Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		1.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		2.0

Game of Death Blu-ray Movie Review

An embarrassment.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 10, 2013

Note: This film is currently only available as part of Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection.

For hordes of baby boomers, Bruce Lee will probably forever be Kato. In the wake of the insanely popular Adam West Batman series, ABC greenlit another superhero in the hopes of lightning striking twice, but The Green Hornet had neither Batman’s campy sense of humor nor, ultimately, its popularity (though truth be told, by the time The Green Hornet aired, Batman was probably already at its all time peak in popularity and was soon to begin losing its audience, ultimately following its sibling into the purgatory of cancellation and endless reruns via syndication). Bruce Lee made such an impression as Van Williams’ sidekick in The Green Hornet that the series was actually known colloquially in many international markets as The Kato Show. Many Westerners at least were unaware that Lee had toiled in film for years as a child actor before his breakout role in American television. Though The Green Hornet was not in itself a success, it raised Lee’s profile to the point where he at least could find occasional work as a guest star in other American television series, but perhaps surprisingly it took a few more years until Lee’s tragically brief adult film career finally took hold. Over the course of a mere two or so years, Lee made only five films, but he established himself as the leading martial arts star of his generation and due perhaps at least somewhat to his untimely death at the age of 32 in 1973, Lee rather quickly became even more legendary, part of that cadre of stars who, rather like James Dean, experienced a post-mortem reassessment of their contributions that only grew with the passing years. The international market has seen several Blu-ray releases of Lee’s first films over the years, both singly and in deluxe boxed sets, but fans were overjoyed to hear of this new Shout! Factory set, which includes four of Lee’s five films (Enter the Dragon is a Warner property and has been released on Blu-ray by that studio). Joy turned to shock, however, when early recipients of this extravagantly packaged set started complaining that Fortune Star, who had provided the masters to Shout! for this release, had “cheated” viewers by supplying upscaled standard definition transfers rather than native high definition properties.

. . .and now, for the rest of the story. Paul Harvey used to tease his radio audiences with that famous introductory phrase, and it’s more or less perfect for “what happened next”. After comments from consumers who received early versions of the first release, and (if I might be less than perfectly humble for a moment) the original Blu-ray.com review, Shout! realized there was something wrong with the release. While they remained a bit circumspect on what was happening, with original reports seeming to focus only on the mislabeled discs I had identified in my original review, Shout! ultimately evidently uncovered newer high definition masters for three of the films and went back to the drawing board to recreate and reissue the set. There have been a lot of accusations flying around the internet (what else is new?) alleging all kinds of nefarious behavior, but I for one find this neither helpful nor ultimately of much importance. What matters is that Shout! has tried to address concerns and has probably gone to considerable expense to recall the first set and reissue this “new, improved” one. Their official statement detailing the differences in this new set reads:

Correct pairing of disc label art and media for discs 10 and 11, which had inadvertently been swapped on the original release.

New Blu-rays for The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon. Contrary to speculation circulating on the internet, the original set did contain hi-def masters of the first three feature films. However, after comments from fans who had received early copies of our set, we discovered that our sources were not the recently restored transfers used for the Blu-rays in Hong Kong and Japan, but rather the original masters done a few years ago in Canada. We therefore acquired the improved masters (the master for Game of Death was no appreciably different), and have included them on this new set, for a truly definitive Bruce Lee collection.

Some fans have thrown brickbats at Shout! for supposedly not “coming clean” about whether the first set contained upscales or not, and to them I’d simply ask two questions, the first of which is: what difference does it make, now that Shout! has corrected the problem? The second, perhaps tangential, question is whether this is simply a matter of terminology. As lovers of FUNimation anime releases are well aware, that label regularly lists releases as HD native when what they really mean is that they have been provided (pre-existing) upscaled HD masters of native SD content. That may in fact be what has happened here, but again, I find the brouhaha a relatively moot point, now that corrected masters have been provided.

Though Shout! Factory’s packaging suggests this is the original (incomplete) 1973 “version” of Game of Death, it is in actuality the pretty lamentable 1978 reboot, which featured a whole new plot and two (count ‘em) stand-ins replacing Lee in the bulk of the film, in an unwitting homage to Ed Wood and his Bela Lugosi non-look-alikes in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Probably the less said about this embarrassing attempt to cash in on Lee’s legacy the better, especially since this version uses surprisingly little of the footage Lee did complete before first taking off to film Enter the Dragon and then of course unexpectedly dying before the film could be finished.

