Exit The Dragon
There is a decades-old conspiracy theory surrounding Kung Fu master Bruce Lee’s mysterious death at the age of 32 which goes like this:
It was no accident.
The Coroner’s Report states Death By Misadventure– but what could they possibly have meant by that?
Popular tradition holds that Bruce Lee’s death was an execution; a hit ordered by the Chinese Mafia.
I’m going to modify the traditional stance by suggesting that the Triads angle was always a front. Instead, Lee’s death was another example of the time-honored Illuminist tradition of ‘setting men among the stars’; the same ritual that claimed the lives of men like Mac Miller and Kurt Cobain.
Like Mac, like Kurt, Bruce Lee was another Sacrificial Sun King; his death another engineered tragedy.
Death by misadventure-
Did Bruce Lee walk through the wrong door at the Eyes Wide Shut party?
Setting men among the stars
In Classical mythology, ‘Setting Men among the Stars’ was the Olympian Gods’ eternal reward for bold heroes like Perseus and Herakles.
Aetos Dios translates to ‘Eagle of the god (Zeus)’; this was the great golden eagle who fetched lightning bolts for Zeus, God of Storms. Aetos Dios is sometimes equated to the constellation of Aquila, The Eagle.
The golden eagle, the Aquila, became the battle standard of the Roman Legions. In ancient Chinese astronomy, Aquila was not an eagle at all— instead, it was the Battle Drum. In Vedic tradition the constellation of Aquila was likened to Garuda, the sacred thunder-bird.
The thunder and lightning of Garuda had formerly been the thunder and lightning of Indra, the early Vedic chief divinity. The thunderbolts of Indra/Zeus might preserve the memory of the impact that the long-bow had on the ancient battlefield, and the American Dollar Bill features a great eagle clutching a grip of arrows;
QED, the Norvus Ordo Seclorum (New World Order) perpetuates the cult of the ancient Indo-European Storm God.
Or is this more misdirection?
If Bruce Lee had made it to the age of thirty-three, his name would come up more often in discussions of Masonic/ Illuminati ritual killings.
Thirty-three is a well-known Masonic code number: there are thirty-three spinal vertebrae, and Jesus Christ was thirty-three when he died on the Cross atop the hill of Golgotha, The Place of the Skull; therefore Golgotha is the skull of the initiate; and we are all the sons of God dying to be reborn.
This is Luciferic Enlightenment; obtaining to the super-spirituality of the Übermensch.
But have you considered the mystical proportions of the number 23?
‘[Adam Weishaupt] held up his hands, looked at the five fingers on each, and began to laugh. It was all clear suddenly: the Sign of the Horns made by holding up the first two fingers in a V and folding the other three down: the two, the three, and their union in the five. Father, Son and Holy Devil…’
As Shea and Wilson further illustrate, two divided by three= .666, the infamous Mark of The Beast.
Reverse 23 to get 32, the age Bruce Lee was when Zeus who marshals the thunder set him among the stars.
The Dragon is an age-old symbol for the Biblical Satan:
And the Great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Enter The Dragon is the 1973 film that launched Bruce Lee into eternal Kung Fu superstardom — and the last movie he finished before dying.
The persistent rumors regarding the mysterious nature of Bruce Lee’s death got stirred up again some twenty-one years later, when I was a kid— when Bruce’s son Brandon, also an actor, famously died on the set of The Crow (1994) at the tender age of 28:
[The Crow] stars Brandon Lee in his final film role, as Eric Draven, a rock musician who is resurrected from the dead to seek vengeance against the gang who murdered him and his fiancée.
Lee was fatally wounded by a prop gun during filming. As he had finished most of his scenes, the film was completed through script rewrites, a stunt double and digital effects. []…
The rumor I’ve always heard is that the sins of the father were visited on the son; whatever went on between the Triads and Bruce Lee left such a deep burn that the mob offed Brandon Lee twenty-one years after they killed Bruce as a kind of calling card:
Do not fuck with us. We do not forgive. We do not forget. We are legion.
