Hump Day Horribleness: ‘Fist of Fear, Touch of Death’

One of the great features over at the Internet Movie Database is the Bottom 100. Based on ratings viewers of the site give to various films, the worst of the worst films get put on this list. Some of them are on and off in a matter of days. Others stick around for the long haul, showing just how much suckage they truly emit.

It’s time to look at these movies and determine where they stand. Do they deserve to be on the Bottom 100 list? Are they not as bad as everyone says? Will they be off the list any time soon?

Here’s the breakdown for this week’s film:

Title: ‘Fist of Fear, Touch of Death’

Release Date: September, 1980

Ranking on Bottom 100 (as of 6/24/2009): #37 (based on 816 votes)

Why it’s here: Imagine my amazement when I was scouring the IMDB bottom 100 and saw a Bruce Lee film on it. How could this be? Had the voters truly lost their minds on this one?

Of course, after watching the film, I now understand why it is here. Despite the marketing to the contrary, this isn’t a Bruce Lee film. Instead, it is a mockumentary about his life, death, and the martial arts match to determine his successor.

Adolph Caesar plays a TV anchorman who is covering the event. When we first see him, he is talking with martial arts promoter Aaron Banks. Banks believes Lee was murdered with a move called the “touch of death,” which kills the victim three to four weeks after being applied. The “murder” angle of the story goes absolutely nowhere, and you have to wonder why it was included at all.

Caesar talks to various martial arts “greats,” most of whom you’ve surely never even heard of, about Lee and the martial arts displays that are taking place behind them. The in-ring action includes Bill Louie plucking out an opponents eye and tossing it to the crowd, sound effects included.

All of this is spliced with a few interviews with Lee himself that are clearly cut up and dubbed. There are even a few skits involving Fred “The Hammer” Williamson oversleeping and Ron Van Clief foiling an attempted rape in a park. In fact, the film features not one, but two, attempted rapes in a park with one of our martial arts “greats” swooping in to save the day. The second of these features Bill Louie in a Kato get-up. The whole scene is ridiculously disconnected from the rest of the film, not that there’s much cohesion to be found otherwise. It does offer up some laughs as Louie flaunts his nunchuck and throwing star skills. After Louie leaves the scene, someone actually utters the words, “Who was that masked man?”

At one point, Caesar takes us back in time to show us Bruce Lee’s childhood and the life of the martial arts master’s great grandfather. We’ll get to this part of the film in the next section.

All in all, ‘Fist of Fear, Touch of Death’ is an atrocious attempt to bank on the name of a superstar. Matthew Mallinson served as the director on this film, and, if you’ve never heard his name before, it’s because this is the only film he’s ever made. There’s a reason for that.

This film would be one to watch as the cinematic train wreck that it is. It could offer up a number of laughs here and there were it not so painfully insulting to the star it is exploiting. At one point, Williamson talks to Caesar about how a match to determine Bruce Lee’s successor is an insult to Bruce Lee. Never mind the fact that the entire film is an insult to Bruce Lee.

Lowest of the low moments: This film is loaded with low moments, but the film nosedives into a mountainside through the middle segment where we are shown the “Bruce Lee Story.” Taking the ‘What’s Up, Tiger Lily?’ approach and dubbing English over found footage, this section depicts a young Bruce Lee who is “karate crazy” and whose family disregards his desire to go into the martial arts. These scenes incorporate Lee as a child on the TV show “Longstreet” and then his early performance in the film, ‘Thunderstorm.’

These scenes of Lee’s childhood play out like a God awful, black and white soap opera. The voice chosen for Lee is that of a whiny kid, and it almost makes you forget the idiocy of what is going on narratively. Almost.

This flashback segment also flashes back itself to show us Lee’s ancestor. According to this film, Lee’s great-grandfather was a…wait for it…Samurai warrior. If that doesn’t sound strange to you, it’s because you aren’t realizing that Bruce Lee is Chinese and Samurai are strictly Japanese. The scenes showing Lee’s Samurai ancestor are taken from the 1971 Samurai film, ‘Invincible Super Chan.’ These scenes actually don’t look all that bad, but none of that credit goes to the makers of this film. Instead, the nature of these scenes sucks whatever life ‘Invincible Super Chan’ had in it to begin with.

Will it ever get off the list: There is very little chance that ‘Fist of Fear, Touch of Death’ will ever get out of the IMDB bottom 100, nor should it. Its current position at 37 is a long way away from the top, and the film is nearly 30 years old. Three decades of pissing off fans of martial arts films is something you never want to do, and that is exactly what this film has done ever since it first came out. Not only is it insulting, not only is it horribly put together, it is downright boring. No level of cult status is ever going to help this film get off this list, and I, for one, have absolutely no problem with that.