The Clones of Bruce Lee is a 1981 Exploitation Film, one of a number of "Bruceploitation" films made after the death of martial arts expert and movie star Bruce Lee to cash in on his popularity.
Three Bruce Lee clones are created by the Hong Kong government to replace the master. Together, they fight crime.
This film provides examples of:
- Artificial Human: Besides the titled clones of Bruce Lee, the villain Dr. Nai also created an army of bronze men with impervious skin.
- Artistic License – Biology: Mad Scientist Professor Lucas create clones of Bruce Lee through a vial of his blood, who emerge as adults and quickly gain incredible mastery of martial arts. Hey, did you really think that the knowledge of kung fu is recorded in the genes?
- Beach Episode: At one point the Bruces wander onto a nude beach at a point when a bunch of the local girls are there. For some reason, whether the girls are completely nude or wearing their swimsuit bottoms changes between shots.
- Bruce Lee Clone: Three literal Bruce Lee clones become a team. And they team up with a fourth Bruce Lee impersonator, playing Special Agent Chuck.
- Face–Heel Turn: Professor Lucas becomes disgruntled because he feels that he wasn't compensated enough for creating the Bruce Lee clones, so he decides to embark on his own diabolical plan using the clones to Take Over the World. Somehow he decides to make the remaining clones battle to the death until only one remains, but gets foiled by his assistants.
- Foreshadowing: A scene of the Bruce clones battle with Dr. Nai's bronze men is interrupted by a mother with two children living in Dr. Nai's garden, who tells them that the grass is poisonous. Guess how the Bruces dispatch the bronze men later?
- HA HA HA—No: The villain Dr. Nai gives a hearty laugh, then immediately yells "Silence!" at all his henchmen laughing with him.
- Hong Kong Dub: You can tell that the voices you're hearing clearly don't belong to the actors on screen.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: One of Dr. Nai's lackeys has the unfortunate fate of getting acid poured on his face by one of the Bruces, who looks on dispassionately, calls him an animal and barks at him to cough up information.
- Mad Scientist:
- Dr. Nai may have been influenced by Thomas Edison; he's a mad scientist who actually has other people do all the inventing for him, such as a vegetation-destroyer, while he wears a business suit and yells at his scientists to invent faster.
- Professor Lucas thought cloning the recently deceased Bruce Lee to fight crime is a sensible idea. He later attempts to use them to take over the world himself.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: After one of the titular Bruce Lee clones infiltrates a movie shoot (actually a front for a gold smuggling racket) as a martial arts stuntman, the director realizes that the clone could be a government agent and schemes to have him shot on-camera through a staged weapons malfunction and profit off the coverage...which sort of becomes
Harsher in Hindsight when you recall what happened to Bruce's son, Brandon Lee... - No Ending: The film just stops as the Professor Lucas is hauled away to jail, no end credits whatsoever.
- There Can Be Only One: A Mad Scientist, Professor Lucas, gets some DNA from the recently deceased Bruce Lee and makes some clones. Eventually he plans to Take Over the World after being disgruntled by the lack of financial compensation. But for some reason his method of doing so involves only creating three Bruces, and then having them fight to the death because he only wants the best one.
- Training Montage: The clones develop their martial arts skills through a montage (where one of their trainers is Bolo Yeung), completely with unlicensed use of "Gonna Fly Now".
