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.
