Fantasy Mission Force (1983) Movie Review

Mi ni te gong dui (Fantasy Mission Force: Dragon Attack, Jackie Chan - Fire Dragon) is a 1983 action martial arts fantasy movie directed by Hong Kong action filmmaker Kevin Chu, previously featured in the blog for directing the classic Golden Queen's Commando (1983). It was written by Wei Hsin and is known for featuring Jackie Chan in a somewhat small role alongside Brigitte Lin, Adam Cheng, Jimmy Wang Yu and Jing Fang.

The film is a typical "men on a mission" story with a ragtag group of misfits enlisted by the Allies to rescue some unorthodox generals kidnapped by Japanese forces in this fantastic and anachronistic version of WWII. The team finds a gang of cannibal Amazons, ghosts and the Axis army on their way.

You can tell this is a Kevin Chu movie because of the delirious and fragmentary narrative, the collection of genre movie elements put together in a rather impressionistic and non-coherent matter, as well as a disregard for copyright laws since this movie features stills of Snake Plissken, Rocky and Roger Moore as James Bond in a scene. Everything is just a jumble of crazy fights and nonsensical slapstick comedy done in an action movie fashion with enough blood and sexuality to make it mature but silly enough to entertain all audiences.

While Jackie Chan is considered to be the star and has top billing in some internet sites, the reality is that it is Brigitte Lin the one who steals the show, playing Lily, a tough girl with a grenade launcher and a black jacket. She kicks everyone's butts and has to save the day in just about every other sequence. Lin had previously played Black Fox in Golden Queen's Commando and her character has a cameo in the film as one of the possible heroes who can pull off the dangerous mission but it is said that she quit and started a family, pretty funny. Unfortunately she doesn't make it to the end, a lot of characters don't, but she is the shining light of an already curious movie.

There are a lot of very dynamic and fun battle sequences involving several acrobatic feats caught on camera and perfectly staged to make the stunts shine. There are many memorable stretches such as when Lily pulls one of her trick contests at a bar at the beginning of the film, shooting the dress off a tied up girl, as well as a whole middle section with the male characters trapped by an all-female army that ties people down with cloth and is lead by a guy in a tuxedo with his wife. The final battle with the Nazis is also awesome. There's very little in between that doesn't work either so i would say that this is a well balanced and always fast-moving picture.

Very recommended for Hong Kong action movie fans, this is one of the weirdest and most delirious films in the canon and with its good stunts, starpower and constant crazy scenarios it will entertain for all of its length.

Niki and unnamed Women Warriors from Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)

Spacehunter is a silly sci-fi 3D movie that follows Wolff, a hero trying to rescue three women lost in a dangerous planet, he faces mutants and several other menaces. It's kind of a male fantasy, featuring one sole man saving three women who really dont do much in the movie besides screaming and being pushed around and abused (the movie has a reputation of being misogynistic), but you wouldn't expect any less from these nonsensical older movies that never claimed to be real nor sensitive to begin with. The Han Solo-like protagonist teams up with a small teenage girl named Niki (Molly Ringwald), spunky and resourceful, the young scavenger becomes his companion and aids him in his search for the women. 

At one point, they meet a group of female warriors who threaten them as they fall into a flooded facility of sorts. Niki drowns and Wolff tries to save her but both are caught in nets by the women, all of the sudden an aquatic reptile comes out of the water and scares the women, who then escape the picture shrieking and fleeting the scene. 

The scene is very short, I wish the warrior women had more screen time because they weren't really that common in the early eighties. They don't do much, an action scene would have been good.   

Niki's relationship with Wolff grows as the film goes on, at first they are sort of antagonistic but by the end they begin to like each other and a bond is created (similar to True Grit), I don't think it was a particularly well developed relationship and some of Niki's lines of dialogue were pretty bad and obviously written by old guys. Obviously because of her age Niki doesn't do much in the action sequences but she has a good little scene that involves her going through some sort of American Gladiators-style junkyard with futuristic obstacles. 

Not a good movie but it has a few certain scenes that make it enjoyable.

Fury of the Femizons: Savage Tales #1 - Review

One of the most influential and popular tropes in superhero comic books is the concept of the amazon world, a female civilization that opposes mankind and features strong women as their inhabitants and rulers. DC has Themyscira while Marvel has the subject of today’s post: Femizonia, a world where females rule with an iron fist.

Included within the pages of Savage Tales #1 we find the story titled Fury of the Femizons, written and created by Stan Lee, who was inspired by the women's liberation movement in the early seventies. It surely captivated readers who were living the feminist fight around the time. Femizonia became so influential it would eventually come up again and again in Marvel comics throughout the years, spawning the homonymous group of female villains and even Thundra herself. 

The story begins with an introduction to the female-lead world. In this first scene, a woman warrior is seen engaging in mortal combat with a fellow gladiatrix, the fierce Lyra executes her opponent, instigated by the surrounding females. Right out of the gate, Femizonia is established as a ruthless and merciless world where women have become cold and savage warriors with a lust for blood. Not a bad start, since it's already completely subverting the traditional ideas of femininity and womanhood that were predominant in the culture at the time but it kind of turns into a very villainizing portrayal of a female civilization.

Another stereotype unfolds as growing contempt dooms over the females at the top, particularly Lyra, who has antagonizing interactions with a fellow Femizon, Syrani. There's always betrayal and secret treason in these stories about women in power. 

Soon enough, Lyra begins to have strange doubts about her world and her place in it. A sense of discontent clouds her mind, she feels as if there's something wrong or missing in her life. Next thing she knows, a male slave revolts and tells her he has discovered secret tapes guarding humanity's occult past. 

At this point it is very obvious what the background here is, we are dealing with an alternate 23rd century where war drove humans to the downfall of the world of men and to the birth of the world of women. The male slave argues that women have been just as evil as men since they left most male children to die and kept a few as slaves. 

Both fall in love and as their relationship progresses Lyra begins to trust him and decides to join his cause and help the remaining men to have a better life. You know how this is gonna go, Lyra's intuition about something being wrong refers to an imbalance between the sexes in their world and she becomes fulfilled by her lover and new sense of justice. 

The man takes Lyra to meet his fellow rebels but it's a trick by Syrani who promptly calls Lyra a traitor and a battle between the defector Femizon and her fellow warriors begins. At the climax, Syrani takes Lyra and her man to the Queen and tests her alliance to Femizonia by telling her that if she isn't a traitor then she should kill the male slave and end the accusations. 

Of course, in this moment of truth the man insults Lyra and sacrifices himself to save the life of her beloved Femizon. The story ends with Lyra proving her loyalty to womankind and the Queen but lamenting the death of her man and her unfulfilled dreams of living in peace. 

Overall, it's a well structured and dramatically effective tragedy of the best kind, well illustrated and creative, tapping on topical subjects in a timeless story of an emotional search for love and justice. But perhaps a it's a little too antagonizing towards it's female characters, just kind of feels like a reactionary criticism towards radical feminism (the last line being particularly egregious), maybe Stan Lee wasn't going for that and was instead advocating for less misandry and more legitimate equality, which isn't a bad thing but it doesn't feel right to depict an all female world in such an extreme fashion. In contrast, the Amazons from DC were always portrayed positively and with affection, as we have seen in my previous reviews of the Wonder Woman comics, maybe that's why those became more popular with audiences over the years while the Femizons were mostly forgotten. Either way, the concept stuck around and branched off into several other storylines.

It's a quick and swift read that feels mandatory for comic book fans and those who like superheroines. High caliber fantasy with great designs for the female warriors and interesting lore.