"Wheels on Meals"(1984)d/Sammo Hung

Tonight's feature is a legendary Sammo Hung modern action/comedy filmed on location in Barcelona, Spain, that unites all three Peking Opera classmates, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and Sammo himself(rocking a drip kit, ferchrissakes!) for the third time to date, after Project A(1983) and Hung's own Winners and Sinners(1983); also on board are former Miss Spain, Lola Forner, Herb Edelman, fellow "Lucky Stars" Richard Ng and John Shum, Black Belt Magazine's 1981 Fighter of the Year, Keith Vitali, and Basque/Blackfoot kickboxing champion, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, who, with Chan, provides a fight sequence towards the end of the film that many rank high on their all-time favorite movie fight lists.Add to the mix a wacky banana-yellow fast food restaurant on wheels, kidnappings, a motorcycle gang, inherited legacies, a mental hospital, trademark mind-blowing car chase, and a knock down, drag out finale set in a freaking castle, and it's not difficult to see why this one, which dates back for me to a stickered up Video World rental VHS under it's alternate title, Spartan X(more about that later), is still such a wildly popular entry in the Chan filmography.According to Chan, Golden Harvest switched the order of letters in the title to avoid the recent bad luck the studio had experienced with movie titles that started with 'M'(!).Unhampered by the usual difficulty when filming in Hong Kong, Sammo enjoyed full compliance from the Spanish authorities while shooting, even during the intricate car stunts.For those of you who like your kung fu without so much long white eyebrows and elaborate sets in it, this one's got slapstick and jump spinning wheel kicks in a modern setting, though most of the actors' brightly colored eighties-wear here looks like somebody fused an episode of Punky Brewster into a taping of Dance Party U.S.A.It just adds to the laughter you're bound to encounter, trust me on this one.

"Ménage à trois???!!!"
Thomas and David(Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao) are two expatriated Chinese roommates who peddle fast food out of a tricked out yellow van they like to call, "Everybody's Kitchen(or 'Cocina Para Todos', since they're in Spain)", in the center of Barcelona.Thomas takes and delivers orders viz skateboard, while David, a nearsighted/goodhearted nerd with awful fashion sense and a father who's flipped his lid in the local nuthouse, cooks them up on grills inside the vehicle, which has been equipped with an automated control panel complete with Atari 2600 level sound effects for when the benches, seats, and awnings slide out.Occasionally, they're forced to display their kung fu skills, like when a multicultural dirt bike gang(they're everywhere, the bastards) tries to ruin their business with exhaust fumes and loud engine buzz.Their friend Moby(Sammo Hung) is a rotund Chinese secretary(with a jheri curl) to Detective Matt(Herb Edelman), who's behind the monetary eight ball to some unsavory types and in going into hiding, turns the business over to his assistant.While Moby plays private detective in the office, his very first client strolls in, unbeknownst to the oblivious fatso.Meanwhile, a beautiful young whore named Sylvia(Lola Forner) who's been purloining the pockets of her tricks, seeks refuge with our two spring roll-slinging heroes, who she repays by rapaciously jacking their dough, then making off with the vehicle(and wallet) of the adulterous Italian stereotype-ah who-ah shares the building-ah with them.She gets into a fender bender with Moby, who's seeking a woman who worked as a maid for the estate of a man named Mondale and her twenty-something daughter who stands to inherit his vast fortune and property.She falsely gives him the Italian's information and jacks his wallet before driving off.This broad is good.

