Jackie Chan makes a brief guest appearance in this surreally goofy action comedy, a high-spirited shambles from 1982 that hovers awkwardly somewhere between Monty Python and The Three Stooges. When all else fails, cult director Chu Yen-ping (Island of Fire) resorts to exploding cigars, guys making funny faces, men dressed in women's clothing, even a ghost or two. The nominal star, '70s kung fu veteran Wang Yu (The One-Armed Swordsman), is an Allied agent assembling a troupe of commandos for a mission behind enemy lines during World War II. (Although the landscape is obviously Asian, there are Hogan's Heroes-style Nazis scampering through the jungle.) Every member of this movie's mismatched clown-squad seems to hail from a different planet, including one inexplicable fellow who looks like an Elvis impersonator in a kilt. Most of the exhilarating action is handled by the glorious Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, from Peking Opera Blues and The Bride with White Hair, who kicks heads and looks smashing in a red-and-black-leather jumpsuit. --David Chute
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Not enough cheese to make this horrible Wang Yu effort worth watching Comment: I am not going to try to explain the story, because I had no idea what was going on. The Japanese are invading and the Chinese have to find someone to save 4 Generals that have been captured. They run through their options. Agent 007 is now working in South Africa, Karl Maka defected to the enemy, the Snake King is now dead, and Rocky Balboa is underqualified. So, they hire the one man army Jimmy Wang Yu. He gets a bunch of people including Jackie Chan and Brigitte Lin to help him on his mission. Then Wang Yu disappears for most of the movie and comes back for the final fight.
The action is not bad, but it somehow gets worse as the movie goes on. The final fight is between Jimmy Wang Yu and Jackie Chan and it has horrible choreography and editing. Adam Cheng has a cameo in this movie and if the final fight was between him and Jackie, it could have been a lot better. But everything seems so rushed in this movie that the final fight would have been bad no matter who fought.
1/5
I have this movie in the Jackie Chan: Triple Punch Collectionand the picture quality is average at best. Customer Rating: Summary: Great Trash Comment: Pauline Kael once said that movies are so rarely art, that if you can't enjoy great trash, there is not much point for one to go to the movies. Well, this demented film is trash of the greatest order, a movie so bad it's wonderful. It stars Hong Kong luminaries Jackie Chan (in a small role, despite its prominent billing role) and Brigitte Lin, and unlike Ed Wood movies, this film is deliberately bad, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. Customer Rating: Summary: GREAT! B-Movie Weirdness! Nazis, Japs, Amazons, and Kung-Fu! Comment: One of the best B-movies, crazy kung-fu, WW2-ish, fantasy. Truly bizarre plot, Nazis & Japanese attack; Canada? capture 4 generals - one from France, one from England, one from Africa, and one from America - Abraham Lincoln!, take them to Luxumboug! the army choses the captain guy to form a team to rescue them. Including the escape artist guy, the explosives guy, the old west Elvis impersonator guy, his psycho girlfriend, weird asian Scottish highlander guy, and his sidekick dressing in roman armor. Jackie Chan is a thief the team runs into and he helps - some. they are captured by Amazons, escape a haunted house, and finally have a show down with the 70's car chariot riding Nazis & Japs. Most everyone dies. Jackie revenges them. bizzare and sureal plot, quite a bit of good kung-fu action. lots of B-movie sets, and costumes. just great! taking it for what it is Customer Rating: Summary: An Offer Jackie Couldn't Refuse, But Maybe You Should Comment: Bottom line: Jackie Chan owed Jimmy Wang Yu a favor, but apparently so do a lot of people. I wouldn't recommend this movie, but do recommend reading about how it came about in Jackie's autobiography "I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action". Customer Rating: Summary: What a piece of %$#@! Has almost NO Jackie Chan. Comment: Last June I had an operation and I was on morphine for several days. This movie could have been a weird dreams I had. It certainly isn't entertaining, intelligent, functional, or anything. It makes no sense, has no humor, has very little action, has no point and goes downhill from worthless. A few minutes into the movie, it turns into something else and has no explanation how it got there.
It reminds me of some of the stories I have heard of movie albums that were required under a contract even though the singer/band was fed up with the company. They come up with the absolute worst album they could come up with. This movie could fit into that category. It is painful to watch even a few minutes.
For the person who put this in the same category as Naked Gun, I disagree.
