Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is Rob Lamb. Hey.
Speaker 1: You may have noticed we're not doing listener mails on
Speaker 1: Mondays right now. We're experimenting with a new format. We're
Speaker 1: running Weird House Cinema rewinds on Mondays. Listener mails have
Speaker 1: not gone away. We're going to keep doing them, but
Speaker 1: we're just gonna experiment with doing them like we used
Speaker 1: to do them, which is to say, run them once
Speaker 1: a month or so and have them be a bit longer,
Speaker 1: have a little more listener mail to choose from, So
Speaker 1: keep writing in contact. It's Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. And hey, let us know how you think
Speaker 1: this experiment is going. If you prefer it the old way, fine,
Speaker 1: right in let us know we can have that discussion anyway.
Speaker 1: Back to the business at hand. Yes, this is going
Speaker 1: to be Child of Peach, a wonderful nineteen eighties Taiwanese
Speaker 1: action fantasy adventure film. It's a fairy tale, it has demons,
Speaker 1: it has ridiculous actions sequences. This episode original we published
Speaker 1: three seventeen, twenty twenty three. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today's film for Weird House Cinema is the nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: seven Taiwani is action fantasy film Child of Peach, A
Speaker 3: truly special work of art, without doubt, I will say,
Speaker 3: one of the most frenzied and fairal movies we have
Speaker 3: ever watched on this show. This movie is so bizarre,
Speaker 3: so much, and so fast, and it certainly has a
Speaker 3: reputation online for being just a tornado of weirdness that
Speaker 3: I'm genuinely shocked. I had never heard of this movie
Speaker 3: before you selected it for today's episode, Rob, So how
Speaker 3: did you find Child of Peach.
Speaker 1: Well, I think my earliest exposure to it was and
Speaker 1: everything is terrible two minute clip mashup of scenes from
Speaker 1: the movie. And I watched this at some point and
Speaker 1: was just blown away by the weirdness, but also just assumed, well,
Speaker 1: these are just the highlights they took the you know,
Speaker 1: get a weird movie, if you get all the weirdest moments,
Speaker 1: you probably got about two minutes worth. And so I laughed,
Speaker 1: and then I kind of moved on. But then when
Speaker 1: we were talking about Thrilling Bloody Sword, another Taiwanese fantasy film.
Speaker 1: In the last year or so on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: I ran across it again when I was looking into
Speaker 1: Taiwanese cinema in general, and some of the extras on
Speaker 1: that disc from Blue Justin to Clue of the Gold
Speaker 1: Ninja video, and that put it back in my radar,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, well, if we've enjoyed Thrilling
Speaker 1: Bloody Sword this much, then I guess we've got to
Speaker 1: come back around to Child of Peach.
Speaker 3: There are certainly some esthetic ways in which this movie
Speaker 3: did remind me of Thrilling Bloody Sword, but I'm going
Speaker 3: to make a very strange comparison. I kept thinking it
Speaker 3: had another kind of bizarre but familiar energy, and I
Speaker 3: finally realized what it was, and it's that this movie
Speaker 3: kind of reminds me of Morose Co aka Jack Frost,
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixty four Soviet fantasy film that we covered
Speaker 3: a couple of years back around Christmas. And we can
Speaker 3: get into more of the similarities and differences in a bit.
