I just saw this prime example of Brucesploitation and was wondering if anyone out there believes that this movie was made after 1977. The movie (like so many HK 70s films) uses music from Western films such as The Spy Who Loved Me and Rocky. However in addition to those films, there is music from The Warriors and The Wild Geese heard as well. Both of these films came out in 1979 and 1978 so I believe that this film is more likely from 1980/81.
shareLooking for the release year in the Internet, I think it was in 1979.
shareWas the version you were watching dubbed in English? This movie was not distributed in the United States until 1980. It is possible that either no English dubb track existed, or that the English Language distributor wanted to do his own soundtrack. Either way the English version could have been dubbed in 1980. You should also consider that the wave of Bruceploitation in Hong Kong ended well before 1979. It ended about 1978 with the release of Bruce Lee's incomplete final film "Game of Death" and the rise in popularity of Jackie Chan with "Eagle Shadow". There were also a bunch of lawsuits that forced distributors to stop calling their actors Bruce Lee and give them sound alike names such as Bruce Li and Bruce Le. By 1977 the days of fooling audiences into thinking Bruce Lee was the star of a Bruceploitation film were over. After that there was not much point in casting any of the Bruce Lee imitators in any movie. It is more likely that a film like "Clones of Bruce Lee" would have been made in 1977. By 1979 the HK studios would be more interested in making comedies starring a Jackie Chan clone.
shareThe Bruceploitation craze was going stale by the late '70s, true, but a dead giveaway that "Clones" is a post-'77 film is the liberal use of animal styles--particularly snake style. This, along with the distinctly comic flavor of the final fight between Bruce Le and Jon Benn's bodyguard, shows the influence of Jackie Chan's "Snake in the Eagle's Shadow". And there were a few other late-period Bruceploitation films that also borrowed from Jackie Chan, like 1980's "Bruce, King of Kung Fu" (in which Bruce Le learned drunken snake style).
I'd say 1978 or '79 sounds about right for "Clones". Hong Kong martial arts films were routinely assigned incorrect dates, cast lists, etc. because until fairly recently, no one thought they were important enough to document properly.
(A couple of other errors: Leung Siu Lung [Bruce Leung] is not in this film. And the actor credited as Bruce Lai is *not* Yi Tao Chang [Philip Cheung], star of "Fury in Shaolin Temple" and "Grandmaster of Shaolin Kung Fu". There's a resemblance, but they're not the same person.)
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This movie had a release on 14th of august 1980 in the Netherlands.
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