What
bizarre items turn up in bargain bins! The cover of this Canadian
"Dollar DVD" release features a promotional still of Jackie Chan from
RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, while the back offers the synopsis for FIRE
DRAGON, a 1994 period fantasy actioner starring Brigitte Lin
Ching-hsia. So, is this another one of those ridiculous, Xenon-style
composites where elderly, mismatching footage of Chan has been dropped
into that Yuen Woo-ping film to create something "more exploitable"?
No, but the movie contained on the disc does offer a heretofore
unheralded teaming of Chan and Lin. Too bad that neither of them were
actually involved in its creation!
This
FIRE DRAGON turns out to be an atrociously re-edited version of Chu
Yen-ping’s FANTASY MISSION FORCE (1984), a certifiably bonkers
Taiwanese production that Chan appeared in as a favor for its true
star, Jimmy Wang Yu. This reworking retains the Chinese Nazi angle of
the original, but drops in a new storyline that is almost as
nonsensical. In the wake of an assassination committed by the Nazis,
agent John and his female partner (NINJA AMERICAN WARRIOR’s Julie Luk)
set out to locate and liquidate the Nazi Leader (Chan Hung-lit). Wang,
Adam Cheng Siu-chau, and Pearl Chang Ling (who played Chan’s sidekick)
are gone, but the commandos Wang enlisted are retained, with Lin’s
character, Lily, now their primary leader. John is able to get Lily’s
support and, via a meeting with her backlit double, is supplied with
blueprints of the leader’s fortress. We then get the original action
climax, followed by an all-new one featuring the performers from the
re-shoots!
One
always experiences a certain perverse fascination when viewing these
things, but the incredibly ramshackle assembly of this particular one
makes Godfrey Ho’s composites seem graceful and seamless. As with those
IFD patchwork quilts, a certain half-hearted attempt is made to mix the
old and the new together, most notably via an early sequence featuring
a Jackie Chan stand-in. His face is not shown, but to get the point
across, the gymnasium where he is working out just happens to be
plastered with Jackie Chan posters! This imposter also pops up in some
new fight footage that is very awkwardly intercut with older reaction
shots of Chan. The results are so transparently bogus, even children
will not be fooled. The English dubbing (apparently improvised in the
sound booth) is predictably horrid and the score has been largely
pilfered from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, PHANTASM, PSYCHO, and MANIAC
(1980). Chu Yen-ping gets a "Planning Director" nod, while the
little-known Wang Chong-guang is the credited director of this charade.
There is some very minor fun to be had, mostly thanks to the original
FANTASY MISSION FORCE sequences, and the DVD is dirt cheap, but even
FEARLESS HYENA 2 is worthy of more respect than this jumbled
monstrosity.