Speaker 3: But I was trying to think why that isn't I
Speaker 3: think one reason would be, despite the fact that you
Speaker 3: could argue these are both kind of, whether intentionally or not,
Speaker 3: a kind of psychotronic cinema. They're both actually based on
Speaker 3: folk tales, so they have a kind of old soul
Speaker 3: to them, despite how weird they are.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, And there was something we've always have taken
Speaker 1: into mind when we're looking at a quote unquote weird
Speaker 1: film from another from another country's film tradition, you know,
Speaker 1: like how much of it is genuine weirdness? And I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of genuine weirdness this movie.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But then there you know, there's certain aspects of it
Speaker 1: that are in trench within a different film culture than
Speaker 1: one might be used to. And then there is this
Speaker 1: aspect of it that comes from folklore. And of course
Speaker 1: folklore is also it's a it's a rich welve wonder
Speaker 1: but also weirdness.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, fairy tales are like all fairy tales are
Speaker 3: kind of weird. If you're unfamiliar with them. There's just
Speaker 3: like the set you grew up with, so they don't
Speaker 3: feel weird anymore. But you experience the fairy tales of
Speaker 3: an unfamiliar culture and you're like, whoa, that is odd?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, the ones in your own culture
Speaker 1: are weird too, you just don't necessarily have the distance
Speaker 1: to realize that. Oh yeah, the idea of Paul Bunyan
Speaker 1: and a giant blue ox. That's strange. That's strange stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the particular folk tale here at the heart
Speaker 1: of this is a Japanese folk tale, the folk tale
Speaker 1: of Momo Taro. This is about a hero child born
Speaker 1: from a giant peach, and it's actually quite famous. It
Speaker 1: was I was reading that it was utilized in World
Speaker 1: War two War proper Ganda animation in Japan. It's been
Speaker 1: it's been echoed in various video game adaptations. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was astounded by this. My son super into Pokemon.
Speaker 1: He's super into this Pokemon Scarlet and Violet game. It's
Speaker 1: the latest switch game for Pokemon. And there's DLC coming
Speaker 1: out that is going to have three characters in it
Speaker 1: that are based on three magical animals in this story
Speaker 1: that are also in this movie. So it's like it's
Speaker 1: actually the moment Taro folk tale casts a long shadow,
Speaker 1: is just one that not everyone is exposed to or
Speaker 1: doesn't realize they're looking at it.
Speaker 3: Wait, Rob, are you telling me that the three guardians
Speaker 3: of the garden in this film are now pokemon.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've seen the photographs, my god, or they're not photographed.
Speaker 1: There's still they're not actual like wildlife photographs, but yes,
Speaker 1: they're on the way.
Speaker 3: This will become more hilarious as we proceed to explain
Speaker 3: the plot.
Speaker 1: I also thought it was interesting because, Okay, in this
Speaker 1: basic idea child a baby emerges from a giant peach
Speaker 1: and it is raised by old people. This story is
Speaker 1: also reminiscent of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, another
Speaker 1: Japanese tale. This is about a baby found inside a
Speaker 1: stalk of glowing bamboo, which has also been adapted many times,
Speaker 1: including in the twenty thirteen Studio Ghibli film The Tale
Speaker 1: of Princess Kakuya from twenty thirteen, which I watched not
Speaker 1: too long ago, and it was quite good, beautifully animated.
Speaker 3: Well, that's another thing that makes Child of Peach unique.
Speaker 3: It is mostly this a wild, mad cap dance of
Speaker 3: monsters and giant peaches peeing on people and stuff, but
Speaker 3: it also there are moments where it really has kind
Speaker 3: of a sweet core to it, especially with the story
Speaker 3: of the old couple who lives in the bamboo forest
Speaker 3: who end up adopting the peach kid as their son.
Speaker 3: There were moments there where we were genuinely like, this
Speaker 3: is so sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a movie that packs a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just bulging at the stitches. There's so much fact
Speaker 1: in here, and you know, it feels like a very
Speaker 1: full meal, but very satisfyingly.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe we should do the elevator pitch though this
Speaker 3: is one of those movies where you have to see
Speaker 3: it to understand it, just like explaining what happens, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't really communicate the vibe. But the pitch goes
Speaker 3: like this. When the King Devil steals the Sword of
Speaker 3: Sun from the peach garden, it's up to a baby
Speaker 3: hatched from a giant, obnoxious peach to kill the devil
Speaker 3: and recover the sacred mcguffin.
Speaker 1: That's it, that's the quest.
Speaker 3: And now there's also some rescuing of a princess somewhere
Speaker 3: in there. There's a big, old rotund knight named Knight Melon.
