ENTER THE DRAGON: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT by JOSEPH KUBY

There is a lot of subtext in Bruce Lee’s movies. There is the brown suit in THE BIG BOSS and ENTER THE DRAGON symbolizing little to no action, and then there’s the implication via artwork that Nora Miao’s character in THE WAY OF THE DRAGON is a lesbian. The difference between Bruce’s seventies Hong Kong movies with and without Lo Wei is literally the difference between cats and dogs i.e. a cat appears in Bruce’s THE WAY OF THE DRAGON whereas dogs appear in THE BIG BOSS and FIST OF FURY. Robert Clouse’s ENTER THE DRAGON had both whereas Clouse’s attempt at finishing THE GAME OF DEATH had neither. In his 2018 book titled BRUCE LEEE AND I, Bey Logan observed that there is a clock in all five of Bruce’s martial arts movies. Regarding ENTER THE DRAGON, I have my own observations. Like what Mark Kermode said about subtextual content in films: “Just because the director didn’t intend it doesn’t mean that it’s not there.”

When we see Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung surrounded by four rows of monks, the two colours which stand out are the colours of the Concord production company logo: red and yellow. This is why Jim Kelly’s Williams arrives to the island wearing a yellow sweater under a red jacket. Even in John Saxon’s flashback, we see Roper wear a red sweater while his assistant wears a yellow one (she even wears a red cap to accentuate this). Perhaps because of the association with Golden Harvest, there is a strong desire to showcase gold whether it be statues or even Bob Wall’s pinky ring. In some cultures, a pinky ring is meant to signify a noble status. After Bob Wall’s Oharra is scarred, we no longer see him with the ring. The joke is that Bruce Lee in real life could rarely be seen with his wedding ring, if at all. By late March of 1973 (when the Americans went home), Bruce was more interested in obtaining a gold Rolls-Royce Corniche.

Yellow just about manages to overwhelm red and gold as the dominant colour in ENTER THE DRAGON. There are even allusions to Bruce Lee’s costume in THE GAME OF DEATH with some of Han’s island inhabitants including the messenger who we see in the travelogue title sequence. If it wasn’t for Bruce’s death and other unfortunate events getting in the way, the mantis fight in ENTER THE DRAGON would have foreshadowed the praying mantis guardian in THE GAME OF DEATH. There’s a fair amount of foreshadowing in this movie. When we see Roper travelling in a rickshaw, we can see a sign in the background that advertises Turkish bath massage. Later on, Roper gets a back rub. The cobra mascot in the Kenpo Karate club foreshadows the cobra that Lee encounters when he attempts to infiltrate Han’s underground lair for the second time.

Before 1973 even began, Bruce Lee was well aware of THE GODFATHER. This is why Bruce’s final movie tips its hat to it by incorporating the orange omen. During the opening credit sequence, we see Williams walk through a marketplace that sells oranges. His future is sold short on the island. Later on, Peter Archer’s Parsons kicks a man holding a basket of oranges. He becomes a different kind of loser to Williams, and it involves losing to him. Which reminds me - Parsons is still in the movie after he loses. If you look carefully, you can see him in the crowd when Bolo executes some of Han’s guards. Back to the fruit, we can see four Chinese pears when Lee is given his mission briefing by Braithwaite. The Chinese word for four is similar to the Chinese word for death. This scene is weird because Lee was supposed to have a brown bag that he brought along with him. It was last seen when he was at the graveyard.

Elsewhere, the movie has some nifty Easter Eggs. When Shih Kien’s Han is taking Roper on a tour through his weapons chamber, we see a human hand in reasonably good condition except for a black dot on the wrist. This is a reminder of what we saw in the projector reel that Braithwaite screened for Lee. The human hand looks to be female, so it could have been Han’s loved one - maybe a lover, maybe a daughter. When Lee fights Han in the weapons chamber, there are two hands on the bottom display of the cabinet which Han breaks into - one hand is red while the other is green. There are several sayings in Cantonese slang about red and green. “Fire red, fire green” means acting in a feverish manner. “Boil red, boil green” means to be lecherous or have illicit sex (since red and green colours are associated with night-clubs). “To dot red and dot green” means to change one’s mind. “Red hair, green eyes” means a European foreigner. Food-wise, there is even red and green bean congee.

