Line #22 Trivia/EnterTheDragon


1	* ActingForTwo: Jackie Chan played several different guards in various fight scenes.
2	* ActorInspiredElement:
3	** The gloves used by Lee and Sammo Hung at the prologue were Lee's own brand of training gloves for Jeet Kune Do, designed by his partner Dan Inosanto after competition gloves used in UsefulNotes/{{Karate}} and kenpo.
4	** Marlene Clark, who played Roper's secretary, said in an interview that the stylish red hat she wore was hers.
5	--->That's my Big Apple hat! I brought a bunch of stuff with me to the set. I'm a hat person anyway, and when I pulled out that Big Apple, everyone said, "Yes! Put it on!"
6	* BannedInChina: The film was heavily censored in the UK to remove scenes involving nunchucks, which were banned at the time. It was also banned in Sweden and Finland.
7	* CastTheExpert:
8	** Every principal castmember was skilled in martial arts in some way.
9	** The hundreds of extras needed to play derelicts were real derelicts from the streets of Hong Kong.
10	** There was a problem finding actresses to play prostitutes, so real prostitutes were hired for the film.
11	* CreatorCouple: Linda Lee Caldwell, Creator/BruceLee's wife, has a short cameo as a partygoer at Han's banquet. She appears in a purple dress and is walking around among the banquet servers and entertainers.
12	* TheDanza:
13	** Lee, played by Bruce Lee.
14	** Ditto in the first Mexican Spanish dub, when he was voiced by Hector ''Lee''.
15	** In an inversion, actor Yang Zse took the stage name of Bolo Yeung to cash in on his sudden exposure in this film as the villainous Bolo.
16	* DirectedByCastmember: Creator/BruceLee directed the film's opening Shaolin Monastery fight sequence.
17	* ExecutiveMeddling:
18	** In the original script, [[spoiler:Roper died and Williams survived, thereby averting BlackDudeDiesFirst.]] This was reversed by Creator/JohnSaxon's agent to land him a bigger part. Ironically, this actually benefitted the plot, as Roper, while by no means a villain, is portrayed as having less morals than Williams, money hungry, and on the run from the mob. He's a much likelier candidate for Han to persuade to join his organization than Williams ever would be, especially if it were Roper's corpse hanging in front of him, rather than the other way round.
19	** Lee, playing a secret agent, wanted to use a gun in at least one scene, but the producers nixed this idea. The annoyance Lee portrays on-camera after being said guns are not allowed is real.
20	* FakeNationality: Parsons is said to be from New Zealand. Peter Archer was Australian.
21	* FatalMethodActing: Averted, though not by much margin: Peter Archer, who played the arrogant fighter during the "fighting without fighting" scene, almost drowned while filming it, as the sea was choppy that day and his boat shipped so much water that it capsized.
22	* FollowTheLeader: Pretty much all {{Fighting Game}}s and movies involving a fighting tournament owe at least something to this film. Lee's gloves in this film might have also inspired Wrestling/SatoruSayama to create the modern UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts gloves.
23	* FriendshipOnTheSet: In heavy contrast to their characters, Bruce Lee and Kien Shih were close friends, having known each other for years from when the latter worked in the Cantonese Opera House with his father. They addressed each other as "uncle" and "nephew".
24	* HarpoDoesSomethingFunny: In the finished screenplay, there were no details of what was happening in the action sequences. They would be written as "They will be choreographed by Mr. Creator/BruceLee".
25	* HostilityOnTheSet:
26	** There were often arguments between Creator/BruceLee and Raymond Chow, one ending with Lee storming off the set. Lee felt that Chow was trying to assert himself as the mastermind of the movie, and that he wasn't being kept informed of everything going on in their partnership, while Chow thought that business was his side of the partnership and that he didn't have to consult Lee on every decision and told Lee to get on with the acting.
27	** Fights broke out onset between stuntmen and extras hired from rival families of Triads.
28	** After Bob Wall accidentally cut Lee while filming the scene with the broken bottles, a rumor around the set claimed Lee had vowed to kill him in revenge, possibly spurred by Raymond Chow in order to save his honor. Wall phoned Lee to apologize when he heard it, but Lee denied having ever said such insanity, so they later suspected the whole thing had been made up and spread by Robert Clouse.
29	** Bruce Lee also had clashes with screenwriter Michael Allin, who made flippant remarks about the film only being made because it was cheap, and deliberately wrote dialogue that the actor would have trouble saying, knowing he struggled to pronounce certain words. Eventually he refused to work with him anymore, and the writer was advised to lay low.
30	** Bob Wall wrapped the film without getting a good impression of Jim Kelly, who would develop a reputation for changing choreographies on a whim and legitimately beating up stuntmen. When Kelly and Wall met again on the set of ''Film/BlackBeltJones'', Wall and other stuntmen had to threaten him with fighting for real in order for him to stop.
31	* HypotheticalCasting: Creator/BruceLee offered Creator/ChuckNorris the role of O'Hara, but he turned it down, feeling that [[Film/WayOfTheDragon one film where Bruce beat him was enough]].
32	* InternationalCoproduction: The film was a collaboration between Creator/WarnerBros and Golden Harvest as a way of bringing martial arts films to the west.
33	* LoopingLines: The entire movie was filmed without sound, and so virtually all the actors had to loop their dialogue after filming was complete, with a couple of exceptions:
34	** Kien Shih (Mr. Han) spoke no English, so his voice was dubbed by veteran Chinese-American actor Keye Luke (of ''Series/KungFu1972'', ''Franchise/StarTrek'', ''Film/{{Gremlins}}'', and ''Film/CharlieChan'' fame).
