The Cutting Room Floor: Lost, Censored & Deleted Bruce Lee Movie Scenes (Article)

[saltysam]

I think the UK may have been the first to get the Lee movies on official releases.Rank did a deal with Golden Harvest that also saw the likes of Bandits From Shantung,One Armed Boxer and Beach Of The War Gods etc released on tape.

[DragonClaws]

Just now, saltysam said:

I think the UK may have been the first to get the Lee movies on official releases.Rank did a deal with Golden Harvest that also saw the likes of Bandits From Shantung,One Armed Boxer and Beach Of The War Gods etc released on tape.

 

Thanks @saltysam, what are your thoughts on the below Malayasian? VHS release. The cover has got that bootleg feel to it.

 

Link- https://www.carousell.com.my/p/vhs-bruce-lee-the-big-boss-tape-1137298071/

 

 

[saltysam]

Could be legit, no front label on the cassette but i have seen uk pre-certs like that as well.Cover looks like it was originally a carton and has been cut up and slotted into a bigger box.

[DragonClaws]

 

Respectful Cinema: Restoring the Bruce Lee Classics

Interview with Davide Pozzi 

 

Link- https://www.fareastfilm.com/eng/archive/catalogue/2016/cinema-rispettoso-il-restauro-dei-classici-di-bruce-lee-intervista-con-davide-pozzi/?IDLYT=31711

 

Interesting interview with Davide Pozzi by Tim Youngs, regarding one of the last major restorations of the Bruce Lee movie catalogue in 4-K a few years ago. According to this article, the  Bolognese film restoration laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovataonly, only had had acces to the original camera negatives for The Big Boss & Fist of Fury.

- "After scanning, the film is digitised, and we start the digital restoration. That usually takes hundreds of hours. For the Bruce Lee titles, the average was 1,400 hours for this step alone."

- "What materials did you work with for this project?"

 

- "Out of the four Bruce Lee titles, we were only able to work with the original camera negatives for two of them. They were The Big Boss and Fist of Fury. Unfortunately, for The Way of the Dragon and The Game of Death, the original camera negative was not available. So we used interpositives, which are a second-generation element. You said it took 1,400 hours to do the digital restoration."

 

- "We asked Fortune Star to provide us some with some references, and we received old videos already approved by Fortune Star. We also asked them to check if some vintage prints were available. You prefer a respectful approach to restoration"

 

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by DragonClaws

[Kevin Chan]

Very interesting read. But of course the most important info is missing 😜 One would assume if they are working with the original camera negative there would be more (missing) footage to see. I wonder if that is actually the case and if it is Fortune Star who are actually stepping on the brake regarding an extended version.

Also this:

Quote

Our goal is to respect the spirit of the film. When we are talking, for instance, about colour correction, it would be very easy to do a very modern and even better colour correction. But the film was released in the 1970s, and we have to respect the original look of the film. Otherwise, we are doing something fake.

That sound very ironic considering L’Immagine Ritrovata are known for their orange/teal color gradings.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Kevin Chan

[saltysam]

Yep,Criterion and Shout had to colour correct the Ritrovata masters for their releases.

[DragonClaws]

On 6/5/2022 at 2:15 AM, saltysam said:

Yep,Criterion and Shout had to colour correct the Ritrovata masters for their releases.

 

Just what was the original colour/look of these movies?, I remember when I picked up the remastered Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood westerns. My Dad, who is by no means a movie collector/expert,  said those movies looked very different back on the big screen in the 60's in terms of the colours. He said the colours were much darker, redder and richer, closer to the colours used in the  promotional photos that came out at during the 60's. At the same time, he said it might just be his memory of them thats distorted, its so long ago. Out of all the images and footage thats been preserved well, how much of an effect has time had on how it once looked?.

 

On 6/4/2022 at 10:06 PM, Kevin Chan said:

Very interesting read. But of course the most important info is missing 😜 One would assume if they are working with the original camera negative there would be more (missing) footage to see. I wonder if that is actually the case and if it is Fortune Star who are actually stepping on the brake regarding an extended version.

 

In the interview Davide Pozzi acknowledges that fans want different versions. Talking about what they did with the three versions of the 1978 theatrical cut of Game of Death but not The Big Boss?. Maybe he wasn't allowed to comment further on that subject?. If they had access to the original negatives, its a good sign there could be more in the vaults?.

