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

[PandaPawPaw]

1 hour ago, DragonClaws said:

 

It was in the Warner Brothers archive, which I should imagine is pretty well organised?.

 

If it is then they should release the deleted/rare footage (if there is any).

[DragonClaws]

 

 

[DragonClaws]

 

 

[Cognoscente]

On 1/4/2018 at 7:21 PM, DragonClaws said:

Image - Did Tang Lung finally show the waiters his Kung Fu techniques, without getting interrupted this time?. The version of the scene that appears in the movie, doesn't have Lee topless. Below are some more tid-bits, regarding other deleted Way of The Dragon scenes.

It seems like Bruce felt that the audience should only see his physique after we see him fight for the first time, so people can be surprised by his progress from the last movie.

I feel like that there may have been a training scene that was removed where Tang Lung teaches some moves to the waiters. When they rescue Cheng, Jimmy is slightly more effective as a fighter whereas Ah Gung gives a look to Tang that suggests he wants approval for successfully applying Tang's teachings of stick fighting.

It kind of reminds me of Bullet in the Head. There's a scene where the three leads attempt a raid/rescue mission, and they're all of a sudden master marksmen when in fact there was a deleted scene where Simon Yam's character taught them how to fire guns.

Edited August 23, 2022 by Cognoscente

[DragonClaws]

On 8/23/2022 at 2:09 PM, Cognoscente said:

I feel like that there may have been a training scene that was removed where Tang Lung teaches some moves to the waiters. When they rescue Cheng, Jimmy is slightly more effective as a fighter whereas Ah Gung gives a look to Tang that suggests he wants approval for successfully applying Tang's teachings of stick fighting.

 

There is a reference to another training scene in the curent version of the film.

 

[DragonClaws]

 

I'm under the impression the final fight in The Big Boss last about 8-minutes in current versions?.

"Then, around minute 77, Bruce unleashed the beast. The final fight lasted for 18 minutes. It ended when pretty much everyone in the cast was dead." - Grady Hendrix

Source- https://www.thesefistsbreakbricks.com/nowplaying/happy-birthday-to-the-big-boss

 

[DragonClaws]

 

Ok so the final fight actually is actually shorter than eight minute.,I wonder if Grady Hendrix was combing the ice factory fight, and the man sequnce at the end?. Even then, Im not sure it all runs to 18-minutes?, anyone have any theories of their own?.

 

[Cognoscente]

Maybe he used a stopwatch to time the daytime finale but forgot to pause it when he found himself rewinding shots so as to play them in slow motion.

[PandaPawPaw]

Maybe he watched it like this.....

 

[starschwar]

Maybe he said, "eight to ten" and someone misheard it as "eighteen"? 

[PandaPawPaw]

Don't you mean "eight (James) Tien".

[DragonClaws]

 

By the useal extended length of fight scene in the early 70's Hong Kong movies, it was very short. Like other's have pointed out before, there are a few abrupt cuts in some of the final scenes. Bad editing and continuity?, or was considered too long for 70's Western movie goer's?.

[Cognoscente]

I wish it was longer. Maybe they could have extended it so that Cheng chases after Mi into a Muay Thai club where Cheng gets attacked by kickboxers who think that Mi is a victim. 

[starschwar]

I'm sure some of the "teleportation" is a result of the cuts made after that censorship law went into effect, but it could be that many were made before the official release.  They have that scene early on establishing the boss's guard dogs... who are nowhere to be seen for the finale.  Perhaps they met with some gruesome fate during the final battle that was too intense (or too unconvincing) for the final cut.

[Cognoscente]

It's like Enter the Dragon where Han's daughters are established but nothing comes into effect for the finale.

 

 

 

[makone]

I always thought May ling would have fought them on her way to free the prisoners.

[Cognoscente]

If ETD had been a Huang Feng film then Angela Mao would have played Mei Ling, and she would have fought the daughters in the weapons chamber.

