Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger

source: Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger

David (otherwise known as Tiger) investigates the mysterious death of Bruce (otherwise known as Dragon). As 'Bruceploitation' goes this has the usual tacky use of Bruce Lee's funeral footage and direct copies of his martial art movements and noises and actual scenes where David disguises himself as an old bearded man and a bespectacled telephone engineer like Bruce Lee in 'Fist of Fury' but it's not terrible. Bruce Li is not charismatic like Bruce Lee but is a competent fighter and his final combat with the soft spoken 'The Baron' at the rocky shore's edge with the waves crashing is well staged. The characters aren't memorable except for the aforementioned 'The Baron'. The use (legally?) of music from Isaac Hayes, Pink Floyd and Johnny Pearson's 'Sleepy Shores' is quite amusing.

Bruce Lee is dead and there must be foul play, there must! How can a movie like this not fail? It must fail. There is no way to make a winner out of this. Instead of action and martial arts we start with people who can do action and martial arts (not act) trying to act, trying to create suspense, mystery, and solve a crime. That must fail. The all talk and no action goes on for 23 minutes before there is a poorly choreographed and filmed fight in the dark. The one thing that could make the movie interesting takes 23 minutes to get to and then flops. This pattern continues until the end. Thanks to the fast forward button I watched the entire movie – with a run time of one hour and eighteen minutes in about thirty minutes. This is the preferred method to watch this movie. I found it almost entertaining that way and rate it a generous four out of ten but only at 2x or 4x speed.

Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976) ** (out of 4) David Lee (Bruce Li) goes to visit Bruce Lee on the set of ENTER THE DRAGON when Lee tells him about some strange phone calls. Later that evening David learns that his friend is dead so he sets out to find out who murdered him. When Bruce Lee died there were countless conspiracy theories as to what really happened. Very few people believed the official report simple because it was hard to believe that someone as young and healthy like Lee could die that way. The death of Lee also caused an entire sub-genre of the Martial Arts flick, which some call leeploitation. This film here isn't nearly as horrible as some make it out to be but you can see how fans or family of the real Bruce Lee might be extremely offended by it. The exploitation level here is pretty strong including them using real funeral footage to show Lee's death here. Some of the conspiracy theories out there are mildly interesting but this cheap Hong Kong movie doesn't try to tell a good story. In fact, there's very little actual plot here outside of someone killed Lee and it's up to the friend to find out who. None of it ever makes too much sense and I'd argue that the producers weren't really interested in telling a real conspiracy theory. Instead this here is just an excuse to exploit Lee's name but we certainly know this wasn't the only one. For the most part I found the film slightly entertaining but it certainly helped that it didn't overstay it's welcome as the running time is rather short and the film has a fairly good flow to it. On a technical level the movie is quite bad with some silly performances, laughable dramatic scenes and some incredibly awful editing. The editing here is beyond bad and especially during the final fight sequence. The main attraction to this genre is watching the kung fu and I will admit that the fight scenes here were entertaining. They're certainly not in the same level as a real Bruce Lee movie but they're fun. Li, one of the biggest imitators, is good here as well. EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER isn't a film to take too serious. Even the offensive exploitation of Lee probably shouldn't be taken overly serious but if you're a fan of the genre there are certainly much worse out there.

Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger is a highly irreverent kung fu cash-in that shamelessly exploits the mystery surrounding the death of '70s martial arts icon Bruce Lee, using it as the impetus for a far-fetched storyline involving Hong Kong movie stars being blackmailed into becoming international drug mules. Casually mixing fact with fiction, the film stars Bruce Li as Bruce Lee acolyte Tiger, who, devastated by his master's sudden death, decides to investigate rumours of foul play. Teaming up with reporter George, Tiger learns of an incriminating tape-recording made by Lee's mistress that makes him the target of crime boss The Baron. Cue lots of kicking and punching as Tiger dispatches numerous henchmen to finally face The Baron. Showing actual footage of Bruce Lee's corpse during the opening scenes, and introducing fictional character Suzy Yung as the late star's mistress (presumably to avoid being sued by actress Betty Ting Pei, who was rumoured to be Lee's real-life mistress), ETDETT is undeniably disrespectful to the memory of Lee, but as a fan of trashy exploitation films, I couldn't help but have just a little fun with this tawdry chop socky flick. The acting is atrocious, the story risible, and the '70s decor utterly abysmal (witness the world's tackiest cigarette dispenser!), all of which proves unintentionally amusing, while the martial arts scenes, although somewhat repetitive in style for much of the movie, are at least frequent enough to ensure that the pace never lulls. Towards the end of the film, the standard of the fight scenes improves markedly, with a fun clash between Tiger and a female gymnast in a yellow tracksuit (a nod to Game of Death?) and an impressively staged final battle that takes place on the rocky shore of the South China Sea.

