Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.0

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 23, 2024

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Severin's The Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1.

When Severin Films released Kung Fu Trailers of Fury and Return of Kung Fu Trailers of Fury several years ago, I'm sure I wasn't the only one initially thinking, "Well, that's a stupid idea for a release", only to have the sheer lunacy of the trailers assembled in both collections "fight back" against that assessment, as if to say in response, "Yeah, well who's stupid now?" In fact, both Kung Fu Trailers of Fury and Return of Kung Fu Trailers of Fury were kind of deliriously enjoyable in their own slapdash way, and those releases evidently were one of the inspirations for a full on collection of so-called "Brucesploitation" films, this time offering the actual films in addition to their trailers. The goofily affable Michael Worth, who has contributed so many fun commentaries through the years to various kung fu films on Blu-ray, is your "host" of sorts here, offering introductions to all the films and commentaries for many of them. If none of these films is ever going to be acclaimed as an unappreciated masterpiece, and if both video and audio on many of the films in this set might be charitably termed problematic, merely having these films in high definition will be alluring, and an absolute glut of other supplemental material is included as well, making this a probable "must have" for a certain demographic.

This is yet another "riff" on <Game of Death, but this one evidently beat the kinda sorta Bruce Lee feature to theaters, according to the introduction by Michael Worth. Worth also mentions a completely bizarre "meta" element to this film that evidently zinged right over the head of both early critics and evidently large swaths of the audience, but the upshot here is that what begins as almost a documentary (and actually for all intents and purposes, an actual documentary) then morphs somewhat chaotically and briefly into a tale of Bruce Li being hired to play Bruce Lee in order finish Game of Death, which then morphs somewhat chaotically and for a longer span of time into the movie that Li has been hired to perform in. It's spectacularly weird but does have some impressive fight scenes with Li in this film's Tower of Death.

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Michael Worth's introduction mentions this transfer was taken from a CRI from Aquarius Releasing. The actual presentation has this prefatory text card:

The following presentation was scanned from the internegative of Aquarius Releasing's US Theatrical Version of Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death.

Because no film element could be found for the pieces that were removed for this release, they are included in the Special Features as Deleted Scenes.

This is another pretty badly damaged looking source element, with screenshot 8 providing just one of several examples. That said, damage as extreme as shown in that screenshot can be intermittent, and some of the more minimal signs of age related wear and tear are not as disruptive. Colors are actually pretty good this time around, which may be a bit of a surprise given a CRI source element, though there are still noticeable variances in temperatures and densities. Once again anamorphic oddities are abundant, including not just the expected squeezing at the edges (and sometimes into) the frame, but the same completely odd tilted / skewed look that I've mentioned in other reviews, where it almost looks like the rectangular frame has been tweaked into a parallelogram. There's an excellent example of this phenomenon in screenshot 2.

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death features another DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track that is graced with a really groovy theme song that Michael Worth says is the most famous of all Brucesploitation music, and which sounds decently full bodied in this presentation. In fact, the low end and midrange of this track can be more consistent than the high end, which can once again be brash and bright to the point of near pain, especially with regard to louder sound effects or more hyperbolic cues. Optional English subtitles are available.

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary With Frank Djeng, Co-Producer of Enter the Clones of Bruce, With Contributions from Chris Poggiali, Co- Author of These Fists Break Bricks


• The Last Kung Fu Picture Show – The Bay Area's Movie Theater Era (HD*; 12:28) is a tribute to a probably bygone era, hosted by Frank Djeng.


• Deleted Scenes (HD; 11:46)


• Severin's Kung Fu Theater With Actor/Director/Bruceploitation Expert Michael Worth (HD; 2:08) offers a brief introduction. This is accessible as either a standalone supplement or under the Play Menu, where it's authored to lead directly to the feature.


• Radio Spot (HD; 1:04) plays to a poster.


• Trailer (HD; 4:07)

*720

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death is such an obvious cash grab property that it's hard to take it seriously, which is probably a good thing, considering how unintentionally comic it is a lot of the time. Li's fighting skills are the saving grace here, if there is one. Once again video and audio encounter obstacles, but the supplements are very enjoyable.