Way of the Dragon, of Masters and Mobsters (an essay)

[DrNgor]

I saw my first Bruce Lee movie on network TV back around 1994. It was a weekday and Channel 31, the same channel that played all the Disney-produced cartoons during the afternoon and kept “Full House” in syndication for years, was showing Enter the Dragon one evening. I started watching about the time that Bruce Lee was challenging the jerk-off Australian fighter to match, after which he just dropped him in a rowboat and had him drug to Mr. Han’s Island. By that time I was a bonafide fan of martial arts movies, thanks to the collective works of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, plus The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

                My second Bruce Lee movie, Fists of Fury (aka The Big Boss), came the following year. I was in the 7^th grade and generally spent my lunch time in Mr. Lud Williams’s classroom, which was huge and doubled as a chess club and had a bunch of old Apple computers for us to play “The Oregon Trail” and “Spy Hunter.” One day during lunch, Mr. Williams, an older black man who looked and talked like an older version of the Notorious B.I.G. and had previously been a high school football coach, showed us Fists of Fury. I guess he forgot about the scene with the naked Thai prostitute, as he hastily turned it off when we got to that scene. No problem, he just popped that baby in after that part the next day and we finished watching it. I’m going to assume that nobody ratted him out, since showing any R-rated movie would get a teacher fired, let alone an R-rated film with female nudity.

                That same summer ended up with me convincing my parents to spend 40 dollars on a Bruce Lee VHS collection (released by 20^th Century Fox), which featured (using their American titles) Fists of Fury; The Chinese Connection; Game of Death and this film. This one was the first one that my brother and I watched. It was easily the tamest movie of the collection, with no nudity (at least in this version), minimal swearing, and martial arts action that really wasn’t all that violent. How it got an R rating has always been beyond me.

                In 1997, my friend Jacob Proctor was celebrating his 15^th birthday and invited me over to his house to have pizza and spend the night. I brought my Return of the Dragon VHS and we watched it along with his brother Jim. This movie essentially kicked off our classics list. When I brought it over again a year and a half later for another sleepover at Jacob’s mom’s place, we were rewinding almost each scene just to laugh at whatever poor sucker was getting kicked in the face. It had earned its place forever on our list.

                The movie begins with Tang Lung (Bruce Lee) arriving at the airport in Rome, waiting to be picked up, while some old white lady stares at him as if the only Asian person she had ever seen was Swedish actor Warner Oland playing Charlie Chan. He’s eventually picked up by Miss Chen Ching-Hwa (Nora Miao, who was in The Chinese Connection and Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin), who has just inherited her father’s Chinese restaurant. The downside is that a small-time mafia has set their sights on the land, and have been threatening customers in an attempt to force Miss Chen to sell. Remember that scene in The Godfather where the different family heads are having a meeting to discuss their expanding operations to include drug dealing, albeit only to black people? Few scenes have exemplified the stereotypical Italian racist more than that one. Anyway, wouldn’t it be something if, during their meeting, one of the guys said, “By the way, I’ve been trying to buy the local Chinese restaurant, but some Chinaman keeps on beating my men up!”

                Initially, Miss Chen doesn’t really like Tang Lung. He’s a complete fish out of water, hailing from the New Territories of Hong Kong, making him a bit of a hick. He has something of a prejudice against foreigners and just doesn’t know much about anything beyond martial arts. I can only hope that he spent his adolescence beating up those inbred Disco Boys from The Beasts. After a strange aside featuring a hooker—the U.S. release cuts out the scene where she undresses in front of him—Tang arrives at the restaurant and meets the staff: Uncle Wong (Wang Chung-Hsin, of Twelve Gold Medallions and Fist of Fury), Ah Kung (Gam Dai, who went on to produce the legendary The New South Hand Blows and North Kick Blows) Tony (Lau Wing, who gets beat up by John Saxon in Enter the Dragon), Jimmy (Unicorn Chan, who tried to make it big in Fist of Unicorn, but ended up in crap like Shaolin Drunk Fighter), Thomas (Chen Fu-Ching, Slaughter in San Francisco), Robert (Robert Chan, of Kung Fu 10^th Dan and Tiger Force), and the guy who doesn’t speak English (Wu Ngan). Jimmy has been teaching karate to the others so they can fend of the gangsters, but if Unicorn Chan’s choreography later on in the film is any indication, he’s in no condition to teach anything resembling self-defense at all.

                Later that evening, some thugs show up and order some food, leading to the classic exchange:

 

Thug: I’d like some Chinese spare ribs.

Jimmy: Chinese spare ribs?

