if you sopping wet vaginas want to watch a man's jackie chan movie, you need to watch fantasy mission force.
http://www.teleport-city.com/movies/dvdjournal/2001/11/fantasy-mission-force.html Fantasy Mission Force
1985, Hong Kong. Starring Jimmy Wang Yu, Jackie Chan, Pearl Cheung, Brigette Lin Ching-hsia, Adam Cheng, Chang Ling. Directed by Chu Yin-Ping.
I don't know if any of you out there have ever actually felt your brain melt, but if you have, you know what it's like to experience the acid trip that is Fantasy Mission Force. Jimmy was definitely on that brown acid when he dreamed up this crackpot film, and thank god for whatever drugs the man was doing. I love this film! Some people can't seem to get it through their little pea brains that it is a slapstick comedy, and they laugh at how the film-makers thought they were making a serious action-adventure film. But it has flying Amazons, vampires, and Abraham Lincoln in it!
Anyway, almost as wacky and convoluted as the film itself is the story of how up and coming martial arts star Jackie Chan came to be in the film. Keep in mind that much of this is conjecture, wild accusation, conspiracy theory, and half-truth. It sure is interesting though.
Back in the day, Jackie was working for Seasonal Entertainment and director Lo Wei. Lo Wei was the guy who directed Bruce Lee's three films before Enter the Dragon. Wild rumor had it that Lo Wei, a notorious thug and triad member, was furious that Lee dissed him to go to America and make Enter the Dragon. Thus more than a few people believe that Lee was murdered and Wei's goons were responsible.
So fast forward a few years. Jackie Chan is saddled with the task of being "the next Bruce Lee," despite the fact that lee and he are totally different types of fighters making totally different types of movies. But they both worked for Lo Wei. Chan was getting sick of toiling away in Seasonal flops like To Kill With Intrigue, though he did make some great films at the time. Lo Wei's vehicles simply were not taking the young star where he wanted to go.
When Chan was approached by a Taiwanese company with the chance to work with Yuen Wo-ping on Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master, he jumped at it, and jumped ship. Once again, Lo Wei's star had ditched him for greener pastures, and once again, Lo Wei was fuming. Again, speculation claims that Lo Wei sent thugs to Hong Kong to kill Jackie Chan, but Jackie was protected by the local movie star triad thug of Taiwan, Jimmy Wang Yu. Yep, they claim that the ol' one-armed swordsman, who of course has two arms, fought off a whole bunch of Lo Wei's men.
Chan now owed his life to Wang Yu, and Jimmy took it out in trade, calling on Jackie's growing name to inflate interest in some of Jimmy Wang Yu's own films. Jimmy's star was well down the path toward waning, so adding Jackie to the list of cast members was a sure-fire way to guarantee the aging Jimmy Wang Yu a decent return on his films. Thus, you get Jackie showing up in Wang Yu films like this and Island of Fire.
Like I said, take that shit with however many gains of salt you devote to the tabloids. One thing is for certain, and that's that Chan must have owed something pretty heavy to Jimmy Wang Yu to show up in some of those films.
Fantasy Mission Force is the best of the bunch, and definitely the weirdest damn thing Chan has ever done. He's not exactly a member of the main cast, but he keeps popping up, along with Cheung Ling, as a whimsical con-man. He shows up in the end to have a grand duel with Jimmy Wang Yu and his army of Chevy-driving neo-Nazi Chinese skinheads.
That right there should clue you in on what sort of movie this is. Plot? Jimmy Wang Yu is a super soldier who assembles a team of misfits and renegades for a suicide mission. Yeah, familiar plot. Their mission is to rescue the leaders of the Allied Powers during World War II, all of whom have been captured by Nazis. One of the leaders is Abraham Lincoln. They are being held in Luxemborg, Canada. Jimmy Wang Yu has to go because Rambo, Snake Plisskin, and Baldy (Karl Maka's character from the Aces Go Places films) were all busy.
Jimmy soon fakes his death and is revealed to secretly be the leader of the Nazis, all of whom drive long pimpmobile Caddies or something with swastikas spray-painted all over them. Curiously enough, Chinese nazi skinheads also figure prominently into the plot of Flash Future Kungfu. I don't know if that's a whole subgenre, but you can bet your ass I will investigate further.
Along the way to saving the leaders, the ragtag band (one of whom is a young Brigette Lin Ching-hsia) encounters flying Amazons with magic powers, vampires and ghosts, and other things you would typically think of when you think about World War II films. There are frequent battles, Jackie Chan shows up to do some kungfu, and in the end he and Cheung Ling drive some bulldozers around.
By the time this film was over, I was weeping sweet tears of joy. I mean, someone thought of this. Even in the dead of summer in Florida, living in a squalid apartment on the edge of a swamp with no air conditioning, my nightmarish heat hallucinations never even came close to the level of pure nirvana this film helps me attain. Screw drugs. All you need is Fantasy Mission Force. Were you thinking of piercing your nipples with buffalo bones, taking peyote, and seeing visions in the sweat lodge? Why bother when you can watch Fantasy Mission Force?
I've seen a lot of shit. I've seen movies featuring muppets doing hardcore sex scenes and cumshots. I've seen movies where an evil dwarf kidnaps young virgins and chains them in his attic while his mom belts out old cabaret tunes. I've seen movies where the romantic triangle is between a man, a woman, and a corpse. I've seen damn close to everything this crazy world has to offer, but Fantasy Mission Force still makes me scratch my head. If I watch it along with Young Taoism Fighter, I can actually travel through time and Sun Ra begins to make sense.
Fantasy Mission Force is a source of great and dangerous power. You will either learn to wield it and thus experience all the earthly delights, or it will kill you. Possibly both.
