It would be years before martial arts films would overcome the negative image created by this flood of third-rate product. The Bruce Lee clones appeared as well, featuring names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le and the quite improbable Bronson Lee (sporting a Charles Bronson mustache he was actually Japanese). theatres, often presented in poorly dubbed and crudely re-edited versions.
Other Hong Kong martial arts films starring Jimmy Wang Yu, Ti Lung and other Chinese stars began appearing in U.S. Many of Lee's earlier Hong Kong films were then dubbed and released in the U.S. barely a month later and became a huge hit. Enter the Dragon was released in the U.S. Weintraub recognized Lee's immense talent and was planning to sign him for a second American film at the pay rate of one million dollars.īut Lee died Jof a brain edema. After principal photography was completed Lee added the Shaolin Temple scene that places Enter the Dragon in a cultural context, linking it more closely to Chinese traditions. One of his kicks was actually so fast that it was filmed in slow motion so that viewers could see it wasn't a camera trick other shots were sped up. He staged all the martial arts sequences that made the film so memorable. Most of the extras were actual martial arts fighters and some of them couldn't resist the urge to take on the famous Bruce Lee, scuffles that invariably ended in Lee's favor. The first day Lee appeared, his nerves manifested themselves in a facial tic that required 27 takes to get a good shot.
Producer Weintraub told writer Rick Meyers at the time that Lee was feuding with his old boss Raymond Chow and giving him a hard time as well. In fact, he was so nervous that he didn't appear for the first three weeks of shooting. For added box office appeal, the producers signed up perennial B-movie actor John Saxon and karate champion Jim Kelly.īecause it was his first starring role in an American film, Lee felt tremendous pressure to succeed. Supposedly Clouse was the only director who wanted the job. The director was Robert Clouse, a two-time Oscar nominee for Best Live Action Short Subject ( The Cadillac (1962), The Legend of Jimmy Blue Eyes, 1964). Michael Allin was hired as the scenarist (he would later write Truck Turner (1974) and the 1980 Flash Gordon as well as Zarafa, an acclaimed book about the first giraffe brought to Paris). He convinced Warner Brothers to back the project and then hooked up with Bruce Lee's own production company, Concord. The genesis of Enter the Dragon began with producer Fred Weintraub who thought Hollywood could make a good martial arts film. It turns out that the smugglers' boss is hosting a martial arts contest which allows Lee and two partners to visit the island as contenders in the championship.
The smugglers' island is heavily guarded which prevents Lee from easily gaining access until a police agency recruits him for a secret mission there. Putting an espionage twist on the familiar revenge theme, Enter the Dragon features Lee as a martial arts expert whose sister was killed by drug smugglers. Enter the Dragon was a huge hit but sadly Lee didn't live to see this, dying just a few weeks before the premiere. And, of course, the fight scenes are mesmerizing and unlike anything previously seen in American films. By Hollywood standards, the film was a B-movie, yet every aspect of it from the acting to the direction was way above average for an action thriller. In fact, it's often called one of the greatest martial arts films ever made and one reason is because people who aren't martial arts fans also enjoy it. Rather than being just a weak imitation of the crowd-pleasing films Bruce Lee made in China, Enter the Dragon (1973) - his first mainstream American film - captures all the excitement of his previous Hong Kong hits.
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