Thug: You mean to say, you…you don’t know what Chinese spare ribs are?

(Jimmy shakes his head)

Thug: Well, let me show you, man.

(Thug lifts up Jimmy’s arm and punches him in the ribs)

 

This eventually leads a fight between Tang Lung and the gangsters, all of whom fall effortlessly to Tang’s “Chinese Boxing.” All of a sudden, things are now looking up for the restaurant.

                The next evening, an armed man shows up at Miss Chen’s apartment, but Tang beats him up, too. That’s followed by the gangsters, led by John Benn (who played a mad scientist in Clones of Bruce Lee) and his second-in-command, Mr. Ho (Wei Ping-Ao, who played similar roles in The Chinese Connection and Hapkido), paying a visit to the restaurant. They try to bribe Tang into leaving Rome, but it only results in the film’s second major fight sequence, where he takes on all the thugs with a pole, two pairs of nunchaku, and fisticuffs, too.

                Mr. Benn and Mr. Ho decide at this point that Tang will have to be dealt with more forcefully, so they send a sniper to wipe him out…and they kidnap Miss Chen while they’re at it. That attempt fails, and Tang and his new buddies come to the rescue. The resulting fight is quite strongly at odds, with regards to the choreography, with everything we’ve seen before. That leads me to believe that Unicorn Chan was allowed to choreograph, but to little effect. On the same token, having seen the fight between Sharon Tate and Nancy Kwan in The Wrecking Crew, I can’t help but wonder if the man was only good at choreographing himself.

                So now Mr. Benn has had it. He hires a trio of martial artists, one Japanese (played by Korean actor Whang In-Sik, of Young Master and A Fistful of Talons) and two Caucasian (Game of Death’s Bob Wall and the master of the roundhouse kick himself, Chuck Norris), to beat Tang Lung at his own game. It all culminates in a legendary final fight at the Roman Colosseum between two of the biggest names in the history of martial arts cinema.

                I still can’t figure out how so many people have labeled The Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow as the first kung fu comedies. They certainly created a new formula for mixing kung fu and humor, but they certainly weren’t the first martial arts films to have heavy comic elements. Call Me Dragon (1974) and Win Them All (1973) have lots of slapstick humor incorporated into their numerous fights, for example.  And with Way of the Dragon, even if you ignore the hilarious dubbed dialog, this movie is largely a comedy, even when Bruce Lee is seriously kicking the stuffing out of everyone around him. You have low-brow fart and boob humor (once again, depending on the version you watch). You have an overweight Italian man yelling “Momma mia!” after witnessing his men get a sound thrashing from Bruce. You even have some social-tinged humor based on the stereotypical Asian (or Hong Kong—because of the limited space, perhaps) practicality, as Tang Lung declares Roman ruins and monuments to be a waste of space that could be used to build on.

                That humor is important, because it takes a good twenty minutes for the movie to really get moving. Once Bruce takes out the thugs in the back alley behind the restaurant, things pick up and never slow down. The fighting is classic Bruce. As I watch more and more Brucesploitation films, especially those made by Bruce Le, I grow weary of the monotony of the action of some of those films. There was a certain charisma to Bruce that allowed him to do the same simple moves and still knock our socks off with them. Moreover, Bruce does make an effort to shake up each fight, changing the stakes, the location, the players, or the weapons, without relying on any goofy gimmicks.

                The first fight is mainly a showcase for Bruce’s lightning-fast kicks. The second fight, set in the same back alley as the first fight, raises the stakes as the he takes on more opponents, all of whom are armed. Bruce evens out the score by bringing weapons, including his trademark nunchaku skills, into the mix. The next fight has Bruce standing off to the sidelines while the restaurant’s waiters take on the thugs, giving us an interesting point of comparison between differing choreography styles. And to top that fight off, the diminutive Lee performs a standing jump/front kick to break a light bulb several feet above. It’s a simple, but powerful display of the man’s athleticism.

                The final fight to Way of the Dragon would not only give viewers another opportunity to see Bruce Lee in action, but would carry with a number of other significances. The first was that it would give Bruce Lee a worthy opponent: Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris, a relative unknown at that point, was a Middleweight Karate Champion (record: 65-5) and a master in Tang Soo Do, Shinto-Ryu karate, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Tae Kwon Do. He had a spinning-back kick that would help catapult him to legend status in certain internet circles 30 years later, the which gets ample time for demonstration in the first half of this fight. He was certainly a better opponent for Bruce Lee than Han Ying Chieh or Riki Hashimoto. As powerful as Chuck’s kicks are, they are no match for the rapid kicks that Bruce unleashes on him. Chuck can try to make a movement, but by the time he’s halfway to his target, Bruce’s foot is already connecting with Chuck’s face. Lee’s roundhouse and spinning kicks are faster than his opponents. Lee’s speed is spell-binding, especially in his famous kicking combination: one kick to the legs, another to the stomach, and three to head, all in rapid succession. This combination would be used by the character Jackie, a proponent of Jeet Kune Do, in the Sega game Virtua Fighter.

