Story of the Dragon (1976)

Story of the Dragon (1976)
aka: Bruce Lee’s Secret; Bruce Lee’s Deadly Kung Fu; A Dragon Story; Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do
Chinese Title: 詠春截拳
Translation: Wing Chun Jeet Kune (“Intercepting Fist”)

 

Starring: Ho Tsung-Tao, Carter Huang Chia-Ta, Hwang Jang-Lee, Dan Schwarz, Roy Horan, Chin Chi-Min, Wu Yen, Lin Hsiao-Hu, Lin Chong, Su Hsiang, Wei Ping-Ao, Chang Kuei, Tsang Ming-Cheong
Director: Chan Wa, William Cheung Kei
Action Director: Huang Fei-Long

 

1976 was an important year for Brucesploitation. First of all, Burmese actor Huang Kin-Lung found his calling as Bruce Le, which would define the vast bulk of his movies up through the end of the 1980s. It also saw the start of the acting career of Korean actor Chang Yi-Tao, who would work on a handful of Brucesploitation films under the moniker Bruce Lai. Above all, it was when James Ho Tsung-Tao, best known as Bruce Li, was at the top of his output and success. For starters, his movie Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger was an international hit. Moreover, he made no fewer than four unofficial biopics about the life of Bruce Lee, including Young Bruce Lee and Bruce Lee – The Man, the Myth.

Story of the Dragon is fascinating in that it is obviously based on Bruce Lee, even if the dubbing suggests that it’s really about some guy named Bob[1]. The movie is an amalgamation of events from Lee’s life from 1959 to 1967: Lee did indeed live in California’s Bay Area—more specifically, Oakland in 1964—but his initial job as a waiter was from five years earlier 1959 when he arrived in Seattle from Hong Kong. The last act of the movie focuses on the creation of jeet kune do, but that wouldn’t happen until 1967 when he was living in Southern California.

The movie opens with Bob Lee working as a waiter at a Chinese restaurant run by Ruby Chow (Wu Yen, who played a brothel madam in Green Dragon Inn; The Incredible Kung Fu Mission; and The Great Chinese Boxer—the same personage was played by Flower Drum Song’s Nancy Kwan in Dragon, the Bruce Lee Story). Bob and his friend, played by Chang Kuei, get fired after Bob fights with a couple of aggressive customers, including Robert Kerver (of Snuff Bottle Connection). The two try to find work elsewhere, but Robert and his band show up at every interview to make sure they don’t get the job.

Bob and his friend eventually find work at the docks, working for a wealthy Chinese businessman (Su Hsiang, who played director Lo Wei in He’s a Legend; He’s a Hero). Coincidentally, the dock is ground zero for a territory war between the Chinese laborers and the local karate school (!), including the aforementioned Robert Kerver and friends. Bob eventually proves his mettle by beating the crap out of the karate fighters during one of their brawls. The laborers are so impressed by Lee’s skill that they encourage him to open a school. Bob does just that, and even invites non-Chinese people to study Jun Fan Wing Chun (as he calls it), too.

This angers his boss’s nephew—I’ll point out here that the subplot of Bob working at the docks is largely forgotten at this point—played by cult favorite Carter Wong (Hap Ki Do and Fatal Flying Guillotines). He’s against white people and black people learning Chinese martial arts, so he challenges Bob to a duel. He loses, but agrees to become an assistant instructor of sorts at the new school. Bob also continues to unload truckloads of whoop-ass on the thugs whenever they show their faces, which is surprisingly often. Finally, their boss, Mr. Grace (Dan Schwarz of Fists of Bruce Lee and Tower of Death) and his Yes-Man (Wei Ping-Ao, playing the same role he did in Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon), decide to hire a top Chinese fighter to deal with Bob: Jin Yong-Ji (played by Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee). Jin defeats Bob in their initial scuffle, causing Bob to determine that traditional wing chun isn’t enough: he’ll need a new style…a style that isn’t a style…perhaps one that he could refer to as jeet kune do.

Fudging historical details is nothing new to biographical movies, nor is it unheard of to compact several years worth of events into a smaller timeframe to maintain a sense of pacing and build-up to the proceedings. Story of the Dragon does just that, and compounds that by completely ignoring the character of Linda Lee, whom Lee would’ve already been married to (or at least engaged to) by 1964. That might have had a little bit to do with the fact that some Chinese people never accepted that the greatest martial arts star of all time was married to a gwailo girl.

