Nevertheless, the decision attracted criticism from both sides. With these cuts made, Enter The Dragon was classified X on 23 October 1973.
These cuts included crotch kicks and neck breaks during fight scenes, and a sequence in which glass bottles are smashed and wielded as weapons. In one or two cases these were requests for reductions to the action rather than an outright deletion of the scene. However, in the end, only five separate edits were confirmed.
Cuts were required to almost every reel and covered every aspect of the violent action in the film. On 14 August, an extensive cuts list was drawn up. There was also concern about the violence being potentially encouraged by such a charismatic actor, at the height of his (posthumous) fame and popularity. These would remove visuals of a number of violent combat techniques that the Board considered excessive, and could be easily imitated by audiences.
While the highly choreographed fighting was viewed as a 'fantasy', the level of aggression, sadism and violence in the film could only be accommodated at the adult level: the X category, restricting the audience to those aged 18 years and over.Įven if classified at X, Stephen Murphy deemed that Enter The Dragon would still require edits. He therefore considered such a presentation of violence without any qualifying context to be potentially harmful to teenage boys, to whom the BBFC recognised such films would be very attractive. Stephen Murphy, the then BBFC Secretary, felt that the film, like others in the wave of kung-fu movies in vogue at the time, exploited violence purely for the sake of entertainment. Enter The Dragon, a Hong Kong-USA co-production and Bruce Lee's final film, was submitted to the BBFC for classification in August 1973, one month after his death.
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