GEE, I WISH I WERE IN ZAMBIA!!!
About a year and a half ago I stumbled over the above trailer on YouTube. The film is THE BIG BOSS PART 2 and it's a kind of sequel to the Bruce Lee film. It was directed by Chan Chue and stars Lo Lieh and Bruce Le (and should not be confused with several other films also using the same title in various different territories). The film is listed on Hong Kong Movie Data Base as being a HK film but I'm sure some of those actors are Thai so until I get more solid info I'm listing it as a co-production. Oh, and the difference between this one and THE BIG BOSS is that Lee's film is out there, everywhere, on DVD and VHS, while this on is... completely impossible to get to see. Well, unless you live in Zambia! (I'll get to that in a tic).
The trailer looks like this is a fun, trashy, cheap, exploitative and WILD film! Some martial arts fans have stated it looks crappy and, well if I were a real kung fu film fan I might agree - but I'm not! I'm a fan of, well, trashy, cheap, exploitative and wild films! LOL. So it looks just up my alley. I would certainly love to see THE BIG BOSS PART 2 but unfortunately that's most likely not going to happen any day soon.
In the 18 months since I found the trailer I have come up with this info about a release: There is none! There's never been any!! And there may never be one!!! It's almost a lost film ... well, if it weren't for the fact that I'm aware of the existence of ONE cinema print!
It seems that back in the apartheid days of the 70s and 80s a lot of wild HK and other Asian films played in the South African cinemas. One big cinema had a lot of these prints and when the owner died his son-in-law took over. That guy formed a video label called Global and he started to put out a lot of these rare films on DVD.
Crude cinema prints were used for the DVD's without any form of restoration but at least it means you can get to see these rare films. I have some Filipino films from Global that haven't been released anywhere else on DVD and altho the DVD's in question are direct off 16mm film prints they're cool enough (one of the films is THEY CALL HER... CLEOPATRA WONG which has also come out from Dark Sky recently). If you're into spaghetti westerns you've undoubtedly come across the odd Global release.
Anyhoo, to make a long story short the Global guy had a print of THE BIG BOSS PART 2 but didn't wish to release it (despite heaps of fans bugging him about it) and in the end he sold the print to a cinema in Zambia. I don't have the name nor location of said cinema.
I wrote to him and bugged him about a DVD-R but he was adamant; no DVD-R! However, and get this, because some fans on Kung Fu Cinema forum doubted that he even had a print he uploaded 10 minutes from the film to YouTube! So even tho he never intended to release the film or make DVD-R copies he let everyone see what they couldn't have. Boo-hoo. I wish I were in Zambia. :(
Anyway, check out the trailer and the 10 minute clip. The picture quality of the clip is pretty good (but I fear it may not even look this good anymore if it's been shown 50 times at a run down cinema in Zambia). As with most Asian films that ran in the South African cinemas it's dubbed into English.
These magazine scans are nicked from HKMDB so thanks to whoever uploaded them.
Click scans for bigger size.
Notice how the article writer misspells Bruce Lee's name as Bruce "Li". Ironic as one of the Bruce Lee clones that was "invented" after his death was none other than Bruce Li.
