BRUCE LEE AGAINST SUPERMEN (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

One might think there would be some stupid fun to get out of a kung-fu mash-up of Superman, the Green Hornet and Kato, and Italy's long-lived franchise The Three Fantastic Supermen. But not so, unless one happens to be a devotee of films exploiting the legacy of action-hero Bruce Lee (i.e., "Brucesploitation").

The Bruce-imitator this time up is Bruce Li, who appears early in the film dressed as Kato for one scene, in which he's also called that name. Some reviews claim that Li then becomes a second character named "Carter." I think it's more likely that the producers of the film meant to have Li be their version of Kato for the whole film, but got nervous about inviting the wrath of foreign lawyers for their unsanctioned use of the Green Hornet franchise. So for the rest of the film, Li dresses in more or less regular clothes (though suggestive of Bruce Lee attire) and is called by the semi-sound-alike "Carter." Carter like Kato remains in contact with a costumed fellow named "Green Hornet," but he mostly hangs around in a car monitoring the situation, dressed in a domino mask and a red union suit with a hornet on the chest. 

Carter is called upon to fight a criminal gang that purposes to abduct a famous professor, Ting, who's supposedly invented a way to feed the world's millions at nearly no cost. (We hear about this miraculous process but don't see it, so I don't count it as relevant to the film's phenomenality.) After Carter fends off the gangsters a few times, the gang's leader Tiger seeks help from a mysterious kung-fu practitioner, Superman, who hangs around wearing a black leotard and a white cape, as well as teaching his kung-fu to two nameless, similarly attired students. These are the characters I believe to be functional stand-ins for The Three Fantastic Supermen, even though the Hornet and maybe one other minor character are the ones wearing something like the distinctive red leotards of the Italian heroes.

When the filmmakers aren't wasting time with extraneous car-chases and a bathroom catfight between two jealous women, a few of the kung-fu fights between Carter and Superman are watchable but unmemorable. No one has super-powers or special gimmicks, except that Superman has some spiked gauntlets on his wrists. There are some incoherent scenes of Carter fighting what look like costumed mimes, but there's no fun to be had in this dull potpourri. To say the least, the illicit use of franchise-names for characters bearing no resemblance to the originals does not constitute a crossover, only one of the dumbest attempts of a cheapjack film to coast on the success of both fictional and non-fictional icons.