Christopher Lee's Weird '70s Fantasy Movie Was Originally A Bruce Lee Passion Project

At the time of Bruce Lee's controversial and still-haunting death, the world-famous actor and martial artist was in the middle of several projects at various stages of development. One of those was a film called "The Silent Flute," about a Western man being introduced to Eastern philosophy, that he began workshopping with actor James Coburn and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant in 1969. It remained unfinished when Lee died in 1973, at which point Silliphant and screenwriter Stanley Mann completed a significantly reworked version of the script.

Chief among the changes was making the movie less violent and a lot more lighthearted and silly. Lee did intend it to be a comedy, but not quite to the extent that the final draft of the script became. The new version, now called "Circle of Iron," finally began filming in 1977 and was released the following year. It starred David Carradine, Christopher Lee, Roddy McDowall, and Eli Wallach, though it's Lee's performance, presence, and costumes that ended up being the strange film's most enduring legacy. 

Lee loved to work and therefore spent most of his career making terrible movies, with "Circle of Iron" initially considered one of them. But the weirdness of the film, as well as its fascinating history as a Bruce Lee passion project that ultimately served as one of his final credits — he was given a "story by" credit — have helped to ensure that the movie became an oddball cult classic. 

To be clear, Christopher Lee didn't end up playing the part that Lee had planned for himself. The celebrated actor could play a lot of different roles, but a martial arts hero he was not. Instead, he leaned into what he did best by playing the movie's eccentric antagonist, Zetan. It was David Carradine who stepped in to play the multiple characters that Bruce Lee was going to play — the mysterious mentor known only as "the blind man"; two different martial arts group leaders named the Monkeyman and Chang-Sha; and a version of Death that appears in the dream of the movie's actual main protagonist, Cord (Jeff Cooper). 

It's perhaps fitting that Carradine took over for Bruce Lee in "Circle of Iron." Even though he was a martial arts actor who doesn't even have a black belt, Carradine had already established himself as someone who could still get it done on screen thanks to starring in the TV series "Kung Fu" — a role that Lee was up for but that Carradine landed instead. Carradine would frequently revisit the martial arts genre throughout his own career, most famously as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two "Kill Bill" films. Meanwhile, Lee's legendary filmography included turns as villains in the James Bond, "Star Wars," and "The Lord of the Rings" franchises, not to mention his breakout role as the Hammer Films version of Dracula.