Game of Death

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Game of Death

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Game of Death

Director: Bruce Lee

Productor: Raymond Chow, Bruce Lee

Starring: Bruce Lee, James Tien, Chieh Yuan, Dan Inosanto, Ji Han Jae, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Written by: Bruce Lee.

Country: Hong Kong

Release date: October 22, 1978.

Running time: 39 min. (incomplete, original version). 103 min. (1978 version).

The Game of Death was the film Bruce Lee had planned to be the demonstration piece of his martial art Jeet Kune Do. Over 100 minutes of footage was shot before his death, some of which was later misplaced in the Golden Harvest archives, and has not yet been recovered (such as one fighter attacking Dan Inosanto with a thin log). The remaining footage has been released with Bruce Lee's original English and Cantonese dialogue, with John Little dubbing Bruce Lee's Hai Tien character as part of the documentary entitled Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey. Most of the footage which was shot is from what was to be the centerpiece of the film.

In the middle of filming The Game of Death Bruce Lee received an offer to star in Enter the Dragon. The first kung fu film to be produced by a Hollywood studio, and with a budget unprecedented for the genre, it was an offer Lee was unable to refuse. Lee died of cerebral edema before the film's release. At the time of his death, he had already made plans to resume the filming of The Game of Death.

After Lee's death, Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse was enlisted to direct additional scenes featuring a stand-in which, when pieced together with the original footage as well as other footage from earlier in Bruce Lee's career, would form a new film (entitled Game of Death) which was released in 1978, nearly 5 years after his death, by Columbia Pictures.

PLOT

The original plot involved Lee playing the role of Hai Tien, a retired champion martial artist who was confronted by the Korean underworld gangs. They tell him the story of a pagoda where guns are prohibited, and under heavy guard by highly skilled martial artists who are protecting something (which is not identified at all in any surviving material) held on its top level. The gang boss wants Hai to be a part of a group whose purpose is to retrieve said item. They would be the second group to try to do so as the first attempt with a previous group had failed. When Hai refuses, his younger sister and brother are kidnapped, forcing him to participate. Hai, as well as four other martial artists (two of which were played by James Tien and Chieh Yuan), then fight their way up a five-level pagoda, encountering a different challenge on each floor. The setting of the pagoda was at Beopjusa temple in Songnisan National Park in South Korea.