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 100-minute export version, which was cut on the original camera negative (later trimmed even further for the HK Cantonese language reissue in 1983). The writing was most likely helmed by Ron Oliphant, the main writer of Axis' dubs. The export version - and thus the HK English dub - features a re-edited version of the original Mandarin score, made up mostly or entirely of stock library cues.

The cast of the HK dub is composed of Axis regulars. While many former HK VAs have claimed that Ted Thomas was the first dubber of Bruce Lee (including Ted himself), in actuality the voice of Bruce Lee in the HK dub of The Big Boss is a prolific, unidentified male VA who - in most dubs - attempts to hide his Canadian accent. It is implied in an article written by fellow Canadian Hong Kong dub VA Jack Moore that Canadians were in demand in the HK dubbing hub because their voices more easily passed as American. The unidentified Canadian male VA had previously been cast in Axis dubs of Shaw Brothers films in 1967-1968 as the voice of Jimmy Wang Yu. The Big Boss is his last known performance in a Hong Kong martial arts film, and this was after he had already ceased being a regular in Axis dubs of such films, as Axis had replaced him as the archetypical young heroic lead in 1969 with Jack Moore, who would consistently be used as David Chiang's voice for the rest of Jack's active dubbing period. The unidentified VA's only other known role in an HK martial arts film in the 1970s was a reprise of Jimmy Wang Yu's voice in The Chinese Boxer. However, this VA appears in HK dubs of Japanese films consistently from his first known dub roles in several Japanese films made in 1966 until his last known performance in 1972 in Godzilla vs. Gigan.

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 surfaced, featuring a transfer of a censored and damaged original 35mm print, missing approximately 13 minutes. 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 ("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 heard in English-speaking countries since 1972 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 (Copri Dub)

 * Mark Harris

Video Releases
* As part of the Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection DVD set