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The Tattooed Dragon: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (30th July 2025). |
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The Film
 When aid for Chinese overseas in Thailand is stolen, Zeng Long "The Dragon" (One Armed Swordsman's Jimmy Wang Yu) tracks down a gang (lead by Man from Deep River's Pipop Pupinyo) and retrieves the cash but is badly-injured. He first seeks shelter at a martial arts school but incurs more injuries when he must defend the teacher and pupils from the gang pursuing him. Hiding in the river, Zeng Long loses consciousness and washes up near the duck farm of young Xiao Yang (Games Gamblers Play's Samuel Hui) and is found by his dog Lanni. His best friend Ah-Khun (The Fate of Lee Khan's Erh Chun) identifies the man by his exposed back tattoo as "The Dragon" and Yang's girlfriend Ah-Xiang (Eat Drink Man Woman's Sylvia Chang) surmises that he must be on the run from criminals. They hide him in Yang's home and nurse him back to health. Meanwhile, the gang has returned to their boss (Fist of Fury's James Tien) who is annoyed at The Dragon's interference but turns his gang to a new moneymaking enterprise. Tipped off to the presence of precious minerals beneath the village of Qingmuyuan nearby, the boss thinks simply killing off the villagers and burning their homes would draw too much attention and instead sends his gang and a group of hired grifters to establish a casino in the village and swindle the locals into losing all of their money and being forced to put up their homes and farms. As Zeng Long recovers, he gives kickboxing amateurs Yang and Ah-Khun tips on fighting and helps Yang win a local tournament. Despite the warnings of Zeng Long and Yang, the gambling bug has bitten Ah-Khun and he takes his profits from the tournament to the casino, neglecting both his friends and his own family. The locals are soon neglecting their farms and spending all of their time at the casino. When tragedy strikes one ruined family, Ah-Xiang's father (]Lee Kwan) tries to shame the villagers into giving up gambling, he is beaten by the gang; whereupon, Zeng Long recruits Yang into a scheme to win back all of the money and land deeds and put the casino out of commission… but he may have underestimated the cruelty of his enemies. Following the death of Bruce Lee in July 1973, his producer Lo Wei (Angel with Iron Fists) was among the many filmmakers putting up actors as the "next" Bruce Lee including Wang Yu who was already more established than some of the other "clones" (released at the end of 1973, the film might not have been part of the race of Lee's successor than Lo Wei just looking for a replacement after the pair fell out). For a brief period, Wei found a box office draw with Wang Yu who had left Shaw Brothers and was unable to work in Hong Kong and had been making films for his own independent company in Taiwan, before Wang Yu would also fall out with Lo Wei (and would later be instrumental in helping Jackie Chan extricate himself from working under Lo Wei). Unlike Lee or Chan, Wang Yu is a less technical fighter and falls more into the "basher" category and Tattooed Dragon finds him fighting unambiguous bad guys who do not even feign a shred of respectability. Apart from one particularly grim episode involving the family of a financially-ruined man, the path of the story is predictable so we know what will be the consequences of The Dragon's plan but that also effects the finale in which The Dragon unleashes his full unfettered fury including beating up a man he has set on fire (without flame-retardant suits and flammable gel). As with most Lo Wei films, particularly Bruce Lee-successor films, The Tattooed Dragon has its moments but is a slog in its dramatic elements. 
Video
The Tattooed Dragon made it Canada's Golden Harvest cinemas in 1973 with Chinese and English subtitles as shown in Hong Kong cinemas, but would not reach stateside until 1981 as an R-rated theatrical release from World Northal. Fortune Star's early-2000s anamorphic remaster appeared here on DVD as part of Shout! Factory's two-disc, four-film The Jimmy Wang Yu Collection in 2014. Eureka's dual-territory, Region A/B Blu-ray – also available in the U.K. – comes from a new 2K restoration on par with Fortune Star's other restorations of Lo Wei titles from this period including their recent release of the Lo Wei/Jimmy Wang Yu film A Man Called Tiger (which was to have been another collaboration with Bruce Lee before they parted ways). 
Audio
Audio options include Mandarin and English LPCM 2.0 mono tracks, both post-dubbed – with Djeng suggesting that one of the reasons the film did not do well with Hong Kong audiences was because Hui did not dub himself and his voice was already quite familiar to the fans the studio was trying to attract with a vehicle for the young singer – and sounding clean but limited by the style of tracks for these films with limited atmosphere (mostly background murmurs during village scenes) and typically artificial foley work during the fights. Optional English subtitles are free of any glaring errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by a pair of audio commentaries. The first is an audio commentary by East Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and filmmaker Michael Worth who reveals that the film was one of three feature films by Golden Harvest attempting to make a martial arts star out of Cantopop singer Hui – who would later team up with Chang again on the Aces Go Places films – and that it was made the same year that Golden Harvest would transition back to Cantonese language films after the success of the comedy The House of 72 Tenants which was number one at the box office while The Tattooed Dragon was number fifty-six. Djeng provides background on the production and Wang Yu's career – along with Thai actors who they can recognize by face if not by name given the documentation of Hong Kong productions with regard to foreign actors – while Worth discusses Lo Wei's shooting style including his frame-filling compositions which garnered reassessment while auditing the track, but does reach a bit for analysis of the film's symbolism beyond the heavy-handed anti-gambling moral, addressing recurring visual motifs in Lo Wei's films. The audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema covers some of the same ground along with some of their recollections about shooting and working in Thailand (some time after the productions of films like this) but like the first track they too stop dead at the suicide sequence, bowled over by Lo Wei's depiction of it, but here they also ponder the director's message about gambling given that Wang Yu was not the only actor to complain about Lo Wei's gambling (noting that since the films were shot without sync-sound, he had the radio playing matches he was betting on during takes).  In "Wei and the Dragon" (16:12), martial arts cinema expert Wayne Wong discusses how director Lo Wei's reputation was shaped by his studio experience as a matinee idol and then as a director with the lush resources of Shaw Brothers in the sixties. In looking at his films with Wang Yu, Bruce Lee, and Jackie Chan, Wayne observes how Wei in building vehicles around the charisma of his actors with little interest in auteurism and experimentation proved that he as adaptable a director as he was stubborn, with his formula of forthright heroes, unambiguous villains, and blunt moral lessons proved constraining to the efforts of the three actors in different periods of Hong Kong action cinema to grow and innovate, particularly Lee who was given no input into story or choreography and Chan who Wei tried to "force into the mold" of Bruce Lee when his strengths were in acrobatics and comedy which the actor would not be able to fully exploit until loaned out to Golden Harvest. The disc also includes the alternate English export opening credits (2:54), the Hong Kong theatrical trailer (3:30) – which was inadvertently authored at 1080p25 in a 1080i50 container and may not play on some players and television sets – and the film's U.S. theatrical trailer (1:12). 
Packaging
The first pressing includes a slipcover featuring newly-commissioned artwork by Sean Longmore, a reversible cover that incorporates the original Hong Kong poster art, and a nineteen-page booklet featuring the essay "The Big Bosses: Golden Harvest and The Tattooed Dragon" by James Oliver covering the rapid rise of Golden Harvest as a competitor to Shaw Brothers after a shaky first year, the signing of a deal with Bruce Lee and his impact on the career of Lo Wei as a director (along with the thrashing his reputation has received by Bruce Lee fans over he years), and the film at hand.
Overall
Like many a Lo Wei/Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle, The Tattooed Dragon is overshadowed by the phenomenon that was Bruce Lee and the race to find a replacement even before his early death, but embodies both the strengths of its star and the stubbornness of its director.
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