Overview: Written and directed by Lo Wei, the man behind the Bruce Lee’s international hits The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, The Tattooed Dragon was designed to bring martial arts superstar Jimmy Wang Yu (The One-Armed Swordsman) to a global audience still hungry for kung fu cinema in the aftermath of Lee’s death.

Featuring Sylvia Chang (Slaughter in San Francisco) and James Tien (Shaolin Boxer) in a villainous role, it follows The Big Boss in pitting a legendary fighter against organized crime.

Wang Yu stars as the eponymous Tattooed Dragon, a virtuous martial artist who makes a habit of defending the defenseless. After he is injured in a fight, he is taken in by a farmer (Sam Hui, The Swordsman) and his sweetheart (Chang), and soon finds himself having to defend their local village when it becomes the target of a gangster (Tien) and his crew.

Determined to lay their hands on the village’s rich resources, the gangsters install a casino and encourage the locals to gamble away everything they have. But the Tattooed Dragon has other ideas.

The Tattooed Dragon is a showcase for Jimmy Wang Yu following his move from Shaw Brothers to Golden Harvest in the early 1970s, boasting cinematography by Cheung Yiu-tsou (Police Story) and stunts coordinated by Simon Hsu (The Flying Guillotine).

Eureka Classics is proud to present The Tattooed Dragon for the first time on Blu-ray anywhere in the world from a new 2K restoration.

Blu-ray Verdict: The third (that I am aware of) teaming of director Lo Wei and Jimmy Wang Yu is pretty dark. Most Golden Harvest movies feature the bad guys doing something terrible that motivates the hero to seek revenge, but this is a different kind of dark.

At first, it looks like it’s going to be one of those movies where there’s a fight every ten minutes. Wang Yu plays a character known only as The Dragon. Everyone knows who he is, and he’s some kind of super-hero legend, despite the fact that he is actually shown to be more vulnerable than most Golden Harvest protagonists.

In Thailand, he comes across a gang of thugs who’ve robbed the overseas Chinese fund. He fights them and recovers the money, but he sustains some serious injuries in the process and takes refuge in a nearby martial arts school. The thugs come looking for him, and the students defend him, but The Dragon’s honor won’t let him sit on the sidelines, and he joins in the fight and gets hurt even worse before limping off.

The scene then shifts to a village, where we meet dorky Thai duck farmer, Koon Kit (Sam Hui). He has an adorable scene stealing dog named Lanni and a cute girlfriend (Sylvia Chang) whose father is pressuring him to marry. However, Koon doesn’t feel financially secure enough and is too independent to take handouts from his potential father-in-law.

Lanni discovers The Dragon near death and alerts Koon to his presence. Of course, Koon knows who he is from the dragon tattoo on his back. He is honoured for the opportunity to help such a legend, and he and the other villagers nurse The Dragon back to health. In exchange, The Dragon teaches Koon how to fight.

The goons have pretty much stopped looking for The Dragon, but they are not out of the picture. They work for a gangster named Lee Kwan (James Tien), and he has nefarious plan to take over Koon’s village. He is going to open a casino and also provide credit to the villagers to gamble with, ensuring they use their property deeds as collateral. Before you know it, everyone in town is a gambling junkie and people are giving up their family homes to cover their debts.

One such schmuck is Koon’s best friend, who marches into his house to get the deed to his house and finds his wife crying because the kids have no food. He responds by smacking them all around and then heading back to the casino. This scene is disturbing enough, but in the aftermath, his wife takes the kids to the river, weighs herself down, ties a rope to her three kids and tells them they won’t be hungry anymore. I mean... Jesus Christ!

This terrible tragedy is enough to provoke The Dragon to get involved, although I like that he doesn’t immediately go for the more conventional approach of using violence. He actually employs the tactic of using his super keen sense of hearing to bankrupt the casino. Don’t ask me how that works, just trust me. But of course, these are bad guys, and they don’t play by the rules, so ultimately it comes down to violence after all.

This is a pretty decent affair. The whole evils of gambling thing is more of a plot device than any kind of social commentary, but it works. The action is not as plentiful as it is in some Golden Harvest movies, and many of The Dragon’s fight scenes are the type where the bad guys stand around and wait to attack him one at a time, but they still look good.

In closing, I found the story of a simple farming village being exploited by greedy gangsters and aided by a vulnerable hero to be a refreshing change from the usual stories of Japanese colonialism or feuding martial arts schools. [X.F.]

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:
Limited to 2000 copies
Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Sean Longmore
Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on The Tattooed Dragon by film critic and writer James Oliver
The Tattooed Dragon presented in 1080p HD from a new 2K restoration
Original Mandarin mono and English dubbed audio options
Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
New audio commentary by East Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival)
New audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
Here Be Dragons – new discussion of Tattooed Dragon with martial arts cinema expert Wayne Wong

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