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by DragonClaws

[saltysam]

Ritrovata are known for their teal & yellowish restorations.The Argento and King Hu movies ,Good Bad,The Ugly all suffered from it.

[starschwar]

I want to be optimistic.  But, if Fortune Star truly is in possession of the missing Big Boss footage, why have we not heard about this already?  They'd have to know that it's a holy grail for Bruce fans around the world.  It'd sell like crazy.  Even a preliminary, "watch this space" type announcement would do wonders to generate hype.

A few guesses as to why there's been such a delay, if this is indeed true:

Maybe they have the footage.  But if it's only OCN, they wouldn't have the sound, which was done in post.  It could be that they are trying to locate those materials.

Failing to obtain the missing sound elements, they would have to reconstruct the audio - either with soundalikes, or failing that, record an entirely new audio track for consistency.

A related problem - if they do not have the original sound, replacing it could prove difficult as well if the script is also not archived.  Figuring out which scenes go where shouldn't be too hard, but hammering down exactly what the dialogue was could be problematic.  They would need lip-readers for at least three languages, and that's assuming what was spoken on-set was indeed correct at the time. 
 

But even in the worst case of this - a New York Ninja style "best guess" reconstruction would be an absolute dream come true.

Edited June 5, 2022 by starschwar

[Kevin Chan]

18 hours ago, saltysam said:

Yep,Criterion and Shout had to colour correct the Ritrovata masters for their releases.

 

13 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

Just what was the original colour/look of these movies?, I remember when I picked up the remastered Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood westerns. My Dad, who is by no means a movie collector/expert,  said those movies looked very different back on the big screen in the 60's in terms of the colours. He said the colours were much darker, redder and richer, closer to the colours used in the  promotional photos that came out at during the 60's. At the same time, he said it might just be his memory of them thats distorted, its so long ago. Out of all the images and footage thats been preserved well, how much of an effect has time had on how it once looked?.

It might as well be that the orange/teal color grading is how it is supposed to look like and that the Shout/Criterion recolouring of The Big Boss is "modern" and not true to the analogue original, as Davide Pozzi phrased it. I guess we'll never know for sure.

But there are indications that this is not true: Many (all?) films that L'Immagine Ritrovata did in 4k share that same look. I had an instance recently where I watched Serpico and halfway through I couldn't help but notice the strange color grading that I knew from The Big Boss, Police Story or The Good The Bad and The Ugly and wondered if Ritrovata did the transfer. Turned out they did. So it is rather distinguishable.

7 hours ago, starschwar said:

Even a preliminary, "watch this space" type announcement would do wonders to generate hype.

[...]

But if it's only OCN, they wouldn't have the sound, which was done in post.

I have a feeling that it is more thrilling and that it creates more buzz when you leave people guessing. Once the cat is out of the bag, sure many people would go nuts, but once released all that would fall flat quite soon I guess.

Interesting thoughts about the sound, though!

[PandaPawPaw]

I don't know why but I feel like any rare/lost footage is probably in the hands of private collectors now.

I still want to see a nice copy of the GOD BTS footage.

[Cognoscente]

If only they could drop dead.

[DragonClaws]

15 hours ago, starschwar said:

I want to be optimistic.  But, if Fortune Star truly is in possession of the missing Big Boss footage, why have we not heard about this already?  They'd have to know that it's a holy grail for Bruce fans around the world.  It'd sell like crazy.  Even a preliminary, "watch this space" type announcement would do wonders to generate hype.

 

How much would it cost to restore the Mandarin version?, and would they sell enough copies to make a profit still. In an age when so much stuff ends up online on torrent sites. Like @Kevin Chan said, the rarer prints have already built a following by just not being available to the fans.

 

8 hours ago, Kevin Chan said:

It might as well be that the orange/teal color grading is how it is supposed to look like and that the Shout/Criterion recolouring of The Big Boss is "modern" and not true to the analogue original, as Davide Pozzi phrased it. I guess we'll never know for sure.

