Foxbat [狐蝠] (1977)
AKA Operation Foxbat, Nato Code Name MIG-25
Starring Henry Silva, Vonetta McGee, Rik Van Nutter, Roy Chiao, James Yi Lui, Melvin Wong, Wong Hung, Nick Lam Wai-Kei, Phillip Chan Yan-Kin, Tong Chung-San
Directed by Po-Chih Leong
Expectations: High. I liked Jumping Ash, and this one’s on Blu-ray!
In 1976, Po-Chih Leong co-directed Jumping Ash, a film often cited as the beginning of the Hong Kong New Wave. The film was a big hit, and so the following year Leong made Foxbat. The film is interesting in many ways, perhaps most because it is a Hong Kong production shot in English and featuring an international cast. This sort of thing had been done prior by Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, but those I’ve seen have all been co-productions with a Western-based film company. Foxbat was made fully independently, so it carries none of the baggage that studio-based co-productions generally have; it is a film with a singular vision executed with style and confidence. Like Jumping Ash it exhibits many hallmarks of the Hong Kong New Wave films, specifically a noted influence from European and American films, location shooting, and the multi-tonality that would come to define Hong Kong filmmaking during the ’80s and ’90s.
The story of Foxbat is based in current events of the time, taking the defection of Russian pilot Viktor Belenko as its jumping off point. On September 6, 1976, Belenko landed his MiG-25 Foxbat jet at the Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido, Japan. The film begins here as well, showing us the defection with scenes shot at the actual Hakodate Airport where it happened. From here the fiction begins, with multiple groups desiring the chance to study the Russian fighter jet. The CIA send Mike Saxon (Henry Silva), a James Bond-style operative, and he captures all the pertinent info via his photographic fake eye. He hides the film inside a candy so it can pass unsuspected through customs, but things get hairy when a goofy Chinese cook, Cheung (James Yi Lui) mistakenly eats the candy!