Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1980)

A big fighting tournament is taking place at Madison Square Garden. Many fighters are showing off their various skills. Why is this going on, you ask? It's because everyone is trying to find the "possible successor to Bruce Lee". Not the actual successor, the POSSIBLE successor. The event is MC'd by a man with a name that has interesting historical connotations, Adolph Caesar. In the audience for no particular reason (though we're happy he's on board) is Fred Williamson. As the fights in the ring go on, we're treated to a variety of clips from a myriad of different sources, trying to recreate the life of Bruce Lee, and people that knew him talking about him (and, not so subtly, talking TO him using horrendous editing). Is this film a crass cash-in exploiting the greatness of Bruce Lee and insulting his memory for a quick buck? Find out today! This movie is a crass cash-in exploiting the greatness of Bruce Lee and insulting his memory for a quick buck. Hopefully this saves you some time. Now, this isn't really a movie per se, as it's not linear, and is cobbled together footage from a patchwork of sources, with a few new bits filmed to try to glue it all together. All the old footage, which appears to have been re-dubbed, is boring and painful to sit through. The newly-filmed footage isn't without some merits, however flimsy...There are some cool NYC locations of the day which we always love seeing, and we even see some movie marquees that are playing Apocalypse Now (1979), Animal House (1978) and 10 (1979). Fred Williamson brings his charisma but he's obviously confused as to why he's there so he's on autopilot. But even The Hammer on autopilot is more entertaining than most actors. There seems to be an inexplicable running gag where people keep thinking he's Harry Belafonte. Why this is, no one can say. A funky score also underlines these scenes.But women jogging in the park and being accosted by street toughs and then being saved by one of Bruce's pretenders to the throne seems to be the sole bit of creative thought put into this trainwreck of a movie. Bill Louie plays "Kato #2". That's right, a guy dressed as Bruce's character, with the name "Kato #2". As mind-numbingly stupid as that is, Louie gets a pass because he was in one of our favorite movies, the awesome Death Promise. So all is forgiven. In these "saving the joggers" scenes, Ron Van Clief actually shines as well. You gotta love that winning smile. But though this movie technically (by default) has Bruce Lee, Fred Williamson and Ron Van Clief, they've got some stiff competition in Fred the Flying Fat Man.Ah, Fred the Flying Fat Man. He had such dreams. We'd love to be privy his thoughts. How a morbidly obese vagrant with sleep apnea and diabetes could think he could genuinely become the new Bruce Lee is beyond comprehension. Yes, this is real. If anyone out there has any information on said Flying Fat Man, do leave a comment today.But the big question here (especially when characters are talking to stills and spliced-together footage) is: WHO DID THEY THINK THEY WERE FOOLING? True Bruce fans aren't going to accept this tripe. Casual moviegoers won't care. So what was the audience here? Naturally, the Fred Williamson stuff is the best here, and after suffering through the footage of Bruce's "biography", we were screaming for Adolph Caesar and his famous voice to come back and save us all.So while there are a few decent moments in this plot less exercise, most of it is an endurance test that would test hardened bad movie lovers. If only they made an entirely new movie with Williamson, Van Clief and Louie, then we'd have something here. As it stands now, we really don't.For more action insanity, drop by: www.comeuppancereviews.com

This is a horrible film by anyone's standards. And, sadly, it was made in a sick attempt to cash in on the name of Bruce Lee after his tragic death. Now this isn't that unusual, as many films came out in the mid to late 1970s with his name in the title or starring some second-rate martial artist who they re-christened "Bruce Li" or "Bruce Le" in the hopes that the unsuspecting public might accidentally think that the film had something to do with him. In the case of FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH, all the posters bore large portraits of Lee in order to make it look like this might be a lost film of the master (yeah, one of 130,384 that made this claim!!).Unfortunately, the film is just an incomprehensible mess that looks like it was edited by a chimp--and a very untalented chimp at that! Much of the film is a fake documentary narrated very poorly by Adolph Caesar--a guy who actually did a few respectable films (such as SOLDIER'S STORY), though here he just looks a bit like an out of work pimp. He purports to be broadcasting from the world championship of martial arts in New York, but the people they show fighting have no idea what they are doing in the film or about martial arts. For example, while Fred Williamson did some excellent blaxploitation films and was a dandy football player, what did he have to do with all this martial arts?! And they also had interviews with "greats" in the field---guys who frankly sucked at martial arts and had all the charisma of a bag of hairballs! The worst was the supposed acting of a talentless jerk who claimed Lee was killed by some mystical death punch that killed WEEKS after being administered. Soon after making these ridiculous claims, he tried to show how to do it and couldn't even break a thin board until the 3rd or 4th try--some mystical death punch!!!Now there WAS some Bruce Lee in the film. He is supposedly being interviewed several times but it's also clear that the interviewer (Caesar) was filmed at an entirely different time and Lee is badly dubbed from Chinese into English. You have no idea WHAT Lee was originally talking about, but I suspect his comments had nothing to do with this film. For all we know, he might have been talking about Superbowl III or his favorite brand of marmalade or a cute lady he met on the way to the interview! Then, some old clips of Lee in early films AND clips of no one in particular were just slapped onto the screen randomly. This all just seemed like time filler.Overall, there is no consistent theme, vision or watchability. It just looks like they grabbed tons of old film and hastily filmed new stuff with a whopping budget of $45 and this is what they came up with. It's so bad that the Bruce Li and Bruce Le films are far, far preferable over this recycled junk. A film so bad that it's not even good for laughs--it's more like a case of necrophilia--a bunch of talentless jerks pimping out a dead man for every last penny they can get! An evil and cynical film in every sense and I sure hope that everyone who made this film dies from the dreaded mystical death punch!

A tournament is held to find the successor of Bruce Lee, while the the tournament is being held we learn that Bruce Lee's great grandfather was a Samurai (Despite the obvious fact that Samurai are Japanese and Bruce Lee is Chinese) and the movie amounts to an amateurish cut and paste job that will be looked at with scorn for even fans of Bruceploitation. The biggest surprise about this travesty is the quite good cast it has, in that we have Fred Williamson (Say what you will but he's got charisma), Adolph Caesar and uh, Bruce Lee clips. It's hard to even qualify this as a movie because everything about it feels so incompetently made. The samurai clips have some moments (Well if you're an old school fan like me.) but I can always try and locate that movie (Which I most likely won't do for a long time.) and the fake interviews, fake stories and indeed the shameless promotion of Bill Louie as Kato, all make this a true labor of badness. The Bruce Lee clips are worthless since he does no fighting in them (I mean seriously if you're going to steal clips steal from Fist Of Fury) and basically it's all one cut and paste mess with very little worth or value. It's not even hilarious just painful to watch, although the music in the beginning of the credits (When it flashes the title credit) is hilarious.1/2* out of 4-(Awful)

Unfortunately, this film neither features real martial arts, nor is it a classic. It hardly even features Bruce Lee, except for some old footage that has been re-dubbed to make it look like Lee actually agreed to this film being made. I hope somebody got sued for this one.This could have been a good documentary about the "1979 Karate Championship" but most of the footage from the karate matches is obviously staged, and has little to do with Chinese martial arts. Some interesting "facts" were revealed by this film however. For instance, prior to watching "Fist of Fear", I had no idea that Lee's great grandfather was the greatest Chinese samurai warrior.There are a few funny moments in the film (the Bill Louie Kato scene, or when Fred Williamson is introduced for example) but if you have any respect for Bruce Lee or film-making in general, I would highly recommend avoiding this film.Lex