In late 1972, Bruce Lee began working on Game Of Death which was the film Bruce had planned to be the demonstration piece of his martial art Jeet Kune Do. Most of the footage which was shot, is from what was to be the centerpiece of the film. He began filming some scenes including his fight sequence with 7’2″ American Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former student. Robert Clouse, the director of Enter the Dragon, and Raymond Chow attempted to finish Lee’s incomplete film Game of Death which Lee was also set to write and direct. Lee had shot over 100 minutes of footage, including outtakes, for Game of Death before shooting was stopped to allow him to work on Enter the Dragon.
In addition to Abdul-Jabbar, George Lazenby, Hapkido master Ji Han Jae and another Lee student, Dan Inosanto were also to appear in the film, which was to culminate in Lee’s character, Hai Tien (clad in the now-famous yellow track suit) taking on a series of different challenge on each floor as they make their way through a five-level pagoda. In a controversial move, Robert Clouse finished the film using a look-alike and archive footage of Lee from his other films with a new storyline and cast, which was released in 1979. However, the cobbled-together film contained only fifteen minutes of actual footage of Lee (he had printed many unsuccessful takes) while the rest had a Lee look-alike, Kim Tai Chung, and Yuen Biao as stunt double.
Of the 100 minutes of footage which was shot, some was later misplaced in the Golden Harvest archives, and has not yet been recovered (such as one fighter attacking Dan Inosanto with a thin log). The remaining footage has been released with Bruce Lee’s original English and Cantonese dialogue, with John Little himself dubbing Bruce Lee’s Hai Tien character as part of the documentary entitled Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey.
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