Director – Robert Clouse – 2018 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 94m (cut)
£6.99, Dist Warner Screen Classics
***
Reviewed on VHS for Manga Mania sometime in the late 1990s.
Now over twenty years old, this 1973 offering holds up pretty well as an average HK martial arts movie and remains a milestone in terms of Western involvement in the HK film industry. The plot, which owes more than a little to Ian Fleming’s Dr.No, has Bruce Lee sent to the island home of despot Han, a trafficker in opium and young women who has disgraced Lee’s temple and killed Lee’s sister. Han doesn’t allow guns on his island and recruits fighting talent by putting on martial arts contests with intent to employ the best entrants (an idea reworked later with supernatural trimmings in Mortal Kombat, Paul W.S. Anderson, 1995) – among them the unknown Jim Kelly (sporting embarrassing period afro) and the young John Saxon.
Much of the proceedings are taken up with one on one contest fights, with numerous yellow or white clad extras clapping politely after every blow or kick. The stunts remain impressive, but this current release isn’t in widescreen (unless you count titles, credits, and two fight scenes duplicated in widescreen at the start of the tape) with the result that essential parts of the fight sequences (e.g. many of Lee’s opponents) disappear from view off the screen sides.
Originally published in Manga Mania sometime in the late 1990s.
BBFC: A version of this work was cut.
Here’s a 1973 trailer. The nunchakus were almost certainly cut from the VHS print reviewed above: