Bruce Lee Vs Elvis: more “Game of Death” footage found April 1, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Uncategorized, Articles, Humour , trackbackA recently discovered film can containing a mere 10 minutes’ worth of material has already been hailed as the Holy Grail for both action film fans and music fans. The contents show the King of Kung Fu fighting the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in a life and death struggle set inside a Pagoda.
The footage is believed to be yet more material from Lee’s unfinished film Game of Death, shot in 1972. The project was only in its infancy when Lee was called upon to film Enter The Dragon for Warner Brothers, and Lee died before he could go back and complete the film. However, it has always been claimed that more material was shot than was ever seen, even taking into consideration the newly restored material that surfaced in recent documentaries on the subject.
The idea of Bruce Lee starring alongside Elvis Presley is not as far fetched as it sounds. Presley was a huge fan of Lee, and was himself a Karate practitioner under the tutelage of Lee’s friend Ed Parker. Presley expressed a wish to work with the Kung Fu star on a film project, but it had always been assumed that the two legends never met. However, the footage comes as no surprise to the Presley estate. “We know Elvis went to Hong Kong in 1972 to meet Bruce,” says a spokeman for the singing star, who died in 1977. “He wanted the visit to be very low-key as he was mindful of the hysteria that would follow if the Hong Kong people knew the two were meeting.”
Travelling under the name of Vince Everett, Presley spent a total of two weeks in Hong Kong filming with Lee. Full details of the found footage are being kept secret, but it is believed that the scene starts with Presley singing a musical number while Lee and co-star Nora Miao dance the Cha Cha – Lee was a spledind dancer in his youth and was even crowned the Hong Kong Cha Cha Champion of 1958. Unfortunately, the film was shot without sound, so the song Elvis is singing remains a mystery – for now. “There is dialogue, and it’s in English,” says another spokesman. “We’re working with lip-readers to discover what is being said and sung.”
After the song ends, it appears Lee and Presley have an argument, and the two start fighting, with Presley using Karate against Lee’s Jeet Kune Do. In all, the footage lasts just under ten minutes and contains fight choreography that one privileged viewer has said “will stun fans. It’s simply outstanding stuff, and Elvis is on fine form. When he breaks his guitar over Bruce’s head, it all goes nuclear. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
So why has the world not seen this amazing footage, and why did neither Lee or Elvis mention it? No one knows for sure, but one theory is that Lee was unhappy with the dancing element of the scene and wanted to reshoot it before presenting it to the world. As for why the footage was lost, there appears to be a simple explantion. “We have a large vault in which we store all our films,” explains an employee at the archive vault of Golden Harvest studios, where Lee made all his Hong Kong movies. “This particular reel was in a can where the writing on the label was completely obscured by a substance that looks like hamburger mustard. It was simply left in the vault until we were doing a cleanout and we decided to have a look at what was on it. Imagine our surprise when we found what it contained.”
And what will happen to the film now? Columbia Pictures distributed the Golden Harvest film Game of Death in 1978, five years after Lee’s death using stand-ins and archive footage to seemlessly build a new movie around the footage Lee had shot before leaving for the States to make Enter The Dragon. The result was so astonishingly successful that hardly anyone noticed that Lee was being played by a series of other actors and stuntmen. Columbia Pictures now wants to buy the film outright and insert the found footage – and shoot new scenes to explain the Presley character.
“We have found that we could not simply add the Elvis scene to the Pagoda section of the movie Game of Death,” said one high-ranking Columbia official. “His character needs explaining. We are therefore going to shoot new footage to help the flow of the revised film.” One problem is that many of the cast, and director Robert Clouse, have passed away since making the film, and the aging process makes it impossible to use the services of the surviving cast. “We have already aquired the services of an Asian-American actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tai Chung Kim [Lee’s stand in for the 1978 shoot] to play Billy Lo, and we will use archive footage and outtakes to fill in the gaps with the other actors.”
Columbia have gone even further by hiring an unknown actor to direct the new material. Matt Conroy was given the job as he looked eerily similar to Robert Clouse in the late 70’s. Conroy has not directed a single frame of film, and after studying Clouse’s back catalogue, which includes such genre classics as Gymkata and China O’Brien 2, was initially worried he may have been over-qualified. However, he has now embraced the challenge: “There’s no getting around the fact that I look like the guy,” says Conroy, “and the producers are insisting that they want someone as close, physically, to Bob Clouse. I will do my best and try not to let anyone down.”
It is not known at this point who will play Elvis in the re-shoot, but with an estimated 85,000 professional impersonators in the world there shouldn’t be too much trouble finding someone for the role. As for the outcome of the duel, executives are keeping their lips firmy sealed. “You’ll have to wait and see,” says an excited official. “But this is going to be huge!”
The revised version of Game of Death is scheduled to hit cinemas worldwide exactly one year from today – on April 1, 2009.
Comments»
Mr Thau please, create in CGI Bruce Lee finishes the Game of Death scene scene.
Try to do it please.
Elvis allegedly bought his black belt qualification. Chuck Norris trained Priscilla
You slipped up by saying Elvis flew to Hong Kong, everyone knows Elvis hated to fly
What a joke…sounds funny but it isn’t. Elvis read books about Bruce Lee after Lee’s death not before. They never met eachother although you can conclude that there was a lot of respect from the King towards Bruce Lee. It is my understandin that A Bruce Lee fan is also an Elvis fan and vicaversa…I love both of them and regret their early departure every day.
Elvis bought his qualification? But he was a fine figure of a man! In fact, he was a fine figure of several men…
I’m going to have to have serious words with my researcher on this article, I think.
elvis and bruce never met . but realy who knows . i do know that elvis did go missing for a couple of weeks and know one knows where he went .maybe this was the tine . elvis did not like flying . but still used the lisa marie plane of his it would be a dream come true to see elvis and bruce in a film together but this may be a cruel hoax . davidx
Oops. Sorry I didn’t clarify this earlier, but this article was an April Fool’s day joke. I didn’t realise anyone would take it seriously - especially in those last few paragraphs
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That’s bullshit!
Well spotted.