Bruceploitation took the world by storm in the 1970's and we are taking a look at just one of the many films in this subgenre, Bruce's Deadly Fingers, from VCI Entertainment.
Studio: VCI Entertainment
Release Date: 1976 (theatrical) / March 27th, 2018 (blu-ray)
Run Time: 91 mins
Region Code: A
Picture: 1080p (2.35:1 aspect ratio)
Sound: English LPCM 2.0
Subtitles: English
Slipcover: No
Digital Copy: No
Starring: Bruce Le, Nora Miao, Bolo Yeung, Michael Wai-Man Chan, Lieh Lo, Man-Tzu Yuan
Written by Joseph Kong
Directed by Joseph Kong
Rating: R (martial arts violence, a rape scene, and language)
THE FILM
Malicious gangsters capture Bruce's ex-girlfriend, then a young martial artist (Bruce Le) attempts to rescue her and the late master's book containing lethal techniques for killing with a finger.
Bruceploitation was all the rave in the 70’s following the unexpected death of Bruce Lee. Every movie studio (including the very studio Bruce Lee worked for when he died) wanted to get in one finding the new Bruce Lee, which meant that they would find someone who looked like Bruce Lee and put them in films that would fool audiences into thinking that the film was another film Lee made before he died. I am not an expert on Bruceploitation so I don’t know if this worked or not, but there are a ton of Bruceploitation films out there so it must have worked even if for a bit.
BRUCE’S DEADLY FINGERS stars Bruce Le (there was also Bruce Li, Bruce Lai, Bruce Leung, and Dragon Lee) as “Bruce” who has to rescue his girlfriend (or his sister, I am not really that clear) and get back the mystical “Kung Fu Finger Book”. “Bruce” goes up against all different kinds of thugs and lowlifes in kung fu battles that aren’t all that great, but are better than anything American martial arts stars in the 80’s put out.
The film just isn’t very engaging. It moves from one fight scene to another with a bit of plot put in there to give the film a story. There a few scenes that are memorable including one where the bad guy puts a snake into a naked woman’s vagina which I found to be just plain weird. There is also a group rape scene in front of a fire in the woods. These scenes are here for sensationalism and offer nothing to the film itself.
BRUCE'S DEADLY FINGERS is not very good. The story is almost non-existent, the dubbing is decent at best, and the fight scenes don’t offer very much in the way of entertainment. It was nice to see Bolo Yeung pop up, but it was a little too late for me to be counting that as a true win. I would say that this is a curiosity piece at best and a bad film at its worst.
THE PICTURE AND THE SOUND
BRUCE'S DEADLY FINGERS has been given a new 2K scan from the original 35mm negative and you can tell that this is a new scan, but I highly doubt that it came from original camera negative. Then again, negatives are really taken care of that much in Hong Kong so maybe it was. The point is, the picture quality varies from scene to scene. Some scenes look really good, so do not. There was much work done to clean the print up at all, but DNR was applied to give the characters a nice waxy look. Again, the DNR doesn’t seem to make an appearance in every scene, but comes up more often than not. Colors are inconsistent as are skin tones. Grain pops up from time to time, but is mostly taken away with the DNR.
The included English LPCM 2.0 track does a really good job at recreating the look and sound of an old school kung fu flick. Dialogue is clear, if a bit raspy at times. The score also sounds great.
THE PACKAGING
Front and Back
Reverse
Discs
THE MENUS
THE FEATURES
Commentary with author Michael Worth
Theatrical Trailer (3m 27s, HD)
Deleted Scenes (6m 21s, HD) Scenes cut from the U.S. release.
Bruceploitation Trailers (13m 11s, HD) Seven trailers are presented here: Fists of Fury, The Chinese Connection, The Way of the Dragon, Game of Death, The Dragon Lives, Golden Dragon Silver Snake, and Fist of Fury Part Two.
Photo Gallery (6m 16s, HD) Gallery auto-plays while selections from the film’s score play.
Bad Kung Fu Dubs (6m 35s, HD) Just clips from the film.
THE CONCLUSION
Like with my review for THE LEG FIGHTERS, I may not have liked BRUCE'S DEADLY FINGERS, but I appreciate the time and effort that has been put into archiving films like this as well as the blu-ray itself. While there is some DNR applied here, the picture still looks better than you would assume it would. The commentary track here is really solid and offers a lot of insight into the Bruceploitation era of films. Again, like with THE LEG FIGHTERS, I hope that we see more blu-ray releases of old school martial arts films because they need all the help they can get.
 (VCI Entertainment) Blu-ray Review){kind=link}
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