In this dark tale of revenge, Lee plays Billy Lo whose best friend Chin Ku (Wong Ching Lei) dies of a sudden illness. But suspicion of foul play arises when a gang tries to steal Ku's coffin at the funeral using a helicopter. When Lo 's younger brother Bobby Lo (Tong Lung) hears about the incident, he leaves his Buddhist master (Roy Chiao) to investigate the truth.

His trail soon leads him to the Castle of Death, the last place Chin Ku was seen alive. There, he meets and befriends an unlikely ally - a cruel and merciless martial arts expert (Roy Horan) who is also the tower's master. But when the master dies under mysterious circumstances, Lo ends up dueling with someone far more terrifying.

Including Game Of Death II in this set and labeling it as a legitimate Bruce Lee film rather than a ‘Bruceploitation' film is stretching things a little bit, as all of the footage in this film that contains Bruce Lee in it is taken from bits not used in Enter The Dragon and Game Of Death. A lot of this film was shot in and takes place in Japan, and it was completed after Lee had died. With this in mind, it shouldn't surprise anyone to find that this film is all over the place, and has plenty of continuity errors and slips ups.

Basically what happens in a nutshell is that a famous martial artist named Billy Lo (Bruce Lee) is killed when he starts looking into the strange death of his good friend Chin Ku (Hwang Jang Lee of Drunken Master and Secret Rivals fame).

With Billy gone, his brother Bobby (Kim Tai Chung) decides to pick up where he left off and figure out who's responsible for both of the recent deaths. He finds himself en route to Japan where he hooks up with a man named Lewis (Roy Horan). As seems to be the norm for Bobby's pals, Lewis winds up dead pretty soon after meeting him, and Bobby traces it all to the strange Fan Yu temple where he must face a strange cast of skilled fighters and solve the mystery once and for all.

While not much of a ‘Bruce Lee' film despite his top billing Game Of Death II does deliver in the fight scenes department. With Yuen Biao, Hwang Jang Lee and Cassanova Wong in front of the camera and Yuen Woo Ping handling some of the fight choreography, even if Lee only appears in recycled footage the film still has enough going for it in the fight scene department to make it worthwhile. Just don't expect it to make much sense, because it doesn't.

Of course, the Bruce Lee gimmickry employed throughout the first half of the film is disgraceful: like "Game of Death," Tower of Death freely and jarringly inserts shots of Bruce Lee from his various movies into the film. So you'll see Kim Tai-Chung walk into a room, then suddenly there will be a close-up of Bruce Lee, copped from "Fist of Fury" or something. And like "Game of Death," these splices wouldn't fool a ritalin-crazed third-grader. Luckily though, director Ng See Yuen was against the Bruce-splicing from the start, and so came up with the idea of murdering his character halfway into the movie, and pushing Kim up to the lead role for the remainder of the film, as Bruce's brother.

The Bruce-splices in the first half were only left in at the behest of producer Raymond Chow, and one can see that Chow originally intended to insert Bruce clips into the remainder of the film. The reason I say this is because the astute viewer will notice that Kim Tai-Chung wears outfits throughout Tower of Death that are the same as those worn by Bruce Lee in his movies.

When Kim sneaks around the Tower, he wears a black nightsuit with a white rope hanging from his shoulders; perfect for inserting clips from Bruce Lee's dungeon battle in "Enter the Dragon." When Kim receives a film briefing on the Tower of Death, he sits in a projection room and wears a gray, three-piece suit; perfect for inserting clips from the projection room scene in "Enter the Dragon." And so on. It's just that Ng refused to insert anymore splices into the film, and for that he should be given credit.

There's hardly a plot at all, but this is excusable when you take the quality of kung-fu into consideration. Yuen Woo-Ping handled the choreography, and gives us one wonderful battle after another. The end fight sequence is action-packed from beginning to end, with Kim first taking on a group of lackeys who (for some reason) wear silver, "futuristic" outfits, then a big guy in a leopard outfit, then a Shaolin monk, and finally the main villain, who (not so) surprisingly turns out to be Hwang Jang-Lee. Hwang and Kim go at each other in what has to be one of the longest fights of all time. It's almost as long as that street fight Rowdy Roddy Piper gets into with his friend in "They Live." Yuen Woo-Ping pays Bruce Lee tribute in this fight, having Kim Tai-Chung implement jeet kune do moves to counter Hwang's wooden sword.

