Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

There are other martial arts movies, but for those that have never seen one before, they’re probably thinking of this movie when they imagine a kung fu movie.

To reach the biggest audience, Bruce Lee, who plays the hero Lee, would be teamed with a white man, Roper (John Saxon) and a black one, Williams (Jim Kelly). They’re on the way to the island of Han (Shih Kien, voiced by Keye Luke) to participate in a fighting tournament to discover the world’s greatest fighter, a theme that so many movies would take. Roper owes the mob money, Williams killed two bad cops and is on the run. They’re friends from Vietnam and ready to scam everyone to make money off the tournament.

British intelligence man Braithwaite (Geoffrey Weeks) informs Lee that Han, a former Shaolin Temple student, is running a fighting school that also sells drugs and trades in people. Oh yeah — Lee’s sister (Angela Mao Ying, Lady Whirlwind) was one of Braithwaite’s agents who was killed by O’Hara (Bob Wall), one of Han’s bodyguards.

When they win their fights, everyone gets the woman of their choice. Williams takes several, Roper takes Tania (Ahna Capri), Han’s secretary, while Lee chooses Mei-Ling (Betty Chung), who is an undercover agent there to help him.

This is filled with so many amazing things, such as Bolo Yeung as the main bodyguard, Mr. Han’s fake hands, a gigantic ending filled with so many battles and Lee and Han facing off inside a room full of mirrors, which finds director Robert Clouse taking the end of The Lady from Shanghai.

Kien Shih, who played Han, was a close friend of Bruce Lee’s father, an actor in the Cantonese Opera where Shih had worked as a makeup artist. Their relationship was so close that Bruce addressed Kien as uncle and Kien called Bruce nephew. At one point during filming, Bruce told Kien Shih, “I feel that you will live longer than me.” Kien replied, “Nephew, don’t force yourself too hard. You are overworking yourself.” Lee died weeks before Enter the Dragon was released in Hong Kong.

This movie changed martial arts films, while two other actors who would do the same a few years after, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, appear in small roles.

I’ve watched this hundreds of times and it still makes me happy every single time I put it on. It’s just the perfect episodic fighting movie.