And while it’s common for a character in a biopic to be a composite of several real-life personages, Story of the Dragon goes in the opposite direction by splitting the personage Wong Jack-Man into two characters. Wong Jack-Man was an expert at the arts of hsing-I and Northern Shaolin kung fu, who was called in by the local Chinese teachers to fight Bruce Lee when the latter refused to stop teaching kung fu to non-Chinese people. Accounts of the fight vary depending on who you’re talking to, but it’s generally accepted that this bout was a huge influence on Lee’s decision to develop jeet kune do. In this film, it’s Carter Wong’s charater who disagrees with Lee’s teaching kung fu to anyone, regardless of race. On the same token, it’s Hwang Jang Lee’s character who ultimately pushes Lee to develop his new style.

On the subject of fights and duels, the action here is helmed by Huang Fei-Lung, a Taiwanese choreographer who had almost two dozen credits to his name throughout the seventies. He worked with a lot of the well-known actors of the day, usually on their middle-of-the-road films. His collaborations include Jimmy Wang Yu (in Wang Yu, King of Boxers); Roc Tien Peng (The Champion of the Boxers); Dorian Tan Tao-Liang (Shaolin Deadly Kicks); Carter Wong (The 18 Bronzemen); and Don Wong Tao (Eunuch of the Western Palace). For the most part, Huang’s work could be characterized as being “solid” and “competent,” although for this film, Huang reaches the heights of “quite good.”

The action mainly consists of Ho Tsung-Tao beating up endless Caucasian karate thugs with his wing chun[2] skills. Only in the last fights does Ho really get into the whole Bruce imitation thing, complete with shuffling feet, nose rubbing, and loud caterwalling. This is one of Ho’s better fight movies, certainly surpassing his earlier work in New Game of Death and Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story. As wing chun was one of Ho’s main styles, he’s certainly at home with the choreography and acquits himself well to everything Huang Fei-Lung has him perform. Bruce Li can’t help but look goofy when he unleashes the Brucesploitation skills at the end, but the truth is, Bruce Lee’s onscreen style does sound silly when you think about it. The real Bruce simply overcame it by his charisma, physical prowess, and channel of pure emotion into his moves. As a good a fighter as Ho Tsung-Tao is, he lacks that same natural charisma and emotion and thus can’t sell the totality of his impression.

Matching Ho Tsung-Tao in the fighting department is Carter Wong, who gets three four fight scenes over the course of the film, including one against Legendary Super Kicker Hwang Jang Lee. Despite being a champion kickboxer, Wong spent the latter half of the 1970s using hung gar in his movies, which he does here. But playing a traditionalist master here, using a classical Southern style makes sense. Surpassing both actors is Hwang Jang Lee, who shows up in a goofy wig, biker gloves and a cape…a cape!!! Hwang had just achieved stardom that same year after playing the villain Silver Fox in Secret Rivals, and further cemented his status as one of the great movie villains here. He kicks like a mad man, although Huang Fei-Lung didn’t see the full potential in his bootwork, or didn’t want him to completely show up the star. As a result, some of Hwang’s most famous aerial kicks aren’t on display here.

A lot of fans point this out as being one of the better Brucesploitation films, but simultaneously one of the most hysterical. A lot of that has to do with the dubbing, although even then you can tell that the surplus of maniacal laughter and scoffing from the (mostly) Caucasian villains showed up in the original Chinese version. And speaking of Caucasians, the white people the filmmakers found for this are some of the ugliest people on record—I understand that most of them were hired on account of the filmmakers picking up everybody they could find, but man! And what’s the deal with the goofy perm wigs the characters wear? Was that long 70s hair not enough for the director? I’m pretty sure the real Ruby Chow would have had an aneurism had she saw herself portrayed as a portly woman who’d allow anybody and everybody to mistreat her employees in the name of “not causing any trouble.” Oh, and watching Wei Ping-Ao get his ass handed to him by an eight-year-old girl? Comedy gold!

Oh, and one more thing: if this is set in 1964, two years before Bruce Lee played Kato on “The Green Hornet”,  how does Bob Lee have a Bruce Lee poster on his wall?

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[1] - The Hong Kong Database states that Bruce Li is, in fact, playing Bruce Lee. We also note that at there’s one scene in the dubbed version in which a character flat-out calls him “Bruce.”

[2] - Speaking of Wing Chun, there’s a brief Ip Man cameo in which Lee’s now-legendary teacher is played by Lo Man-Kam, Ip’s real-life nephew.