Speaker 3: You'll hear a lot more about him. There are guardians
Speaker 3: that turn into animals, so there's a lot going on.
Speaker 3: And this is another thing that kind of reminds me
Speaker 3: of the Soviet fantasy film Morosco, because whereas in that
Speaker 3: movie you get the feeling that they're just combining so
Speaker 3: many different kind of fairy tale elements together into a
Speaker 3: single narrative, this movie I don't know if they actually
Speaker 3: come from fairy tales in every case, but this does
Speaker 3: have that very like lots of different stuff thrown together
Speaker 3: into a blender feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost kind of a circus feel like, well, you
Speaker 1: got to have this act, you gotta any clowns, you
Speaker 1: gotta have your lion tamers, you got to have this,
Speaker 1: and so it's all there, three rings, all at once,
Speaker 1: look wherever your eyes take you.
Speaker 3: Their similarity I think has to do in part with
Speaker 3: the gorgeously weird sets and costumes and the onslought of
Speaker 3: peculiar supernatural images and themes, which again I think these
Speaker 3: are partly unfamiliar to us because they are based in
Speaker 3: the fairy tales of a culture that we're less familiar
Speaker 3: with in childhood. But also they just contain a lot
Speaker 3: of strange original elements that I suspect would be weird
Speaker 3: to anybody watching. So there's that in common. But then
Speaker 3: I think there's another similarity, one that's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to explain but really does color our experience of a film,
Speaker 3: and that is about the piecing of the introduction of
Speaker 3: unusual imagery and ideas. Do you know what I'm talking
Speaker 3: about here, Rob, Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's kind of a feeling like you're hit with one
Speaker 1: supernatural element and one speculative element and then wham, here
Speaker 1: comes a fairy and to narrate things from the other direction,
Speaker 1: and you can feel a little struck by it exactly.
Speaker 3: Both of these movies have this habit of kind of
Speaker 3: throwing a strange new character or image or statement or
Speaker 3: behavior at you, and it usually does not give you
Speaker 3: time to be like, wait, what is this? You don't
Speaker 3: have that sinking in time. It's still just ripping ahead
Speaker 3: at full speed to the next thing, right right. Another
Speaker 3: thing about this movie, and this is partially a warning.
Speaker 3: Love this movie, but it does have these major who
Speaker 3: is this for? Issues? So you look at this, you'd
Speaker 3: be like, oh, this would be good to show my kids.
Speaker 3: I would not recommend that. So it has a very silly,
Speaker 3: zany tone and subject matter that would seem to indicate
Speaker 3: that this is a movie for kids. But I think
Speaker 3: it is not at all. It is full of inappropriate content.
Speaker 3: There is almost constant swearing in the hard baked subtitles.
Speaker 3: So it has these subtitles much like Thrilling Bloody Sword.
Speaker 3: At least in the version we watched, they seemed like
Speaker 3: they like burned into the film itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I and just to give ahead just a
Speaker 1: little bit on quality like this is they aren't really official.
Speaker 1: There's no official release of this film, yeah, outside of Taiwan,
Speaker 1: is my understanding. So any copy you find of it
Speaker 1: seems to be like the same, sort of slightly degread.
Speaker 1: It's very watchable content, but yeah, it's not restored, it's
Speaker 1: not pristine by any stretch. And it has the subtitles
Speaker 1: in I believe Mandarin and English just hard baked in there,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you can't read them because those are white
Speaker 1: subtitles against white backgrounds.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, so there were parts where I really don't
Speaker 3: know what was happening in the plot because it's being explained.
