Enter The Dragon (1973)
Enter The Dragon was a defining moment for martial arts films
and for Bruce Lee (real name Lee Jun Fan). The first martial arts
film produced by a major Hollywood studio came from Warner
Brothers and made a star of Lee in the Western world.
Before Enter The Dragon, Lee had appeared as Kato in the
short-lived US TV series The Green Hornet, but was already a
household name in Hong Kong. He wanted more though, and he knew he
would only get it in Hollywood (ironically he was born in San
Francisco).
This was no art-house movie. It's a classic thriller. Lee
infiltrates a small island - home to the bad guy and his illicit
drugs and prostitution racket. The plot was thin, but the fight
scenes showed Lee's genius, turned him into a Hollywood icon and
captured the imagination of popular culture for generations.
Everyone wanted to do it, a hundred martial arts rip-offs were
popping up, every TV cop knew how to use his legs, and the disco
movement had another fad to grasp on to.
Lee was the first Asian star to make it in Hollywood - but he
never knew it. Three weeks before the premier he was found dead in
a Hong Kong apartment of a mysterious brain oedema. The conspiracy
theories ran riot; some said he had been hit in the head too hard,
or that he had been poisoned.
Then there was the 'vibrating palm' theory that certain Asian
martial artists knew how to simply touch you and cause your
internal organs to vibrate rapidly until you died. The official
verdict was that Lee had died of a brain oedema from a mysterious
reaction to aspirin, and 100,000 people attended his funeral in
Hong Kong. He was just 32.
Jackie Chan can be clearly seen in a cameo appearance, getting
his neck broken in the elaborate underground cave fight sequence.
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