Audience Member
Fantasy Mission Force is one of the first movies I ever owned. It was a cheap VHS tape and I was so excited to own a Jackie Chan movie in the mid-80s. However, once I watched it, I absolutely hated it. I didn't understand why Jackie was barely in it or what a Hong Kong mo lei tau movie was.
Mo lei tau means nonsense, a type of slapstick that was developed in Hong Kong that places elements that should not belong together, often with anachronisms and things that should in no way go together.
That explains why this movie, set during World War II, begins with the Japanese attack on Canada, where four generals, including Abraham Lincoln, are taken by the enemy. Lieutenant Don Wen leads the rescue, putting together a team. At first, he rejects James Bond, Rocky, Albert from Aces Go Places and Snake Plissken because he heard that he's dead. He ends up with a dirty kind of dozen that includes two kilt-wearing weirdos, a homeless man named Old Sun, Greased Lightning the escape artist, Billy and Lily (Brigitte Lin, The Bride with the White Hair). They're soon joined by two criminals who want money named Emily and Sammy (Jackie, finally showing up).
Don Wen dies pretty quickly when some natives attack them, followed by cannibals led by a man in a tuxedo. That man would be Yu Jin Xiang and his music is that of Chor Lauheung, a martial arts soap opera in which the actor who plays this role, Adam Cheng, appeared on. He was typecast as a James Bond type, which is why he plays this role in the movie.
After our gang kills them off, they must spend the night in a haunted house staffed by Chinese hopping vampires before they find the base. But when they get there, the generals are gone and the Japanese are all dead.
They barely have a second to catch their breath before German troops in 1970s cars attack them, except they're all Japanese and dressed like they've come out of Mad Max. Everyone in the cast is killed as the movie suddenly gets dark — I was ill-prepared for this narrative switch — and only Sammy, Emily and Old Sun survive, but the older man is soon killed by Don Wen, who survived and orchestrated the whole thing.
This leads to a fight and Jackie of course wins, before driving off with the girl. But hey — Don Wen is playing by Jimmy Wang Yu, the man who starred in movies like Master of the Flying Guillotine and The One Armed Swordsmen.
So why did Jackie make this movie? Well, he owed director Jimmy Wang Yu a favor, because Wang Yu negotiated on Chan's behalf during a Triad dispute over his contract between Golden Harvest and Chan's former employer Wei Lo. It's also why Jackie made the movie Island of Fire.
This movie is goofy beyond belief, with music stolen from Planet of the Apes, Halloween, Tourist Trap and The Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. But best of all, it has Brigitte Lin shooting a bazooka. I've come around to this movie in my old age, but trust me, it's really something.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Fantasy Mission Force is an absolute master-class of bad cinema, going far beyond the 'So Bad It's Good' idiom, and all the way to what I call 'So Bad It's PERFECTION'. Like, this movie HAD to have been made by some razor-sharp mad genius, as its energetic madness coupled with a high-energy surrealism (that is, surrealism by way of an action comedy) is genius. Like, people whose schtick is "bad movies on purpose" really need to take a look at Fantasy Mission Force, as it could very well be the single greatest example of this -- The plot is so madcap that it seems to intentionally make no sense, the dialogue and characters are over the top, the situations the characters find themselves in are inventive, and the way the action plays out (involving some shots where like 50 people all get shot at once from a single machinegun) is almost like outright Spoof territory. This movie is one gigantic exaggeration of various movie tropes, mostly Dirty Dozen style movies, but features others as well, usually having the movie switch genres altogether, while still remaining in the central narrative - There's a musical sequence, a Prison Escape sequence, and even a Haunted House sequence, which, honestly, is THE VERY BEST Haunted House bit I have ever seen in a movie, featuring more creativity in this 10 minute chunk than most 90 minute movies that only take place in the Haunted House. If you can enjoy Good Bad Movies, this movie is for you; in fact it might become one of the Holy Grails, up there with Story of Rikki, as this is, overall, even more bonkers than that film was.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Corny Jackie Chan action film, billed here at Jacky Chan. Jackie was just starting to break out as an international star at this time, having done "The Battle Creek Brawl" in the US and also appearing in "Cannonball Run." It's kind of surprising he'd take a step backwards in the cheaply made Hong Kong comedy Dirty Dozen type of story about the Fantasy Mission Force fighting the evil Japanese Army during WWII. According to IMDB, Chan appeared in this film as a favor to the director. Petty weak martial arts film with a few alright sequences, but it's certainly not enough to make this a film worth seeking out. Brigitte Lin also appears in the film, but this film is really only for hardcore Chan fans.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Had a mundane plot line. The fighting scenes were pretty decent though. Jackie Chan's role was rather small.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I admit I don't generally go for movies of this type, but this is a work of such mind-melting sub-Jodorowskian weirdness that I have to recommend it. Chan is probably onscreen for a total of about 15 minutes or so; mostly the action is given over to a wild story set in a parallel-universe version of World War II, where a motley gang of criminals and warriors are rounded up by a Chinese colonel to rescue a group of generals (including Abraham Lincoln?!) from the Japanese. The characters wander from one bizarre adventure to the next, finally ending up in a face-off against a gang of Nazis in modern-day cars festooned with swastikas. The budget is painfully low, the dubbing is largely incomprehensible, and most of the music seems to have been 'borrowed' from Western horror and action films, but this film manages a certain plucky charm thanks to its outrageous sense of humor and its willingness to descend into pure surreal fantasy. Westerns, slapstick comedy, horror movies, kung fu, action films, war movies, and parody are all tried on, and all things considered, the fight scenes are well-staged and exciting. Coming from someone who's generally bored to tears with Hong Kong action cinema, Fantasy Mission Force is quite something. Check it out!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I own this on DVD in a five movie pack along with:
* Master With Cracked Fingers (1974)
* Eagle Shadow Fist (1973)
* Fire Dragon (1986)
* The Young Tiger (1973)
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
Full Review
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