[WarriorBloodCrest]

7 hours ago, starschwar said:

I'm sure some of the "teleportation" is a result of the cuts made after that censorship law went into effect, but it could be that many were made before the official release.  They have that scene early on establishing the boss's guard dogs... who are nowhere to be seen for the finale.  Perhaps they met with some gruesome fate during the final battle that was too intense (or too unconvincing) for the final cut.

As far as "teleportation" goes, during the final fight sequence, one can observe quite a few more corpses strewn across the Boss's compound (more specifically, near the bigger palm trees, since I don't think the movie shows Cheng Chao-An dispatching those thugs, or perhaps they tried ambushing him mid-fight?). 

[CharlieParker]

The big question for me about the cuts to 'The Big Boss' is trying to work out if it was a bloodbath before it was all removed?

We have an idea of the kind of effects they would have used from the tiny fragments that seem to have slipped through the censor's hands.

- the most obvious are arterial blood sprays which are, I think, in one of the trailers?

- The shots of the saw in the head.

- The gruesome faces in the ice at the ice factory

I recently worked on a release of this film for a company in the States:

My Name is Shangai (sic) Joe/Shanghai Joe

And it's the first time I've come close to thinking - yeah, maybe there was this really bloody and gruesome edit of 'The Big Boss' that fell foul of the censors. Shanghai Joe has eye-gouging, limbs being chopped off and all sorts of really over the top "grand guignol" style gore scenes. But this film came a bit later - in 1973 - so I'm not 100% convinced that there was this brief wave of ultra-gory films around then - or that there's a connection (geography aside) The only other one that springs to mind (and I'm sure many others) are the Japanese (Shogun Assassin) Babycart series of films. Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance was released in 1972 which, again, puts it a good year later than The Big Boss. 

So where's the precedent for this ultra violent/gory type of cinema? Is there anything from around 1971 that also had this level of graphic violence we think or assume may have been cut from 'The Big Boss'? 

Or was this some sort of cinematic first - and they didn't get away with it? With the censors removing all the juicy bits?

This is what I question most about the censor cuts. An ultra-gory version of The Big Boss doesn't fit in with what was being made around that time. (I could be way off here, I know some of the Shaw's are quite graphic - but in 1971?)

I'd lean towards a bit of the above - but perhaps none of the special effects came out as they intended and they junked them from the start. It explains all the publicity snaps, shot/taken during filming, and then nothing else ever really turning up, barring a fragment or two. 

A scene with dogs attacking people? That would be a nightmare to film effectively/convincingly and I could see it looking like a real mess in the editing suite. Remember, this is the film with the 'precise cut out' of the guy who gets kicked through a wall - I mean, it was cheap... and even the most basic of effects aren't that easy to pull off - and I doubt they had anyone skilled creating these gory effects.

We'll never know for sure but I think it was more a case of trying out something new and it just didn't work. To the point where most of this stuff wasn't even edited into the film in the first place. But it's just my fan speculation.

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by CharlieParker

[DragonClaws]

N.T

Edited September 26, 2022 by DragonClaws

[ShawAngela]

9 hours ago, CharlieParker said:

The big question for me about the cuts to 'The Big Boss' is trying to work out if it was a bloodbath before it was all removed?

We have an idea of the kind of effects they would have used from the tiny fragments that seem to have slipped through the censor's hands.

- the most obvious are arterial blood sprays which are, I think, in one of the trailers?

- The shots of the saw in the head.

- The gruesome faces in the ice at the ice factory

I recently worked on a release of this film for a company in the States:

My Name is Shangai (sic) Joe/Shanghai Joe

And it's the first time I've come close to thinking - yeah, maybe there was this really bloody and gruesome edit of 'The Big Boss' that fell foul of the censors. Shanghai Joe has eye-gouging, limbs being chopped off and all sorts of really over the top "grand guignol" style gore scenes. But this film came a bit later - in 1973 - so I'm not 100% convinced that there was this brief wave of ultra-gory films around then - or that there's a connection (geography aside) The only other one that springs to mind (and I'm sure many others) are the Japanese (Shogun Assassin) Babycart series of films. Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance was released in 1972 which, again, puts it a good year later than The Big Boss. 

