Fantasy Mission Force

"Oh, Jackie Chan's not in the movie enough.. All these in-jokes no one could POSSIBLY appreciate.. And it doesn't make any sense! Yikes, I'd better come to the conclusion that it's a bad film, and real quick like, lest my hipster friends think me a FUN-ster." Go away. You, who knows nothing of the beautiful Brigette Lin, or Jimmy Wang Yu, star of countless "one-arm" kung fu films, or Jackie Chan for that matter. Go listen to your Radiohead, and read your Spin. Ignorance is truly bliss. To the true fu fans out there, and to the ones that can appreciate original, unusual films like this, I offer props. Mad ones, even. It's World War II.. sort of. From a heavy drug-user's perspective, I suppose. The Japanese (always the Japanese), in a desperate attempt for world conquest, kidnap 4 generals, and one of them is Abraham Lincoln. Various miscreants and misfits from all walks of life are assimilated into an elite military unit, by one super-tough and, this time villainous Mr. "Jimmy" Wang Yu. It's their job to rescue the generals, in four days. This plot may seem contrived, aside from the Abraham Lincoln part maybe.. but it's the way it's carried out, the way this film takes so many different, weird directions at once. Plot twists, you might call 'em. But these are REAL plot TWISTS! None of that, "Ohh.. so HE was on the bad side. Okay." Who's expecting these guys to be fighting flying, color-rope wielding amazons one minute, then playing Mah Johng with ghosts in a haunted mansion the next?? I didn't. I don't suspect anyone else saw it coming either. And this film is so FILLED with such inexplicable and genuinely funny goings-on.. with KUNG FU to boot! And good KUNG FU at that! "But what about the ending, oh it sucked.." Again, WRONG. The way this film ends, and I daren't give it away, NEVER: suffice it to say, it is one of the most nihilistic and insane conclusions to any film ever made. It's as though the film makers, not content to have merely warped your mind with a whole 90-or-so minutes of brilliant, unheard-of plot developments and VERY competent action (especially from Brigette Lin, Jackie Chan too, natch.), they go the WHOLE nine yards by slapping on an ending that could not have taken more than 2 minutes to conceive, but it stands now and forever as the cinematic pinnacle of "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??" You won't be disappointed in this film, not one bit. Well.. no, there are SOME people that don't like it. There's a good chance that these same folks find the musings of Alanis Morisette to be "thoughtful," "energetic," "liberating," and maybe even "scathing." Egad..

What sets this movie apart from other, less funny, movies is a scene near the end. It's supposed to be World War 2. The Nazis are coming, but in old junk American cars from the 60s. They even have swastikas spray painted on the side of them. As far as great scenes in awful movies, it doesn't get any better than that!

Except for about 1,000 boring spots, this film is one of the most bemusingly funny "bad movie night" attractions I've ever seen. An absolute trainwreck of a production, Fantasy Mission Force (as its title translates, or so I'm told) is so profoundly and utterly stupid that it deserves a place of honor in the pantheon of cinematic ineptitude.

Still, it's funny!

There's a musical number in the first act which, although it fails to tie in with the subsequent story in any fashion, has got to be seen to be believed. Taking place at a what appears to be a huge honorary banquet for white male law students...oh, never mind.

If you love bad film as much as I do - "Plan 9 From Outer Space," "Glen Or Glenda," "Song Of Norway," "On Deadly Ground," "Boxing Helena," "An Alan Smithee Film," "Battlefield Earth" and the like - you will want to fashion a religion around this masterpiece of the inane.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, in this film makes even the slightest bit of sense. It makes "Godzilla Vs. Megalon" seem like an algebraic equation by comparison.

I watched this movie with two of my friends, and it is hands-down the funniest movie I've ever seen. It's so horrible. And it's so random. An island of cannibal women. Superheroes with KKK hoods who fly and throw streamers. A haunted house with jumping zombies. For God's sake, Japanese Nazis in Canada whose base is in a barn. And if you watch at the end, one of the junk cars the Nazis have has a Star of David on it. I very, very strongly recommend you watch this.

A hectic martial arts farce, it's a hard movie for casual fans to accept. Drinking helps. By our collective second beer, we stopped caring about glaring anachronisms and Benny Hill-like comedic sequences and just started whooping like baboons at the film's many hilariously bad "high points."

Apparently this is the "Good, Bad and the Ugly" of chop-saki flicks, inasmuch as every character gets his or her own ten-minute introduction to the audience. Yes, there is minimal Jackie, but he makes up for it with a well-choreographed fight scene against a dozen amazon warriors (played by women in the closeups, by men during the stunt sequences) all the while holding a chicken.

Other highlights include a houseful of decapitated, blood-sucking ghosts which falls somewhere between Disneyland's Haunted Mansion and Roger Corman's Death Race 2000; Plus, a young Kate Bush kicking butt in her vinyl thigh-high red booties; Also, Fans of the "Sharp Object Injury to the Butt" school of comedy won't be disappointed.

As for the undubbed musical number at the beginning of the film, what can I say that hasn't been said before? It was at once both mind-bendingly horrible and unspeakably fantastic.

Well worth the $2.99 I paid for it. As long as you approach it as a novelty film rather than expecting a "Drunken Master" out of it, you'll be cheerfully repeating "But first you must call me 'papa.'" with glee and fond memories for days following.