Speaker 3: There's like exposition dialogue, and it's just white text on
Speaker 3: a white background. So I don't know. But okay, so
Speaker 3: there's a lot of swearing in the subtitles. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that means there is swearing in the original
Speaker 3: dialogue or if this is a translation issue. Obviously, the
Speaker 3: as we will note in several ways, the hard coded
Speaker 3: subtitles we saw had a lot of I don't know
Speaker 3: what felt like very approximate translations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the subtitles are very rough around the edges anyway,
Speaker 1: and then they hit way too hard, especially with the
Speaker 1: swearing at times. And I guess I'm willing to attribute
Speaker 1: this possibly to just, you know, the crude nature of
Speaker 1: the subtitles. It's kind of like, what if, what if
Speaker 1: any of us were given the task of translating Bart
Speaker 1: Simpson's insults into a foreign tongue that we're not a
Speaker 1: master off. You know, there's a certain nuance that has
Speaker 1: to be in place where you know, Bart is saying
Speaker 1: crude things, but they're not too crude or you want
Speaker 1: to imply this thing but not stated outright in clinical terms.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I kind of I've tended to give them
Speaker 1: a break on that and chalk it up to less
Speaker 1: than perfect subtitles in translation.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you got the swearing. There's also some kind
Speaker 3: of jarring nudity, not of a sexual nature, but just
Speaker 3: like peach Kid running around naked a lot. And then
Speaker 3: I think there's a scene where your night Melon character
Speaker 3: gets pranked by just getting his pants pulled down and stuff.
Speaker 3: There is occasionally really gory violence, but mostly not like it.
Speaker 3: It's just these suddenly surprisingly gory moments interspersed with mostly
Speaker 3: more cartoony martial arts action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and generally the violence is directed at some sort
Speaker 1: of a demon underling. Yeah, but still you know, heads
Speaker 1: will pop, brains will bleed, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Also, I don't know whether this one goes in the
Speaker 3: the kid's movie column or the anti kids movie column,
Speaker 3: but the movie is obsessed with urine. There is so
Speaker 3: much PP on everything. How many PP scenes were there.
Speaker 3: There's like Peach, the giant magic peach peeing on people.
Speaker 3: There's the dog like animal creatures peeing in people's food.
Speaker 3: There's other monster there's a lot of monster pee. I
Speaker 3: think there are at least four or five P scenes.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I counted three, but I might have missed
Speaker 1: one in there. This is ironic though, because okay, today
Speaker 1: of publication, this happens to be Saint Patrick's Day, and
Speaker 1: originally we were thinking, well, we should do an Irish movie,
Speaker 1: and that ended up being a whole slog trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what Irish movie would be appropriate and it
Speaker 1: would be fun. And for a little bit we were
Speaker 1: looking at nineteen eight six is raw Head Rex, which
Speaker 1: features famously features a urine scene, and we're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, really, I want to talk about that urine scene,
Speaker 1: So we pivoted to Child of Peach, which has at
Speaker 1: least three urine gags. But like we were talking about before
Speaker 1: we came in here, I would say raw Head Rex
Speaker 1: is a urine movie and Child of Peach is a
Speaker 1: pee pee movie, and there's a big difference between the two.
Speaker 3: And often what is in fact, in almost every case,
Speaker 3: the thing that's peeing in Child of Peach is not
Speaker 3: a human. It's big into animals peeing and peaches peeing,
Speaker 3: and Peach based Mex peeing.
Speaker 1: Yes, and very much played for comedy.
Speaker 3: Earlier, I did describe the weirdness of this movie as
Speaker 3: an onslaught, and I think that really is the right
Speaker 3: term for it. When we were watching it, we had
Speaker 3: to rewind many times because there'd just be something that
Speaker 3: was like what and then it was so bizarre, But
Speaker 3: then it was over too fast and we had to
Speaker 3: take it back and we were like, what just happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is actually a good movie to watch it
Speaker 1: on like a YouTube type format, because you need to
Speaker 1: be able to go back and re examine things you
Speaker 1: think you saw and think you might halfway understand. It
Speaker 1: is indeed just a NonStop sort of picture. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that everything is terrible two minute cut of Child of
Speaker 1: Peach and I'll embed that in the blog post for
Speaker 1: this episode at immutamusic dot com in case when anyone
Speaker 1: wants to check it out. Like I say, with any
Speaker 1: other film, I would think, well, you got the weirdest
Speaker 1: moments and that's two minutes worth the footage. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: pretty fun, But no, there's so much more weirdness in
Speaker 1: the film. Like, if you just watch those two minutes
Speaker 1: with everything it's terrible and you think you've seen it all,
Speaker 1: you haven't. You can then go and watch the full
Speaker 1: film and it's still got so many things to exclaim about.