To those with ears to hear (i.e. those who dealt with the Chinese Mafia), the message would have been loud and clear.
Brandon Lee as The Crow would have gone down as a goth icon no matter what, but the fact that he was maybe murdered while working on a film about a goth who was murdered guaranteed him a place in Goth Valhalla.
But isn’t all of this reddit and cringe? Isn’t all of this so 2013? Isn’t Masonic Illuminism a dead meme?
All this background information is intended to frame the next phase of our exploration— the one where we are go hand-to-hand with Bruce Lee’s death in Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger (1976).
Enter The Tiger
When I first picked up a copy of Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger at an AMVets thrift store and read the back I was like,
‘Holy Shit. Is this predictive programming?’
Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger is a film starring Bruce Li wherein a Bruce Lee lookalike investigates (and avenges) the mysterious death of Bruce Lee.
At first, I thought the filmmakers were being super meta; having Bruce Lee investigate his own death at the hands of a ruthless gang seemed like it was part of some kind of next-level mental blitz— like they went after his sanity first.
But Bruce Li and Bruce Lee aren’t the same person. They don’t even look alike, except in that both men were extremely handsome.
Exit the Dragon, Enter The Tiger was released in 1976, while Bruce Lee died on July 20, 1973 exactly a month before Enter The Dragon premiered in Los Angeles.
[Enter The Dragon] was estimated to have grossed over US$400 million worldwide (equivalent to an estimated $2 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2022) against a budget of $850,000. It is the most successful martial arts film ever and is widely regarded as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time.
Enter The Dragon was Bruce Lee’s final film, unless you count the unfinished Game of Death— and the veritable storm of post-humous releases meant to capitalize on the tidal wave of interest Lee’s sudden death generated.
By inserting stock footage of the deceased superstar into low budget kung fu film shells, producers gave birth to the Bruceploitation subgenre of martial arts films.
Exit The Dragon, Enter the Tiger is such a film— indeed, it is the best-known exponent of the Bruceploitation cultural moment.
Bruceploitation is exactly what it sounds like. An entire industry rose up in the wake of Bruce Lee’s death, with a borderless cadre of media moguls descending like vultures to glut themselves on the market potential of what amounted to an international tragedy:
Bruceploitation (a portmanteau of "Bruce Lee" and "exploitation") is an exploitation film subgenre that emerged after the death of martial arts film star Bruce Lee in 1973, during which time filmmakers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea cast Bruce Lee look-alike actors ("Lee-alikes") to star in imitation martial arts films, to exploit Lee's sudden international popularity.
Bruce Lee look-alike characters also commonly appear in other media, including anime, comic books, manga, and video games.
*Did You Know?
Bruce Lee secured his first acting role in 1941, when he was less than one year old —his father worked in the film industry. Lee appeared in at least twenty films before the age of twenty— mostly minor roles in historical dramas.
It wasn’t until 1971’s The Big Boss that Lee brought the kung fu action hero that made him universally beloved to the big screen.
Though he was only in three kung fu films before his death, Bruce Lee is widely considered the greatest kung fu film star to have ever lived.
'Tiger, I've had some strange phone calls...'
The action of Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger begins to unfold on July 17, 1973.
Bruce Lee, the eponymous Dragon, is on set, sipping coke and chilling down with his big beehive hair 1970’s baddie.
It’s funny that the pair has a bottle of what appears to be unbranded Coca-Cola between them— rumors circulate that Bruce’s health problems during the filming of Enter The Dragon were related to cocaine abuse.
The scene references the real-life circumstances surrounding Lee’s death:
According to press reports, Lee was going over the script of Game of Death in Betty Ting's apartment, a film in which she was reported to have a lead role, when he complained of a headache.
