THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I'd heard bits and pieces about this low-budget Hong Kong comedy, but streaming made it possible to see all the craziness in the comfort of my home. DRAGON-- also circulated under the title DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU (which title Marvel Comics borrowed for their kung fu magazine) -- isn't a great comedy. But it's definitely a rara avis, given that most Asian chopsockies assiduously avoided references not only to American icons of pop culture but to popular Asian icons as well. I'm sure the only reason director/co-writer Chi Lo bucked the trend was because he almost certainly had no legal permission to use any of these franchise-characters. He was probably counting on just getting his wacky Brucesploitation film shown in HK cinemas for a few weeks, making a little money without inciting foreign retaliation, and closing up shop. Though I don't recognize any of the other movies in Chi Lo's repertoire, it doesn't seem like he ever attempted this brass-balled crossover dementia again.

Purely as an exercise in lunacy, I was won over by the inventiveness of the credit sequence alone. Bruce Lee (played by Bruce Leung) squares off against James Bond, but they agree not to fight after all, possibly because Bond had his share of HK fans. Bruce fights some guys in skeleton costumes, and a taller guy fights them too while the credits play a few strains from THE GODFATHER song "Speak Softly Love." Zatoichi duels Bruce but Bruce tickles the hostility out of the blind masseuse. Kato humiliates the Man with No Name. Bruce is attacked by the Western Dracula and an Asian guy later called The Exorcist, and he bests both of them. Then the sequence ends after Bruce fights a red-robed fellow and more skeleton guys.

Then the "story" begins in Hades, where the underworld's lord, Judge Pao, prepares to judge the recently deceased Bruce Lee. However, the dead body of Bruce appears to get a boner. Hey, surprise, it's just the nunchucks in his pocket! Then Bruce springs back to life and promptly insults the king before his assembled court. Pao shows off his power by shaking a pillar that can cause earthquakes, and Bruce more or less slows his roll.

Next Bruce shows up in what I assume is an underworld restaurant, where he has minor encounters with Popeye, Kwai Chang Caine, and Zatoichi. Bruce pisses off Zatoichi, who seeks revenge by bringing in his criminal allies: James Bond, the Man with No Name (called "Clint Eastwood"), and those skeleton-costumed guys from the credit sequence. Bruce kicks a lot of asses but suddenly loses his strength. There's a second-long scene in which he's being encircled by beautiful women in filmy gowns like the hot maidens from Pao's court, and as Bruce collapses Clint Eastwood kicks him when he's down. Injured Bruce is taken in by the kindly owner of the inn, also a doctor.

  Bruce explains (sort of) to Doctor Wa To and his daughters that he has an "Achilles Heel" from having played around too much in life, and he even mentions the real-life wife of Real Bruce Lee, also the mother of actors Brandon and Shannon Lee. While the audience tries to figure out what this confession of impropriety has to do with anything, the scene shifts to the underworld haunt of the bad spirits, including those already mentioned plus Dracula, The Godfather (who resembles no one from THE GODFATHER), the Exorcist (who resembles no one from THE EXORCIST), and the sex-nymphet Emmanuelle. They're all planning to overthrow Judge Pao, and they reference using their ally Dracula and his "zombies."  

 Some thugs randomly attack Bruce, but he fends them off with the help of the One-Armed Swordsman, who doesn't have a sword this time. Bruce, One Arm, Popeye and Caine put on a show to draw business to Bruce's new gymnasium. While that's going on, some of the hot ladies in Pao's court sit around bathing and showing off their tits while they fantasize about Bruce's attainments, Another shift, and there's a brief brawl when Popeye and Caine beat up some underworld cops. Zatoichi challenges Bruce to a battle, and they adjourn to a quarry, where they have one of the movie's few decent fights (albeit still comical in nature, not even counting Bruce "labeling" his moves after the films he made in life). 

The bad spirits send Emmanuelle to seduce the Bruce, but for some unknown reason he's able to throw off his tendency towards concupiscence, so he rejects her. The Godfather and his gang offer Bruce a place in their conspiracy, and he rejects them too. Pao's wife the Queen and her servant-girl invade Bruce's quarters and knock out Wa To's daughter Sue Man, who clearly has a crush on Bruce though he doesn't show any feelings toward her. One of the spirit-girls takes Sue Man's form but he isn't fooled her come-on. The queen and her servant fight over Bruce and use a magical potion, intended to stoke Bruce's lust, on one another. They become deformed and complain to Judge Pao, but he's more interested when the Exorcist offers him Emmanuelle. 

While Bruce is away from his gym, it's attacked by Dracula and his "zombies" (the thugs in skeleton-suits). Bruce dresses up like Kato and ambushes the vamp and his henchmen in the quarry, and wouldn't you know it, even the hero's defeat of Dracula entails another sex-joke. Meanwhile, Emmanuelle tries to hump Pao to death. Bruce, who has no particular reason to help Pao, intervenes and preserves the ruler's life. Later Bruce has encounters with Bond and the Man with No Name, defeating them easily. Exorcist and Godfather abandon all subtlety and make a frontal assault on Pao's court to kill the king. Pao shakes the pillar again, causing an underworld earthquake. (At least Chi Lo didn't make a sex joke around the pillar, though one could have been halfway justified.) Bruce beats down Exorcist and Godfather, but somehow Pao gets the idea that Bruce wants his throne, when Bruce just wants to quit working for him. Pao calls upon the red-robed guy from the credits, who's some sort of court magician, since he conjures up a dozen mummies to battle the hero. Caine, One Arm (wielding a knife but no sword) and Popeye show up to join in the fun. Once all the villains are defeated, Bruce demands to be sent back to Earth (in a new body, one supposes) by Pao, and everyone waves bye-bye.

I'm of two minds about whether DRAGON is a valid crossover. The presence of humor doesn't keep a given story as being a crossover, but Chi Lo plays so fast and loose with all of these fictional personas that the effect of DRAGON is like that of MAD magazine commingling disparate pop-culture characters solely for the sake of incongruity. However, the idea that all of these characters are dead-- when in truth nearly none of them were genuinely ever alive-- makes this underworld seem a bit like an archetypal state of being, where even "real" Bruce Lee has become more legend than mortal. In any case, I rate DRAGON as having fair mythicity. Despite all of its goofy flights of fancy, it does reveal how thoroughly Western culture was impinging on the culture of Hong Kong, and possibly on that of China as a whole, not least by expressing a desire to see Asian characters like Zatoichi sharing a place at the pop-fiction table with the famous American or European icons. (And there's something rather singular about the director's obsession with Bruce Lee's sexual prowess, which obsession he seems to have thought his audience would share.)