Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book by Ric Meyers Read Free Book Online

the day, and, while Huang Fei-hong was still in there kicking, he was doing so less and less. If actual kung fu was being used on screen at all, it was the artificial, unconvincing, sort reviewers Bill and Karen Palmer termed “swingy arms.” And, to Lo Wei ’s mounting frustration, Bruce Lee refused to play along. The director was credited with the script about a young man banished to Thailand to work in an ice factory after his mother had exacted a promise from him not to fight. The Big Boss (1971) turned out to reflect many Lee images that would recur throughout his painfully short career.
    The “Big Boss” of the title, played by Han Ying-chieh (who was also credited as the kung fu choreographer, a position he held on many of King Hu ’s classics) is using the ice factory as a front for drug running. When Lee gets too close to the truth, the bosses first try to buy him off, then seduce him with wine and women, and finally try to kill him. But instead of taking on the bad guys with loads of swingy arms and low, awkward kicks, Bruce adamantly refused to do more than just a few moves. Wei angrily summoned Raymond Chow to Thailand , complaining that the crew had derisively nicknamed Bruce “three kick Lee.” Bruce’s explanation: “No one would survive more than three of my kicks.”
    Chow watched the footage. He returned to Hong Kong after instructing Wei: “Do it Bruce’s way.”
    Although Wei and Han still had on-screen credit for the direction and action, the best portions of The Big Boss are clearly accreditable to Bruce. After the bad guys kill all his friends, Lee explodes with a barely controlled rage that thrilled audiences. The scene is now considered a classic. Lee finds the drugs embedded in ice. He is surrounded by about twenty knife-, club-, and chain-wielding thugs in the eerie, red-lit icehouse interior. With mounting anger clearly etched on his face, he takes the villains apart in a battle that combines dramatic action with nearly cartoon-like violence (the latter of which Lee only reluctantly acquiesced to).
    From that climactic scene, Lee created an uncharacteristically cathartic one. Upon finding his dead friends, he takes a scene to comprehend his heartbreak and responsibility, making the fight-filled finale all the more effective. Lee races to the Big Boss’ palatial estate to take on the main bad guy and all his minions. It is on the lawn of the mansion where the two antagonists have a knife fight, showcasing two more Lee trademarks — the wounds that inspire Lee on to greater heights of heroism, and the tension-building pauses that add to Lee’s ground-breaking on-screen style.
    When Lee is cut by the Big Boss’ blade, he stops, tastes the blood, and moves forward, always letting the tension build. And The Big Boss represented the first time moviegoers heard Lee’s now trademark animal screeches. All three main filmmakers — Chow, Wei, and Lee — were happy enough with the results to immediately start on a follow-up. The trio were already at work on a second movie when word came in: The Big Boss was a gigantic, galvanizing success. Made for only $100,000, it earned five times that much in Hong Kong alone. Bruce Lee was now, officially, a star, and he fully intended to take advantage of it.
    Fist of Fury (1972) is again credited to Lo Wei as writer/director and Han Ying-chieh as choreographer … but there’s no mistaking who the real big boss was (in fact, Lee made a habit of working on films with directors who never again made anything nearly as good as the movie they made featuring Bruce). This time the crew had the Golden Harvest Studios as home base and a budget befitting their star’s talents. Allegedly Lee even called on the services of the great I Kuang , a stunningly prolific and polished film writer, to punch up the script (all puns intended).
    The Chinese usually made movies the way some people make cars — on an assembly line. With such a gigantic population to supply,