Bruce Lee's second film broke the record his first set

Fist of Fury was made in 1972 by the Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest and director Lo Wei, and it is the film that beat the box office record Bruce Lee had set only a year earlier with The Big Boss. It opened in Hong Kong on 22 March 1972 and took about HK$4.43 million.

It was Lee's second film for Golden Harvest and Lo Wei, a rough, fast kung fu picture that runs 106 minutes. The story is set during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Lee plays Chen Zhen, the star pupil of a martial arts teacher who has just died. A Japanese dojo wants to destroy his master's school, and Chen takes them on.

Was it really shot in Shanghai?

No. Most of it was shot at Golden Harvest's studio in Kowloon, with limited exteriors in Macao. The park gate scene, where Chen kicks apart a sign, was filmed at the Luis de Camoes Garden in Macao. It stands in for Shanghai's Huangpu Park, which served the city's non-Chinese International Settlement residents.

Macao filled in elsewhere too. Lee disguises himself as a rickshaw puller in a street behind the Ruins of St. Paul, because the Golden Harvest backlot lacked the space.

Who worked on it?

Robert Baker, one of Lee's students from California, played the Russian strongman Petrov in his acting debut. Baker said Lee cast him because he wanted someone who understood his way of fighting, and that most of their fight was real sparring apart from some camera angles. He said the bite Lee takes at his leg was real.

Jackie Chan was 18 and worked as an extra. He also doubled for the villain Suzuki, taking Lee's kick through a window.

Why does the title change depending on where you saw it?

The Chinese title, Jing Wu Men, translates as "Jingwu Tradition." Jingwu is the martial arts school Chen belongs to.

In North America it was released as The Chinese Connection. Warner's distributor swapped the titles of Lee's first two films: The Big Boss went out as Fists of Fury, and this one became The Chinese Connection. It reached number one on the US box office chart in June 1973.

How did a film with Japanese villains do in Japan?

It did well. It opened in Japan on 20 July 1974 and was the year's seventh highest-grossing film there, with about 600 million yen in distributor rentals.

Under every title it ends the same way. Chen walks out to face armed police and soldiers to protect his school, and the film freezes on him in mid-air as gunfire is heard. Critics have linked that final image to the fatalism of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released in 1969.

It is for anyone who knows Bruce Lee's name and has never seen him in a lead role.

Action/Adventure