Game of Death
| The Game of Death | |
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| Directed by | Bruce Lee |
| Produced by |
Raymond Chow Bruce Lee |
| Written by | Bruce Lee |
| Starring | Bruce Lee James Tien Chieh Yuan Dan Inosanto Ji Han-jae Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Hwang In-shik |
| Music by |
Joseph Koo Peter Thomas |
| Cinematography | Tadashi Nishimoto ()(Japanese) |
| Edited by | Peter Cheung |
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Production
company |
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Release date
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Running time
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39 minutes (Incomplete) |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | Cantonese English |
| Budget | $850.000 |
| Game of Death (1978) | |||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 死亡遊戲 | ||||||||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | 死亡游戏 | ||||||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Sǐwáng Yóuxì |
| IPA | [sɹ̩̀u̯ǎŋ i̯ǒu̯ɕî] |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| IPA | [se̬imɔ̏ːŋ jɐ̏uhēi] |
| Jyutping | Sei5 Mong4 Jau4 Hei3 |
| Game of Death | |
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Game of Death film poster
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| Traditional | 死亡遊戲 |
| Simplified | 死亡游戏 |
| Directed by |
Robert Clouse Bruce Lee (G.O.D. footage) (action) Sammo Hung (action) |
| Produced by | Raymond Chow |
| Written by | Jan Spears (Clouse/Chow) Bruce Lee (HK Version Opening Credit) |
| Starring |
Bruce Lee Kim Tai-jong Yuen Biao Gig Young Dean Jagger Colleen Camp Robert Wall Hugh O'Brian Dan Inosanto Mel Novak Sammo Hung Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Ji Han-jae Casanova Wong |
| Music by |
John Barry Joseph Koo |
| Cinematography | Ho Lan-shan Godfrey A. Godar |
| Edited by | Alan Pattillo |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Golden Harvest (HK) Columbia Pictures (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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103 minutes (Int'l cut) 94 minutes (HK cut) 125 minutes (HK premiere) 100 minutes (US cut) |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | Cantonese English |
| Box office | HK$3,436,169 |
The Game of Death is an incomplete 1972 Hong Kong martial arts film directed, written, produced by and starring Bruce Lee, in his final film attempt. Lee died during the making of the film. Over 100 minutes of footage was shot prior to his death, some of which was later misplaced in the Golden Harvest archives. The remaining footage has been released with Lee's original Cantonese and English dialogue, with John Little dubbing Lee's Hai Tien character as part of the documentary entitled Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey. Most of the footage that was shot is from what was to be the centerpiece of the film.
During filming, Lee received an offer to star in Enter the Dragon, the first kung fu film to be produced by a Hollywood studio (Warner Bros.), and with a budget unprecedented for the genre ($850,000). Lee died of cerebral edema before the film's release. At the time of his death, he had already made plans to resume the filming of The Game of Death.
After Lee's death, Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse was enlisted to finish the film using two stand-ins which was released in 1978, five years after his death, by Golden Harvest.
The original plot involves Lee playing the role of Hai Tien, a retired champion martial artist who is confronted by Korean underworld gangs. They tell him the story of a pagoda where guns are prohibited, and under heavy guard by highly skilled martial artists who are protecting something (which is not identified at all in any surviving material) held on its top level. The gang boss wants Hai to be a part of a group whose purpose is to retrieve said item. They would be the second group to try to do so as the first attempt with a previous group had failed. When Hai refuses, his younger sister and brother are kidnapped, forcing him to participate. Hai, as well as four other martial artists (two of which were played by James Tien and Chieh Yuan), then fight their way up a five-level pagoda, encountering a different challenge on each floor. The setting of the pagoda was at Beopjusa temple in Songnisan National Park in South Korea.
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Wikipedia