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| KUNG FU MOVIE REVIEW: GAME OF DEATH (1978) movie & AMC TV special |
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Tom
- - Ian yeah.
Game of Death ("GOD" if you're a hepster)
sucks my ball-sack. it's only worth seeing for the scenes you probably
saw in the special, therefore, you don't need to see it. the dude
that did the fill-in work was awful. wrong body type, wrong hair.
tried hiding him behind huge sunglasses. i read somewhere that Yuen
Biao did some stand-in work on it, but i'm not really sure. on top
of it all, you could just tell how "american" the movie
had the
original pagoda setup is great. not only is it actually MEANINGFUL
(well, to some), but it laid the groundwork for every videogame that
came out in the arcades in the 80's. new level, new boss. sweeeeet.
- Tom Yeah, the reading his "writings" would be cool - he seemed to be a pop-concentration of a bunch of Zen philosophies. I actually wrote down a few bits from the docu they seemed to make so much sense. The director of GOD was the dude who did Enter the Dragon - and later - GYMKATA! You can blame Warner Bros Prods. for GOD - they were actually going to produce it with Lee after the hit of Enter - which was finished after the GOD scenes were shot. Then he died. Which is how they ended up with the footage to chop up for the "finished" GOD. Sammo Hung choreographed the post-mortem fight scenes with the stand ins. The short Lee stand in was Jackie Chan (among others, I imagine). Yes, there were scenes from other, "lesser known" Brucie films cut into GOD - most notably the fight between Lee and Walker, Texas Ranger from the Chinese Connection. video games - yeah, no shit. huh. I'd seek this docu out - it had lots of really great, facinating stuff. Even a bit that looked like Bruce sparring with James Coburn. And some nifty TV appearance stuff - particularly from a cop drama called "Longstreet" with James Franciscus - (he was the Heston replacement in the 2nd Apes movie). Kareem is a freak - but it works better when it's a full 10 minute fight scene in-context. Be like water dude. Water fills a glass, and becomes the glass. Water fills the toilet. . . . -
Ian While the great willow is felled by a strong wind, you will bend like the pliant motherfucking REED. - Tom that's
a direct quote, right? okay,
so i caught the AMC special. very peculiar thing, it was. the actual
"bruce lee life story" sort of stuff was very brief and
uninvolved. i think they mentioned his first three movies in one sentence,
with no clips for any of them. i don't even think they addressed how
he died. this thing was obviously put together just cos the producers
got their paws on some unseen footage. which, you know, that's cool,
but it could've just been half an - Tom glad you caught and enjoyed the special. . .yeah, it wasn't the most complete "Bruce Lee story" but hey - we have "DRAGON" for that, dont' we? -
Ian Hi guys! I'm just writing cuz I saw your Bruce Lee/Game of Death dialogue and I wanted in on the action..... even though the closest thing I've done to watching an entire Bruce Lee movie was watching "A Fistful of Yen" from Kentucky Fried Movie. Well, that and the Jackie-Cheung-in-yellow-jumpsuit scenes from High Risk. Either of which, from the sounds of it, kicks Game of Death's ass. It's interesting how Game of Death laid the groundwork for an entire genre of video games, and now almost thirty years later video games laid the groundwork for the entire droid factory scene in Attack of The Clones. Well, sort of interesting except that the droid factory scene in Attack of The Clones was kinda sucky. Anyway, all this martial arts/video game talk reminds me of Karateka, which I used to play on the good ol' Apple IIe with good ol' Joe Harrington. Funny thing about Joe is that when I used to hang out with him he was half-Korean and double-jointed -- now, last I heard, he's a born-again christian. Go figure. But
back to Bruce Lee: this one time I was playing chess with Josh's ex-girlfriend
and she was up on me cuz she's quite good and I was playing like a
fucking idiot. Normally I would've rolled over for it and died like -Shawn Funny, I think I used to play Kareteka or something like it with Joe Harrington in the A/V room during library study. That was before I knew you. Don't forget he also had super-human lung capacity, according to some sort of breathing test thing some stop-smoking campaign brought to the school once. You know, I think Joe Harrington wins for being mentioned on noshadowkick.com the most amount of times without us actually being friends with him. - Tom
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SCENES
FROM GAME OF DEATH:
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READER'S COMMENTS : |
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- Steve, Nov 4, 02 You're
right, Game of Death sucks, even a smart monkey would have kept with
his original script, or even anyone in this world could find doubles
for Wong In Sik, Taky Kimura, Bruce Lee and George Lazenby and actually
carry on from where Bruce Lee left off. Also, I think that someone
should show how Chieh Yuan fell down those stairs acrobatically and
Bruce should go into the treasure room and be suprise attacked by
perhaps Jackie Chan, then Lazenby would save Bruce's ass (as he intended
it to be). But, how ironic it was to use the person who hated Bruce
the most to direct Game of Death and insult his legacy. I think overall
it's ok, only Bob Wall's appearence was the best and the cut-out greenhouse
scene was the only good scene.
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| FEEDBACK: | |
An
E-Mail Exchange between Ian and Tom....and, uh...Shawn....
