supposedly taped "shortly before he died" in which Adolph Caesar is cut into footage of Bruce talking. Caesar's background isn't even the same as Bruce's! And that dubbing, ooh, pain. Almost as bad as the silly, pseudo-mystic-philosophical stuff they have him saying.

The tournament will, as Adolph Caesar explains, determine the successor to Bruce Lee's title of King of Kung Fu. Is a skeptical sneer creeping across your face? It should be. Bruce is also described as "perhaps the greatest karate expert of them all." If you don't know what's glaringly wrong with that statement, then you had best not read the rest of this review. The tournament comes across as something more akin to an Extreme Fighting Tournament than a real karate tournament. In one highlight from last year's tournament, a fighter in one bout is shown plucking out his opponent's eyes in a lightning-quick move, then tossing them into the audience. The choreography of this bout was laughably bad, but as a kid seeing this on the big screen, I was like, "Whoa, he just plucked out that guy's eyeballs!" Ah, the wonderment of youth. In another highlight from last year, we see a woman, probably less than 150 pounds, judo into unconsciousness this big, fat guy. To add to the fight's credibility, both combatants are wearing street clothes (even though the match takes place in the ring) and each of the fat guy's falls are accented by a cartoony 'bounce' sound effect. But the tournament itself, and Adolph Caesar in his Howard Cosell role, are merely the framework for this mixture of martial arts vignettes. Some of them are, truly, tributes to Bruce Lee, and some are just silliness (or a mixture of the two). But Caesar assures us, "Tonight, we'll have the answers to these questions: Who will be Bruce Lee's successor? And Will he meet the same fate as Bruce? A fate which Aaron Banks calls the 'Touch of Death.'"

We are shown a shot of Fred Williamson (blaxploitation star of 1975's Boss Nigger), one of the contestants in tonight's tourney, and told he will be with us in a moment. Then Caesar chuckles, saying, "Ol' Fred almost didn't make it here; it's quite a story," as though he is about to tell us an anecdote. Then the screen goes into a wobbly-flashback transition, and we are taken to Fred's vignette. It is filled with B-grade 1970s comedy involving people mistaking Williamson for Harry Belafonte. A drive through New York city shows movie titles like Animal House and Apocalypse Now on the theatres. And finally he arrives at the venue. That's it. Not even a fight. An interview segment with Ron Van Clief (star of the 1975 movie Black Dragon Revenges the Death of Bruce Lee), in which he opines that Bruce must have been murdered, is followed by a vignette in which a woman being harassed in a park by a group of thugs is rescued by Ron in a very quick fight with the thugs, who politely wait their turn in the fight.

But what of Bruce Lee himself? An interlude for some biographical information proves just as insightful and informative as the rest of this movie. Adolph Caesar: "I was the first to spot Bruce Lee's talent." But there were many early indications that Bruce would be a great martial arts hero. One clue was hereditary. According to Caesar's narration, "Bruce's great-grandfather was one of China's greatest samurai master swordsmen of the 19th century." Support for this claim is provided in the form of a fight scene taken from some kung-fu costume drama, in which one man defeats a horde of armed attackers. One can only assume that this was supposed to be Bruce's great-grandfather.

Then, we are told, Bruce's obsession with martial arts started to bother his family. This is illustrated in a scene taken from one of Bruce's early films. A fact which is left out of the plethora of Bruce Lee biopics: Before Bruce Lee left Hong Kong to move to America, he had appeared in dozens of films as a child actor, even into his teens (though none of them were fighting roles). Really. He got into this because his father was an actor. Anyway, one of these early black and white films, with Bruce as a teenager, is cannibalized and redubbed (same terrible actor doing Bruce's voice as a teen) for a vignette showing how Bruce's martial arts studies caused trouble at home. At one point, Bruce tells his brother, "Karate classes are incredible, but the folks, they don't want me to be a black belt." I'm pretty sure Bruce never said that as a youth. "Ma, karate is our family tradition, just like our business." Soon, however, we learn the cause of Bruce's mother's concern. She fears that martial arts will lead Bruce to an early grave just as it did Bruce's great-grandfather, as illustrated (wobbly-flashback transition) in another fight scene (in full color) from that kung-fu movie. Though oddly, that flashback doesn't show the death of his great-grandfather, it just shows him slaying more foes. Yeah, that makes sense. The vignette goes on and on, including a bit about Bruce's girlfriend being a floozy. The damning evidence: "Chuck, last night was great, let's do it again. Love, Sue" Throughout the unending vignette, Bruce's ancestor is referred to as a great "samurai warrior." Bouncing back and forth between the black and white, redubbed, early Bruce Lee film and the full color flashbacks to that kung-fu movie, this travesty grinds on for over half an hour. It was so awful, I had to laugh.

Then, we are told, Bruce went to the Hong Kong film studios, because "he knew this was the fastest way to build a reputation, and gain the respect needed to become a samurai soldier of fortune." As all true Bruce Lee fans know, this was his life-long goal: to become a "samurai soldier of fortune." Toss in the phrase "Pizza Cat" and you might have something there. Once the biographical segment reaches his portrayal of Kato (surprisingly, this movie does include a bit of factual information!), we move to another vignette. This one features a street gang pursuing a pair of female joggers in a park. A limo pulls up and we are treated to an Asian-Freddie-Prinze-looking Bill Louie (hey, it was the 1970s) saving the day dressed as Kato. I always liked this bit, because Kato is cool.

The "Tournament" does include footage of some decent martial arts demonstrations. It's not ALL bullshit. Just mostly. Finally the show reaches its climax, the main event. This is the World Welterweight Karate Championship title bout between Louis Neglia and John "Cyclone" Flood. This match is your standard karate/kickboxing type of ring match, nothing "Bruce Lee" about it: a lot of boxing with a few kicks thrown in. The entire fight is boiled down to about 3 minutes. And that's it. The movie is mercifully short (though not short enough) at 80 minutes.

The lingering mystery of this movie is the question of whether the writers and filmmakers knew how many inaccuracies, and how much ridiculous bullshit they were putting into this thing, and just doing it to be ridiculous, or if they were just a band of ignorami. By 1979, when this was shot, Bruce had been dead for 6 years, and much was known about his life. Or was it just a bunch of guys who had the rights to shoot this tournament fight and decided to package it like this to sell it. These questions may never be answered. But I am left with one piece of certain knowledge: it will be a long time before I feel compelled to watch this movie again.

© 2002 Jeffrey P. Hui