Audience Member
This makes GAME OF DEATH seem tasteful by comparison
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Serving as a martial arts film which maintained the Troma Entertainment label, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death was a film which I had hoped would deliver cheap martial arts thrills.
Like many low budget martial arts films, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is another feature which exploits the legacy of Bruce Lee as a means of making the narrative seem more interesting. But while some films that essentially do the same work as guilty pleasures, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is guilty of nothing more than being a vain piece of filmmaking.
The story in Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is nonsensical. While it could have had some potential as an exercise in showing off many martial artists fight each other in the ring, instead it decides to act like some kind of documentary with fictionalised flashbacks. Fist of Fear, Touch of Death pretends to be a documentary about Bruce Lee, but it could not know less about him and tries to use stock footage from multiple film appearances he was in to piece together a life story. Not just that, but Fist of Fear, Touch of Death shows off a severe lack of knowledge regarding martial arts by stating that Bruce Lee's great grandfather was a samurai even though Bruce Lee is Chinese and the samurai are Japanese. Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is largely an insult to Bruce Lee's memory. Though he has nothing to do with the production of the film, that did not stop Fist of Fear, Touch of Death from being plastered with images of Bruce Lee's face all over the promotional material and even using stock footage of him. Though Bruce Lee died seven years prior to the release of Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, his corpse is rolled out for the sake of this film in a thoroughly disrespectful manner. The stock footage of Bruce Lee is used in Fist of Fear, Touch of Death to make up a story by having what he is actually saying dubbed by a terrible voice actor. Everything that Fist of Fear, Touch of Death tries to do in regard to the life of Bruce Lee is just insulting. Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is not a Bruceploitation film, it is little more than an exercise in terrible filmmaking and mocking Bruce Lee's fans. All this is wrong with the film, but the story itself is wasted because even though it is partially about a martial arts tournament it does not string together fighting scenes at any consistent rate whatsoever. The film suggests at the beginning that we will see people like Ron van Clief or cult classic Blaxploitation action star Fred Williamson thrown into the ring, but they are only played off for some kind of half assed comic relief which is the furthest thing from funny. Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is no laughing matter and no viewing pleasure whatsoever.
Frankly, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is too built upon footage from other movies for it to actually stand alone as a film of its own right. It is clear that nothing in the film is realistic because it plays out like a shoddy Asian soap opera with excessive reliance on awkward dubbing. It is such a poorly made film that it is likely to find a cult following with audiences who really enjoy mocking terrible movies, but I found it hard to do that when he film was so insulting to Bruce Lee. But viewers with even the lowest standards can usually find joy in a film like Fist of Fear, Touch of Death if the action in the feature is good. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although the choreography in the film looked like it had potential, the way that it is filmed is way too awkward. The visual quality of the camera I a little blurry, but that is easy to look past as that is essentially the norm for the genre. What is difficult to ignore is the shoddy placement of the camera. Fist of Fear, Touch of Death makes use of a widescreen camera which is too focused on being horizontal to ever pan up, and in that regard there are many moments during the fight scenes where the limbs of some actors are cut off by the perspective that the camera takes. Even though the fight scenes of the characters in the ring are choreographed well, the filming methods are composed mainly of cameras that stand still and pan slightly to the left or the right at times but never bothering to look up. But I guess that hardly matters because Fist of Fear, Touch of Death maintains minimal original fight scenes anyway. Originality is not a word that I could imagine anyone finding synonymous with Fist of Fear, Touch of Death.
Last of all, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death does not live up to the Troma entertainment label due to the fact that it does not have any blood and gore in the film. That label is one that stays with ridiculous exploitation films, ridiculous in the sense that they are over the top with blood and gore while Fist of Fear, Touch of Death lacks either that or even some good action, wasting the infamous legacy of the company that has distributed so many cult classics over the years. However, viewers who consider the quality of Troma films to be lacklustre may find entertainment in Fist of Fear, Touch of Death simply because it is one of the worst films to ever try to squeeze into the Bruceploitation label.
So Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is a film which attempts to be both an examination of contemporary fighting and a documentary on the life of Bruce Lee, but while it uses a lot of stock footage of Bruce Lee it is short on facts and high on insults to his legacy while the shortage of action in the film is the nail on the coffin in ensuring that lack of entertainment value.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Undoubtedly the worst of all the Bruceploitation films, this hamfisted nightmare features bold flavors of ineptitude accented with notes of ignorance, racism, and blatant copyright infringement. It's the film that Ed Wood might have made if he had access to some Bruce Lee interview footage and a library of old samurai films which he could overdub with nonsensical drivel that interchangeably uses the terms kung-fu and karate. Also apparently interchangeable are China and Japan, as the narrator, Academy Award nominee Adolph Caesar (the Color Purple), refers to Lee's great-grandfather as "one of China's greatest Samurai Masters".
Fist of Fear, Touch of Death begins documentary-style, with real-life sleazy promoter Aaron Banks being interviewed by Caesar about Bruce Lee's murder by the "vibrating palm" technique. Banks is then shown awkwardly attempting the one-inch punch while referring to it as the "touch of death". The movie then drifts into a narrative about blaxploitation star Fred Williamson begrudgingly making his way to a Karate Championship, all the while being mistaken for Harry Belafonte by almost all of New York City. Get it? Because all black people look alike!
The rest of the film cannot be accurately summarized in any linear fashion. It includes long passages of old martial arts films overdubbed to loosely fit the ridiculous false narrative of Bruce Lee's life. Then comes an intensely confusing scene in which a mustachioed Bill Louie dressed as Kato (Bruce Lee's character in the TV show, The Green Hornet) saves a woman from being gang raped. After taking the attackers down (mostly by screaming at them), the woman and Louie appear on a boat (?), where she asks him his name. He proceeds to remove his mask and reveal himself as "Louie. Bill Louie."
The rest of the film is a hodgepodge of silly fighting footage at Madison Square Garden. Caesar then gives some final thoughts on Bruce Lee's inability to be succeeded.
This film can actually be enjoyed on an ironic level, but viewers should have some baseline knowledge about Bruce Lee and martial arts in general in order to fully appreciate the film's hilarious incompetence.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/09/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This film has just about nothing to do with Bruce Lee; this film was released in 1980, 7 years after his death, as this movie takes place at the '1979 Karate Championships' that supposedly determines the successor. Out of all the actors in this film, the only one that gives a somewhat great, if not, decent performance is the anchorman, Adolph Caesar. Ironically, he seems to have his final thoughts with words and opinions taken from both Fred Williamson and Ron Van Clief, who believes that the match to determine the successor is unnecessary, and believes that everyone else other than Bruce Lee is an imitation, respectively. If you want a good Bruceploitation movie, I'd advise to look elsewhere.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Way cheesy and enjoyable.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
So cheesy it is actually enjoyable (to a point). This is not a biography of Bruce Lee (far from it) but if you just enjoy the wacky story and odd fights (eye-balls being poked out and all) you can enjoy how terrible yet fun this truly is. It really doesn't deserve 3 stars but because of nostalgic reasons (I vaguely remember watching this with my dad) I rate it a bit higher than it deserves (ok maybe a lot higher).
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/15/23
Full Review
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