Today, ‘the lady that was banging Bruce Lee and gave him the aspirin that killed him’ is how Betty Ting Pei is remembered, but she was an accomplished leading lady in her own right— Betty Ting Pei had starred in over a dozen films before her liaison with Bruce.
Over the past four decades, rumours about the death of martial arts legend Bruce Lee have never abated, even though official autopsy reports at the time concluded it was a tragic case of death by misadventure. The allegations and gossip centre on the fact that Lee’s body was found in the flat of his rumoured girlfriend, Betty Ting Pei – a Taiwanese actress working for the Shaw Brothers’ film studio at the time.
…Death by Misadventure?
The article continues:
Born in Taiwan in 1947, Ting comes from a family of three generations of doctors and also has eminent historical figures as relatives. Her uncle was Zhang Xueliang, the general of the National Revolutionary Army in the 1920s, while her grandfather was Bao Yulin, the chief police officer of the Beiping Police Bureau during the Warlord Era.
Of course, this is exactly the sort of apologetics you’d expect from South China Morning Post if they were running interference for a high-profile operative — and there is every reason to suspect the Masonic Illuminist tradition prefers to recruit it’s high-profile operatives from the hereditary ruling class.
I’ll let some redditors with skin in the game brief you on the Betty Ting Pei-helped-murder-Bruce Lee conspiracy:
Returning to the film,
Tiger (Bruce Li) swings by Summit Studios to pay his shifu a visit before flying out to Singapore to teach Kung Fu.
Their meeting has grim undertones, which is appropriate— for The Dragon is possessed of the foreknowledge granted to those men whose deaths are approaching:
‘If something happens to me, you’ll be my successor. Remember, you must always uphold the honor of the martial arts. Wear that garment, and wear it well.’
*Shifu” (师父 or 师傅) is a Chinese term that means “teacher” or “master”.
A mere three days later, Bruce Lee is dead:
Maybe Exit The Dragon, Enter The Tiger helped to sew the seeds that have grown, forty-eight years on, into the tendrils of paranoid speculation that have become so deeply entwined with the brick and mortar of Bruce Lee’s legacy. Or maybe it’s like Tiger’s pupils said.
Maybe there was something…
‘teacher, do you think there was foul play? His death was so sudden…’
‘the paper said that he had been ill; but he wasn’t. So maybe there was something.’
A grieving Tiger embarks for Hong Kong to investigate the death of the Dragon, his best friend and mentor.
‘the police say he died from natural causes. Nothing suspicious there.’
In the film, Bruce died at Susie Yung’s place. In reality, Bruce died in an upscale neighborhood of the notorious Kowloon District— at the villa of starlet and possible femme fatale, Betty Ting Pei.
In the film, drugs were found at the scene. In reality, traces of cannabis were found in Bruce Lee’s small intestine during the autopsy, but it was the aspirin Betty Ting Pei had famously given him that some say did the 32-year-old Martial Arts master in:
She gave him a single tablet of Equagesic, a strong aspirin-based drug that she often used herself. He then went to sleep, but when she could not wake him up for a dinner appointment with Raymond Chow, Raymond Chow came to Ting's apartment and attempted to call Lee's personal doctor at least 20 times. Failing to connect Chow, then, called Ting's personal doctor who arrived 20 minutes later...[]
Ting called an ambulance. Lee was rushed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Of course it was Queen Elizabeth Hospital:
Of course, because of the conspiracy theory where the English Crown is among the highest degrees of Global Freemasonry—
Tiger’s next move is to talk to Susie Yung, the big beehive 70’s baddie from the first scene who supposed to be the films stand-in for Betty Ting Pei.
In the movie, Susie Yung tries to commit suicide in the aftermath of Bruce’s death. In reality, Betty Ting Pei received a flurry of death threats and developed schizophrenia in the months following the traumatic event wherein her superstar secret love affair died in her bed.
