Tian huang ju xing

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.

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.

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.

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.

People need to get over themselves regarding this prime piece of Bruceploitation. It's the mid 70's and Bruce Lee's films are still packing out cinemas 2-3 yrs after release. In that golden age of exploitation cinema it would only be a matter of time before a film would be made based on finding Lee's "Killer(s)". For a low budget Taiwanese flick it comes over as good action /mystery film that showcases it's up-coming lead actor; Bruce Li. Dimension Films did a good job in adapting the original (Bruce Lee - The Star of Stars) by having a good dub-cast deliver the lines in English and augmenting the action with some great library music tracks. People forget that these films were made to make money not to be reverential "tributes". The recent discovery of Bruce and Linda Lee's "Drugs" letters suggest the film makers where more knowing than the average fan(atic) realised. The late Roger Corman would have been proud to have produced a title like Exit the Dragon-Enter the Tiger as it was quite a money-maker in it's day. Hats off to those involved, especially the great Bruce LI as The Tiger!