Considering the iconic status of Enter the Dragon, it’s not easy to find a suitable follow-up that doesn’t involve Bruce Lee, but Heroes of the East is one film that can fill that void. Easily the most famous of the five movies that Bruce Lee starred in, Enter the Dragon is credited with helping shape the martial arts genre into what it is today. Its decision to follow three fighters of different backgrounds helped provide the setup for one of the greatest martial arts tournament movies ever made, if not the best kung fu film of all time.
Another film that explores that particular martial arts subgenre is Heroes of the East, a lesser-known release from 1978. Heroes of the East was made by Shaw Brothers, the biggest kung fu movie studio in Hong Kong as well as the main rival of Golden Harvest, the company behind all of Bruce Lee’s movies. Helmed by prominent martial arts movie director Lau Kar-Leung, Heroes of the East was an old-school kung fu film set in the 1930s. Headling the movie was Gordon Liu, who played Ho Tai, a Chinese practitioner of kung fu who finds himself fighting karate experts in Japan.