Way of the Dragon

Way of the Dragon (猛龍過江 Měng Lóng Guò Jiāng), originally released in the United States as Return of the Dragon, is a 1972 Hong Kong martial arts action comedy film written, produced and directed by Bruce Lee, who also played the lead role.

Synopsis

Tang Lung arrives in Rome to help his cousins in the restaurant business. They are being pressured to sell their property to the syndicate, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. When Tang arrives he poses a new threat to the syndicate, and they are unable to defeat him. The syndicate boss hires the best Japanese and European martial artists to fight Tang, but he easily finishes them off. The American martial artist Colt is hired and has a showdown with Tang in Rome's famous Colosseum.

Dubbing history[]

During the Mandarin dub's recording sessions, the dubbing crews from both Wang Ping's Mandarin dubbing group and Axis International would work together to dub the unique Mandarin / English audio. Bruce Lee was dubbed by Chang Pei-Shan and the Mandarin dubbers of Ho, Cheng, and the Japanese fighter would dub their voices into both English and Mandarin (Japanese for the Japanese fighter). The Mandarin dubber for Jimmy only dubbed one line of his English dialogue into English, with the rest of his English dialogue being dubbed by Jack Moore. Although Ted Thomas dubs The Boss for the majority of the film, Bruce Lee shares the English dubbing role with Ted. Bruce dubbing the character is extremely brief though, with it only happening for a couple lines in a single scene. Unlike The Boss, Bruce also dubs the “Chinese spare ribs" thug for the entirety of the character’s scenes. The Axis crew of Way Of The Dragon consists of Ted Thomas, Jack Moore, Michael Kaye, and Carolyn Levine.

In a 1975 article by Jack Moore for the film magazine Take One, Jack would claim that Axis produced their own English dub of the film some time in 1972 and that he dubbed Tang Lung. However, Jack's account is currently the only known record of Axis' English dub, with the audio of the first English dub seemingly becoming lost some time before 1974. Likely as a result of the original English dub's audio becoming lost, Golden Harvest would commission Barry Haigh to re-dub Way Of The Dragon into English in 1974 under his dubbing group. The cast for the second English dub of Way Of The Dragon consists of Barry Haigh, an unknown female voice actor of English descent (theorized to be Dorothy Haigh, Barry's first wife), Michael Kaye, Matthew Oram, Michael Ross, and Hal Archer. The second English dub of Way Of The Dragon would first be heard when the film came to the United States in August of 1974, and has since then been the only official English dub of the film to be released, with the first English dub now seemingly lost forever.

Cast[]

Character	Original Actor	Mandarin dub	Second English dub
Tang Lung	Bruce Lee	Chang Pei-Shan Bruce Lee^{[N 1]}	Barry Haigh
Cheng Ching-Hua	Nora Miao	Siu Kam-Chi	¿?
Uncle Wang	Huang Tsun-Hsung	¿?	Michael Kaye
Ho	Wei Ping-Ao	¿?	Matthew Oram
The Boss	Jon Benn	Ted Thomas Bruce Lee^{[N 2]}	Michael Ross
Ah Gung	Chin Ti	¿?	Michael Ross
Jimmy	Unicorn Chan	¿? Jack Moore	Hal Archer
Tony	Tony Liu	¿?	Matthew Oram
Tommy	Chen Fu-Ching	¿?	Barry Haigh
Colt	Chuck Norris	Jack Moore	Michael Kaye
Bob	Robert Wall	Bruce Lee	Matthew Oram
Japanese Fighter	Hwang In-Shik	¿?	Michael Kaye
Sniper	Homan Tapsell	Michael Kaye	Michael Ross
Bearded Thug	¿?	Michael Kaye
"Chinese Spare Ribs"	¿?	Bruce Lee	Michael Ross
Maori Thug	Mark Metekingi	Jack Moore	Matthew Oram
Italian beauty	Malisa Longo	Carolyn Levine	¿?
Bank Manager	Riccardo Billi	Michael Kaye	Matthew Oram
Waitress	Vera Drudi	Carolyn Levine	¿?
Notes: ↑ Grunts and One line. ↑ One line.

Notes[]

In the United States, it was originally released as a sequel to Enter the Dragon and retitled Return of the Dragon.
The original Japanese theatrical print featured the English dub, though strangely maintained all of Bruce Lee's fight yells. All other prints contain dubbed yells.

Video Releases[]

Note that all releases feature Michael Kaye's dub.

Distributor	Year	Region	Country
Star Video	1983	PAL	Australia
Rank Home Video	1986	PAL	United Kingdom
CBS/Fox Video	1990	NTSC	United States
	1990
	1999
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment	2002	1 NTSC
Dragon Dynasty	2003	2 PAL	United Kingdom
Shout! Factory	2014	A DVB-T	United States
Shout! Factory	2014	1 NTSC	United States
Mediumrare Entertainment	2015	B DVB-T	United Kingdom
Mediumrare Entertainment	2015	2 PAL	United Kingdom
Shout! Factory	2017	A DVB-T	United States
Shout! Factory	2017	1 NTSC	United States

External Links[]

Way of the Dragon at the Internet Movie Database

[1] Grunts and One line.

[2] One line.

[N 1]

[N 2]