Way of the Dragon
Tang Lung arrives in Rome to help his cousins in the restaurant business. They are being pressured to sell their property to the syndicate, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. When Tang arrives he poses a new threat to the syndicate, and they are unable to defeat him. The syndicate boss hires the best Japanese and European martial artists to fight Tang, but he easily finishes them off. The American martial artist Colt is hired and has a showdown with Tang in Rome's famous Colosseum.
All above mentioned cuts to the original US release were restored to the new 2005 DVD release. Plus an additional scene of Lee being made fun of by the gang for saying "excuse me" to one of the crooks after bumping into him.
In the original Mandarin Hong Kong version Tony Liu, Unicorn Chan, Malisa Longo, Fu Ching Chen, Chin Ti, Wu Ngan, and Robert Chen were credited in the films intro; in all other and later released versions of the film they are not.
The original UK theatrical version was heavily cut by around 6 minutes by the BBFC to edit scenes of violence, and the 1986 video release lost a further 1 min 11 secs of footage from the nunchaku fight scene. The cuts were fully restored for the 2001 Hong Kong Legends release, though the later 2005 Universal DVD featured the same print as the edited 1986 video.
The Japanese theatrical cut, released in 1974, was a unique hybrid, in that it was dubbed in English, yet maintained Bruce Lee's real fight yells. For some unknown reason, all other English dubbed prints featured a "yell double" for Bruce Lee (save for the final fight, in some prints). Aside from this, the music was also slightly altered to feature vocal versions of the opening and ending themes (sung by Mike Remedios), as well as featuring an extra music cue, "The Big Guy", during Lee's fight against Bob Wall and Whang In Sik. This audio track was used as an audio option on both the 2012 "Extreme Edition" Japanese Blu-ray and the 2013 American Shout Factory Blu-ray and DVD. In January 2017, within the commemoration of the 45th anniversary of the film, the so-called "Ultimate Edition" Japanese Blu-Ray release contains not only the original audio track from the Japanese theatrical cut; it also includes the original Japanese theatrical cut in HD restored from original negative (without burnt-in Japanese subtitles) for the first time in any home video format around the world.
In the original release there were several scenes that were edited from the US version:
One scene was when Bruce Lee was walking in the airport. He tried to tell a little kid he was hungry, but because of the language barrier, his gestures scared the little kid;
In another scene, Bruce flushes the toilet several times because he's never seen one before.
- The scene where Bruce walks into the airport restaurant and has trouble communicating with the waitress;
- The prostitute scene;
- In the fight with Chuck Norris, Bruce kicks him in the head three times. This scene was later shown at the beginning of "Game of Death (1978)."
- US version also includes track music of John Barry's score from Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
- Also in the HK version when uncle stabs Tony Liu we see him presumably bleeding or dying. In the US version this scene was blurred out
New Zealand theatrical and videotape versions were originally cut to minimize the use of nunchakus in the alley-fight sequence, although the censors later allowed this scene to remain intact in the documentary _Curse of the Dragon (1993)_. In 2005 the cuts were also waived for the Region 4 DVD release of "Way of the Dragon".
[1] Among the effects of the Haitian earthquake listed by the Disasters Emergency Committee are: 3.5 million people affected by the quake; 220,000 estimated deaths; 300,000 injured; nearly 300,000 homes destroyed or badly damaged. http://www.dec.org.uk/haiti-earthquake-facts-and-figures (accessed 24 October 2013).
[2] See, for example, Susan Bassnett’s essay “Seismic Aftershocks: Responses to the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755” on the various interpretations of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which range from religious questions on the existence of God to Enlightenment-inspired rationalist understandings.
[3] The Etonnants Voyageurs website has a very comprehensive and useful page on Haiti-related literary news, particularly from the post-earthquake era. See http://www.etonnants-voyageurs.com/spip.php?rubrique148 [accessed 18 August 2011].
[4] This is not to say that disaster on this scale was inevitable, or that Haiti is alone in experiencing political, social and environmental upheaval. Following the earthquake, many Haitian authors remarked that the event signified a decisive break with the past. Edwidge Danticat, for instance, writes that there is to be no turning back from this moment, no comforting recollections of familiar places, as these memories now belonged to a previous Haiti, one that ‘no longer exists, the Haiti of before the earthquake’. Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 161. See also the current visual art project run by the journal Small Axe, which considers the Caribbean to be a ‘measureless scene of catastrophe’, a region that is extremely vulnerable to ‘natural disasters, but also to social and political atrocities (invasions, enslavements, exterminations, tyrannies)’. ‘In fundamental ways’, the project statement argues, ‘the Caribbean has never overcome [the] founding colonial catastrophe’. ‘The Visual Life of Catastrophic History: A Small Axe Project Statement’, Small Axe 15.1 (March 2011), 133–36 (p. 134).
[5] There are also no doubt issues related to the ethics of reading and criticism to consider. Perhaps critics, especially non-Haitian ones, are increasingly obliged to pay proper attention to the primary works and to engage fully with the range of social, political and historical ideas expressed by Haitian authors. See Paul Farmer, Haiti after the Earthquake (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2011) on issues of the ethics of bearing witness to disaster.
[6] The earthquake quite clearly has cultural implications beyond literary fiction. See, for example, Arnold Antonin’s documentary film, Chronique d’une catastrophe annoncée: Haïti apocalypse now (Centre Pétion Bolivar, 2010), which details the destruction of key buildings of cultural value such as Jacques Roumain’s family house at Bois Verna. See also the remarkable post-earthquake works of the visual artist Frantz Zéphirin, some of which may be viewed here: http://www.indigoarts.com/gallery_haiti_zephirin.html [accessed 18 August 2011].
[7] Other works apparently largely written before 2010 but published following the earthquake include: Emmelie Prophète, Le Reste du temps (Montreal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2010); Evelyne Trouillot, La Mémoire aux abois (Paris: Hoëbeke, 2010); Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Noires blessures (Paris: Mercure, 2011); Kettly Mars and Leslie Péan, Le Prince noir de Lillian Russell (Paris: Mercure, 2011), and Gary Victor, Le Sang et la mer (La Roque d’Anthéron: Vents d’Ailleurs, 2010). Marvin Victor’s Corps mêlés (Paris: Gallimard, 2010) is considered to be the first full-length novel on the earthquake.
[8] Dany Laferrière, J’écris comme je vis (Outremont: Lanctôt, 2000), p. 44.
[9] On the other hand, some of the earliest post-earthquake works of fiction suggest that certain authors have re-asserted their right to creative and thematic freedom and have continued to resist such expectations. See, for example, Kettly Mars and Leslie Pean, Le Prince noir de Lillian Russell, and Lyonel Trouillot, La belle amour humaine (Arles: Actes Sud, 2011). It is also true to say that these authors are clearly historically and politically ‘engaged’ in their own particular ways. See also Lyonel Trouillot’s recent argument that ‘literature has not changed the world’ and that it is up to the citizen, not the writer, to do so; [accessed 18 August 2011].
[10] For further reading on the earthquake, see some of the various collections published since January 2010: Haïti: Parmi les vivants: Pour soutenir Haïti (Arles: Actes Sud, 2010); Le Serpent à plumes pour Haïti (Paris: Du Rocher, 2010), Pour Haïti, ed. by Suzanne Dracius (Paris: Desnel, 2010), Pierre Buteau, Rodney Saint-Eloi and Lyonel Trouillot, Refonder Haïti? (Montreal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2010), and Martin Munro, Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press; and Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2010).
