Bruce Lee's Secret

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Bruce Lee's Secret
Directed by	Chan Wa William Cheung Ki
Starring	Bruce Li Carter Wong Hwang Jang-Lee Roy Horan Robert Kerver Alan Ellerton
Release date(s)	1976 (Hong Kong)
Running time	91 min min.
Language	Cantonese

Bruce Lee's Secret is a 1979 Bruceploitation martial arts film, which is also a psuedo-biopic of Bruce Lee. It stars Bruce Li as "Bob" Lee, whose life is essentially the same as Lee's and is on two occasions actually referred to as 'Bruce'. The film has been released under the alternate titles Bruce Lee's Deadly Kung Fu, The Story of the Dragon, and Bruce Lee's Jeet Kun Do.

1 Synopsis
2 Reaction
3 Trivia
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In Seattle, Bruce "Bob" Lee (Bruce Li) works in a Chinese food restaurant with his wacky friend Chang Ming. When a gang of hoodlums is making trouble, Bob puts a lot of pepper on their chicken, making them sneeze a lot (and inspiring the immortal line, "This is pepper chicken. Good for gut's ache!").

Unfortunately, Bob and Chang are blicklisted from the bustling Seattle Chinese restaurant community by the gang. However, after beating up some bad guys, people realize what an amazing martial artist Bob is, and encourage him to start his own kung fu school.

Bob's school opens to boffo business, but there is controversy among the powerful rival kung fu schools because Bob is teaching to non-Asians. He also creates Jeet Kun Do, and uses his newly improves martial arts ability to whup the baddies once and for all.

[edit] Reaction

Most fans of kung fu movies agree that this is a very bad movie - bad acting, pathetic attempt to pass of suburban Hong Kong as Seattle, unspeakable dubbed dialogue, thin characters and plot, etc.

In the fanzine Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger, Carl Jones writes:

"This film was a definite backward step for Bruce Li...The gwailos are laughable, notably Roy Horan (he later of Seasonal Films) blacked-up and wearing a fright wig (he also plays on of the gang sans make-up) and a tall Chinese fighter also blacked/wigged up who seems to live in his gi...Ho Chung Tao puts in another solid performance in the film, yet his fighting skills don't appear to have made any kind of progress, once again this could be because it was shot earlier. The locations are baffling: is it the U.S., is it Taiwan or Hong Kong, and who the hell cares?!"[1]

On the website [www.cityonfire.com/ City on Fire], Joseph Cuby is more affectionate:

"People buying this movie are more likely to watch it for the same reason I watched it: to entertain the notion of what would have happened had Bruce Lee clashed with Hwang Jang Lee...Bruce Lee's Secret isn't completely incompetent, there were quite a few scenes that I thought were well-directed. One scene depicts Bob and his friend working at this new place with Bob doing cool tricks with the bowls & glasses before getting sacked by their boss just by the sheer presence of Rob Kerver & his lackeys (the way it was done with editing, music and no dialogue was pretty effective) and I liked one directorial touch which shows Mr. Grace means business in this groovy shot where we see his office, almost pitch black, except there's a light behind his desk which is making the retro-looking wall behind him look shiny - creating a silhouette where the only other thing you see is the smoke coming from his cigar, quite artsy! All in all, harmless fun that's above average if not completely good!"[www.cityonfire.com]

[edit] Trivia

Hwang Jang-Lee later went on the achieve stardom after appearing as the bad guy in Jackie Chan's breakout films, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master.

Actor Paul Wei Ping Au played the effeminate translator in Bruce Lee's Way of the Dragon.

Roy Horan appears in this film in blackface. He was a regular actor as Seasonal Films, and is best known for his role as a bad guy in Game of Death II (A/K/A Tower of Death).