What’s at least a little remarkable here is the inclusion of some relatively high profile American stars, including Hugh O’Brian, Gig Young and Dean Jagger. While none these guys were exactly A-list material, they still had a certain marquee value, and one has to wonder if they had any conscience qualms about lending their names to such a shoddy enterprise.

The film is almost laughably inept at times, inserting nanoseconds of Lee from previous films in order to supposedly establish his presence, but then lingering on not very well disguised “doubles” (who look nothing like Lee). This is crass commercialism of the very worst order, an obvious attempt to try to rake in a few last bucks based on a putative Lee starring role. Seldom has the filmmaking world seemed so shameless.

Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: As detailed above, Shout! has not upgraded The Game of Death with a new master, so the comments on the video quality reflect my initial assessment of this film while revising some comments about the original version of some of the others in this set. While Shout! continues to state that the original masters were hi-def, as (again) mentioned above, this may simply be a case of terminology, not any kind of subterfuge.

The Game of Death is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Let's just get the elephant in the room out of the way as soon as possible: is this an upscale? Almost certainly. Now already there will be some fans storming the battlements with torches and pitchforks insisting that this is a cop out, but let me just answer those people this way: I will not state something as an absolute fact if I do not know it to be true. While The Game of Death is probably incrementally better than what was the horrible looking version of The Way of the Dragon on the now recalled release, it's by pretty minimal degrees.

As with The Way of the Dragon, not all of the problems with this presentation can be traced solely to the transfer, for this film has its own built in issues, a result of the really shameless decision to try to cobble together mere seconds from other Lee films in order to make it seem like Lee is actually in this film. There are manifest differences in the appearance of various film stocks as well as rather large variances in grain structure built in to the elements here. That said, there are some of the same density issues that hamper other offerings in this set, leading to quasi-flicker and an unstable palette. The image is also highly variable in terms of sharpness, though truth be told it never really rises much above merely acceptable in that category. Blacks are pretty milky and contrast is erratic, especially in some of the shaded or nighttime sequences.

Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! Factory has included several different audio options, but their menu listings either don't always match what's actually present or fail to disclose whether the tracks are lossless or not. The following list offers the menu listings followed by actual audio specs in parentheses, if those differ from the menu listing or if further clarification is needed:

• English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
• English Mono (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• English Mono (Japanese Theatrical) (Dolby Digital 1.0)

The Game of Death features what is arguably the overall best sounding audio of this entire package, with regard to the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. But there's one really odd anomaly which I am frankly at a complete loss to explain. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is just a few centimes higher (i.e., the track is just slightly faster) than the three other mixes on this release. How sync is still established is beyond me, but for those who have perfect pitch or excellent relative pitch, the difference is irrefutable. That said, fidelity is excellent on the English 5.1 track, with even the lossless 2.0 track suffering, albeit minimally, by comparison. The two lossy tracks are noticeably muffled sounding when compared to the lossless tracks. Surround activity still tends to be relegated almost exclusively to foley effects (some of which are pretty funny) and score.

Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers (1080i; 5:22)


• Still Gallery (1080p; 3:57)


• Game of Death Outtake Montage (1080i; 3:39)


• Game of Death Bloopers (1080i; 2:29)


• Game of Death Revisited (1080p; 39:01) is apparently the original 1973 cut of the film.


• Alternate Opening (1080i; 1:56)


• Alternate Endings (1080i; 3:52)


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 7:01)


• Game of Death Locations (1080i; 7:27) takes "then and now" looks at several of the film's locations.


• Game of Death Japanese Print in HD (1080p; 1:39:51) runs just slightly shorter than the main version's 1:40:50.


• Audio Commentary by Hong Kong Film Expert Mike Leeder. You know the drill by now if you've been reading other reviews of films in this set: great commentary, lousy audio.

Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's probably best to just dismiss The Game of Death as a really unfortunate example of greed overcoming any semblance of decency. That issue is only exacerbated by a pretty shoddy looking video presentation here. The upside to this Blu-ray is some of the supplementary material, some of which at least should engender considerable interest.