*If you haven't ever seen this movie before for some reason, well
a) Go watch it
b) Some possible spoilers ahead!
Jim Kelly replaced Rockne Tarkington, who quit the film three days before production was due to star because he thought the pay was too low.
On the set, Bruce Lee offered $100 to anyone who could catch his hand before he jabbed them...it didn't cost him a penny.
The hall-of-mirrors set was inspired by a restaurant in Hong Kong where the producers ate lunch.
Production was halted briefly when a body of a dead young woman was found near the set.
The producers discovered Jim Kelly at a martial-arts studio in Los Angeles. In 1971, he was the international middleweight karate champion. John Saxon was cast because he had a black belt in karate.
Linda Lee Caldwell, Bruce Lee's wife, has a short cameo as a partygoer at Han's banquet. If you watch closely, she appears in a purple dress and is walking around among the banquet servers and entertainers.
An extra challenged Bruce Lee to a fight to see if he really was that good. Lee won the fight and sent the extra back to work.
Bruce Lee trained the women playing Han's daughters so they could overpower John Saxon.
In the finished screenplay, there were no details of what was happening in the action sequences. They would be written as 'They will be choreographed by Mr. Bruce Lee'.
Major communication difficulties emerged from using Chinese and American crews. There was a shortage of translators and often no adequate Chinese words for some of the English jargon and technical terms and vice versa.
Matters were further complicated because people who made mistakes would often simply disappear from the set rather than lose face.
Bruce Lee hid a small piece of iron in his hand to break the mirrors.
Bruce Lee didn't show up for work for several days due to nerves because he knew the importance of the movie in terms of finally giving him international appeal. The studio bosses told Robert Clouse (the director) that money was been spent and not to stall, so Clouse filmed other scenes until Lee was ready.
Originally Roper was meant to fight Han and die, and Williams was supposed to survive through to the end, fighting Han's men with Lee. John Saxon's agent complained to the producers so Roper was the one who survived.
The movie was filmed without sound. All of the dialogue and effects were dubbed in during post-production.
This was one of two English-language movies in which Bruce Lee speaks with his natural voice. The other is Marlowe (1969).
Bruce Lee actually struck Jackie Chan in the face with one of his fighting sticks. He immediately apologized and insisted that Chan could work on all of his movies after that. Unfortunately, Lee died before he could keep his promise.
This was the first Chinese martial arts films produced by a major Hollywood studio.
In 2004, Enter the Dragon was deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" in the United States and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
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