But regardless of the great fights, there's a lot of lameness on display. The battle with the "lion" is unforgivable, as is the pointlessly-nude crack whore. At least, I assume she's a crack whore. The fact that Roy Horan's one-armed servant is a traitor is blindingly obvious, and Hwang's underground empire is hard to swallow. But still, the movie is heads and shoulders above "Game of Death." At least we don't have to look at Bob Wall in this one.

Special mention should be made of Roy Horan's character Lewis, easily the most interesting character in the film. As the English subtitles declare, he's a "kung-fu nut" (I believe the English dub says he's "crazy about kung-fu"), and he fights with wild abandon. Sure, he looks goofy with his white-guy afro, but he's damn fast, and should've been in more movies. The bit with him eating raw deer meat and drinking blood just begs for more development, but instead he gets murdered in the night and we're left wishing we could see more footage of him in combat.

The best version of this on the market is probably the Hong Kong Legends release, which includes both the English and the Cantonese dubs, with all of the footage. Those without the ability to play Region 2 DVDS should just get the Media Asia release; although it doesn't feature an English dub, the Hong Kong version of Tower of Death is preferable in that it includes clips of Bruce Lee from "Enter the Dragon" that have otherwise never been released, even in Warner Brothers' 25th anniversary Special Edition of "Enter the Dragon." I've also read that the English version's final fight isn't as long as the Hong Kong version's.

REVIEW
So much can be said of this movie. You can call it a Bruce Lee exploitation film, a Bruce Lee inspired flick or utter garbage, but I do believe the movie is better than most people have made it out to be. At the end of the day it comes down to the fighting, and the fighting is very similar to Bruce Lee’s modern Wing Chun/Jeet Kune Do display of martial arts. It may be true that Tung Lung is suppose to be Bruce Lee in the movie, indirectly though, but he still manages to create a few great kung fu scenes. If you just flat-out ignore the movie because of the Bruce Lee aspect you will miss out on an above average movie.

The movie starts off with Bruce Lee and Hwang Jang Lee practicing. Jang Lee soon fights against a challenger and shows off his nice Tae Kwon Do kicks. We can immediately see where cuts were made, especially from Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973). Just like in Game of Death (1978), the cuts can get a bit much at times, especially when the backgrounds don’t match! The first half hour is the only time we get to see Bruce Lee and his double as they investigate the death of Chin Ku and finds Chin Ku’s daughter who has a film that her father gave her. Billy dies at the funeral of Chin Ku and then it’s up to Bobby Lo to avenge his brother’s death. The fight in the dressing room of Chin Ku’s daughter and the subsequent alley are definitely not too bad and has some nice kung fu moves. Its no surprise though as Yuen Wo Ping himself did the choreography. It’s also worth mentioning that Sammo Hung and Corey Yuen both co-directed the film, even though they are uncredited.

After viewing the film Bobby decides to pay the man in the video a visit, at the palace of death! The man in the video is called Lewis, and the video shows him training with Chin Ku. Initially, he comes off as a vicious man who could easily murder someone, but in time Bobby sees that Lewis is a honorable man and rather suspects his helper as the criminal. This finally leads Bobby to a nearby temple and into a pagoda, an upside-down pagoda. From here on it’s action all the way till the end as Bobby works his way up, or rather down, until he is finally face to face with Chin Ku. The fights at the end are just as good as those in the rest of the movie and deserve to be seen. Like it or not, the movie contains good action and okay acting and my only problem is the Bruce Lee cut-ins in the first part of the movie.

Some people prefer to laugh at efforts like these but as I said, I’m quite happy with it. If you are looking for good kung fu in a movie other than classic kung fu movies, look no further! Tung Lung and Hwang Jang Lee deliver great performances and fans of the martial arts genre shouldn’t miss this one. Yuen Wo Ping fans won’t be disappointed either. May the Master rest in peace.

