The Big Boss - Alternate Music Scores

Alternate Music Scores

Unlike other Bruce Lee films, The Big Boss is unique in that there are not only two, but three completely different music scores. Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, and Game of Death all only feature one score, albeit possibly with minor alterations.

The first music score for the film was composed by Shaw Brothers veteran composer Wang Fu-ling, who worked on films such as The Chinese Boxer and One-Armed Swordsman. This score was made intentionally for the Mandarin language version, as well as the first version of the English dub. The score has a sound to it very similar to other martial arts movie scores at the time, especially the Shaw Brothers films. While Wang was the only one to receive credit, it is also believed that fellow Shaw Brothers veteran composer Chen Yung-yu assisted with the score.

The second, and most popular, of the music scores was composed by German composer Peter Thomas. His work on the film did not become widely known until 2005, when most of the music he composed for the film appeared on iTunes in a Big Boss collection. The story behind Thomas's involvement stems from the complete reworking of the English dub of the film. This earlier version of the dub featured the classic British voice actors who worked on virtually every Shaw Brothers film, and also used Wang Fu-ling's score. However, the choice was made to scrap this dub to make a new English dub that would stand out in comparison to the other martial arts films at the time. New voice actors were brought in to re-dub the film in English, and with this, Peter Thomas (composer) was called in to re-score the film, completely abandoning Wang Fu-ling's original score. It is also believed that the German dubbed version features his score, especially with the reference to the German title of the film on the iTunes compilation.

The third score is the 1983 Cantonese release score, which primarily features music from Golden Harvest composer Joseph Koo. However, a good portion of Joseph Koo's music in the Cantonese version was originally created in 1974 for the Japanese theatrical release of The Big Boss, which was half Koo's music and half Peter Thomas'. Golden Harvest simply took Koo's music from the Japanese version and added it to the Cantonese version. Aside from this, this version is most infamous for its use of the Pink Floyd music cues "Time" and "Obscured by Clouds", as well as King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Part Two".