This thug(Keith Vitali) wasn't looking for a glass of water, so David(Yuen Biao) gives him a pitcher instead.
It isn't long before Mondale's nephew(Jose Sancho) is sending out blazer-sporting miscreants(Benny Urquidez, Keith Vitali) to hunt down the heir and her mother, who happens to be a nymphomaniac institutionalized with David's father(!), and kidnap them so that Sylvia's inheritance is transferred to Mondale instead.Moby takes David and Thomas out for drinks at a disco so he can ask for their help with the case, but they hoodwink him into shouting anti-Spaniard sentiments to the mostly Spanish crowd.When the boys next encounter Sylvia, she's being pursued by Mondale's thugs, who prove to be tougher than they originally expected.There's a death-defying van chase all over Barcelona, then a hideout in a mountain of smelly stumblebums, and a showdown at the asylum which leaves Thomas, David, and Moby temporarily defeated and the girl and her mother abducted back to the villain's sizeable castle.The martial trio bands together to infiltrate the fortress and rescue the women, but all three eventually get themselves captured through every silly fault of their own.At the dinner table, Mondale loses face, cuing a battle royale between his two henchmen and the boys, with Moby himself squaring off against the head honcho, who proves to be quite an adept fencer, indeed.Meanwhile a Muay Thai flying knee from Thomas nearly sends his opponent out a castle window in defeat after a tense battle that saw the thug-in-braces(and visible flak jacket) kicking out a row of candles with a single kick.Elsewhere, David's dizzying acrobatics prove mostly ineffective against his hard-kicking foe, so he simply smashes a pitcher off of his dome, rendering him unconscious.In the catacombs, they find Moby barely holding off the attacks of Mondale's foil, until they combine skills and force him to concede.We then see the boys working the food beat again, first dropped in on by Sylvia, now a limo passenger, who asks for waitress work for the summer, then Moby, who asks the boys to help him on an Eskimo case.They kick him in the ass.Freeze frame.

"My fist's got first dibs on your grill and ribs, Buh-buh-buh Benny the Jet!", says Thomas(Jackie Chan).
Strangely enough, the aforementioned VHS copy of tonight's review, which was nominated for a Best Action Choreography award in the 1985 HKFA's, turned out to be the only format with Jackie's signature blooper reel during the credits left intact, apart from the later Japanese laserdisc release.A year later, all three friends would reunite for My Lucky Stars and Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars, both semi-sequels to Winners and Sinners.Not my favorite three showcases for the actors by a long shot.Forner would appear with Chan again in Armour of God(1987), while Urquidez would again square off against him in Dragons Forever(1988).Though the duo's dynamic show of pugilist skill is certainly praise-worthy, I'm kinda left flat by the other two final fights.I've seen Yuen Biao defy gravity on many occasions throughout his career, his match with Vitali just seems lazy and uninspired, and the same goes for the brief Hung duel afterwards.That's probably me just spoiled by decades of quality fight features, but I'll do that if you aren't careful.Other than my slight chafe, this is mostly flawless martial arts action with enjoyably silly comedy that you'll probably dig.On the scale, each star merits a Wop for his performance, for an impressive total score of three Wops.Highly recommended.

What's with the Chinese fire drill, guys.

"Armour of God"(1987)d/Jackie Chan

For our next entry in Chan-uary, we look back to the year 1987, which saw the release of tonight's review, Chan's box office record breaking hit filmed entirely in the former Yugoslavia(because of their lax insurance policies for motion picture stuntmen, no doubt), and his biggest to date.Chan's legendary d.i.y. approach to stuntwork nearly got him killed this time around, after misjudging a jump from a high wall across to a tree branch and falling fifteen feet to the ground below, with cameramen rushing to salvage the expensive camera equipment before tending to the seriously injured action star(!), who required cranial surgery to remove pressure from a fractured piece of skull lodged against his brain, leaving him temporarily comatose, with a permanent plastic plate in his head and partial hearing loss in one of his ears.That he survived proves he must've been wearing the titular armour of uppercase G during the shot.Content-wise this time around, Chan crafts an often hilarious, always entertaining James Bond-meets-Indiana Jones adventure one-upping his previous high watermark for excellence in comedy, fight choreography(helmed by middle Liu, Chia Yung here), and gravity-mocking physical stunts that defy the realm of possibility for any human being on the planet not named Chan Kong Sang.Sharing the spotlight with Jackie here are the delectable Miss Spain 1979, Lola Forner, who also appeared in his earlier Wheels on Meals(1984), Cantopop sensation Alan Tam, whose late seventies musical outfit, "The Wynners", is parodied in tonight's script, and Rosamund Kwan, who'd appeared alongside Chan in Sammo Hung's Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars in 1985.Years later, Miramax Pictures, after acquiring the U.S. distribution rights, would re-release the film's 1991 sequel, Armour of God II:Operation Condor, re-edited, re-dubbed, and simply re-titled Operation Condor, then give tonight's review the same treatment, re-titling it, Operation Condor 2:The Armour of Gods.Let's see, that effectively makes the first movie of the series it's own sequel, and vice versa.Wait...huh?Let's just get to it already, sheesh.

