The Spirit of Bruce Lee (1973) User Reviews

Ignore the title and poster - this has nothing to do with Bruce Lee!

[Red-Barracuda · 4/10 · 17 November 2015]

This Hong Kong Chopsocky action film is set in Thailand. Like many, many others it is based around a revenge plot-line - two guys team up to defeat a gang of criminals who are responsible for killing one of their brothers. This is the type of story you will have seen done dozens of times if you have delved into Asian martial arts movies of the 70's. And to be honest, there's really nothing much to differentiate this one from all the others. It has lots of kung fu fighting for sure but it's also badly paced and pretty tedious on the whole. The one thing that does stand out a little bit was its utterly meaningless title. To tell you the truth when I went into this I thought I was going to be getting a documentary about Bruce Lee and I have to admit that the title seriously let me down on that score and turned out to simply be a pretty cheap and annoying way for this undistinguished and below par martial arts flick to cash in on the one truly international star of its sub-genre.

Kung-fu, bell bottoms, and an exotic Thai backdrop...

[InjunNose · 6/10 · 23 March 2009]

Like "The Big Boss" (Bruce Lee's first film), "Spirits of Bruce Lee" is an early '70s martial arts thriller filmed in Thailand with a mostly Chinese cast and crew. And no, the movie has absolutely nothing to do with Bruce Lee; the title is just another lame attempt by the Hong Kong film industry to cash in on Lee's name. Michael Chan stars as a man who travels to Thailand to avenge the murder of his brother--and who is, of course, well-equipped to deal with the bad guys because of his outstanding martial abilities. Chan is aided by an undercover cop and a Chinese family living in Thailand; together they raid the palatial estate of the lead villain, a fellow who mutters "Gol-damn" (that's right: "gol-damn", not "goddamn") when he's angry and spends most of the film clenching a cigarette holder in his snarling mouth. After Mr. Big has finally been dispatched, a couple of his henchmen show up (one of them, rail-thin and dressed as a cowboy, uses a whip) and Chan has it out with them, too. "Spirits of Bruce Lee" suffers from all the usual deficiencies of the genre: poor pacing, not-very-funny comic relief (provided by a heavyset young man known only as 'Fatty'), ridiculous dubbing. But it's filled with hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot combat, and that's the only thing you can reasonably expect from a kung-fu picture. Michael Chan is, as always, impressive in the fight scenes...and this is one of the few films in which he manages not to look sinister.