Fantasy Mission Force

Fantasy Mission Force (Mi Ni Te Gong Dui) (1983)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Yen-Ping Chu

Starring: Brigitte Lin, David Tao, Yueh Sun, Jimmy Wang Yu, Jackie Chan

From: Cheung Ming Film

It's become the norm by now: most of this review is from Letterboxd. That portion will start after I give the IMDb plot description to what is a well-known film... known because it's so weird.

The plot from the IMDb: “Similar to "The Dirty Dozen" or one of that nature. Japan is trying to take over the world and the generals of the allied forces trying to stop the Japanese have been taken prisoner. A force of loners and fighters is put together to try and rescue the generals and save the war effort with the promise of gold and/or pardons of past crimes.” That makes things sound somewhat normal; trust me it isn't.

Here's another case of me watching something extremely bizarre because I heard about it on a forum, and it's also a rewatch of something I first checked out like 8 years ago or so. Even back then the film had a reputation. People talked about this movie and it sounded so strange it needed to be seen. I found a VHS copy at a mom & pop store that was going out of business (true story) and indeed is really strange.

The film is always billed as starring Chan (for obvious reasons) but he's just a supporting character; after the fact I heard that allegedly Chan only appeared in the movie as a favor to Wang Yu for old Jimmy helping him out against the Triads early in his career. Also, this movie is both from Taiwan and Hong Kong, making it appropriate for my foreign film watching month.

Let me tell you about the first few minutes of the film. It's pretty much set in an alternate universe. I mean, the evil Japanese capture the generals at a meeting. The American one looks like Stonewall Jackson and yet he refers to himself as “Abraham Lincoln”. There's a meeting with the good guys where they discuss who should lead the mission to rescue them. Drawings are shown of Roger Moore's version of James Bond, “Snake King” (Snake Plissken), some Hong Kong characters I did not recognize, and even Rocky Balboa. They then decide on a general, played by Wang Yu. After that... a musical number! Yes, the movie has a few of those. This one has an odd-looking dude in a suit and top hat. And that's just in the first 10 minutes.

The other highlights in this mesmerizing genre-bending film include:

* Hopping vampires, which are a part of Chinese lore; yes they squeezed horror into this
* The Japanese villains... also Nazi's... who ride around in 70's era muscle cars!
* Cannibal Amazonian people are also involved
* Music is ripped off from American movies; two noted examples are the original Planet of the Apes and the original Halloween; also, scenes from popular films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark are blatantly lifted
* A self-proclaimed escape artist is part of the motley crew and he calls himself Grease Lightning

There's more but I don't want to spoil everything. Really, this is a difficult movie to rate. It's so random, so free-wheeling, so willing to change tone and styles at the snap of your fingers... and yet despite it making no sense and having crap happen at random, if you shut your brain off you may enjoy the insanity like I did enough to where a 3 star rating seems reasonable. And hey, if nothing else it's one of only a few movies to feature both Chan and Yu.

I'll return on Saturday; if it's not in the afternoon it'll be in the evening.