Speaker 3: Yes, the treats just abound now.
Speaker 1: As we discussed in our episode on Thrilling Bloody Sword,
Speaker 1: it's our understanding that Taiwanese cinema at the time was
Speaker 1: kind of the underdog versus Hong Kong cinema, and so
Speaker 1: there's this feeling Taiwanese movies of this period, particularly fantasy
Speaker 1: action films like this, the filmmakers really felt they had
Speaker 1: to go big. They had to be weirder than Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: they had to be riskier, and the stunts had to
Speaker 1: maybe be a bit more dangerous. And I think you
Speaker 1: can totally see all of this in Child of Peach
Speaker 1: and a film that you can well imagine critics of
Speaker 1: the time and of the intended region thinking it might
Speaker 1: even be trying too hard, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like like, oh, well, they just really are trying too
Speaker 1: hard in this film. I don't think that's what most
Speaker 1: contemporary viewers make of the film, though it is certainly
Speaker 1: become a cult classic.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that means trying too hard.
Speaker 1: Like think of some outrageous comedy that not only has
Speaker 1: to have just a gag a minute, but also really
Speaker 1: wants you to make sure you got that gag. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you get that gag? We just did. Let me
Speaker 1: remind you of you know, like that energy of just
Speaker 1: like I'm going to assault your senses and I just
Speaker 1: really want you to like me kind of of energy.
Speaker 1: Which can be very obnoxious if you're encountering a film
Speaker 1: in its time, it hasn't had time to sort of
Speaker 1: you know, cure in the in the in the in
Speaker 1: the cellar or anything as this film has. Like maybe
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of something like an ace Ventura, you know,
Speaker 1: And I don't know what extent Aceventura has matured in
Speaker 1: the Cellar either.
Speaker 3: The Mega Dusk, Yeah is nineties Jim Carrey movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not exactly the same energy, but you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just trying to think of movies that
Speaker 1: are a lot and maybe that changes over time and
Speaker 1: with different audiences.
Speaker 3: Okay, I get you now.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, this film, like we say, it
Speaker 1: seems to have been a hit because it spawned at
Speaker 1: least one sequel, Magic of Spell from eighty eight and
Speaker 1: perhaps Magic Warriors from eighty nine, both starring the same
Speaker 1: actor and both from one of the same directors. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no actual trailer that I could find for this film,
Speaker 1: so we're just going to listen to just a little
Speaker 1: bit of the audio from the film. Just give you
Speaker 1: a little little tape. So this isn't going to be
Speaker 1: our normal trailer audio treatment, but let's have a listen.
Speaker 1: All right, Hopefully what you got from that is it's fun.
Speaker 1: Now if you want to watch the film before continuing
Speaker 1: on with the episode, just have to remind you that
Speaker 1: this one, this one's hard to come by. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for anything like an official release, I think you're
Speaker 1: generally going to be looking at him ported DVDs or
Speaker 1: burnt discs. I know Video Drum in Atlanta that they
Speaker 1: say they have an acceptable copy of it, and you
Speaker 1: can find it streaming in various formats online. It's exactly
Speaker 1: the sort of film that I keep expecting Golden Ninja
Speaker 1: Video to put out at some point, but it hasn't
Speaker 1: come to fruition. So look around. There's there's some good
Speaker 1: places to find it. And also there's that everything is
Speaker 1: terrible two minute cut. If you just want to want
Speaker 1: a sample platter of what the full film would consist of.
