April 7: Jackie Day — Celebrate Jackie Chan’s birthday!

A Hong Kong and American co-production, The Big Brawl was directed by the same man who made Enter the Dragon, Robert Clouse, along with a lot of the same crew. It was Jackie Chan’s first movie to try and make him a star in America, which would be followed by a smaller role in Cannonball Run and another movie that did even worse, The Protector, with Jackie not coming back for nearly ten years until Rumble In the Bronx.

Jerry Kwan (Chan) lives a quiet life in Chicago with his girlfriend Nancy (Kristine DeBell, who was in the erotic musical Alice In Wonderland and Meatballs). He protects his family’s business with the fighting skills he learned from his uncle Herbert (Mako), which gets mob leader Dominici (José Ferrer) interested in having Jerry fight his best brawler, Billy Kiss (H.B. Haggerty, a former pro wrestler), whose finishing move is a bearhug after he kisses his opponent.

After the bad guys kidnap his brother’s girlfriend, Jerry, Herbert and Nancy travel to Battle Creek where he fights a literal army of people, including Stroke (“Judo” Gene LeBell, the coach of Rhonda Rousey and the policeman for the LaBell wrestling territory; his name is where Bryan Danielson got the name the LaBell Lock from), Iron Head Johnson (Sonny Barnes, who is also in Golden Needles and Force: Five), Atashi (pro wrestler Phil Mercado), Spear (martial artist Donnie Williams), Jamaican (Earl Maynard) and unnamed fighters played by pro wrestlers Ox Baker (who fought Kurt Russell in Escape from New York) and Jeep Swenson (Bane from Batman and Robin). One of teh fight judges is Larry Drake from Darkman.

Speaking of wrestling, Lenny Montana is in this. He’s best known as Luca Brasi from The Godfather, but was a pro wrestler as Zebra Kid and as Lenny Montana. As his wrestling career slowed, he was trying to get into films as well as working for the Colombo crime family as an bodyguard, enforcer and an arsonist. During filming of The Godfather, he explained that he would tie a tampon to the tail of a mouse, dip it in kerosene, light it and let the mouse run through a building. This is where I remind you that Italian-Americans are not criminals and there is no such organization as the Mafia. His last role was in the Frankie Avalon slasher Blood Song, which he co-wrote.

To help Jackie break in America, producers surrounded him with American actors. This was strange for him, as his lack of English language skill and knowing cultural ways caused him to have no chemistry with them. Chan was in a self-imposed exile, due to a dispute with director Lo Wei, who was purported to have Triad connections. He threatened Jackie his contract which was resolved with the help of Jimmy Wang Yu, which is why Chan is in Fantasy Mission Force.

The big brawl that closes the movie has more than twenty fighters and over a thousand extras. There’s also a roller derby scene, which I was totally down with. It’s way better than I thought it would be, even if it’s so sedate by what you expect from a Jackie Chan movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.