Rewatching after finding it on Tubi,
Enter the Clones of Bruce, a documentary about the Brucesploitation wave of martial arts films following Bruce Lee's passing, and profiles the men who suddenly found themselves working as Bruce Lee clones. such as the talented but reluctant Ho Jong-dao, renamed Bruce Li for marketing purposes, who laments the career which he might have built in his own right had he not been co-opted into roles created with the intention of fooling people into thinking he was some kind of successor. There's Moon Kyeong-sok, dubbed ‘Dragon Lee’; then Bruce Le, all the way from Burma. Later, we see Bruce Thai and Bruce Liang, as well as other variants Ron Van Clief, labelled ‘the Black Dragon’, as well as Angela Mao who was dubbed ‘the female Bruce Lee,’ even though she was a promising talent on her own. Veteran Japanese action star Yasukai Kurata recounts with some bemusement seeing one of his films retitled overseas, and him being billed as "Bruce Lo". Besides the surviving clones, and various cinema experts, and retired film director Godfrey Ho (who was at Shaw Bros. studios at the time of Lee's failed audition there), we hear from martial artists and film stars like Bruce Liang,, Casanova Wong, Eric Tseng, Shaw Bros. star David Chiang and Sammo Hung. Besides that, there's a broader survey of Brucesploitation, from bizarre entries like
Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave which latched onto conspiracy theories surrounding the star’s death, and at the increasingly inaccurate biographies which emerged, each purporting to tell the never-before-seen true story, the highly unauthorized "sequels" to entries in his short filmography, films whose posters identified him as the headline star even though all they had was a snippet from an old TV episode in which he had appeared, or footage from one of the films he made as a child. The movie also looks at
The Clones Of Bruce Lee, starring Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and Bruce Thai all together as the products of a mad scientist’s attempt to clone Lee and create his own army of martial artists. It's a fascinating exploration of a time in cinema, of ruthless marketing machines going out of control, greed and exploitation, and with the "clones", a reflection on their careers, where for some, it’s a sad tale of being railroaded into something they never wanted, while for others, despite numerous injuries and all that they have no regrets.