Speaker 3: All right, you want to talk about some of the
Speaker 3: people involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm not going to go as in depth
Speaker 1: on the cast, but there are some interesting folks to discuss. Now.
Speaker 1: Just a note before I go to I had to
Speaker 1: use multiple databases to get some of this info, so IMDb,
Speaker 1: TMDb and also the Hong Kong movie database. So some things,
Speaker 1: especially the movie like this something, are listed on one
Speaker 1: database and they're not on another, or names can be
Speaker 1: slightly different, So just keep that in mind as we proceed,
Speaker 1: all right, Starting at the top here, one of the
Speaker 1: two directors and also one of the stunt coordinators is
Speaker 1: Chung singh Chow. Dates unavailable on this particular director. Taiwanese
Speaker 1: director and his stunt coordinating and directing credits include both
Speaker 1: Peach films so you know this one and then the
Speaker 1: Definite sequel, as well as nineteen ninety one's Twelve Animals,
Speaker 1: which I've heard good things about, nineteen eighty five's Drunken Dragon,
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty fives Hello Dracula, which is a hopping
Speaker 1: vampire film and film franchise that is going to We're
Speaker 1: going to mention it multiple times in the ourt discussion
Speaker 1: of the people in this movie.
Speaker 3: I was looking this up. I think there is also
Speaker 3: a Korean TV series of the same name that is,
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, unrelated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a lot of questions about Hello Dracula,
Speaker 1: like is it a definite franchise or is this like
Speaker 1: the Italian Zombie franchise where it's all about how these
Speaker 1: movies have been released outside of the original market.
Speaker 3: Well, I was looking for a stream of Hello Dracula
Speaker 3: to try to see if I could, I don't know,
Speaker 3: just get a little flavor of it, because I loved
Speaker 3: the name. When you told me this, I first heard
Speaker 3: it in the big bopper voice, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 3: this looks like a franchise. I would love to check
Speaker 3: out if I can actually get a copy of this movie.
Speaker 1: The other director is chun Ling Chin, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two through twenty sixteen. Additional planning and directing credits
Speaker 1: include Dragonball The Magic Begins from nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 1: yes this is connected to dragon Ball Z.
Speaker 3: So as somebody who was never a dragon Ball Z van,
Speaker 3: I've only seen little bits of it and heard other
Speaker 3: people talk about it. I did have friends who were
Speaker 3: into dragon Ball Z. It seemed like a show that
Speaker 3: was very oriented around the concept of powering up. Is
Speaker 3: that accurate?
Speaker 1: Yes, I think, And I think it has almost as large,
Speaker 1: if not as large, a footprint in many people's sort
Speaker 1: of pop culture upbringing as Pokemon. But I personally don't
Speaker 1: know a lot about it. My son has not gotten
Speaker 1: into dragon Ball Z. But I know this is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing like if you have dragon Ball Z
Speaker 1: in your childhood, then it is a part of who
Speaker 1: you are for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: It seems like it provides a useful set of metaphors
Speaker 3: for whenever you're getting ready to do something important, you know,
Speaker 3: like you're going into dragon Ball mode. Maybe you're powering
Speaker 3: up for this test at school.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So this is a live action nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one adaptation of the dragon Ball manga and TV series
Speaker 1: that led to dragon Ball Z. So, for instance, this
Speaker 1: movie from ninety one has Goku in it, if that
Speaker 1: means anything to you out there, But anyway, Chin also
Speaker 1: worked on Hello Dracula, all right, and then the writer
Speaker 1: for this film is Chin Kang Yao born nineteen forty six.
Speaker 1: Extensive screenplay credits between forty nine and fifty three films,
Speaker 1: depending on the database you're looking at. His earliest credit
Speaker 1: is the Bruce It's Bruce Lee l I. I've also
Speaker 1: seen this pronounce Bruce Lai, which is kind of fun
Speaker 1: because it's not really Bruce Lee. It's just a guy
Speaker 1: who looks almost exactly like him. I guess are close
Speaker 1: enough to market him as such. But anyway, he is
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy five film Super Dragon Versus Superman.