When we first see Angela Mao’s Su Lin confronted by aspiring rapists, there is a wall with writing that advertises a construction company. Also written on the wall is 26 B. In February 1973, Betty Ting Pei turned 26. Angela’s scene was filmed in late January. Back to the wall, there is also a Chinese character that is the first part of Jackie Chan’s Chinese stage name. It is used for the word success or even become. In Jackie’s case, his stage name means becoming dragon. There is an interview that Angela did where she regarded him as her brother. One of the actors in the opening monastery scene regarded Bruce as a young relative. His name is Cheung Chok-Chow, and he played a senior monk. Cheung acted in two 1953 films where Bruce was a child actor: THE GUIDING LIGHT and BLAME IT ON FATHER. Similarly, the banquet scene contains cameos from character actor Kwan Yan and film-maker Wong Tin-Lam.

One cameo requires you to look in the background. Legendary character actor Ho Pak-Kwong played one of the guards surrounding the pool when Roper reaches the end of Han’s tour. When Han appears at the banquet with female aides, it’s not immediately apparent that Mei Ling is there because she looks different from the photo that Braithwaite showed Lee. Also, she isn’t presented front and center. She blends in quite nicely. Not to mention that she doesn’t get any special introductory coverage in the form of a knowing wink or glance exchanged with Lee. This leads us into a worrying aspect about Mei Ling’s fate. We never see what happened to her after she frees the prisoners. We could assume that she survived because she was part of the winning team, but Han’s army were supposed to have strength in numbers yet look what happened to Tania. Furthermore, what happened to Parsons and the other yellow-garbed fighters?

One thing that people don’t realize about film-making is that jump cuts are sometimes supposed to be seamless so that you can maintain consistent reality. After Lee crouches behind a small wall during his first attempt at a nocturnal investigation, you can tell that frames have been cut. Bruce Lee’s head movement gives it away. Perhaps they couldn’t afford to turn off the camera to do more than one take, so multiple takes were probably done in one go so that they could edit in camera without saying cut. Maybe Mars couldn’t find Bruce, so the latter had to gesture wildly before reverting back to position. A similar editing technique was achieved when Lee attempts to hide from a maid. There was not enough room on the set to hide from her without revealing his shadow, so his shadow automatically appears without any gradual emergence. But even this is more subtle than the jarring shifts of reality in the cavern battle sequence.

When the elevator opens to reveal a squadron of armed guards, one of the men in blue is a stuntman named Billy Chan Wui-Ngai. He has long hair when we see him brandishing a long pole. Later on, there is a shot in front of the jail cells where he reappears but with shorter hair and armed with a nunchaku. Granted, several stuntmen had to change their appearance so as to give the illusion of there being more guards. The problem is that this shot represents a time flux. When Billy falls to the ground, the final group of guards comes in - one of whom also has short hair while wearing a blue suit and armed with a nunchaku. After seeing the reverse shot of Bruce fighting them, we see that the man holding the nunchaku is now Billy. Either there was a case of mistaken identity or Bruce wanted to give Billy a memorable role.

Bruce wasn’t careless with his stuntmen. He was savvy in terms of who gets to do what. When Roper is escorted into the field for the final time, he is escorted by three guards in beige suits. They aren’t extras or random stuntmen; these are three of the most formidable stuntmen: Peter Chan Lung, Alan Chui Chung-San and Phillip Ko Fei. Speaking of three, there are three scenes involving typewriters but only one of them is used, and it’s by producer Paul Heller playing an intelligence operative. Each typewriter scene happens in different acts - before, during and after the mission. Bruce Lee is meant to be playing an author but we never get to see what he writes with his pen when he’s at home (during the flashback) or in Han’s room (when Tania comes in with the escorts). With Han’s obsession with hands, there was a missed opportunity for him to forebode the end of Lee’s writing career.

This brings us to their final showdown. There is foreshadowing of Han being impaled by the spear. If you look at the mural that leads to the hidden mirror room, it contains a mural depicting people being tortured. This suggests that Han’s weapons chamber is really a torture chamber. One of the illustrations depicts a man using a spear to impale someone hiding behind the top part of a tree. Another illustration depicts a man being impaled by three arrows. Besides the fact that a spear was often regarded by old Chinese warriors as big arrows, the number of arrows could also be seen to foreshadow how many times that Bruce’s torso is pierced by Han’s claw. The Chinese title for ENTER THE DRAGON refers to Han as the tiger, and it just so happens that the spear goes through the illustration of a tiger. In their previous encounter on the field, Han attempted to kill Lee with a furry claw. Fittingly, the film’s closing shot focuses on this abstract tiger claw.