The first day Lee appeared, his nerves manifested themselves in a facial tic that required 27 takes to get a good shot. Producer Weintraub told writer Rick Meyers at the time that Lee was feuding with his old boss Raymond Chow and giving him a hard time as well. In fact, he was so nervous that he didn't appear for the first three weeks of shooting. For added box office appeal, the producers signed up perennial B-movie actor John Saxon and karate champion Jim Kelly.īecause it was his first starring role in an American film, Lee felt tremendous pressure to succeed. Supposedly Clouse was the only director who wanted the job. The director was Robert Clouse, a two-time Oscar nominee for Best Live Action Short Subject ( The Cadillac (1962), The Legend of Jimmy Blue Eyes, 1964). Michael Allin was hired as the scenarist (he would later write Truck Turner (1974) and the 1980 Flash Gordon as well as Zarafa, an acclaimed book about the first giraffe brought to Paris). He convinced Warner Brothers to back the project and then hooked up with Bruce Lee's own production company, Concord. The genesis of Enter the Dragon began with producer Fred Weintraub who thought Hollywood could make a good martial arts film. It turns out that the smugglers' boss is hosting a martial arts contest which allows Lee and two partners to visit the island as contenders in the championship. The smugglers' island is heavily guarded which prevents Lee from easily gaining access until a police agency recruits him for a secret mission there. Putting an espionage twist on the familiar revenge theme, Enter the Dragon features Lee as a martial arts expert whose sister was killed by drug smugglers. Enter the Dragon was a huge hit but sadly Lee didn't live to see this, dying just a few weeks before the premiere. And, of course, the fight scenes are mesmerizing and unlike anything previously seen in American films. By Hollywood standards, the film was a B-movie, yet every aspect of it from the acting to the direction was way above average for an action thriller. In fact, it's often called one of the greatest martial arts films ever made and one reason is because people who aren't martial arts fans also enjoy it. Rather than being just a weak imitation of the crowd-pleasing films Bruce Lee made in China, Enter the Dragon (1973) - his first mainstream American film - captures all the excitement of his previous Hong Kong hits.