CineSavant Column

Saturday June 8, 2024

 

Hello!

I never would have thought this subgenre existed … innumerable Chinese chopsocky pictures feeding off the aura of star Bruce Lee. I remember seeing Enter the Dragon when it played 24-7 at Grauman’s Chinese, and learning that the action pix dervish had died just as international superstardom hit.

Meet Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee, Bruce Liang, and others … Severin has somehow collected 14 ‘Brucesploitation’ epics on seven discs, packaged with a full documentary Enter the Clones and a fat book. Severin must have a busy ‘ideas’ department, charged with thinking up original collector’s gift boxes.

The Game of Clones: Brucesploitation Collection Vol. 1
Among the interviews and featurettes is one that will intrigue armchair preservationists, The Lost World Of Kung Fu Film Negatives. I’m not even much of a fan of Hong Kong Martial Arts pictures, but this sounds like fun. It’s expected on June 25.

 


 

The indomitable Michael McQuarrie comes up with another winner: effects legend Ray Harryhausen once sued Big Tobacco and an advertising agency, claiming that his creative ideas for animated cigarettes dancing to music, had been misappropriated (polite-speak for stolen).

The Internet Archive has Harryhausen’s entire 250-page deposition online. For us fans, the fun is hearing Ray in his own words describe his full employment history in the 1940s and ’50s.

Ever been deposed?  You are like a piece of wood, with somebody whittling away at you, circling around the subject at hand in an effort to keep you confused, poking any prying to find some massive disconnect. Harryhausen does very well, at least in the first 70 pages I read… not the excitable type!

Harryhausen vs. American Tobacco Co.
Deposition of Ray Harryhausen, April 12, 1957
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson