LE SOMBRA DEL JUDOKA CONTRA EL DOCTOR WONG: Jess Franco's Martial Arts Holocaust.

Anyone viewing Jess Franco's 1982 crime/martial arts epic LE SOMBRA DE JUDOKA CONTRA DR. WONG over 40 years after it was filmed on Canary Island locations will be confronted by a very curious spectacle. The shadow of judo refers to Bruce, the main charater who works to bust drug smugglers in his tropical city. It was one of the first "martial arts" films made in the 1980s, a series of crime-action films made with sparse resources for Emilio Larraga's Golden Films Internactional. The martial arts action performed by "Bruce Lyn" aka actor Jose Llamas is not impressive and is mostly rendered in B-movie style slow motion. But, as we shall we, Llamas was not the only actor performing martial arts in the film. First, a bit about the late Jose Llamas from a post created by Nzoog here some time ago: "[In his work in Jess Franco films] Llamas was assigned anything from minor roles to leads, sometimes on the heroic side, as in Viaje a Bangkok, ataúd incluido (1985) and several antagonists, such as his “Macho Jim” in Los blues de la calle Pop (1983). Strangest of all was Franco’s decision that he fill in the shoes of Bruce Lee in some of the pseudo-martial arts features the director was occasionally and inexplicably turning out in the eighties despite an absolute lack of demand in Spain for homegrown product of this kind, not to mention Llamas’s lack of an appropriate background. The actor certainly looked athletic, had black hair and, as Mayans has said, could dance, but in the words of David Domingo “he’s hopelessly clueless about martial arts” (2). These words are in reference to La sombra del judoka contra el doctor Wong (1982-85), with Llamas credited as “Bruce Lyn” and the real Bruce Lee featuring on the film’s poster!"