Abominable Advent Calendar Day 10: Fantasy Mission Force (1983)
Crapsterpiece Category: WTF Were They Thinking?
Heads up: complete disregard for geography, history, and physics
Four generals, including Abraham Lincoln, are taken hostage by the Japanese during World War II, apparently from Canada, based on the map the military men are pointing furiously at in the opening scenes. Lieutenant Don Wen (Jimmy Wang Yu) puts together a team of rescuers, including, among others, the amazing Brigitte Lin as Lily, two comic relief guys in kilts, an escape artist, and Sammy, played by Jackie Chan, who only agreed to appear in the film because he owed Jimmy Wang Yu for helping him out with some sticky contract negotiations involving the Triads. He chooses this group of misfit toys over James Bond (Roger Moore version), Rocky, and Snake Plissken.
On their way to find the generals,—who are inexplicably being held in Luxemburg—the team must face wizards, Amazon warriors, cannibals, a haunted house full of jiangshi, and Japanese warriors in Road Warrior samurai gear fighting from ‘70s muscle cars with swastikas on the side. It’s like someone determined each character’s traits based on what they found when they wiped out the costume section at the Goodwill. Nevertheless, it’s easy to become attached to some of the oddball personalities, and sad when things turn Dirty Dozen toward the end. In the spirit of recycling, the soundtrack has snippets stolen from a dozen better movies.
If you’re seeing some timeline and continuity issues here and you’re not familiar with the concept of mo lei tau—a form of humor popularized in Hong Kong and characterized by deliberate anachronisms, juxtaposition of opposite or contrasting things, and non sequitur (and often nonsense) breaks in action or dialog—you might think Fantasy Mission Force is just a hot mess of a movie. And if you are familiar with the concept or even a fan, you’ll still think it’s a hot mess of a movie, but you’ll know they were shooting for mo lei tau and got a crapsterpiece in the process.