I don't blame the lesser denizens of the Hong Kong film industry for trying to make a buck when the biggest breakout sensation of that industry (probably ever) suddenly died and the industry lost its biggest marquee draw. But really, this is a little too much in terms of exploitation. Bruce Lee was a man,not just a celebrity, and his reputation (and his family and friends) deserved better than the bunch of pretenders who wanted to cash in on the tragedy of his death. If someone had tried to exploit the death a friend of Bruce Lee like this, he would have probably punched them in the face. But if you can get past the ham-handed sanctimonious cheese of the first few minutes, the film isn't all that bad. Some of the fight scenes are obviously a tribute to the source - the "Tiger" fights a giant, a gymnast in a yellow track suit(!) and a whole bunch of familiar looking "gangsters" (I recognized actor/stunt man An Ping from a string of early Shaw Brothers films before he was kicked off a roof top) multiple times, etc. And the final big fight/showdown with "the Big Boss" (yes, that's a Bruce Lee in-joke) actually is pretty good. The trouble is that the story and the direction and the fight choreography are hopelessly stale and unoriginal and derivative.No one here has access to the larger-than-life qualities Bruce was able to bring to the screen. So having the nerve to compare their efforts to something like "Fists Of Fury" makes the actors and action look even more trivial and 2nd rate than they would on their own. Bruce's presence (and some suitably archetypal skillful scripting) turned his four feature films into epics of adventure, honor, revenge, tragedy and heroism.In contrast, all a film like this is about is the "hero" beating up a bunch of guys. Penalized a couple of stars for the opening moments which exploit the stock footage of Lee's funeral, but gets those two stars back as a bonus for having an English dub that doesn't make my ears bleed.

Exploitation cinema exploits audience desire for lurid subject matter, and there can be few more morally reprehensible forms of exploitation than the short-lived "Bruceploitation" genre, which sought to make money out of films pertaining to the death of Hong Kong's box office hit, Bruce Lee. But to call these films on their lack of scruples is to waste breath - such films luxuriate in their own lack of taste. There is an extent to which the whole of drama and cinema is an exploitation of the difficulties of life, and perhaps these films are a little more honest than most. In any case, there was a public need to air concerns gossip and conspiracy theories about Lee's death, and so these films provided a place for such a need to be fulfilled. What is really fascinating about Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger is it takes a postmodern notion of everything being up for grabs as fiction and stretches it to rarely reached lengths. A film in which a new film star investigates the death of an old film star, in which an actress plays an actress who was present at the old film star's death, which plays out in the style of the films of the old star's films - it's heady stuff. The investigation into the death of Lee by his pupil and supposed successor Li is a pretty flimsy affair. We never get to find out why Bruce was killed, but Lee's real death provides a basis for a fictional plot about a drugs ring wishing to use martial arts stars as couriers. But it's a pacey enough film, with excellent widescreen cinematography (the framing is particularly impressive) and sharp editing, and if the plot is rather slight and the characterization rather one dimensional - well, we are dealing with a genre (the martial arts film) which is hardly known for its sophistication in those departments. Li doesn't have Lee's presence and charisma, but he's cute and is convincing enough at the centre of some tasty fight sequences. All of the positive elements of the film come together at one moment in the final scene - Li is fighting the drugs kingpin The Baron, who unsheaves a sword-stick and lashes at our hero. Li's shirt is cut off, and bare chested with cuts across his body, he looks just the image of Bruce Lee in a famous scene from Enter the Dragon. The film has been building towards this moment, and all Li has to do is vanquish the villain to take the mantle of his forebear, which he does. No matter that Li didn't go on to nearly the same international success as Lee, and faded rather ignominiously from the screen by the early 80s, this film has done exactly what it intended to do - momentarily replace Lee with a plastic facsimile, air a bit of gossip about his death and make a small pile of money in the process. It's no good expecting anything else of a film like this, and it's as honest about its intentions as can be - and given the low-brow nature of those intentions, a considerable amount of film-making skill and effort has been put into the picture - you have only to think for a moment the logistical difficulties filming the final seaside rocks at incoming tide sequence must have presented to realize that although the filmmakers are exploiters, they certainly weren't slackers.

This film is pretty good out of many Bruce Lee death plot that plagued the 70's kung-fu film market. Bruce Lee (not the real one) is worried about the mob, so his student "the tiger" who looks like Bruce visits him. Bruce is dead as we see stock footage of his real life funeral, as the Tiger figures out who killed him. There's some real good fight sequence in this film, especially the one at the end where the tiger fights the baron, a mean dude who fights with a top hat on, and it never falls off in fight sequence. Title theme from Issac Hayes music from the film THREE TOUGH GUYS is the main theme! (i wonder if the producers got permission to use it?). If you are looking for quality, this isn't it. But a quick way to kill time, this is your film. The dubbing in this film is first class as Dimention pictures hired Chinese-American dubbing, instead of the usual loud british-chinese dubbing. You can hear American actor James Hong in several voices in this film.

EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER is your run-of-the-mill Bruceploitation film, shot by a Hong Kong outfit in Taiwan. The story takes the real-life circumstances surrounding the death of Bruce Lee and uses it as a basis for a story about Bruce's buddy going after the gangsters who had him killed. I always think there's something a bit repellent about these rip-off films which include real-life footage of the star's funeral including shots inside the open casket. In any case, EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER is very much par for the course for this genre. The title is probably the best thing about it. There's a lot of routine action, some of it quite well-handled, and not much in the way of wit or originality. The plot never really goes beyond having our Bruce Lee impersonator beating up one bunch of bad guys and going on to the next. The '70s trappings are as fun as ever and there's some snazzy music ripped from a blaxploitation movie. Bruce Li is the star of this one and even though he's not trying to be Bruce Lee, he does a good job of playing someone very similar.

I'd just like to say, if you listen closely to the music in some of the sequences, you'll also hear Pink Floyd's 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond'. It was quite common for kung-fu in the 70's to use popular music from radio and other movies as main theme's and incidental music. Every now and then you'll hear some Ennio Morricone or some Jerry Goldsmith peice somewhat briefly but still recognizable. One of oriental films' odder attributes.