But there are indications that this is not true: Many (all?) films that L'Immagine Ritrovata did in 4k share that same look. I had an instance recently where I watched Serpico and halfway through I couldn't help but notice the strange color grading that I knew from The Big Boss, Police Story or The Good The Bad and The Ugly and wondered if Ritrovata did the transfer. Turned out they did. So it is rather distinguishable.

 

Thanks for the feedback, Im only fan who got to see The Big Boss on home media formats. I cant really comment on how these films looked colourwise, back in the 1970's in cinemas. Some prints must have varied from cinema to cinema, depending how long they had been used for.

 

[shukocarl1441996347]

11 minutes ago, DragonClaws said:

 

How much would it cost to restore the Mandarin version?, and would they sell enough copies to make a profit still. In an age when so much stuff ends up online on torrent sites. Like @Kevin Chan said, the rarer prints have already built a following by just not being available to the fans.

 

 

Thanks for the feedback, Im only fan who got to see The Big Boss on home media formats. I cant really comment on how these films looked colourwise, back in the 1970's in cinemas. Some prints must have varied from cinema to cinema, depending how long they had been used for.

 

I saw The Big Boss many times in the cinema in the UK, plus the infamous mandarin version in London '79 AND the rejected dub version in Nottingham in the '90's. From my memory (and I'm an old git) the UK prints were slightly paler in the daylight scenes. The mandarin one was more or less the same and the 'other' dub was very faded/scratched and lots of damage.

[DragonClaws]

 

"Big Boss (1972) and Fist of Fury (1973 ) and the other two, La Fureur of the Dragon and The Game of Death, 1976), from interpositives. This is the reason why when you look at the first two, you can see that they have a different sheen and texture."

- And to come back to the case of the Bruce Lees, what was the approach adopted?

For Bruce Lee, we proposed to Fortune Star a calibration that is not too “video” but on the contrary more respectful of the historical approach. What they accepted. On the other hand, when we delivered the first version to them, they found that there was too much grain that they then asked us to erase. In Asia, they tend to clean everything: China, Philippines, Thailand, etc. We didn't use DNR, which consists of a filter applied to the telecine that removes grain uniformly over the entire image, full stop. We use a degraining tool that allows us to work on certain portions of the image in a more nuanced way. But we still remove a lot of grain. If you give them a version with grain, it will be rejected during quality control.

- On arrival, the result is very different from the Blu-ray editions released at Shout Factory in late 2016 / early 2017.

It has nothing to do since they did not start from the new 4K masters that we were restoring at that time but from HD telecines."

Source- Interview with Davide Pozzi – The Found Image

Link-https://digitalcine-fr.translate.goog/4k-bluray-dvd/interviews-bluray-dvd/39578-entretien-avec-davide-pozzi-image-retrouvee/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by DragonClaws

[saltysam]

I'm happy with the Crierion & Shout colour corrected discs. They look great for the most part. Who knows what Arrow may bring to the table when they announce their strongly rumoured 4k box. I'd say it's almost certain Warner will release a 50th Anniversary 4k of ETD next year as well. Unfortunately unlike Arrow i don't expect Warner to do much in the way of locating extras, deleted scenes etc.May not even have the original mono and could well be just the SE version.

Edited June 6, 2022 by saltysam

[DragonClaws]

Just now, shukocarl1441996347 said:

I saw The Big Boss many times in the cinema in the UK, plus the infamous mandarin version in London '79 AND the rejected dub version in Nottingham in the '90's.

 

Didnt the rejcted English dubbed print feature some of the older Mandarin soundtrack?.

 

 

[shukocarl1441996347]

1 hour ago, DragonClaws said:

 

Didnt the rejcted English dubbed print feature some of the older Mandarin soundtrack?.

 

 

Yes, it was totally the mandarin score. 

[DragonClaws]

19 hours ago, saltysam said:

I'm happy with the Crierion & Shout colour corrected discs. They look great for the most part. Who knows what Arrow may bring to the table when they announce their strongly rumoured 4k box. I'd say it's almost certain Warner will release a 50th Anniversary 4k of ETD next year as well. Unfortunately unlike Arrow i don't expect Warner to do much in the way of locating extras, deleted scenes etc.May not even have the original mono and could well be just the SE version.

 

Maybe the films will get individual releases instead of a combined box-set.

 

17 hours ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

Yes, it was totally the mandarin score.