Out of all the attempts to cash in on Bruce Lee after his death, this is probably one of the more shameless because it actually tried to promote itself as a Bruce Lee movie. Lee's footage in the film consists of outtakes from Game of Death (which was only partially completed by Lee before his demise) and the rest is filled in by Tang Lung, which presents some problems as Tang has a longer haircut than Lee and is also a bit bigger than him. And for about the first 30 minutes of this movie, while it tries (painfully) to pretend that Bruce Lee particpated in the filming, the results are less than stellar. However, once the attempts to use Lee are dropped and the focus switches to Tang, Tower of Death turns into a good martial arts movie. The fights, expertly staged by Yuen Woo-Ping, are dramatic and action-packed. Both Tang Lung and Hwang Jang Lee are excellent fighters and their talents are put to good use here.

Bruce Lee fanatics often hate this movie, but if you can look beyond the obivous cheesiness of using a dead man to headline a film, there's some good stuff to be found in here.

After the Bruce Lee character dies, early on in the film (convenient, eh?), it's up to his brother to exact revenge! What follows is a series of bizarre, awkward, mostly unrelated sequences with great Yuen Wo Ping fight choreography, poorly executed. Bruce Lee's brother takes up asylum in the "castle" of some eccentric-white-guy-weirdo-kung-fu-master (the guy eats raw deer meat and drinks deer blood for breakfast...?), where there is a veritable zoo of wild animals roaming free. Be on the lookout for a fight scene against a man dressed like a lion, which poses the question, "Lions and tigers and bears, oh WHY?".

After his stay at the casa de muerte, Bruce Lee's brother finds out that the man he wants is hiding out in a huge tower, that was build underground... After some funky sound library music (breakbeat collectors note: there's a true gem in here!), some Indiana Jones-esque acrobatics, and some cheeseball-futuro set pieces that scream "'70s!", our hero finally locates the villain (who is sitting in a huge, villain-like chair, staring at...the wall?). An epic battle ensues (and of course, by "epic", we mean "too long").

This film was made for very little money. The actors and martial artists aren't in top form. The sets were probably built the night before shooting with spare parts from other films. But still, this film is quite memorable, and we definitely recommend giving it a whirl. It's really a blast to watch, since it's so incredibly bad at times, but also because it seems like the people that made it had fun. We say grab yourself a big ole' bowl of popcorn and some funny friends, turn off the lights, turn up the stereo, and give this disc a spin!

In 1981 Raymond Chow together with acclaimed director Ng See Yuen released Tower of Death and it was even more of an insult to the memory of Bruce Lee than Game of Death was.

Using Lee double, Tang Lung, and about 6 minutes of outtakes from Enter the Dragon they put together a story about a famed Martial Artist, Jim Koo (Huang Cheng Lee) who dies suddenly and mysteriously. When an attempt to steal the coffin he is in is interrupted by Lee Chun (Bruce Lee), Lee is killed and his brother, Tang Lung, travels to a pagoda temple to investigate further.

It is discovered that Jim Koo is not dead after all and is faking death to continue his huge drug empire. Tang Lung has to battle his way past various martial artist until a battle to the death with Koo himself.

This film is awful. Raymond Chow tried to pass this off as a real Bruce Lee movie and his image is plastered all over the posters. The Lee double Tang Lung, is an accomplished martial artist but all too often one is reminded that the real thing was so much better and it was not just fighting skills that made Bruce Lee a star it was his all round charisma.

Admittedly some of the fight scenes are very well done with expert choreography by Yuen Woo Ping. Yuen Biao, then just an up coming stuntman can be seen doing some of the more acrobatic moves doubling for Tang Lung. Huang Cheng Lee known mainly for the Jackie Chan films Snake in the Eagles Shadow and Drunken Master, shows off his incredible kicking range.

Bruce Lee fan John Little and the Bruce Lee estate has just completed a documentary called Warriors Journey, using all of the footage Bruce Lee shot for Game of Death and assembling it in the order according to Bruce Lee's notes. There will be about 25 minute of unseen footage and will show the film as it should have been.

Wait for this to be released next year and avoid Tower of Death at all costs.