IL COLPO MAESTRO DI BRUCE LEE
Italian one-sheet, late 1970s
This Italian poster is a great example of how martial arts films were marketed in Europe after **Bruce Lee’s death in 1973—and why that era is so fascinating to me as a film historian and collector.
The title translates roughly to “The Master Stroke of Bruce Lee.” Despite the name and the artwork, Bruce Lee is not in this film at all. The movie is actually the 1979 Taiwanese kung fu film The Crippled Masters (Tian Can Di Que), which was retitled in Italy to ride the wave of Lee’s continued popularity around the world.
In the mid-to-late 1970s, Italian distributors were especially aggressive about rebranding martial arts films with Bruce Lee’s name. New poster art would be commissioned specifically for the Italian market—bold illustrations, motion echoes, exaggerated strikes—designed to suggest Bruce Lee without ever explicitly claiming he was involved. It was marketing by implication, and it worked.
What makes this title interesting is that The Crippled Masters isn’t just a throwaway cash-in. The film tells the story of two kung fu practitioners—one without arms, the other without legs—who adapt, train together, and ultimately fight as a unit. It’s a genuinely inventive martial arts film, and one that has earned real respect over time, regardless of how it was marketed overseas.
The artwork on this poster was painted specifically for Italy and, like many exploitation posters from the era, the artist remains uncredited. That was common practice at the time, especially for genre releases produced quickly to meet demand.
For me, this piece represents more than a single movie. It captures a moment when Bruce Lee had become something larger than any one film—a global symbol whose name alone could redefine how a movie was sold across borders. That cultural afterlife is part of what makes collecting posters like this so compelling.
