CIRCLE OF IRON (1978)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*


Just to get the phenomenality question out of the way: most of what transpires in CIRCLE OF IRON falls into the realm of the uncanny, but given the presence of a tribe of apparently real "monkey-men," this boosts the film into the realm of the marvelous.

I don't know how far the revised 1978 CIRCLE script is from the version scripted in part by Bruce Lee circa 1970. However, Lee knew on what side his spring-roll was buttered, and throughout his career he was known for tossing out psuedo-Oriental bits of wisdom. In the early days these pearls were presumably provided by TV-writers raised on Charlie Chan, but I suspect that over time Lee worked such aphorisms into his verbal routine as a means of selling himself in Hollywood. Even classic action-films like ENTER THE DRAGON and RETURN OF THE DRAGON are littered with all manner of alleged Asian profundities.

CIRCLE stars a character named Cord, who would have been played by Lee himself had the actor not passed away in 1973. The hero is a thoroughly arrogant young fellow who embarks upon a journey to find a great kung-fu priest named Zetan, in order to challenge him for the ownership of a great Book of Wisdom. During his search for Zetan, Cord continually encounters enigmatic presences, all of whom fill his head with confusing advice, apparently with the aim of blowing his mind Zen-style. David Carradine plays four of these characters, and he's the only saving grace of the film, as he obviously reveled in the opportunity to play so many distinct parts in the same film. True, his blind flute-player has strong overtones of Carradine's classic hero Kwai Chang Caine from the KUNG FU series. Other renowned actors, such as Chris Lee and Roddy MacDowall, have small roles in CIRCLE, but for the most part the emphasis is on Cord interacting with the Carradine characters.


The best I can say for main actor Jeff Cooper is that he tries to undertake his role with conviction, though his fighting-scenes are underwhelming and his big-haired, surfer-dude appearance makes his earnest character entirely risible. Of course, the endless flow of phony-baloney aphorisms would have made Bruce Lee himself sound stupid, and the film achieves a certain "so bad it's good" form of reverse-entertainment.

I don't know how well-read Bruce Lee was in either Zen or general Asian mythology, but it does seem that he adapts, very freely, various Asian tropes. Particularly odd is a sequence in which Cord encounters "the Man of Oil" (Eli Wallach), an ascetic fellow sitting out in some desert in a pot full of oil, slowly allowing the oil to bake away his legs and genitalia. This sounds like it could've been borrowed from Hindu stories describing how sadhus could reach enlightenment by mortifying the flesh, but as presented, the scene only succeeds in mortifying the viewer's sense of credulity. Cord's climactic meeting with Zetan (Lee) suggests another Hindu myth, that of the Chakravartin who seeks to hoodwink another victim to take over his earthly burden. The fact that someone involved in the scripting is the only reason I give CIRCLE a fair mythicity-rating.