|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
After Bruce Lee (Danny Lee) has died in her bed, starlet Betty Ting Pei
(herself) is hounded by the press & Bruce lee fans alike ... so much
so that she can't even have a drink in a bar without being attacked by a
sextet of Bruce Lee-fans. But the sympathetic bartender throws them out of
the bar. Then Betty Ting Pei tells her story to him.
It starts withthe fact that she was hated in school, especially because
she was a loner & wanted to be a moviestar. Eventually, when she
stares at movieposters in a cinema lobby, film producer Lo discovers
her, invites her over to his place to sign a contract, but after she has
signed he drugs her, takes her clothes off & takes a few nude
photographs - w2ithout her being aware of it afterwards. & when she
later, at a movieset, refuses to present herself in the nude, he
blackmails her into starring in sex films using her nude photographs.
Eventually, Betty flees to Hong Kong. There she is promptly attacked by
a bunch of hoods, but a man not only beats them up & saves her, but he
also gives the pennyless girl 2000 Dollars to start a new life. That man
changed her life, & that man was of course Bruce Lee.
Soon enough, Betty has made herself a name (& quite some money) by
playing in sex films, & she has a long line of admirers who make her
presents, so when she next meets Bruce Lee, she bluntly returns the money
... & immediately he is fascinated by her & wants to start an
affair ... but at first she refuses him, since he is a married men with 2
children. However, they remain on friendly terms, & on his next film,
an international co-production, Bruce tries to get Betty the female lead
...
Eventually their relationship becomes more than friendship, but after a
night of sin, Betty tries to disappear from Bruce's life, abandons her
luxurious hotelroom, moves to god-knows-where & tries to make it as a
gambler. With little success, because soon enough she has lost all her
money at poker, & her house in Kowloon too, & the henchmen of
moneylender Zhao are after her. She is clever enough to hide out in
Bruce's house, who, when he comes home, beats up Zhao's henchmen but good.
Bruce's & Betty's romabnce starts anew, & this time for real,
& soon enough he has persuaded his parnter to give Betty the female
lead in his film. When he comes to get her to sign the contract, they make
passionate love ... & shortly after Bruce dies from brain haemorrhage
in her bed, & what should have been Betty's triumph proved to be her
downfall.
Having told her story to the bartender, Betty wants to leave, but again
she is attacked by the fanatic sextet, who by now want to kill her ... but
the bartender, obviously a kung fu expert, beats them all up but good to
teach them to show respect to Bruce Lee ...
In the 1970's, after Bruce Lee's untimely death, pretty much every
producer tried to jump the Bruce Lee-bandwagon, & to fill the gap Lee
left with inferior Bruce Lee clones or highly fictional bio-pics - &
hence bruceploitation was born. & with this movie, even renowned Hong
Kong production house Shaw Brothers tried their hands on
bruceploitation, delivering a bio-pic, that (as usual) mixed a grain of
truth with heaps of imagination.
It is a fact that Bruce Lee died in Betty Ting Pei's bed. It is also a
fact that she afterwards was hounded for it by Bruce Lee-fans &
reporters alike. And it might very well be true that Bruce Lee had an
affair with Betty Ting Pei (actually, Bruce Lee-fans have gone to such
absurd lengths to produce evidence that Bruce Lee did not
have the affair, that I tend to believe that Betty Ting Pei really was
his mistress). Everything else in this film (like the portrayal of a
pot-smokint heavy drinking Bruce Lee) might just very well be made up.
The resulting film itself is a blend of high drama, soft sex flick
& martial arts movie, & it's not without its lengths or
inconsistencies in script. However, garishly coloured 1970's outfits &
interior designs paired with a pseudo-funky soundtrack might make it
watchable for you nevertheless (it did for me, anyways).
|