                An interesting observation about Bruce Lee’s kicks: Bruce’s original style, Wing Chun, uses few kicks and most of them are low kicks adapted to close-quarters combat. In teaching practicality, Bruce believed that high kicks were not ideal for actual fights. However, time and time again audiences have shown a love for flashy moves and thus Bruce incorporated such kicking into his movies. His kicks are from Tae Kwon Do, which he learned with Tae Kwon Do master Jhoon Rhee. It is said that Chuck Norris himself encouraged Bruce Lee to use high kicks in their fight, although Bruce had been using flashier kicks since The Big Boss.

                Besides his famous kicking combination, the most memorable combination we’ll see in this fight is a demonstration of pure Wing Chun. In close quarters, Bruce and Chuck trade a few blows, with Bruce being able to trap Chuck’s arms. What follows is a five-punch combination performed in about one second. That’s right, he punches Chuck Norris five times in one second, following it with a roundhouse kick to the head. It’s an awesome moment, and Sammo Hung would pay homage to this sequence in his 1990 film Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon.

                Their duel in the Roman Colosseum would set the standard for all one-on-one fights for all years to come. Not only that, it would establish the glorious tradition of Hong Kong filmmakers importing foreign martial artists for their films, generally as the villains. People like Jeff Falcon, Richard Norton, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace and Benny “the Jet” Urquidez owe a big part of their careers to the Bruce Lee-Chuck Norris Showdown. It truly is a classic moment in martial arts cinema.

                Internet movie critic and author, Keith Allison, best summed up this movie when he said:

 

“So if you want to see Lee’s biggest film, see Enter the Dragon. If you want to see his first film, see The Big Boss. If you want to see his best film, see Fist of Fury. If you want to see the one film out of all of them that shows Bruce Lee at his finest in all ways, the one film at that has the most Bruce at its heart, the one film that, more than any of the others and despite its rough edges, defines where Bruce wanted to take the genre, then you have to see Way of the Dragon.”

 

                One key to understanding this film’s success is to look at other movies that tried to do the same thing, but to lesser effect. Success naturally breeds imitators, and Way of the Dragon was no different than Bruce Lee’s other films. Following Bruce’s death, Golden Harvest tried to find the new Bruce Lee. One of their choices was Taiwanese tae kwon do stylist Don Wong Tao, whom they cast in a film Slaughter in San Francisco, which pit him against Chuck Norris. The film was a bust and is nothing more than a curio today. Thankfully, Don Wong Tao would later go on to be one of Taiwan’s greatest martial arts stars, and Chuck’s status, first as an action actor and later as an internet phenomenon is well-known by all.

                Where Slaughter in San Francisco used its casting to cash in on Way of the Dragon, other movies sought to capitalize on the “Chinese kung fu master in Europe” angle. One of the earliest examples was Chinese Kung Fu Against Godfather (1973). The movie starred a young Cliff Lok, a graduate from the Peking Opera and a master of several styles, including the Tibetan martial art hop gar and Northern Shaolin Boxing, among others. Cliff Lok was also notable for being one of producer Ng See-Yuen’s original choices to star in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow[1], the film that made Jackie Chan famous[2]. Lok plays a Chinese kung fu master (natch!) who goes to the Netherlands and opens a kung fu school, only to get involved with shady Caucasian gangsters. The movie has largely been forgotten today and the reason for it is fairly obvious: for all of Lok’s training and knowledge, he does not look especially powerful in his fights and Chan Siu-Pang’s action direction is too meandering and lacking in crispness, as was the style of the time. We give the two points for not trying to ape Bruce Lee’s fighting style, but it has to be exciting in its own way to draw us in.

                A year later, producer Ng See-Yuen gave us The Little Godfather from Hong Kong, aka The Godfather Squad. The film was an early lead role for choreographer and supporting player Leung Siu-Lung, who would go under the moniker of Bruce Liang[3] during much of the 1970s. The film wisely doesn’t follow Way of the Dragon’s story too closely, opting for something much bigger, and ultimately more absurd. The Italian mafia is lashing out against Interpol, killing their agents all over the map. They try to kill an agent based in Hong Kong via an exploding dog(!)—I swear I’m not making that up—who is saved at the last moment by David (Leung Siu-Lung), a martial arts expert. David becomes a local celebrity and is even invited to Rome to make a kung fu movie. Naturally, the Mafia isn’t happy with David having spoiled their plans and puts out a hit on him, which gets violent very quickly.