So where's the precedent for this ultra violent/gory type of cinema? Is there anything from around 1971 that also had this level of graphic violence we think or assume may have been cut from 'The Big Boss'? 

Or was this some sort of cinematic first - and they didn't get away with it? With the censors removing all the juicy bits?

This is what I question most about the censor cuts. An ultra-gory version of The Big Boss doesn't fit in with what was being made around that time. (I could be way off here, I know some of the Shaw's are quite graphic - but in 1971?)

I'd lean towards a bit of the above - but perhaps none of the special effects came out as they intended and they junked them from the start. It explains all the publicity snaps, shot/taken during filming, and then nothing else ever really turning up, barring a fragment or two. 

A scene with dogs attacking people? That would be a nightmare to film effectively/convincingly and I could see it looking like a real mess in the editing suite. Remember, this is the film with the 'precise cut out' of the guy who gets kicked through a wall - I mean, it was cheap... and even the most basic of effects aren't that easy to pull off - and I doubt they had anyone skilled creating these gory effects.

We'll never know for sure but I think it was more a case of trying out something new and it just didn't work. To the point where most of this stuff wasn't even edited into the film in the first place. But it's just my fan speculation.

 

 

 

As I said in a previous post talking about The big boss, in the German bluray, we see Bruce taking the saw in his hand and doing the gesture to attack an opponent with it, and then, a big blood splash on the screen, maybe to hide the the saw on the head to the public ? And reading your post, it seems to me that the faces in the ice can be seen too, at least the girl's face, from what I remember.

Talking about long or short versions, I got a 115 mn dvd of Fist of fury, I still have to watch it. At least, it's the running time that is mentioned on the cover, myabe I have been cheated...

[DragonClaws]

23 hours ago, CharlieParker said:

- the most obvious are arterial blood sprays which are, I think, in one of the trailers?

 

There' one of those left in the ice factory fight, when Bruce Lee character stabs someone off camera, and the blood sprays up. The rest appear to have been edited out of the film, such as the scene with James Tien bleeding head.

 

[PandaPawPaw]

I can't remember which movie that recently came out in the UK but it had missing scenes/frames and the company requested Fortune Star to find the scenes which they did and sent them over.

I wonder whoever releases the BL movies in the UK again can request for missing footage.

"Oi FS, we're missing *insert all known missing scenes here*, be a darling and get them scanned and sent over! Cheers!"

It could work.....

Edited September 28, 2022 by PandaPawPaw

[WarriorBloodCrest]

On 9/25/2022 at 12:40 PM, Cognoscente said:

I wish it was longer. Maybe they could have extended it so that Cheng chases after Mi into a Muay Thai club where Cheng gets attacked by kickboxers who think that Mi is a victim. 

The existing Ice Factory sequence could've been more intense than what we got, and I don't mean just the saw-on-head part. For instance, rather than circling Cheng Chao-An right away, the henchmen opt to try and obliterate him by tossing dynamite sticks at his direction. Not only Cheng get's blown back, but so are the ice blocks with the body parts. Quite the gory affair, come to think of it. Ice and body parts are strewn all over the place.

Cheng is pulled through the rubble - all dirtied up, with his shirt gone, no shoes and black pants all tattered up, and stays that way for the rest of the movie - by the hair by the Boss' son. Cut to the next scene of Cheng's arms chained to a wooden poll, and what happens next is left to one's imagination.

[CharlieParker]

I'm drawn back to this thread - and my comments - because someone over on an Italian forum was asking (by sheer coincidence) about violent of gory kung-fu flicks. A few were mentioned (even Shanghai Joe) but the one that stood out was 'Invincible Super Chan' - which I used to have on pre-cert VHS - and remember being quite OTT - and the year actually fits - 1971. 

So maybe there was something in the air around that time and that's what Bruce and co. were aiming for?

It's the only one that leaps to mind - but were there others? 

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by CharlieParker