Asian Hawk(Jackie Chan) introduces the joys of chugging slavic pilsner to some angry primitives.
We first meet international adventurer/mercenary-for-hire, Asian Hawk(Jackie Chan), as he plunders an ancient sword from some African-ish natives, dazzling them with a technological okiedoke before somersaulting, flipping, sliding, and diving to safety; barely avoiding the indigenous folk and their sharpened speartips and taking to the skies in a nifty getaway glider strategically hidden in the bushes, both his pilfered booty, and his own Asian booty, intact, once again.In Italy, he attends the public auction of the recently stolen treasure where a planted phantom bidder boosts the final price for Hawk's benefit, but the artifact is ultimately snagged with an extravagant bid by a sultry brunette named May Bannon(Lola Forner).Back at his hotel room, he's besieged by a mountain of messages noting the arrival of Alan(Alan Tam), who he'd been in an embarrassingly dated seventies pop band called 'The Losers' with, until his jealous buddy ousted him from the group to have female band member, Lorelei(Rosamund Kwan), all to himself.In the years that have passed, Alan maintains his high profile singing career while the girl that came between them has become a major fashion designer.At one of her shows, she's set upon by machine gun-wielding kidnappers, who mow down throngs of innocent attendees in a violent hail of lead before abducting her, demanding the three remaining pieces of the legendary "Armour of God" set as a ransom for her life.Desperate, Alan convinces a reluctant Hawk to help him break into Bannon's mansion and steal back the relic for use to barter with the kidnappers, but May's father, the Count(Bozidar Smiljanic), easily foils their half-baked robbery plan.They convince him to loan them the three pieces of the fabled armour in his collection on the promise that Hawk will return them intact, with the two missing pieces as payment, and on the condition that his daughter can tag along.

"Mitsubishi two-wheeling it down the steps?!!?My shouldered basket of perishables!!!"
The three effortlessly infiltrate the remote monastery of a brotherhood of some particularly unhip and evil monks in the mountains, and rescue Lorelei from the stronghold, thanks to the fists, feet, and acrobatics of Hawk, unaware she's been drugged by the monks and re-programmed to gaffle back all five pieces of the Armour of God for the sinister cultists, which she does, slipping Alan a mickey and hijacking him back to hideout, in the process.Hawk is forced to re-infiltrate the stronghold to rescue his friends and steal back the relics for the wealthy count, staving off coming hordes of the brown hooded brothers with an enormous flaming pole(there's even a food fight in here somewhere) before sneaking off to snatch the armour.The only problem is there happens to be a personal bodyguard of high-kicking steroid-ripped kung fu soul sistas with metal heels standing between him and the treasure.Hawk takes quite a licking from the ladies before he manages to use the wooden construction of the balconies to break off their deadly heels and give them the hearty ass-beating they'd been so begging for.Afterwards, he's once again set upon by the entire brotherhood, but he tears open his coat to reveal that he's strapped himself with explosives, threatening to blow everything and everyone to smithereens with them(hey, that's not very gung fu of you, Hawk).After a melee of chucking sticks of dynamite in every direction, inadvertently destroying the entire ball of wax, he somehow manages to escape in the nick of time by diving from the high mountain cliff onto a hot air balloon piloted by his three friends.Roll credits over the signature Jackie Chan blooper reel and this one's in the can, boys.

A martial negress' steel heels would tear Hawk asunder... if he didn't sting like he was hymenopterous and float like a Gandaberunda.
Interestingly, Bo "Snowbeast" Svenson scores an uncredited cameo here as one of the monks.Chan would follow up his massive success here with a return to another lucrative series, Project A, Pt. 2(1987), and Dragons Forever and follow up to yet another of his popular series', Police Story 2, the following year.Rather than subjecting yourself to the inferior Miramax cut of the film, you're much better off seeking out Fortune Star's Armour of God boxset or Hong Kong Legends' Region 2 PAL disc instead.The featured mayhem in tonight's entry makes the action in most Bond films look like a leisurely walk to the grocery store with your grandmother in comparison.Though much of the comedy is of Chan's usual hokey variety, and the fights don't really take off until the last third of the film, there oughta be plenty of incredible stuntwork to keep your glassies glued to, in between.An excellent modern era Chan film, recommendable to any and all enthusiasts of such.Three Wops.

"Dining hall full of evil monks right behind me?I'm not falling for that old one."