"Wha-cha!" - ENTER THE DRAGON

Damn skippy.

Have the film. Bought the soundtrack CD before it went out of print.

I have enjoyed its heavenly glory many, many times.

Classic.Used to have this film's dialogue memorized.

John Saxon:"Well,well,one more lovelier than the next,what did you have in mind?"
Lady:"Pick one!"
John Saxoneyeing the head lady herself):"I already have."
Lady:"Wise decision."

and of course"Man,you come right out of a comic book!"

Plus the fact that many of our favorites from Hong Kong during the 80's are in their as well:Lam Ching Ying(Mr.Han double),Yueh Wah(Bruce double),Sammo Hung(opening fight),Jackie Chan(stuntman)..

and for people that care,BOLO!

It's "watah," Werbal. "Watah."

Hell of an argument.

The special edition DVD from Warner Bros, by the way, kicks almost as much ass. The documentary itself (that's as long as the movie!) is worth the price. Grand stuff.

Groovy Lalo Schiffrin score and Robert Clouse's best film.

Classic stuff. Also from HK is Miss Lady Whirlwind herself Angela Mao as Bruce's sister.

'Booolshit Mr Han-man'

Jim Kelly's finest hour. I personally think this movie hasn't held up very well. It's overrated.

If title music pushes a message, the opening theme to Enter the Dragon says, “Get ready viewer! Lots of people are going to be pummeled in the next ninety minutes”.

I was not a child of the 70's, I didn't even see this movie until the 90's. And it holds up awesomely for me.

This movie kicks ass, but pales in comparison to "Fists of Fury" and "The Chinese Connection."

I wouldn't consider The Big Boss (Fists of Fury) better than Enter the Dragon, but I would consider Fist of Fury (The Chinese Connection) to be the better film.

That said, Enter the Dragon is a great film, even if Bruce has to share some screen fight time with lesser fighters.

I just think The Big Boss (Fists of Fury) wait's too long to have Bruce unleash his retribution on the bad guys to have the edge over ETD (doesn't mean it's not a great film though).

I'm a Kung-Fu fan and I'd never seen this film until today. I got it on Blu-Ray, which looks way better than I expect, and the movie is just amazing. I'd already seen the Big Boss and Way of the Dragon and I could never get on with them, so I assumed this would be the same.

It feels more like a Spy film than a strict kung fu movie and it's weird to have Lee part of what is essentially an ensemble. I mean he's the standout star, but he shares screentime with the other two American fighters.

Lee is phenomenal in this. It possibly lacks the raw physicality of Way of the Dragon (the fight with Norris almost makes the film worth watching) but Lee is just fascinating to watch in this.

Also weird seeing Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung in this, they're so young I barely recognised them.

Enter The Dragon is My...Favorite Bruce Lee film. The score is...Epic. There really isn't a bad Bruce Lee film though.

Last year I finally saw the uncut...Way Of The Dragon on the late, lamented...Kung Fu HD channel, and it is far better than the badly dubbed Return Of The Dragon, I saw on...Kung Fu Theater on Fox 5 NYC!

Judging from that list, Spike, I'm assuming you haven't seen Fist of Fury/Chinese Connection yet?

It's his best film. Fix that shit. Yesterday.

Yeah, I never bothered with Fist of Fury because I loved Jet Li's Fist of Legend. Will have to look out for it.

Spike Marshall, That is...Ironic. I never saw...Jet Li's Fist Of Legend, as I love Bruce Lee's Fist Of Fury.

There isn't a single goddamned second in Fist of Legend nearly as awesome or intense as the scream Lee lets out after taking out the head of the Japanese school.

Bruce jumps on that guys chest after the dude comes at him with broken bottles. Crushes said dude's chest. Almost looks like he's weeping.

Art.

I don't know if it's the era it was made or the trifecta (Lee, Kelly, Saxon) of testosterone and personality, but this flick has an aura of Cool that many other martial arts films don't capture. The genre can be brutal and beautiful and awe-inspiring and badass... but ETD is Cool.

I know damn well and totally agree that Lee's HK output generally puts this movie to shame in a lot of ways (believe me I adore and cherish the absolute hell out of The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, and the small bits he actually finished of Game of Death as much as the next person); but fuck it, I have a HUGE soft spot for this one all the same.

It's a lot more ensemble-ish than it is a straight ahead Lee vehicle, but that's alright when the cast is as awesome as it is here. This was definitely a movie I had memorized verbatim when I was little back in the 80's, and I'd constantly attempt to re-enact the fight in the underground cave/prison with my plastic toy nunchaku almost every night in my room before I fell asleep.

