Josh1973 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 27, 2021 1:44 pm
My favorite fight scene will always be Bruce Lee vs Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Game Of Death.
Hi, Josh1973. Thanks for sharing!
Have you seen the original, extended footage of the fights from Bruce Lee’s original concept of Game of Death? IIRC, they were mostly test shots, and not what Bruce had considered perfect. I think I posted original footage earlier in this thread, but I’m posting it below, too. And this version is several minutes longer than the version of the original footage I previously posted. It’s close to 40 minutes of footage, originally shot in Hong Kong in 1972, for Bruce’s original concept. It was never completed, because Bruce Lee had to stop in order to start filming Enter the Dragon. He had planned to resume filming Game of Death after Enter the Dragon was completed; obviously, that never came to pass.
Josh1973, you probably won’t care to read the rest of this, but I’m putting it up, anyway…
When the “official” version of Game of Death was released in 1979, it was a patchwork directed by Robert Clouse, consisting of filler scenes and a completely different storyline, built around the final fight footage (the only original Bruce Lee footage in that movie, which was three fight scenes). And those three fight scenes were shortened considerably from the original footage; the original, uncut fight scenes in the clip below are MUCH longer. Robert Clouse’s “official” movie even added an inferior fight between Korean Bruce Lee imitator Kim Tai-Chung and actor Hugh O’Brian in the pagoda. Had Bruce Lee lived, and had he directed and completed Game of Death, it would have been a much different movie, and WAY better. There were also more opponents and more levels he’d wanted; Bruce had asked his first American student, Taky Kimura, as well as Sammo Hung and Korean Hwang In-Shik, to also appear as pagoda guardians.
In the original footage, Bruce Lee was accompanied by two allies, played by James Tien and Chieh Yuan (in the black Judo gi). These friends (or allies) basically served as whipping boys, to allow Bruce Lee’s opponents to show off their abilities and win before facing Bruce.
The music in this clip was added much later, possibly by Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest Studio, which produced Bruce Lee’s movies The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and Way of the Dragon, and which had kept the existing original Game of Death footage in a vault. Also, some of it was redubbed, especially closer towards the end. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s voice, in particular, was completely redubbed in this version. Bruce’s voice was also redubbed after the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scene: the original version is in Cantonese language.
The opponents and their methods:
1). Dan Inosanto: Escrima/Kali, nunchaku, (and some Kenpo Karate at the very beginning).
2). Ji Han-Jae: Korean Hapkido.
3). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “Style of no style”; closest to Bruce Lee’s concept of Jeet Kung Do.
Note: Dan Inosanto had been a student of Bruce Lee (as was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). But Dan Inosanto was also a highly experienced martial artist before he ever met Bruce, and he was the man who taught Bruce Lee the nunchaku.
(From 0:10): Chieh Yuan, James Tien & Bruce Lee vs Dan Inosanto;
(From 12:22): Chieh Yuan, James Tien & Bruce Lee vs Ji Han-Jae
(From 19:41): Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs James Tien; (From 24:35): Bruce Lee vs Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:
https://youtu.be/3PPs0dKJ6rM
Jim