Bruce the Super Hero (1979)

Bruce the Super Hero (1979)
Aka: Super Hero; Bruce the Superhero
Chinese Title: 黃金喋血
English Translation: Golden Blood

 

Starring: Bruce Le, Lito Lapid, Chiang Tao, Bolo Yeung Sze, Azenith Briones, Cai Qing-Dao, Mike Cohen, Ernie Ortega, Protacio Dee, Ken Watanabe, Subas Herrero
Director: Bruce Le
Action Director: Bruce Le

 

By the end of the 1970s, Bruce Le was busy jumping back and forth between Hong Kong, South Korea and the Philippines making movies. By this point, he had already established himself as a competent screen fighter and fight choreographer. He had now caught the directing bug and was ready to up his game. Bruce the Super Hero, a Hong Kong-Filippino co-production, turned out to not only be his first directorial effort, but his first job as producer, too. It was far from his last however. He would continue to direct his own Brucesploitation movies throughout the early 1980s. By the end of the decade, Bruce would venture out into wuxia fantasy (Ghost of the Fox) and historical exploitation (Comfort Women). After a twenty years hiatus from filmmaking, Bruce would return to directing with the war movies The Eyes of Dawn and On the Nan Ni Wan Frontier.

Bruce the Super Hero is not an especially auspicious debut, but it’s not incompetent, either. It is just a typical generic Brucesploitation opus set in modern times and populated with Japanese villains. Bruce, the second Sino-Japanese War has been over for decades. Get over it. In any case, the movie opens with a Chinese antique shop owner, Susie Chang, being attacked by random thugs dressed in black. She initially fends for herself, but is eventually stabbed to death. However, before she expires, she leaves something with a Good Samaritan: a Filippino boxer named Rocky (Lito Lapid, of Barracuda, Terror of the Sea).

The murderous ruffians belong to the Black Dragon Society, a Filippino crime organization with ties to the Japanese. The object they are after is a hilt to a samurai sword that contains a map to a hidden cache of gold bullion left over from the Second World War. The Black Dragons start harassing Rocky and his family, which ultimately results in Rocky’s father’s death. Meanwhile, Susie’s brother, Bruce Chang (played by Bruce Le), shows up in Manila looking for his sister’s murderers. Eventually, the two fighters team up with a pretty Interpol agent (Azenith Briones, of Temptation Island and Caliber 357) and an equally-pretty female undercover agent to find the treasure and stop the bad guys.

Despite his top billing[1] and roles as producer, director and fight choreographer, Bruce Le is more of a supporting character, showing up mainly when there is someone to beat up. The film mainly revolves around Rocky, played by former boxer, prolific actor and career politician Lito Lapid. Rocky spends the film getting in random fights, schmoozing it up with Marlene the Interpol agent, and watching those close to him get the short end of the stick. And the thing is, Mr. Lapid actually steals the show from Bruce Le. He’s a decent actor, but his boxing skills are undeniable and his hooks and body blows are far more energetic than Bruce Le’s usual mix of hung gar forms and faux-jeet kune do.

Bruce Le does a solid, if unremarkable job, with the action. I’m sure that Lito Lapid looks better with the Hong Kong rhythm of choreography than he might have had with a Hollywood action director. Bruce Le is his usual self: if you like him, you’ll like him here. If you don’t, his fighting performance here will not change your mind. Most of the fights involve one or two people fighting a slew of nameless goons. The big finale is twenty minutes of non-stop martial arts action. In addition to the nameless henchmen, Bruce Le and Lito Lapid take on several mini-bosses, including Bolo Yeung, Ken Watanabe (of the Italian Karate Warrior films, not the fellow from The Last Samurai and the Legendary Godzilla movies), and Ernie Ortega (of Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen). The final fight is a match of Southern Chinese styles between Bruce Le and perennial movie villain Chiang Tao. It’s pretty solid, if standard, fighting until the last part, where Chiang Tao puts on a rubber/leather gauntlet sculpted to look like a cobra’s head(!) and starts using the snake style against Bruce Le! Only Bruce’s Eagle’s Claw (!!) can defeat that particular technique—sort of an inversion of Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow right there. My main complaint is the climax sets up some fights between the two female protagonists and the villains’ stable of fighting hookers, but then cuts away in favor of the men. We never actually get to see the women fight; even if the choreography didn’t come out well, women fighting badly is better than women not fighting at all.

People looking for a Brucesploitation fix can certainly do worse than Bruce the Super Hero. The film doesn’t have the thick veneer of sleaze that would dominate Bruce Le’s later efforts. There is a lot of fighting, most of it fairly competent and even pretty good on occasion. The plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially when the Japanese members of the Black Dragon Society start yammering about using what amounts to two dufflebags full of gold bullion to return Japan to its former militaristic glory. But you can do a lot worse than that. Oh yeah, so much worse.

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[1] - Amusingly enough, the dubbed versions of Bruce Le’s film frequently display “Super Star Bruce Le” or “Super Starring Bruce Le” in their opening credits.