Warner Bros.
Starring: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Kien Shih
Directed by: Robert Clouse

Cat Out of the Bag Alert!  This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Shaolin martial artist Lee (Bruce Lee) takes part in a mysterious martial arts tournament held on an island owned by Han (Kien Shih), a fellow Shaolin who has gone rogue, in order to bring honor back to the order and to help an agency get evidence of Han’s heroin and sex slave dealings.

Featured Feline: In what appears to be a kind of tribute to the James Bond films, the villain Han shows island visitor Roper (John Saxon) his exclusive museum of hands while carrying a white Angora cat.

Han invites Roper to step up to a guillotine.  Roper wants to keep his distance from the device so Han places the cat down upon the space where a person’s neck would go.

Han holds the pull connected to the guillotine, waiting to see what kind of man Roper is as he explains that being ruthless takes more strength than one can imagine.

Roper cannot stand it and reaches down to lift the cat from where it sits.  “Now you’ve got eight more,” Roper tells the cat before setting it down on the ground.  The cat hurries away down the stairs.

As it turns out the pull actually worked an elevator that went into the bowels of Han’s operations.  The film’s producer Paul Heller noted about the cat on the commentary track, “It was all we could do to get it to sit still.”

Final Mewsings: We feel sorry for the cats of villains.  They always seem to be treated as if they are disposable.

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