An excellent example of Bruceploitation as it uses actual Bruce Lee footage mostly from Enter the Dragon, but also Fist of Fury to try and make a "new Bruce Lee" movie. Of course you all know this unless, you've been living in a cave, or something similar. For shots where they used a double for Bruce Lee, he's either shot from behind or shot in poor light, but still they're not fooling anyone. Still, it's a fun movie that everyone should definitely check out.
Billy Lo(Bruce Lee) finds out his friend Chin Ku(Hwang Jang Lee) has died, and he finds this very suspicious. He tracks down Ku's illegitimate daughter in Japan and gets his hands on some possible evidence. Billy goes to Ku's funeral and during the funeral a helicopter comes and scoops up the coffin and takes off. Billy grabs on the coffin and is pulled into the air, someone in the helicopter shoots him with a dart and he falls down, goes boom. Enter the new dragon, Bobby Lo(Kim Tai Chung) as Billy's brother. After seeing the evidence Billy found in Japan, Bobby heads to the Castle of Death to visit Lewis(Roy Horan) a strange guy who enjoys his peacocks and eating raw deer meat and drinking deer blood. Must be the latest diet fad. Bobby suspects Lewis in the death of his brother and Chin Ku, but comes to suspect Lewis' one-armed butler. After Lewis is killed, Bobby makes his way to the Tower of Death, which is hard to find, as it's underground. Once inside Bobby kicks the ass of anyone who gets in his way and finally makes his way to the big boss, Chin Ku. What a shocker! Chin Ku is the one who killed Billy, so it's time for Bobby to even up the score by killing him. Hey, what did you expect?
The old scenes of Bruce usually don't even match up with the new scenes shot for the movie. They use the scene from Enter the Dragon where Bruce is walking talking with the old monk. They dress up another guy same as the monk so he can insert some new dialogue to give the movie some "story". The footage from Enter the Dragon has a weird tint than the new footage so the two different monks look like they have two different colour robes on, yet they're supposed to be the same person. This obviousness of it all just makes it cheesier and fun.
Getting onto the best part of the movie, the fights. Yuen Woo Ping does an excellent job of the fight choreography. The fights are fast and tight, I'm not sure if that's a technical term or not, but doesn't matter because I don't know what I'm talking about anyway. Not only do the fights look kick ass, but there are also lots of them. There is a fight between two monks that has absolutely nothing to do with the story and is just there as filler, but I'm not complaining. One of the monks is Yuen Biao who also does all of Billy/Bobby's acrobatics. The guy is a jumping flipping machine, he never sits still. What review of Tower of Death wouldn't be complete without mentioning the part where one of the fighters in the Tower of Death is lifting a giant wooden crate and Kim Tai Chung does a flying kick right through the crate and hits the guy in the face. It's awesome, I was hitting the rewind button to laugh at the poor sucker of a stuntman who took that kick to the chops, I bet he was knocked into 1983, that or a coma. I'm betting on coma.
I also liked the sets, they looked pretty cool, especially the Japanese street set and the Tower of Death set. In the Tower of Death, all the guards wear these Moonraker-like silver space age suits. You think if they're wearing futuristic suits they'd be packing lasers or even guns, but no, all they got is sticks. Guess they blew the budget on the silver suits.
This whole review is rather half-assed, but if you've seen Tower of Death you already know the movie is good and are wasting your time reading my crappy review. If you haven't seen it, quit reading my crappy review and get out there and watch the movie, Tower of Death. It's got wicked fights, and some guy named Bruce Lee.
Reviewed by Keith.