                The one thing that The Godfather Squad has in its favor is Leung Siu-Lung, who’s a fine martial artist. A student of both Northern style kung and Wing Chun—Bruce Lee’s style—Leung was easily the most physically talented of the Brucesploitation actors from the 70s. He was especially impressive as a kicker, for which he’s most well known by fans today. Leung choreographed his fights, and refreshingly did his own thing, rather than just copy Bruce Lee’s moves. He also packed more power and snap in his moves than Cliff Lok did in Chinese Kung Fu Against Godfather, and was indeed one of the best martial arts actors of the early 1970s, when the genre was already saturated with actors of varying degrees of talent. Sadly, the big fight finale, where Leung squares off with Japanese heavy Yasuaki Kurata, consists of the two running all over Rome and even into the snow-capped hills outside the city, only occasionally trading punches and kicks[4].

                Where The Godfather Squad really goes wrong is the script, which is far more amibitious than Bruce Lee’s film. Conversely, that means that when this film stumbles, it falls hard and gets goofy really quickly. The mafia killing a person with an exploding dog is absurd enough. But this mafia is led by an Italian man with two adopted sons, a German Nazi (played by sword-and-sandal film veteran Gordon Mitchell) and a Japanese karate fighter (the aforementioned Kurata). It’s practically China vs. the Axis Powers in this movie! You have machine guns with noticeably neverending clips of ammo; assassination attempts in front of the Vatican; hitmen who have a clean shot at their target, but still feel the need to walk up until they’re within kicking distance to take a shot; a woman who tries to run down a villain with her car, and despite being several yards away, still takes almost a minute to get close to him; and all sorts of lapses of logic and good sense.

                Way of the Dragon, on the other hand, had a simpler premise and worked because of it.  The mobster want the restaurant, but the owner won’t sell. They try to use force, Bruce fights back. Now they want to kill Bruce, but he’s too strong. So they hire people worthy of his talent, leading to the climax. The actors acquitted themselves well to their parts and everyone knows how their characters should act in the circumstances presented. When a traitor shows himself at the end, his reasons make sense, as does the logic behind his waiting until the last second to betray his friends. Compare with The Godfather Squad, in which more than one character betrays our hero, but given that the aim of the Mafia was to kill him from the beginning, you can’t help but notice that they could’ve knifed him or shot him when his guard was down at any moment, but never did.

                Another Brucesploitation actor, Huang Kin-Lung (aka Bruce Le), went the Way of the Dragon route in 1982, with his twin opi Challenge of the Tiger and Ninja Strikes Back. Produced by British shlockmeister Dick Randall (also known for slasher films like Pieces and Don’t Open Til Christmas), it’s almost surprising that there was still a market for Brucesploitation by 1982. Both films were directed, choreographed and starred Bruce Le, and stand out for being among the most exploitive films of the genre. In Challenge of the Tiger, Le plays a CIA agent who teams up with another, womanizing agent (Italian actor Richard Harrison) to find a chemical formula that induces sterility—shades of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service here. Their mission takes them from Spain to Hong Kong to Macau, where they fight the Spanish Mafia and the Viet Cong(!), who are also after the formula. The finale is set at a drug base run by a bunch of Chinese men in karate gis, which is reminiscent of Enter the Dragon.

                On the other hand, Ninja Strikes Back is about a Chinese enforcer (Bruce Le) to an Italian mob boss who gets arrested after a deal gone sour. A couple of years later, the enforcer tries to leave his life of crime behind, but is enlisted by the local police—including a female detective played by a woman who goes by the pseudonym of Chick Norris(!)—to help them find the kidnapped daughter of an embassador. Le’s mission takes him to Paris, Hong Kong and finally back to Rome, for a final duel at the Colisseum with Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee.

                Bruce Le started imitating the Little Dragon in 1976, with Bruce Lee’s Deadly Fingers, and quickly found himself choreographing most of his own movies, much like Leung Siu-Lung and Bruce Lee himself. It becomes apparently quickly why nothing that Le did could ever come close to holding a candle to the real Bruce. Bruce Le wasn’t a bad martial artist, but he didn’t make good decisions when it came to filming his fights. There are too many moments where he shoots from behind the guy throwing the punch or kick, thereby obscuring the moves on display. Le himself was in good physical shape, and was certainly fast, but he did not possess a fraction of Bruce Lee’s power. And then he pits himself against kicking legend Hwang Jang Lee, and there’s no way he can sell that he’s a better fighter than the villain. Le also had a difficult time differentiating the fights from each other, so that most of them have a feeling of sameness hanging over them, even to seasoned kung fu veterans with more discerning eyes.

