I saw the movie "Fire Dragon" then, after researchign online, discovered that it was largely composed of re-edited film snippets from "Fantasy Mission Force", a film I've not yet seen unless you include "Fire Dragon".
My qyuestion is this, what are the differences between the two films, storywise?
OK, this is going to be long - hope you don't mind the lengthy reply.
In Fantasy Mission Force, Jimmy Wang Yu assembles a ragtag team of commandos to rescue four western generals, who have been captured by Japanese forces during the war (exactly which war, and when the film is supposed to be set, is debatable). Jimmy Wang Yu is apparently killed early in the mission, and the team continue on to encounter a village of amazon women, a haunted house, and Japanese Nazis. They are sporadically helped by Jackie Chan and his partner, Pearl Chang, who are a pair of robbers out to make their money back after being conned by one of the team members.
Basically, they're entirely different movies with totally different plots.
Fire Dragon just uses bits and pieces of footage from FMF, re-dubbed with different dialogue, to tell a completely different story.
As I recall, the footage from FMF in Fire Dragon consists of:
- A brief clip of some soldiers getting blown up after the two villians discuss their plans, which is actually taken from the first scene in FMF.
- Two scenes of ACTUAL footage of Jackie Chan. The footage of him fighting the wrestlers, and later, fighting the Amazon women to free Brigitte Lin. Everything else is done with an obvious double and shot specifically for Fire Dragon. The scene with the wrestler is intercut with reaction shots of the two leads from Fire Dragon to replace shots of Pearl Chang from FMF.
- All the scenes with the team led by Brigitte Lin (Lily) are from FMF. Talking about what they'll do with the money at the campfire, being captured by the amazons, destroying the amazon village, the final showdown where everybody is melodramatically killed by the machine gun (which is just the first part of the ending in FMF), etc etc. The scene where the team is introduced ("John, I have some profiles to show you...") uses bits and pieces of footage from various scenes in FMF, taken out of context.
Pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE in Fire Dragon - the entire first ten or so minutes up until the rape scene, all of the scenes with the two "Chinese Nazi" villians, everything with the main character and his female sidekick, and the entire ending with the three heroes and the team of ninjas raiding the Nazi fort - were all shot for Fire Dragon and not part of FMF.
There are actually more scenes with Jackie Chan in FMF not used in Fire Dragon. For some reason, Jimmy Wang Yu and Pearl Chang have been cut out of Fire Dragon altogether, and the final shoot-out with the Nazis cuts right from Brigitte Lin and David Tao dying, to the entire fort exploding, completely removing the showdown with Jackie Chan (which I won't give away). Also, the sequence in the haunted house, and the scenes individually introducing all the team members, are gone, though bits and pieces of them are featured in the 'profile' scene.
What's really interesting is that there are some cut scenes from FMF used in Fire Dragon - the scene with Hui Bat Liu hiding from the hopping corpse during the profile scene, and the scenes with the team being tortured by amazons (having their feet licked by dogs, stuck on the see-saw just above water level, and being 'rescued' by the two amazon girls) were obviously shot for FMF but not included in any version of it I've ever seen, not even in the longer 100 minute Japanese DVD. Bizzare!
I recommend you see Fantasy Mission Force - it's not hard to find, and generally a much better film than Fire Dragon.
Sorry this reply was so long, I just love talking about different edits of obscure films... and FMF is one of my favourites, especially since there are about three different cuts of it around!