My cousin, Murray, lives in Seoul and told me that he saw this Korean DVD for THE REAL BRUCE LEE. As you know it's my life's work, or fading interest, to provide people with all their Bruceploitation info on this world renowned website. Some people even come back a second time! Anyway, I asked Murray to try and pick it up for me, which he did after finding it at some electronics market. Lucky for me he came back to Canada for a visit and I got this DVD, but really the DVD isn't for me, it's for all of you Bruceploitation fans out there. Haha, suckers! You got ripped!
The back of the case lists the running time of the movie at 127 minutes. The tape that I've got only runs 100 minutes long. Could it be this Korean DVD features more footage? More Dragon Lee footage? After watching my tape, then my DVD back to back I can tell you there is no extra footage. The 127 minute running time is a big fat lie. I feel so foolish now...
Picture quality
Full screen! I was hoping deep down that my cousin would bring me back this crystal clear widescreen version of THE REAL BRUCE LEE that would look so damn sweet and I could rub in it everyone's face. I knew better than to get my hopes up. When I watched the movie it had a Woodhaven Entertainment logo at the start and after looking online found out they are just some crappy company cranking out crappy DVDs. I think the video quality on this DVD is actually worse than on my EP tape I bought with pocket change from Wal-Mart. I had actually tried to take some screen captures for my movie review, but most of my shots were too dark and looked pretty bad.
Sound quality
The only audio track is an English audio track, so I hope everyone has upgraded their home audio systems to STEREO because if you're still stuck with mono you are totally going to miss out. Stereo will also make your LPs sound swell! There is also removable Korean subs, or as they're called in Korea "subtitiles".
Menus/Extras
The disc is a budget disc, something like a Front Row or Brentwood disc, but the menus look pretty slick. Of course this doesn't mean much when you can't even spell correctly. The main menu features some huge typos such as "Subtitiles" and "Scens Selections". The menus are in mainly in English, except for the "Biography" section on the "Special Features" menu. The bio on Bruce Lee is all in Korean so damned if I know what it says. Being Bruce Lee a bio, it easily could be a few pages, but it looks pretty short at two pages. I bet it said someting like "Bruce Lee! He was the greatest fighter in the world. He could kick faster than anyone. And he was always happy." That's a little inside joke between me and William. It's funny, yet surprisingly poignant.
Packaging
Pretty plain, just look at the cover picture above. The disc sports a colour picture of Bruce Lee, if you saw it, you'd instantly recognize it (the picture I mean). The cover is mainly all in Korean except for the name on the front and the specs (which are mostly bogus) off the back. The specs also state that the disc is region 3, but it's actually region 0 as it works in my region 1 player.
Conclusions (and stuff)
So I got a DVD from half way around the world only to find it's a print, a crappy VHS print, that a US company already has out on DVD already. I'm telling everyone not to plan any trips to South Korea to look for this, because it's not worth the trip. Just buy one of the dozen or so versions readily available in North America. I'm sure it's out in the UK too. But if for some reason you don't believe me and go anyway can you pick me up some stuff? I e-mail you my list. But before I go I need to ask you something. What the hell does poignant mean?!
Review by Keith.
