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The Bruce Lee Legacy box set is one of the best supplements to a Bruce Lee movie collection as anything I know of. You can read details about each one of the movies in the reviews section, but since some people will likely be looking for information on the set rather than the individual titles I thought a separate listing would be appropriate.

This is a 4 disc DVD set.

Video:

The ratio and quality are going to vary some. Most of the presentations are 1.33 (the TV standard ratio) or non-anamorphic widescreen. The quality ranges from bad to worse.

Audio:

Count on mono sound with weak quality throughout.

Packaging:

Each film comes in a standard plastic case. Those all fit into a paper thin cardboard box.

Extras:

All 4 DVD’s contain a number of extra features. By the nature of the DVD’s (as in the similarity of packaging, the use of the same elements in the menus and such, and that sort of thing) you might assume that the extras are rehashed. That’s not the case. Only one feature appears on more than one DVD.

Extras include one or more commentaries on all but one documentary, multiple interviews – some of them quite long, a Green Hornet TV appearance, a tour through Bruce’s family’s village and his museum, demonstrations of techniques including the theories behind some of the moves, a look a the history and inaccuracies of exploitation movies about Bruce, a gallery, and other such things. While the presentation is generally not very pretty (in fact some of the commentaries are such low quality they can be hard to understand) the informational content is impressive.

If you want to know more about the specific features check out my buying guide for the titles above.

Movies:

The set contains (in order of their listing on the box):

Death by Misadventure: a documentary that proposes the true cause of Bruce Lee’s death backed by testimony from doctors that treated him. This alone is worth the purchase of the set. It is full of information supported by testimony, but it is unflattering for Bruce and does not have a slick presentation.

Young Bruce Lee: a documentary primarily focused on Bruce’s early career but covering his later years as well. This is the only thing in the set that I didn’t really enjoy. It’s slow and unimpressive. If you’re really into seeing some of Bruce’s kid film roles, though, you might like it.

Bruce Lee True Story (AKA The Man, The Myth): a dramatic “documentary” of Bruce’s life. It’s really nothing more than an exploitation movie, though it’s supposedly the best of that lot. There is very little actual factual information in it as far as I know.

Fist of Unicorn: a movie by Bruce’s friend Unicorn Chan. Bruce helped out and was edited into the movie as a “star.” It’s a fairly entertaining movie if you like old Chinese Kung Fu flicks, although the inclusion of Bruce is shameless. This disc contains 2 versions of the movie.

Other Editions:

There are no other editions.

Final Thoughts:

You really have to have an interest in Bruce Lee beyond seeing him play a Martial Arts role in a movie to enjoy these. Even then you very well might find some of the material here kind of boring like I did with Young Bruce Lee. However, if you’re looking to delve into the real man that is Bruce, this package provides a better glimpse than any I’ve seen so far. In addition to presenting the most plausible explanation for his death it offers clues that help separate the legendary figure we see in movies like Dragon (which was far more inaccurate than I once believed from the man that really existed). While the information is interesting I must reiterate that the presentation quality lacks. Unless you want only one of these titles specifically, the box set is probably the best buy for you. Fair warning, though. Watching this may be like finding out that Jackie Chan does, in fact, sometimes use a stuntman.