Bruce Lee's first real major breakthrough in the entertainment industry was in playing the part of the sidekick Kato in the short-lived imitation Batman (though the original Hornet was a bonafide series character) TV show in 1965 The Green Hornet.

Although the TV audience was not receptive to the TV show as a whole, his breaktaking kung fu created a sensation. American audiences had generally heard of Japanese karate thanks to veterans stationed in Japan and Okinawa after World War 2. However, few knew of Chinese boxing or kung fu.

In Asia, audiences immediately recognized that Lee was not just an actor, but a true kung fu master. The Green Hornet TV show -- although called The Kato Show in Asia -- became a smash hit there.

That was not enough to overcome its US poor ratings, but it proved to some in the industry that there was a demand for Asian martial arts on American TV. They began planning the show that would eventually be broadcast as simply Kung Fu.

Unfortunately, somebody decided that the prime time American TV audience was not ready for an Asian to star in a TV series, and so David Carradine got the role instead of Lee, even though he didn't know any kung fu.

However, Asians could tolerate an Asian star, and better appreciated his kung fu style and unique fighting spirit.

He hooked up with Golden Harvest in Hong Kong, and they cast him in the supporting role with established superstar James Tien. However, in the course of shooting the movie, Lee's role was expanded.

The transition is apparent. It's Tien who does all the fighting for the first half an hour or so, while Lee's character just looks on, trying to obey his mother's wish that he stay out of trouble. However, Tien goes to confront the bad guys, is killed, and from then on Bruce Lee is the unquestionable hero.

And the next action superstar in Asia. The Big Boss was the highest grossing movie in Hong Kong history, and remained the record holder until Bruce Lee's second movie was released.

The overall plot of The Big Boss is not really credible. Lee is a young Chinese man taken to a remote area of Thailand to work in an ice factory, living with his cousins. Turns out the blocks of ice contain packets of heroin being smuggled. Why would any Thai company import Chinese labor, given that Thailand was also full of millions of young men willing to work for a pittance? Inside a block of ice seems an odd way to smuggle heroin, but maybe it worked for that very reason.

It is true that around that time Thailand was exporting a lot of the heroin grown in the "Golden Triangle" area of Burma.

Of course Lee's skill as an action director developed further, but The Big Boss contains great fight scenes that were an advance on film's usual limited camera work. Bruce Lee incorporated elements of the setting -- quite effective in the ice factory itself -- and killed many of the villains.

Other Hong Kong action and martial arts filmmakers adapted this approach, and so by now The Big Boss can seem quite tame compared to recent films in this genre out of China. However, that is no reproach to Lee, who was the pioneer, even before he was a star big enough to have control.

The point in the plot where the boss manages to co-opt Lee by promoting him to supervisor at the ice factory, then getting him drunk and giving him a prostitute, obviously conflicts with Lee's later on-screen persona of great self-confidence and awareness.

His character doesn't take quite the joy in fighting that Lee does later, but he makes some great facial grimaces.

There're also many small touches, such as when he tastes his own blood in the middle of a fight and then spits it out. At one point in the ice factory fight, he flings a saw at one of the villains, and in the uncensored versions, the saw is shown slicing into the man's forehead.

Although it no longer seems the masterpiece it evidently was upon its release, The Big Boss is still a must-see for Bruce Lee fans.