Whether you’ve heard the term or not, chances are you’ve seen an exploitation film somewhere in the wild. From sharksploitation megahits like Sharknado, to culture-defining classics like ozploitation’s original Mad Max, or carsploitation’s Death Race 2000, the quality of these carefully marketed mockbusters – built entirely around audience trends with huge, eye-catchingly stupid titles – has always been up for debate. But it’s rare there’s a moral dimension too; after all, no one owns the copyright on cars or sharks or post-apocalyptic bikers. It’s a little different when the genre being exploited though, is an actual person.
Bruce Lee is arguably the most famous and accomplished martial arts performer that’s ever lived. Despite a tragically truncated filmography, cut short at just four features, by his sudden death in 1973, he had co-birthed the entire kung-fu genre, which continues to live and thrive half a century on. At the time, he was a sensation, a master at his peak, and Lee’s final film – the posthumously released instant classic Enter the Dragon – left audiences desperate for more. So naturally, not even his death could stop the industry from giving the crowds what they wanted.
Enter then, says prolific documentary filmmaker David Gregory, the many, many, many clones of Bruce Lee. A list as long as it is ridiculous, with seemingly every dark-haired martial artist from an Asian background given the Bruceploitation makeover. From Bruce Li, to Bruce Le, to Bruce Lo. Dragon Lee! Bruce Rhee! The moustachioed Bronson Lee! It was truly shameless, and a fascinating, baffling, horrendously unscrupulous period of filmmaking that Gregory lays out almost flawlessly.
No stone goes unturned here, with the film ploughing through an almost unfathomable amount of talking heads, digging beyond the casual “experts” and academics, and reaching the much more fascinating performers themselves. It’s a zippy, bouncily edited doc, as chic-looking in its titles and choice of clips, as it is smartly-arranged, carefully blending important history and fact, with the lives of those the genre exploited.
It’s certainly a very funny film too, particularly for those with a predisposition for the ridiculous. The team here are clever to not shy too far from the obvious indecency of the ’70s, and the dollar-hungry execs pushing hundreds upon hundreds of audacious rip-offs, from Big Boss 2, to New Fist of Fury (starring Jackie Chan!) to Enter the Fat Dragon (starring legendary director Sammo Hung!). But then there’s the truly brazen, like Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave, which combines hurried footage of Lee’s real gravestone being struck by lightning, with a completely unrelated, heavily-dubbed action film from South Korea.
It’s in swings like this that Gregory finds the heart of the story; the absolute moral bankruptcy of what went on, and the toll it’s taken on those involved. Much like Shudder’s cleverly pro-shark Sharksploitation doc from earlier in the summer, Enter the Clones of Bruce is as much a look at the aftermath of exploitation, as it is the output of the genre itself.
At times, the constant locked-off talking heads do get frustrating, and a much more explorative epilogue that digs deeper with some of the performers, feels like it should have been stretched across the entire thing. But it is there, and there’s a clear love and respect not just for kung-fu, but the entire cult of Bruce and the cinema culture that followed. Gregory juggles the moral football brilliantly; it was shameless yes, but the legacy of Bruceploitation has become just as much about platforming the myth of the man, as it has about making money.
Enter the Clones of Bruce was screened as part of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2023.
