Game of Death (1978)

Film: Game of Death (1978)

Stars: Bruce Lee, Gig Young, Dean Jagger, Colleen Camp, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Director: Robert Clouse

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Bruce Lee: click here to learn more about Mr. Lee (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Actors dying during or after the production of a film is not uncommon, and it's actually relatively normal for directors/studios to use creative ways to meld together clips, body doubles, & whatever you can think of to piece together one last movie with a popular star.  Everyone from Carrie Fisher to Philip Seymour Hoffman to Heath Ledger to Paul Walker all had films released after they died that they had been filming at the time.  But no actor in the history of movies has ever continued to work as much in the years after his death in the same fashion as Bruce Lee, to the point where there became a name for it: "Bruceploitation."

The films that happened after his death in 1973 run the gamut, from re-editing two movies from old episodes of Lee's time on The Green Hornet to actors using Lee's name or film titles to conjure allusions to the late actor.  Films with names like Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (likely the tackiest of the bunch) were relatively common in martial arts films of the 1970's.  Even Jackie Chan, who would eventually succeed Lee as the biggest name in martial arts films, would get an early start with New Fist of Fury, a spin on Lee's 1972 film that we profiled earlier this month.  Producers, having seen gargantuan paydays with The Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon, weren't willing to go quietly and admit that Lee had only really starred in four films, and their gravy train had passed away.  This greed was most encapsulated by today's film and its inexplicable sequel, perhaps the most horrifying movie I can remember seeing given its backstory.

(Spoilers Ahead) Game of Death follows a relatively standard (for a Lee picture) plot, with Billy Lo (Lee...occasionally) fighting against a racketeering syndicate who is threatening he and his fiancee (Camp) as they want a piece of his new movie star success.  Billy, after being shot in the face during a film production, decides this is a good time to go into hiding, and in hiding exacts revenge on those around him, in an attempt to get them back for essentially ruining his career (and eventually, because they kidnap Colleen Camp).

This is the plot of Game of Death...which you will not care about during the movie, as the plot of this movie is very obviously "Bruce Lee is dead."  This is because with the exception of about 12 minutes toward the end of the movie, Bruce Lee the living person is not in the film despite prominent top billing.  He is instead being portrayed by a series of stunt doubles & stand-ins, many of whom have their face onscreen, and are clearly, visibly, not Bruce Lee.  That is, of course, when they decide to even do that.  There's an actual scene (and I had to rewind, which if you know anything about streaming movies on Amazon Prime, is a feat) but there is literally a shot of this movie where they have taped a headshot of Lee onto a mirror, with it clear that a cardboard cutout is serving as the face of the stand-in to make him look more like Lee.

Most famously, Lee himself does appear in the film earlier on in the picture...but as a literal corpse.  That is because, in a shameless scene where we see Colleen Camp screaming & crying while attending the fake funeral of Billy Lo, we see cutaway footage of the actual funeral of Bruce Lee, at one point for a second or two seeing the open casket visage of the actually dead Lee on the screen.  Other than a scene stolen from The Way of the Dragon where he fights Chuck Norris imposed into the beginning of the picture, this is the first time you see the real-life Lee in the movie, making it all the more jarring.

Game of Death is, by my estimation, grave-robbing.  Despite having proper actors like Camp and Oscar-winners Dean Jagger & Gig Young (this being his final film before he murdered his new wife & killed himself, which in literally any other review would be the real-life headline), the only thing worth watching here is Lee.  The scenes, especially his fight with basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabber, where he battles in a skin-tight yellow jumpsuit, are splendid.  Lee is wry, agile, funny, & sexy-as-fuck.  I will own at this point that I have developed not just a heart-fluttering crush on Lee but also a talent one on him (I will 100% be completing his five film set at some point, as I am a true fan), and so on his behalf, the fact that this movie (and somehow a sequel that patches together even more past footage of Lee) exist is an abomination.

I will note, though, that it also opens up an uncomfortable door into the other legacy of Lee: his son, Brandon.  The younger Lee was also an actor (in fact both of Bruce Lee's children would become film performers), and in the 1980's he was doing some version of Bruceploitation, making films like Legacy of Rage which was released in Asia to try to capitalize on his father's still potent legacy.  Lee, though, didn't have much success, even after getting a chance in some American action films in the early 1990's.  But The Crow would end up being (in terms of box office) his big break.  The gothic superhero film was a smash hit in 1994, but similar to half of the films of his father, it was released after his death.  Eerily like his father's character in Game of Death, Brandon Lee would die from an accident involving a prop gun, in this case accidentally firing a live round that had been trapped in the barrel, shooting Lee in the abdomen, and killing him.  Unlike Game of Death, most of the younger Lee's performance was completed (he only had three days left on production, so most reviews don't note the clear real-life issues with this production coming through on the screen), and so after some jostling between Paramount & Miramax, the latter used a stand-in and CGI (which would later become more common) to complete Lee's performance.  Father and son would eventually be buried next to each other in Seattle.

Next month, and for the remainder of the year, we are going to start writing about the "true" modern action stars and not just the pioneers who forged the way, all six of whom would enter into action movie fame throughout the late 1970's, and especially in the 1980's & 90's, the heyday of the action movie genre.  Our first star, though, is going to be someone who, for much of the 1970's, felt like he was headed in a different direction than action, and it was only a chance twist of fate (and eventually billions of dollars) that would make him one of the Grand Tetons of the genre.