Tiger overcomes wave after wave of enemies searching for his friend’s killers (hint: it wasn’t Susie Yung), searching for the reason they killed him—but it’s not a big mystery to the audience, because the screenwriters killed the dramatic suspense by giving up the game twenty minutes into the film.
Cut to a quirked-up 70’s gangster with the classic shoulder pads, moustache, and chest-hair aesthetic:
‘I got word from the Big Boss in Amsterdam. We’ve got to get a tape, still believed to be in Suzy Yung’s possession.’
It seems Susie had taped a conversation in which an unnamed crime syndicate tried to blackmail Bruce Lee into carrying dope for them. But the martial arts master would never dishonor his vocation by becoming an international drug mule. He wouldn’t play along, and that’s what got him killed.
Susie has been using the tape as leverage against Bruce’s killers, but she’s playing a dangerous game. If they could take out the world-renowned and universally beloved Dragon, muzzle the press, and bribe the police, what makes her think they would hesitate to take her life for even a second?
Here, Dungeonposting fast-forwards to the climax of Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger. I hope you’re ready for some spoilers.
While Susie Yung is being tortured for information in a warehouse basement by Ming Dynasty Mob Boss and his Cohorts…
…Tiger and company are having a listen to that tape there has been so much fuss about.
Come to find out, Susie Yung had been in league with the gangsters the whole time— which is what Bruce Lee truthers are still saying about Betty Ting Pei.
Ming Dynasty Mob Boss had big plans for her— and through her, for Bruce Lee, and through Bruce Lee, the world.
Suzy: I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t involve him. Please. Not him.
Ming Dynasty Mob Boss: You listen to me. As a kung fu master he’s above suspicion. If we can involve him, in a small way at first, you understand? We can get others to follow. We can infiltrate the whole kung fu world eventually. My god, the number of schools that are opening up. The market potential would be in the millions!
This is some Foot Clan shit but over a decade before Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thought of it; the intersection of Martial Arts and Drug Kingpins.
Using Martial Arts Masters as a drug distribution route and training street-level operatives out of dojos has a kind of Rube Goldberg contraption feel to it.
As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s also extremely perverse— corrupting the youth through an institution meant to teach them discipline and good values; and from there, corrupting the world. It’s the Evil Ninja trope with a moralizing bent; Exit The Dragon was like the Hulkamania craze but marketed to 1970’s kung fu youth:
If you want to be a Hulk-a-maniac, here’s what you got to do:
Have fun with your family and friends,
Don’t do drugs, and
Stay in school’
I don’t know the truth regarding the death of Bruce Lee — my every intuition tells me I’m better off not finding out. The Tiger found out, and he got his ass whooped up and down for it. Thanks to the Dragon’s teachings, though, Tiger triumphed over the Evil Ninjas and they weren’t heard from again — until they re-emerged on the streets of New York City fourteen years later under the leadership of a Heavy Metal Ronin Samurai.
Seriously…
Ming Dynasty Mob Boss Clockwork Orange Lookalike guy laid down the basic operational flow of the villainous Foot Clan in 1987’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
Speaking of look-alikes… what are the odds the uniforms worn by the dudes from The Locust were inspired by those worn by members of the Foot Clan in TMNT (1987)?
…Rest in Power, King…
Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger
‘Ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy explains the world in terms of two forces yin (from the ancient Chinese word for shady) and yang (from the word for bright). Yang elements include light, fire, rain, and the heavens. Yin elements include darkness, water, wind, and the earth. Male traits are yang, and female traits are yin. Yang qualities are active, while yin qualities are passive. Everything in the universe results from the interaction of yin and yang.
Everything in the universe results from the interaction of yin and yang. The dragon and tiger have long been symbols of these two forces. The dragon, a mythical animal thought to reign over the heavens, stands for yang. The tiger, respected in ancient China as mightiest of the wild beasts, stands for yin.’ – Source.
….Great. Another dead end. Where do we go from here?
Recent Posts
Discover more from Dungeonposting
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
