Incredible Kung Fu Mission (1979)

Years ago I kept seeing the VHS box cover for this at the local video store. My buddies and I looked at it, saw the title, and laughed hilariously at what had to be the biggest piece of Kung Fu b-movie schlock ever transferred from celluloid to video-tape.Needless to say we rented it. And, it turned out to be a pretty decent movie ... in a kung-fu sort of way. The would be heroes shirk their training, but learn the hard way that there is no easy way to success.We see them regain new strength and resolve, and eventually launch forth to succeed in their mission.Me, I don't know what I was expecting when I rented it 30 years ago. I figured it had some stupid plot about two rival schools fighting, horrible dubbing, and maybe even some high wire acrobatics. Not quite the case.Don't get me wrong. It's still Taiwanese B-movie fare, but there's a little more heart here than what one might've expected from that era of kung fu films.Enjoy with some popcorn.

Enjoyably silly kung fu version of the dirty-dozen, with comedy characters and high-jinx mixed in with a dash of mildly gory violence. A bunch of misfits (why these guys were selected for an 'incredible mission' is never explained) have to be turned into 'top kung fu fighters' by top kicker John Liu. The misfits consist of a strongman (who looks and sounds like Vinnie Jones), an acrobat, a cowardly coffin maker, a guy who works in a brothel (and looks fairly convincing when dressed as a woman in one of the film's sillier plot strands) and a couple of standard guys. Robert Tai must get a mention as an albino bad guy with a cool cape. There's also some picturesque locations, from steaming volcanic mountains to lonely windmills on a hill. As a fan of cheesy dubbing, the voice-overs are hilarious, from John Liu's cowboy style drawl to some bizarre nerdy snivelling voices for the film's baddies and our hero undertaker. Some genuinely funny jokes (the juggler revealing his 'speciality' and the entire team remaining completely unimpressed) and great lines "When I say jump, you bloody well jump, and when I say crawl, you bloody well crawl!" to "Teacher, what should we do if you tell us to kill you? ....You should do it, but I'm unlikely ever to ask you!" (this followed by a crash zoom of John Liu's smirking face - it's not foreshadowing, it's never mentioned again). The kung fu is pretty good - a lot of complicated group fighting. There's even a twist at the end! A lot of fun, I enjoyed it - although the ending is sad, Hamlet-style death for everyone except 'top kicker' John Liu.

Action, Comedy and a good storyline to boot. One of my favorite "Old school" Kung Fu Flicks of all time. Right up there with Master Killer, Shogun Assassin,& the 5 Deadly Venoms. The story line was good and had some good humor to it as well. You will come to like all the character personalities in the movie. I would definitely recommend it to the fans of the old school Kung Fu flicks that used to come on Channel 5 in NYC in the mid 80's. If at all available for purchase, I suggest that you add it to your collection. You will not be disappointed. I had it on VHS and then the tape broke and I wasn't able to find it again and then I stumbled on to this site.I hope to own it again one day. Along with classics.

KUNG FU COMMANDOS (1982), better known as THE INCREDIBLE KUNG FU MISSION, takes the standard DIRTY DOZEN-type commando mission and transposes it to the Hong Kong kung fu genre. It's not the best example of this particular hybrid (see Sammo Hung's EASTERN CONDORS, 1987), but it's got plenty of fighting, a fairly straightforward plot and two of the top long-limbed stars of the later kung fu era, John Liu and Alexander Lou (aka Alexander Lo Rei).John Liu plays a kung fu expert hired by a gambling boss to train five vagrants with a modicum of fighting skill for the job of rescuing a gang boss imprisoned in the fort of a powerful warlord (Robert Tai). The training scenes follow the model of THE DIRTY DOZEN and include dollops of humor as the five trainees continually disappoint Liu. At one point he takes them to a brothel as a reward for completing the first stage of their training only to see them get into a fight with a rich patron and his gang and lose. Later, after more training, they go back and fight again, with different results.As kung fu fighters so often do in these movies, our heroes head off on their mission with no supplies or provisions but manage to turn up some rope when they need to scale a cliff to get into the fort. They proceed to climb down into the fort in broad daylight in full view of some less-than-vigilant guards.Liu and Lou, of course, have the best fights, especially when they take on the blond-wigged warlord played by the film's fight director, Robert Tai (aka Tai Che). Tai and Lou collaborated on several high-powered, action-packed kung fu films, most notably SHAOLIN CHASTITY KUNG FU, NINJA FINAL DUEL and NINJA VS. SHAOLIN GUARD.While there is humor throughout, thanks to one of the team being a perennial coward, the comic tone is hammered in by the constant repetition of a single melody taken from "Ol' Turkey Buzzard," a song composed by Quincy Jones for the score of the 1969 Hollywood western MACKENNA'S GOLD. It's reorchestrated for this film with Ennio Morricone-style arrangements, giving the film a comic Italian western feel seriously at odds with the more dramatic scenes. The tape/DVD edition currently available in the U.S. offers a good letter-boxed transfer of a widescreen print.