Rating:

Stars: Bruce Lee, Bruce doubles, Gig Young, Dean Jagger, Bob Wall

Director: Robert Clouse

1978, Hong Kong/USA, Golden Harvest

 

Billy Lo (Lee’s character), a popular Hong Kong actor is being followed by a criminal organization named The Syndicate. Billy is threatened time after time but refuses to pay the protection money they’re forcing him to pay. His only choice is to disappear for a while and solve the problem.

 

In 1977 Raymond Chow bought (from Bruce’s wife Linda Lee) twenty-eight minutes of fight footage shot by Bruce himself. It then came clear that only 15 minutes were usable.

Bruce’s inspiration for the movie came when he visited India. The huge temples of the area, which lay on the border with Nepal, impressed him. There he came up with the original "Game of Death" story that was about a noble martial artist who’s looking for a stolen cultural artifact that’s was placed on the top of a temple. To get it he has to beat the fighters that are defending each floor, each of them having different styles (Karate, Wing Chun, Escrima, Hapkido etc.). The top floor was going to have a non-classical fighter (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) with an unpredictable style. With this movie he wanted to show his philosophy on the need for martial arts to develop and not to stay in the old classical and inflexible traditions.

When he finished filming "Way of the Dragon" (Return of the Dragon) he went back to Hong Kong and started filming some fighting scenes for "Game of Death" together with Dan Inosanto (Escrima), Chi Hon Joi (7^th degree Hapkido) and Kareem (basket-style, just kidding!). But the filming was suspended when Lee was called to make Enter the Dragon. The rest is history.

 

The entire movie you keep waiting for the real Bruce to appear, and when he does you just go Waataahh!!!

Tang Lung ("Game of Death 2") was one of the doubles here, you see they used different doubles for different camera angles, because some dudes looked more like Bruce from the side, others from the back etc.

Also a cameo by Sammo Hung, but a Karateka (Bob Wall) beats him up leaving us fans disappointed.

The one who did the stunts was Yuen Biao and you can spot his kicking style here and there.

If you know who Chan Lung is, look for him in cameos spying on Billy.

It’s a shame that we don’t get to see what Bruce Lee really wanted it to be. I think that to many Americans were involved in it, a purely Hong Kong production would've been better.

<<Back