How Bruce Lee film Game of Death became a cynical project to cash in on his death – and its eventual happy ending
- What started in 1972 as a project for Bruce Lee became a cynical ploy to cash in on the star’s fame after his death, using just 11 minutes’ footage of Lee
- Game of Death’s Bruce Lee lookalikes, foreign actors and trashy storyline were a disappointment to all. Only decades later did redemption come
“Lee legend cheapened,” screamed a headline in the South China Morning Post in 1978, highlighting film critic Noel Parrott’s distaste for Game of Death, the disastrous movie which posthumously cut 11 minutes of unseen Lee fight footage into a movie with a trashy storyline, foreign actors and Lee lookalikes made to cash in on the star’s fame.
“With Game of Death, we have an epitaph for Bruce Lee, the best known, if not the greatest, cinematic kung fu exponent of all time. And sadly, it is a far from fitting one,” wrote Parrott.
Although the film, which was made and released five years after Lee’s death, did well at the Hong Kong box office – 25,000 tickets were reportedly sold for the multi-theatre midnight show alone – and cleaned up internationally, Parrott spoke for everybody.
Game of Death was universally derided at home and abroad. Even Lee’s loyal British fans hated it, although they did praise the 11-minute action scene that featured new footage of the star.
“In no way did anyone feel the Game of Death to be a fitting tribute to the ‘Little Dragon’,” opined the UK’s Bruce Lee Society Newsletter in 1978.
Game of Death started off auspiciously, as a project that Lee began developing in 1972, after directing Way of the Dragon.
