Bruce Lee had only just started directing his follow-up to
The Way of the Dragon when he put it on hold to star in the 1973 US-Hong Kong co-production
Enter the Dragon. That film would turn out to be his last completed picture, as he died just days before its release, and the unfinished material he’d shot was consigned to archives. But footage that valuable could hardly stay in a vault for long, and within a few years production house Golden Harvest chose build a full-length work around it.
Though the resulting film The Game of Death may be one of Hong Kong cinema’s most bizarre spectacles, it’s also the source – thanks to scenes of its star doing battle in his famous yellow jumpsuit – of many of Lee’s best-known images.
To weave Lee’s material into a feature-length effort, the producers called on Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse, who helped build up a new script (credited under the pseudonym Jan Spears) using plot devices like facial disfigurement and disguises to mask stand-ins led by Korean martial artist Kim Tai-jong.
The new story sees Hong Kong kung fu star Billy Lo (Lee and others) and his American singer girlfriend Ann (Colleen Camp) refusing to sign contracts with a racket running a large and unsavoury entertainment business. The firm is expanding its recording empire and getting in on the lucrative title-fight scene, and when Lo rebuffs them a hitman is sent to rub him out.
The gunshot to Lo’s face doesn’t kill, however, and in hospital he decides to fake his own death and go undercover to protect Ann and crush the syndicate.
To be sure, The Game of Death sits apart from the consistent, quality cinema found in Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon, even with the presence of Oscar winners Gig Young and Dean Jagger and a fine John Barry score. Stand-ins are screamingly obvious, old footage of Lee is recycled from earlier pictures and, most awkward of all, Billy Lo’s faked death is shown with scenes from Lee’s funeral.
Yet for martial arts cinema buffs, not to mention fans of B-grade cinema’s odder reaches,
The Game of Death is not without merit. The new plot doesn’t skimp on action, and the string of doubles put in an impressive range of entertaining fights, from a street brawl to a stunt-heavy battle with gang of motorcycling enforcers and, in the Hong Kong cut, a thrilling greenhouse fight with Casanova Wong.
A heavyweight bout in a Macau boxing ring meanwhile offers a fierce battle between US karate expert Robert Wall and Sammo Hung, who also served as action choreographer and uncredited co-director, as well as a wild post-match showdown in a changing room.
But all that’s just a lead-in to the main attraction with Lee himself – a showstopper repurposing an incomplete scenario of the star fighting his way up a tower.
Here the levels become floors above a restaurant, and at each stop Lee takes on different opponents – Filipino-American martial artist Dan Inosanto battling with weapons and US basketballer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar appearing as a giant kung fu fighter. (An extra battle with Korean hapkido ace Ji Han-jae on another floor went into the international cut.) As those final scenes stand apart with one iconic shot after another, The Game of Death poses its great tease for what could have been, had Lee’s originally planned vision ever been completed.