User reviews

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.

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.

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.

Not convinced that Bruce Lee died by accident, his good friend "David Lee" (Bruce Li) sets out to investigate the real cause of death. His first clue comes from Bruce Lee's mistress and Hong Kong film star "Suzy Yung" (Chao Hsauo-Chun) who has some possible incriminating evidence against a major crime figure known as "the Baron" (Li Chang). But when "the Tiger" (the other name David Lee is known by) begins to get too close to the truth, the Baron becomes intent upon stopping him at all costs and comes after both Suzy Yung and David's girlfriend "Susie" (Kong Sam-Yi) to make his point. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that the death of Bruce Lee left a very large void in martial arts movies which several different film studios tried to fill--and Bruce Li happened to be one of the actors chosen in that regard. Unfortunately, unlike his famous predecessor, he didn't have the acting ability to really appeal to world-wide audiences and his films suffered as a result. And this particular movie is indicative of that fact as it pales in comparison to any and all of Bruce Lee's films. That being said, I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

Bruce Li stars in a dual role playing Bruce Lee (before he dies) and one of Lee's best friends who battles those responsible for Bruce Lee's death, for reasons unknown the bad guys kidnap Bruce Lee's mistress Betty Teng Pei and Bruce Li kicks but to avenge the matter and make everything okay. The movie is sort of offensive with the premise, however politics aside the movie is just plain dull. Indeed Bruce Li's fight sequences are often shot so we can't see what he's doing. The story makes no sense and the movie doesn't work on any level, even as exploitation. Indeed Bruce Li looks like Bruce Lee and manages to do some impressive moves (though we can't fully enjoy it, as we can't see what's going on) but the movie is lethargically paced, the action badly shot and of course no momentum develops between the action, so what were left with is a boring kung fu movie with better than average production values but nothing worthwhile to watch.

* Out Of 4-(Bad)

Bruce Lee tells Bruce Li he will be heading to Hong Kong, and Li will be in charge while he's gone. He also mentions there have been some threats. So when Lee dies, Li goes to Hong Kong to investigate the mysterious death.

In reality there was nothing mysterious about Lee's death. It was caused by an allergic reaction to components of a drug, meoprobamate, and his body overheating in part because he had had his underarm sweat grands removed in 1972, because underarm sweat did not photograph pleasingly. This had caused his body to overheat, and this killed him.

Li gets involved in various fights with people who are trying to set up a system of martial arts schools who killed him because he stood in their way. The fights are fast, cut at a great pace -- in order to make them seem better -- and there's lots of location work.

Li's career as Bruce Lee's successor would end by 1983. His last movie was in 1991.

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.

This is just another example of someone trying to make a quick buck off of the death of a legend. This film basically is about a supposed disciple of Bruce Lee named David hunting for the people who allegedly murdered his mentor (for the record, his official cause of death was listed as a cerebral edema). However, all this film does is exploit the death of Bruce Lee and all the theories surrounding the sudden death of perhaps the greatest ambassador for the martial arts. Why couldn't they just let the man rest in peace? Sure he died at a young age, but there probably was nothing sinister about it. However, the main problem I have with it is the fact that they tried to pass off a "Bruce Lee" wannabee off as the genuine article. This made this film more of a rip off than it already was. I hope that the person who made this garbage feels real good about the way he tarnished a true legend of the screen.

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.