The Game of Death: Bruce Lee vs Kareem Abdul Jabbar Video

The Game of Death (traditional Chinese: 死亡的遊戲; simplified Chinese: 死亡的游戏; Mandarin Pinyin: Sǐwáng dé Yóuxì; Jyutping: Sei5 Mong4 Dik1 Yau4 Hei3) was the film Bruce Lee had planned to be the demonstration piece of his martial art Jeet Kune Do. Over 100 minutes of footage was shot before his death, some of which was later misplaced in the Golden Harvest archives, and has not yet been recovered (such as one fighter attacking Dan Inosanto with a thin log). The remaining footage has been released with Bruce Lee's original English and Cantonese dialogue, with John Little himself dubbing Bruce Lee's Hai Tien character as part of the documentary entitled Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey. Most of the footage which was shot, is from what was to be the centerpiece of the film.

While in the middle of filming The Game of Death, Bruce Lee was given the offer to star in Enter the Dragon. The first kung fu film to be produced by a Hollywood studio, and with a budget unprecedented for the genre, it was an offer Lee couldn't refuse. Unfortunately, Lee died of cerebral edema before the film's release. At the time of his death, he had already made plans to resume the filming of The Game of Death.
After Lee's death, Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse was enlisted to direct additional scenes featuring a stand-in which, when pieced together with the original footage as well as other footage from earlier in Bruce Lee's career, would form a new film (entitled Game of Death (traditional Chinese: 死亡遊戲; simplified Chinese: 死亡游戏; Mandarin Pinyin: Sǐwáng Yóuxì; Jyutping: Sei5 Mong4 Yau4 Hei3) which was released in 1978, nearly 5 years after his death, by Columbia Pictures.
The original plot involved Lee playing the role of Hai Tien, a retired champion martial artist who was confronted by the Korean underworld gangs. They tell him the story of a pagoda where guns are prohibited, and under heavy guard by highly skilled martial artists who are protecting something (which is not identified at all in any surviving material) held on its top level. The gang boss wants Hai to be a part of a group whose purpose is to retrieve said item. They would be the second group to try to do so as the first attempt with a previous group had failed. When Hai refuses, his younger sister and brother are kidnapped, forcing him to participate. Hai, as well as four other martial artists (two of which were played by James Tien and Chieh Yuan), then fight their way up a five-level pagoda, encountering a different challenge on each floor. The setting of the pagoda was at Beopjusa temple in Songnisan National Park in South Korea.

The pagoda, called Palsang-jon, is the only remaining wooden pagoda in South Korea. At the base of the pagoda they fight 50 people all black belts in martial arts, while inside the pagoda, they encounter a different opponent on each floor, each more challenging than the last. Although his allies try to help out, they are handily defeated, and Hai must face each of the martial artists in one-on-one combat. He defeats Filipino martial arts master Dan Inosanto, hapkido master Ji Han Jae, and finally Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who fights with a free and fluid style mirroring Lee's Jeet Kune Do. Because Kareem's character has great size and strength in addition to a fighting style as potent as Lee's, he can only be defeated once Hai recognizes that an unusually high sensitivity to light is his greatest weakness.
Immediately after defeating the giant guardian, Hai turns around and descends the staircase, heading out the pagoda. Despite all the talk of something awaiting up top of the (now unguarded) flight of stairs, there's no mention of anyone going up to retrieve it. No surviving material explains how this will affect Hai or his captive siblings