Sunday, July 19, 2020

BRUCE LEE LIVES? by Max Caulfield









So much like him, you'll swear Bruce Lee lives! Tomorrow is the 47th anniversary of the untimely death of the Little Dragon, and POTG is happy to debut a new category in order to showcase the above bit of Bruceploitation. From now on, anything outside the UFO/mystery genres will be tagged as Sidereal Visions. On with the show!

Author Max Caulfield (who "had previously worked with Linda Lee on her book Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, which was the basis for the Jason Scott Lee movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story") delivers a fast paced 70s action thriller about the Golden Triangle, with just the smallest hint of the man himself - it seems that maybe Bruce's death by misadventure was a fakeout to allow him to go deep cover and help smash the Chinese Asian Syndicate! Our hard boiled journo protagonist catches a glimpse of the mysterious commando "Captain" in action on two brief occasions, and all signs point to this kung fu killing machine's true identity being Bruce Lee. In the meantime, there's plenty of overwrought scribbling about Hong Kong's position at the precipice of crime, colonialism, and looming Chinese communism. It's an enjoyable bit of hackwork, akin to the films that writer Stewart Home places on the "semi-periphery" of the Bruceploitation genre, having just the barest hint of Bruce about them.

3/4

Dell Publishing, 1975

1 comment:

  1. Yes, sure, one of the world's most famous and recognizable men goes "undercover"!

    ReplyDelete