150 Movies You Should See Before You Die (45 page)

For thirty years it's been marketed as a documentary, but in fact this movie is actually a mockumentary, poking fun at the many sleazy attempts to cash in on Bruce Lee's superstar status in the years following his death. Unfortunately, it's clumsily made with badly re-edited and redubbed clips from early Bruce Lee films and interviews interspersed with footage from a real martial arts competition. Worse, much of the humor of Lee's films has been muted, as the exploitaton genre it mocked has faded into pop culture history.

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The Crappies

The Special Achievement Award in Humorless Nitwittery goes to …
Countless Internet commentators and web-based movie review-ers. They all seem to have missed the fact that this is a comedy and criticize the movie for making ridiculous claims (Bruce Lee ran away from home to emulate his grandfather, the greatest Chinese samurai ever; Fred Williamson is constantly mistaken for Harry Belafonte, etc.).

And the Worst Director Award goes to …
Matthew Mallinson for beating just about every joke in the film to death.

They Really Said It!

Bruce Lee:
The secret of Karate is power. Internal power. From the ear.

Betcha Didn't Know

Jackie Chan first rose to stardom as one of numerous Bruce Lee imitators.

Bill Louie, at the time this film was made, was one of the many martial artists trying to cash in on Bruce Lee's reputation. Louie went onto become a successful martial arts instructor.

Trivia Quiz

How did Bruce Lee die?

A: Cardiac arrest (heart attack)

B: Drug overdose

C: Stabbed to death by unknown assailants (possibly CIA ninjas)

D: Cerebral edema (swelling of the brain)

Answer: D. On July 20, 1973, Lee took a headache tablet and lay down for a nap. He never woke up. The coroner determined his death was due to an allergic reaction to the medication.

PRODUCERS
Al Clarke and Robert Devereux (executive producers), Penny Corke and Robert Fox (producers)

WRITER
Stephen Volk

DIRECTOR
Ken Russell

STARS
Gabriel Byrne (
Lord Byron
), Natasha Richardson (
Mary
Wollstonecraft
), Julian Sands (
Percy Shelley
), Myriam Cyr (
Claire
Clairmont
), and Timothy Spall (
Dr. Polidori
)

Eccentric poet Lord Byron (Byrne) invites young prodigy Percy Shelley and his fiancée Mary Wollstonecraft (Sands and Richardson), along with her half-sister Claire Clairmont (Cyr) to spend a weekend with him and his personal doctor, Polidori (Spall), at his isolated estate. After an evening of reading ghost stories, drinking wine enhanced with laudanum, and holding an impromptu séance, these outstanding figures of the Romantic Age find them-selves trapped in an ever-worsening spiral of confusion and terror.

Why It Sucks

The movie stops making sense about fifteen minutes in. Creepy I'll grant you, but it's also a complete mess, as story threads come briefly together before separating again. Are the events of the film just hallucinations suffered by Mary? Did Shelley and his friends manage to call forth an evil spirit? No one knows the answer, including the filmmakers. This film is all flash (together with puffy shirts and bad hair) but no substance.

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The Crappies

The Worst Writing Award goes to …
Stephen Volk, who must have been on something when he wrote this nonsense.

And the Worst Director Award goes to …
Ken Russell for failing to realize that if he's going to make us sit through a movie full of random nonsense, spooky imagery, and fops being emotionally cruel to each other, he could have at least given us more naked breasts. (I'm sure Charles Band would have given us nudity. He might even have given us some midget sex during the incubus scene.)

They Really Said It!

Byron
: And here I had thought you that contradiction in terms: an intelligent woman!

Betcha Didn't Know

The novel
Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus
by Mary Shelley was completed when she was just nineteen. The genesis of the idea was actually a nightmare she had shortly after suffering a miscarriage with her first child at the age of eighteen.

In 2006, almost exactly twenty years after the release of
Gothic
, Julian Sands starred in
The Haunted Airman
, another sexually charged horror film where the lines between reality and nightmare are impossibly blurred.

Trivia Quiz

Which of the following actresses played Mary Shelley onscreen?

A: Elsa Lanchester

B: Holly Hunter

C: Valerie Hobson

D: Milla Jovovich

Answer: A. Elsa Lanchester played the author in the prologue for
The Bride of Frankenstein
(1935). Valerie Hobson played Dr. Frankenstein's wife, while Lanchester also portrayed the female created by the doctor as a companion to the Creature.

PRODUCER
Lee Demarbre

WRITER
Ian Driscoll

DIRECTOR
Lee Demarbre

STARS
Phil Caracas (
Jesus Christ
), Maria Moulton (
Mary Magnum
), Jeff Moffet (
El Santo
), Murielle Varhelyi (
Maxine Shreck
), and Josh Grace (
Dr. Praetorious
)

When the evil Dr. Praetorious (Grace) and a cult of vampires threaten to wipe out Ottawa's lesbian community, the Savior Himself, Jesus Christ (Caracas), comes to their rescue with blessings, miracles, and ass-kicking, vampire-busting kung fu (and a little help from masked Mexican wrestler El Santo (Moffet)!

Why It Sucks

Well, for a film with a great title, there's not enough Jesus, vampires, or lesbians to fully live up to the film's promise. (Although maybe there could never be enough of those elements to make this film great.) Demarbre should have been smart enough to leave Jesus's appearance alone, with his beard and long hair and Year Zero Middle Eastern robes.

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