                Thus, it’s interesting to note that Bruce Le’s motto for these films is: “If I can’t out-fight Bruce Lee, I’ll simply out-sleaze him.” As a result, these two movies feature near-pornographic quantities of sex and female flesh on display. Both films have scenes set at swimming pools with women randomly walking around topless. Ninja Strikes Back has a fight that breaks out on the set of a porno film, but not before we spend a couple of minutes watching two women make out with each other. Challenge of the Tiger one-up’s that by giving us a game of tennis between Richard Harrison and a trio of topless women…in slow motion. All of it displayed with a completely straight face, without a hint of irony, in all its tacky glory.

                With its simple, but solid premise, great fight action from a highly-talented individual, and equally-great final villain, and some nice Roman scenery, it’s easily to understand why Way of the Dragon would rise above its imitator, with only Wheels on Meals coming close to matching it more than a decade later.

 

---

[1] - Gentry III, Clyde. Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon.

[2] - We should note here that Cliff Lok looks a lot like Jackie Chan, and despite having become a lead actor before Chan, he ended up starring in movies that mimicked the success of Chan’s hits, like Kung Fu Genius and Drunken Master Slippery Snake, rather than doing anything innovative of his own.

[3] - For the record, “Liang” is the Mandarin pronunciation of the character (梁). In Cantonese, the pronunciation is “Leung”.

[4] - For a better showcase for their skills, watch Call Me Dragon (1974). Their final throwdown is one of the best one-on-one fights of the old school era. It received a DVD release in Australia, plus was released in the USA as part of VideoAsia’s collection Martial Arts Essentials, Vol. 3: Best of the Best.

[DragonClaws]

 

Looking forward to reading this one @DrNgor, thats one epic write-up you've done there.

 

[DrNgor]

On 10/31/2021 at 4:54 PM, DragonClaws said:

Looking forward to reading this one @DrNgor, thats one epic write-up you've done there.

 

I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts!

[Josh Baker]

Great Essay, Dr Ngor! I went back and finally watched Ninja Strikes Back and it's a pretty entertaining exploitation flick- Bolo dies far too easily though and I felt sorry for Harold Sakata having to fall into the water😂

[DrNgor]

1 hour ago, Josh Baker said:

Great Essay, Dr Ngor! I went back and finally watched Ninja Strikes Back and it's a pretty entertaining exploitation flick

Thank you for taking the time out to read!

Ninja Strikes Back is one of the more entertaining Bruce Le films, all things considered.

[Coliseum1972]

I wouldve had Bolo stab Bruce Le in the back at the Coliseum while hes walking out , a tragic ending and for once Bolo would win

But i bet producers would find that too much of a downer ending , what with the hero losing 

[DragonClaws]

On 11/2/2021 at 7:04 PM, DrNgor said:

I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts!

 

Great read @DrNgor, I will have to read again just to fully digest it all.

 

[Killer Meteor]

So what's that tapestry on the wall of the Boss' office? I'm thinking Edward the Confessor...

[Cognoscente]

On 10/30/2021 at 9:29 PM, DrNgor said:

Remember that scene in The Godfather where the different family heads are having a meeting to discuss their expanding operations to include drug dealing, albeit only to black people? Few scenes have exemplified the stereotypical Italian racist more than that one.

Speaking of The Godfather, someone in Golden Harvest's marketing department paraphrased one of the iconic lines.

 

[Coliseum1972]

Havent heard from Anders Nelsson , emailed him last xmas.....is he ill ?

I remember emailing Benn a yr or 2 before he died , he never replied back 

 

[saltysam]

Does anyone have any info on the burly bearded thug "mamma mia" who was also in Shaw's The Pirate?

[DragonClaws]

On 3/20/2023 at 1:11 PM, saltysam said:

Does anyone have any info on the burly bearded thug "mamma mia" who was also in Shaw's The Pirate?

 

Wasn't he the flamecno guitarist who helped to bring on board some of the other extras?, bit hazy on this one. Brought this subject up in my Way of The Dragon appreciation thread here on the forums.

[Coliseum1972]

wasnt his name Vido or something (not Vigo......thats the ghost from GB2 , lol) 

[saltysam]

I don't know but I'd love some info on him

[Killer Meteor]