The Big Boss

The Big Boss (Chinese: 唐山大兄, lit. "The Big Brother from Tangshan"; originally titled Fists of Fury in America) is a 1971 Hong Kong action martial arts film produced by Raymond Chow and starring Bruce Lee in his first major film in a lead role.

Dubbing History
The Big Boss was originally dubbed into English in Hong Kong by Ted Thomas' Axis International for the film's shortened export version, which was cut on its original negative by 10 minutes (later trimmed even further in 1983). The writing was most likely helmed by Ron Oliphant, the main writer of Axis' dubs. The cast is composed of Axis regulars, including a prolific, unidentified Canadian male VA voicing Bruce Lee, who had previously been cast in Axis dubs as Jimmy Wang Yu's voice in his Shaw Brothers films. This is the unidentified VA's last known performance in a martial arts film, and this was after he had already ceased being a regular in Axis dubs of martial arts films.

The HK English dub received some play throughout Africa and the Middle East in the 1970s, and was rarely heard again until an unlicensed DVD transferred from an incomplete 35mm print surfaced. It has since been included as an alternate audio track on Shout! Factory's 2013 Blu-ray release of The Big Boss, and Arrow Video's 2023 release of the film features a comprehensive restoration of the export version with the HK dub.

A second, almost completely rewritten English dub was commissioned by either National General Pictures (the original US distributor of the film) or an international agent from whom National General acquired the film. The dub features Saturday morning TV voice talent heard in dubs such as Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, Prince Planet and The Amazing 3, all recorded at Manuel San Fernando's Miami-based Copri International Studios. The writing has similarities to these shows, including many Saturday morning cartoonisms ("cool it," "stop meddling," etc) unusual for an R-rated martial arts film.

The US dub is the English dub of the film that has been the most ubiquitously seen in English-speaking countries in theaters and on TV and video. It is minimally edited from the export version, and many of these edits are duplicated in the 1983 reissue (or attempts were at least made to match the frame count of the US edits). The US dub also features a new score made up of unique and stock compositions by German composer Peter Thomas. The German and Italian versions use the Peter Thomas score conformed to the slightly longer export version's picture. One scene that is left silent in the US dub has an additional Peter Thomas track in both the German and Italian versions.

Since the 1980s, a version of the US dub conformed to the 1983 reissue has replaced the HK dub as Golden Harvest/Fortune Star's export dub that they give to licensors, as they no longer have any material for the HK dub.

Additional Voices

 * Mark Harris