The Frightfest line-up is often home to some exceptional documentaries that chronicle everything from cultural curios to cinematic movements. They act as a sort of cinematic sorbet from the fictional chills and thrills that surround them, and this year is no different with two strong examples being Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee and The J-Horror Virus – the latest from directors who have previously featured at the horror festival.
Conveniently timed for the 50th anniversary of both Bruce Lee’s untimely death and the biggest film of his career (the posthumously released Enter the Dragon), Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee finds a rich vein to mine as it pursues the numerous replacements chosen to fill the void left by his absence – something that came to be known as Bruceploitation. The documentary mixes the giddy thrills of ’70s martial arts movies (it’s packed with footage from a range of films), with the melancholy that comes from this act of exploitation, and many of the people interviewed expressed their regret at being part of the endeavour to capitalise on Lee’s white-hot rise to prominence.
Director David Gregory – who has a hefty catalogue of documentaries to his name – contextualizes well both Lee’s short-lived yet burgeoning career and the state of Hong Kong cinema at the time, before exploring each of the “clones”. The film focuses on the likes of Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Ryong Keo, Angela Mao and many other figures that producers and studios tried to mould into the next martial arts titan. With some great talking heads and a number of fabulous details, the documentary manages to avoid being exploitative even as it chronicles exploitation, and you’ll come out of it with a huge list of films to seek out.
Also likely to give you a wealth of cinema to explore is The J-Horror Virus, and while Bruceplotation was born out of a moment that could be exploited, this sub-genre was a set of films that seemed to have the moment find them. Urban loneliness and fear of new technology made them perfect for the late ’90s where they found prominence, and stylistically they offered something that clashed with Western horror of the period.
Co-directed by Sarah Appleton and Jasper Sharp, The J-Horror Virus is part chronology of the movement and part thematic exploration of it – which makes it a more unwieldy proposition as it’s weighed down by the grief and isolation that are part of the sub-genre itself. Although this makes it artistically captivating, it also makes The J-Horror Virus a rather dour watch, and unlike Appleton’s previously co-directed The Found Footage Phenomenon, it feels like this film doesn’t quite capture the giddy joy of exploring a sub-genre. Where found footage is a format that stretches across horror and into other genres (The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield for example), here it feels like a sub-genre with a shared tone and stylistic traits that’s dominated by a handful of films. It’s fascinating and engaging when the documentary follows the gestation of something like Ringu across several previous films, as well as the impact it had, but it feels a tad lost when delving into the thematic side of things.
Like the previous documentary there are some great talking heads who offer insight into the films of the era (several of which this reviewer will certainly be seeking out), making The J-Horror Virus definitely worth your time, but why not treat yourself and watch both this and Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee?