35	** When the extended Cantonese/Mandarin versions were released for the first time in English in 1998, some extra dubbing had to be done, because no English dialogue existed at that time for those scenes. One of the scenes involved Roy Chiao (Shaolin Abbott) and Bruce Lee. Chiao was still alive (he died shortly thereafter), and was able to dub himself, but Lee's voice was supplied by Bruce Lee biographer John Little. Luckily, Lee's real voice was left alone for the scenes that originally used it.
36	* NeverWorkWithChildrenOrAnimals:
37	** The praying mantises were flown in from Hawaii. When they arrived, they refused to fight.
38	** The crew had a very difficult time getting the cat to sit still on the guillotine.[[note]]Can't blame the critter, really.[[/note]]
39	** When Creator/BruceLee held the poisonous snake that guarded the secret entrance to Han's drug lab, the snake bit him. Fortunately, the snake's venom gland had been removed.
40	* NoStuntDouble: The only times Creator/BruceLee was doubled was for the scenes where he was required to do backflips, which were done by Yuen Wah.
41	* OnSetInjury:
42	** While filming the fight scene against O'Hara, Creator/BruceLee accidentally cut his hand with the broken bottles after failing to deflect Bob Wall's arm enough with his first kick. Those were not the harmless sugar glass bottles usually employed in action cinema, but real bottles, with the consequence that Lee needed twelve stitches to close the gash. Wall, who criticized the director for forcing them to work without safe props, also commented that the scene required him to drop to the ground after breaking the bottles without even looking where all the glass had landed, meaning he narrowly avoided getting hurt as well throughout many takes.
43	** After healing and going to reshoot the scene, Lee and Wall agreed for the former to throw a completely real kick during the point in which Lee sends O'Hara against the crowd, as they wanted to amp up the realism and Wall was tough enough to take it. They repeated the take several times, with Wall taking quite of a punishment on his chest, and in one of the takes, Lee's sheer force launched Wall back against the extras in a way that one of them broke his arm trying to catch him.
44	** Lee accidentally struck Creator/JackieChan in the face with his staff. Chan admits it was his own fault: he wasn't on his mark, and would have been fine if he'd been where the fight choreography required him to be. In any case, Bruce was so horrified that he immediately helped Jackie up and hugged him while apologizing profusely, and later insisted that Chan could work on all of his movies after that. Unfortunately, Lee died before he could keep his promise, but Jackie still claims the moment was one of the greatest things that has happened to him in his entire career (he even admitted that he hammed up how much pain he was in because he didn't want Bruce to stop hugging him).
45	* TheOtherMarty: Jim Kelly replaced Rockne Tarkington, who quit the film three days before production was due to start because he thought the pay was too low.
46	* RealitySubtext:
47	** Lee was a real life advocate of NeverBringAKnifeToAGunfight and wanted to use guns in the movie, but this was vetoed, just like his character gets the same in-universe. His annoyance in that scene is quite real.
48	** A rumor claims that Bruce Lee was once put into an armbar during a sparring session, and when his opponent asked what he'd do in this situation, Bruce responded, "Why, I'd bite your leg, of course." (The situation, if true, should have taken place in Bruce's early days before he trained judo and wrestling, as any grappler knows that trying to bite your way out of an armbar would only get you a broken arm.) In the film, Roper does this in his fight with Bolo.
49	** An eerie coincidence had to briefly halt production when a woman's body was found nearby, paralleling the film's subject matter.
50	* SparedByTheCut: The original script had [[spoiler: Roper die and Williams survive to the end. The reverse happens in the film.]]
51	* StarMakingRole: Jim Kelly had done one small role in the thriller ''Melinda'', and his turn as Williams launched his career as a star of both martial arts films and {{Blaxploitation}}.
52	* StuntDouble: Yuen Wah was Creator/BruceLee's main stunt double and was responsible for the gymnastics stunts such as the cartwheels and backflip in the opening fight.
53	* ThrowItIn: In the scene where O'Hara (Robert Wall) is beaten by Lee, Lee delivers a flying side kick to O'Hara. Wall and Lee had decided that Lee should deliver a real kick to add authenticity to the scene, as Wall knew how to take the hit and was big and tough enough to do it. What they had not planned for, however, was Wall to go flying back into the extras, knocking them all over and actually breaking one's arm.
54	* VacationDearBoy: Ahna Capri told her agent she wanted to film a movie outside of Los Angeles. He called back and told her about this movie. She was on a plane to Hong Kong that night.
55	* WagTheDirector: Bruce Lee sensed that the studios were dubious about whether he could carry the film on his own, and feared that they might use editing to reduce his role and prop up John Saxon as the star. His solution was to direct the opening at the Shaolin temple himself, ensuring that the film would open focusing on him.
56	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
57	** Creator/WarnerBrothers wanted to call the movie ''Han's Island'' because they thought international audiences would be confused by an action movie titled ''Enter the Dragon''. Other alternate titles were ''Blood and Steel'' (a first draft script title) and ''The Deadly Three''.
58	** Creator/RodTaylor was originally considered for the role of Roper, but he was thought to be too tall compared to Lee, with whom he would have been sharing many action scenes. Creator/WilliamSmith was also considered.
59	** Lee as originally written was a mere mercenary with no real connection to Han and OnlyInItForTheMoney. Noticing that Roper, the white character, was the one with more of an arc, Bruce Lee had the script rewritten, giving Lee a personal connection to Han's thug O'Hara for his sister's death, and having him wish to defeat Han because he had disgraced the Shaolin temple.

Context Trivia / EnterTheDragon