Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Fearless Hyena II

An odds and sods effort from Lo Wei and Chan Chuen, thrown together to make some money when Jackie Chan broke his contract to follow Willie Chan to Golden Harvest. Fearless Hyena II is an artless inconsistent thing, cobbled together out of deleted scenes from previous Wei / Chan collaborations, that takes sixty minutes to stumble towards an inciting incident. In the meantime we're subjected to Chan stuffing eels down his pants and wringing a hen's neck. An early scene, clipped out of the original Fearless Hyena, gives a tyrannical restaurateur free reign to insult the star, drawing attention to his girlish hair, big nose and even his eyelid surgery. After breaking some antique bowls, Lung flees rather than settle up with the owner. Following an interlude featuring Austin Wai's Tung, an obnoxious teenage inventor in possession of an automated shack, we're back with our so-called hero, this time gambling away his friend's medicine money.

Fearless Hyena II often feels like Lo Wei's revenge, a petty attempt to undermine and ridicule a star who had departed, leaving Wei in the lurch. In a sense Chan actually complies with this conceit, delivering some deeply unenthusiastic capering in his surviving scenes. Wei and Chuen burn through their previously unseen Jackie Chan footage pretty quickly, handing Hyena II over to heavily made-up stand-ins for the remainder of the film. From a certain point onwards Lung is only seen from a distance or with a branch conveniently obscuring his face. Wei's stunt Jackies aren't even particularly talented, their motions are dull and sluggish by comparison. This consistent sense of indignity even extends to the finale fight. Recycled Chan footage is subordinated by Tung's newly discovered kung-fu abilities and his elaborate bamboo death traps. Chan is used as a placeholder, manfully wearing down the final opponent so Austin Wai can leap in at the last possible second to deliver the killer blow.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Fantasy Mission Force

In order to extricate himself from a contract with mobbed up director Lo Wei, Jackie Chan turned to Jimmy Wang Yu, an action actor known for his public brawling, incessant womanising, and the One-Armed Swordsman series. Wang was able to settle the dispute through his own Triad contacts, putting an end to a situation in which Chan had taken to carrying around several pistols and a hand grenade for protection. In order to pay Wang back Chan agreed to co-star in a number of the actor's productions, including Fantasy Mission Force.

Jackie Chan essentially plays a special effect here, rolling into frame whenever the filmmakers think the audience's attention is starting to drift. You wonder why they bothered. Fantasy Mission Force may be tonally inconsistent and largely incomprehensible but it's never ever dull. The film has been cited as an early example of mo lei tau, a nonsensical comedic style that has become synonymous with Stephen Chow. Irrelevant and anachronistic elements are jumbled together with little narrative consideration, the emphasis being to deliver an uncomplicated, impromptu kind of trash entertainment.

Chu Yen-ping's film is set during an alternative version of World War II that accounts for haunted houses, a cannibalistic Amazonian tribe, and stock car racing Samurai with a hard on for swastikas. Brigitte Lin is the film's biggest plus, her character a violent, somersaulting version of Karen Allen's character from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Setting off to search for her duplicitous lover, Lin turns back to consider the shack they shared. After a nostalgic beat she whips out a rocket launcher and blows the building off the face of the earth. Wang floats in and out as a gruff Lieutenant tasked with rescuing General Abraham Lincoln from the Japanese. Jackie Chan pops up whenever someone needs kicking in the head.