 

I wasn't sure if it was a mixture of the two for the 1996 screening in Nottingham, there so many alternative soundtracks for this title.

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by DragonClaws

[WarriorBloodCrest]

On 6/5/2022 at 5:19 PM, starschwar said:

I want to be optimistic.  But, if Fortune Star truly is in possession of the missing Big Boss footage, why have we not heard about this already?  They'd have to know that it's a holy grail for Bruce fans around the world.  It'd sell like crazy.  Even a preliminary, "watch this space" type announcement would do wonders to generate hype.

A few guesses as to why there's been such a delay, if this is indeed true:

Maybe they have the footage.  But if it's only OCN, they wouldn't have the sound, which was done in post.  It could be that they are trying to locate those materials.

Failing to obtain the missing sound elements, they would have to reconstruct the audio - either with soundalikes, or failing that, record an entirely new audio track for consistency.

A related problem - if they do not have the original sound, replacing it could prove difficult as well if the script is also not archived.  Figuring out which scenes go where shouldn't be too hard, but hammering down exactly what the dialogue was could be problematic.  They would need lip-readers for at least three languages, and that's assuming what was spoken on-set was indeed correct at the time. 
 

But even in the worst case of this - a New York Ninja style "best guess" reconstruction would be an absolute dream come true.

I'm not one for pessimism, but I guess Fortune Star just doesn't see any profit to be made in a complete Big Boss print. That's also underlying the fact that the company, estate etc refrain from discussing or even acknowledging the movie as much as possible. It's especially startling considering how little attention TBB gets in relation to the pop culture spread of Fist of Fury and the rets of Bruce Lee's filmography. That said, a potential reconstruction would be intriguing, although that in itself would also open another can of worms. 

4 hours ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

I saw The Big Boss many times in the cinema in the UK, plus the infamous mandarin version in London '79 AND the rejected dub version in Nottingham in the '90's. From my memory (and I'm an old git) the UK prints were slightly paler in the daylight scenes. The mandarin one was more or less the same and the 'other' dub was very faded/scratched and lots of damage.

Any scenes from the Mandarin print that you remember aren't documented on Jason Hart's article, pray tell? 

[shukocarl1441996347]

12 hours ago, WarriorBloodCrest said:

I'm not one for pessimism, but I guess Fortune Star just doesn't see any profit to be made in a complete Big Boss print. That's also underlying the fact that the company, estate etc refrain from discussing or even acknowledging the movie as much as possible. It's especially startling considering how little attention TBB gets in relation to the pop culture spread of Fist of Fury and the rets of Bruce Lee's filmography. That said, a potential reconstruction would be intriguing, although that in itself would also open another can of worms. 

Any scenes from the Mandarin print that you remember aren't documented on Jason Hart's article, pray tell? 

Okay, I was 21 when the 'uncut' print was shown in London (a KFM "Film Festival") and my first thought was "Oh, all the music is different" and of course it was in mandarin with subs. When the 'new' scenes played out I was just thinking, "well, that's not in our version". So the scenes with the Cart, the slightly extended body cutting at the factory the short conversation in the house, the 2nd prostitute were all present but the saw clip wasn't -whatever anyone remembers! I can't recollect anything else and of course no one had any inkling that we'd never see that version again.

[DragonClaws]

4 hours ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

were all present but the saw clip wasn't -whatever anyone remembers!

 

There are many sources that conflict each other when it comes to this clip that probably lasts a few seconds. Whenever I find anything new regarding this scene, it usually raises further questions. The more sensationalistic omitted scenes seem to get talked about more often.

 

[DragonClaws]

 

The following censored Portaguesse subtitled Big Boss print. Appears have been sourced from the BBFC cut version released by Rank released in the U.K in 1986?. This version also removes some footage from Tony Liu's death scene, among other cuts. Some of the ice factory fight has been re-arranged in this version.

 

 

 

[DragonClaws]

 

Anyone read any official sources that confirm Chiang Hsing-Lung worked uncredited on The Big Boss as an assistant editor?. The award winning editor worked on a whopping 641 films.

Link- https://hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=3243&display_set=eng

 

[DragonClaws]

 

Quick question, would I be correct in thinking that the English language version of Fist of Fury, Was released in the U.K on July 20th 1973?. Some online sources say it was on the 19th?.