In 1972, Fists Of Fury is released, known as Chinese Connection in the US, is made for just $200,000, and breaks all records set by The Big Boss. The second film though, is too similar to the first, and Bruce begins to feud with the director Lo Wei. Later that year, Bruce rejects Lo and Chow's script idea, Stern Faced Tiger, in favor of his own idea, Enter the Dragon. This in turn becomes Way Of The Dragon (Return Of The Dragon in the US). Bruce then announces that his next project will be called Game Of Death. Mentioning "death" in the title is bad feng shui (bad luck). The $100,00 house he buys in Kowloon Tong also has bad feng shui. Back in Hollywood that year, Bruce signs a big deal with Warner Brothers, before Game Of Death is finished. In January of '73, Bruce begins work on Enter The Dragon in H.K. (Hong Kong) Bruce is now mobbed in public, forcing to don disguises (like the scenes in Game Of Death.) In the winter of '73, Bruce is injured several times during shooting, and is said to look alternatively pale and dark. He hangs out on the set with stuntmen from rival Triad gangs. The staged fights with 400 extras often escalated into “vengeful brawls”. On May 10, 1973, during the final edit of Enter The Dragon, Bruce collapses, convulses, and loses consciousness. H.K. doctors prescribe drugs to reduce the brain swelling they detect, but doctors at UCLA find no trouble after a series of tests, Bruce reportedly drinking as many as 20 shakes a night. On July 20, Chow and Bruce meet at the apt. of actress Betty Ting-Pei, to go over the new Game Of Death script. Bruce complains of a headache, and Betty gives him a prescription pill, called Equagesic. He lies down, and hours later, is dead of a cerebral edema, or swelling of the brain. Original cause of death listed as “marijuana poisoning”, later changed to “death by misadventure”. An estimated 20,000 people attend his funeral in Hong Kong. Later in the summer, rumors began to fly about his death. He died while making love to betty; he died as a result of the bad feng shui from his house and Game Of Death; he died as a result of the “Vibrating Palm”, a killing technique certain Kung Fu grand Masters allegedly posses which channels all their energy into a single touch. This was probably as a result of him revealing too many martial arts secrets to Westerners. In August, Enter The Dragon premiered. Rob Cohen, the man who would later direct Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, was at the opening. Though released in Aug., Enter The Dragon outgrosses all other films made that year except The Exorcist. Made for only $500,000, it has grossed over $150 million so far. In the fall of 1978, Game Of Death is finally released, featuring only 20 min. of Bruce Lee footage (the rest is filmed with stand-ins). Twenty years later, on March 31, Brandon Bruce Lee is killed on the set of what was to become his best film ever, The Crow, shot by a tip from a “dummy round”, fired out of a blank-firing prop gun, but that is another story all together.... All these years later, Bruce’s memory is still fresh in all our minds because we remember who he was, and what he did, not just for the film industry, but also for the genre of martial arts films. He will never die, as long as we remember how he lived……