I also has a huge thing for Angela Mao back then; whenever I watched this, her death scene would get me so upset that I always immediately after would put on my dad's bootleg copies of either Broken Oath or The Association or Dance of Death to see her kicking ass once again (please don't laugh; I was like 4 years old).

My dad was a huge martial arts film enthusiast back in the 80's and had a ridiculously large collection of VHS bootlegs; I tore through just about all of them when I was little and loved almost every last one, but Enter the Dragon always still stood out.

It definitely has a charm all its own that's hard to exactly pinpoint; hard to say if its the island tournament setting (that Mortal Kombat and a fuckton of other martial arts related properties would shamelessly steal), or Han (and his many awesome replacement hands), or the cast in general (some awesome stuff with Bob Wall in this: Lee's final revenge on him would always get a huge smile out of me every time) or the setpieces (the house of mirrors, the psychedelic heroin den, the underground prison, the list goes on), or if its just the vibe of a more Western 70's aesthetic that permeates from this. I mean it has Jim Kelly and a scene with him at an inner city martial arts school as well as getting hassled by racist cops for god's sake.

Either way though, this is a movie I will always shamelessly and unapologetically geek out over.

"You have offended my family. And you have offended a Shaolin temple."

You must've loved seeing Angela do her own take on Fist of Fury in Hapkido then. Her Dojo fight scene is pure badassery, it even has Jackie Chan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj9H1VYwXVc

Love the score to this flick. It fits it perfectly. Haven't seen it in a while, but Bruce Lee friggin' OWNED, and seeing him team up with John Saxon and Jim Kelly makes for awesome action.

I've had the 2 disc set since it came out back in 2004, and now I need to break it out again.

Oh very, very much so. Hapkido is absolutely great. Much love for Carter Wong in that movie too.

Not to derail this too far into an Angela Mao love-fest, but has anyone here seen Stoner? I only saw it once, maybe twice when I was VERY little, so my memory of it is incredibly dim. I'd be damn curious to see how well it holds up (and lo and behold, Fortune Star seems to have just recently released it on DVD; adding that to my wish-list straight away).

The inherent random oddness of Angela Mao teamed up with George Lazenby in and of itself though is one of those great "Hey did you know...?" bits of movie trivia that makes being a cinephile so much fun.

Plus, Angela wears that adorable little cap, she looks like she just stepped out of a Dicken's novel.

Watch the documentary on the second disc as well its phenomenal.

I haven't seen STONER in probably 20 years -- so it's hazy -- but I remember enjoying it. Lazenby and Mao also appeared together (opposite Jimmy Wang Yu) in QUEEN'S RANSOM, another Golden Harvest production Fortune Star remastered for DVD.

I like seeing Mao in ENTER THE DRAGON but always had a problem with the unimaginative staging of that fight scene. The choreography is half-assed and Clouse doesn't have Mao doing anything interesting.

Also, she's surrounded and decides to kill herself rather than go out fighting? I never believed that.

I think you’re perhaps reading the scene wrong there. You remember why that fight got started in the first place right? O’Hara and his thugs were trying to hit on her, and they wouldn’t take her “get lost” looks for an answer. They weren’t going to just kill her: it’s pretty much implied that rape is what they all had on the fritz. As you said, she was surrounded and cornered, and one way or another they were eventually going to overpower her. Rather than suffer the indignity of getting gang-fucked before being murdered, she just offed herself.

If it wasn’t for the rape aspect, I could totally get where you’re coming from. If they were just going to kill her and she knew she was cornered and probably dead anyway, then yeah, going down fighting would be the more noble and brave route. But if she’s cornered and the prospect of getting raped by a bunch of skeezy thugs is all but an inevitability, that’s a whole different matter: the suicide then reads as more of a “fuck you, I’m not gonna let you have the satisfaction; I’m dead either way, so now if you wanna fuck me you’ll have to fuck a corpse”.

Of course this is Angela Mao we’re talking about here: ideally I’d like to think that cornered and surrounded or not, she’d still hand all of them their asses like nothing’s nothing. But dramatically within the context of the scene, I get what they’re going for there, and I do think it more or less works.

The staging of the fight itself is a whole other matter. I very much agree that it’s a great deal well beneath Mao’s capabilities and usual standards; but for such a quick role that’s essentially an extended cameo, it’s alright and serviceable enough. But I agree that that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been better.

Bolo was a bad man.

This film is such a profound part of my film watching life I have literally zero objectivity regarding it. Yes some of Lees Hong Kong work is 'better', but this film is such a wonderous, perfect seventies amalgamation of east and west - chop-sockey martial arts meets cheesy spy film with dashes of blaxploitation thrown in, with the greatest ever martial arts film performer at its heart - that I simply will never grow tired of watching it.

Gentlemen, you have our gratitude.