Speaker 3: That's what title.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good title, and you know, implies some certain things
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure the movie is going to deliver on.
Speaker 1: He also wrote Hello Dracula, Dragonball, The Magic Begins, One
Speaker 1: Armed Swordsman Versus Nine Killers from seventy six, The Seven
Speaker 1: Commandments of Kung Fu from seventy nine, and nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one's Chivalry Deadly Feud.
Speaker 3: Okay, a few good sounding titles in there.
Speaker 1: All Right. Our star, though, is is wrapped up in
Speaker 1: this character of the peach kid, peach boy, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call him. Basically, like we said in the movie,
Speaker 1: a male baby is born from a peach and is
Speaker 1: rapidly grown up into a youth. That youth is played
Speaker 1: by the female actor Saw Lao Lin or Lamsu Lao
Speaker 1: or also Sharon Foster, so the name is listed different ways.
Speaker 1: I think these are maybe different aliases. Certainly, Sharon Foster
Speaker 1: is an americanized alias that was probably used as some
Speaker 1: of these movies were marketed in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: but this movie was apparently big enough a deal for
Speaker 1: her that it kind of earned her the nickname Peach Baby.
Speaker 1: So I think we can call her Peach Baby if
Speaker 1: we want, or we can just call her the kid
Speaker 1: however you want to cut it.
Speaker 3: But she doesn't play the baby. She plays like the
Speaker 3: grown up Peach boy who is ready to fight evil.
Speaker 1: Yes, playing a male character, but definitely has this kind
Speaker 1: of punky brewster kung fu spirit to her. Very very peppy.
Speaker 1: I've seen her described as a hung fu wonderkin of
Speaker 1: her time. She apparently attended a peaking opera school in
Speaker 1: Taiwan but quickly made a name for herself as an
Speaker 1: adorable fantasy action movie performer. On various databases, her acting
Speaker 1: credits go back to nineteen eighty, but her career seems
Speaker 1: to really take off with nineteen eighty six's Coong Fu
Speaker 1: Wonder Child, a wu Shaw film in which our youthful
Speaker 1: hero battles evil forces.
Speaker 3: Okay, could also describe the movie we're talking about today,
Speaker 3: are probably many others.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. And then comes Child of Peach in eighty seven,
Speaker 1: which apparently earned her the nickname Peach Baby. The Peach
Speaker 1: sequel follows, as do some other general youth versus demon films.
Speaker 1: Including twelve animals, sometimes with the actor playing a female youth,
Speaker 1: other times of male youth, and she seems to cross
Speaker 1: over into Hong Kong productions for a while as well,
Speaker 1: which isn't surprising given the apparent exchange that went on
Speaker 1: between the Hong Kong and Taiwanese films seen during this time.
Speaker 1: As Justin d. Klu discusses and some of the extras,
Speaker 1: I'm thrilling bloody sword But I think of a I've
Speaker 1: been seen one of the Hong Kong film she's in.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a very big role at all.
Speaker 1: But nineteen eighty nine's The Iceman Cometh, a movie about
Speaker 1: frozen then thowed swordsmen from the Ming dynasty who then
Speaker 1: have to battle it out in modern day Hong Kong.
Speaker 3: WHOA, that's a good premise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember much about it, but I remember
Speaker 1: I ended up watching it because became highly recommended from
Speaker 1: some particular like Hong Kong film enthusiasts, who were like,
Speaker 1: if you want to see a sword fight, watch this movie.
Speaker 1: It's the kids. Set your Highlander aside because The Iceman Cometh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: peach Baby's tremendous, so much energy, just wonderful charisma. She's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Totally agree. Peach Kid rules all right. Now we have
Speaker 1: an old man and an old woman who are going
Speaker 1: to be important to the plot. They end up raising
Speaker 1: Peach baby, and the old man is played by Tuchin
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty two through two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Beijing born actor known for such films as Dragonball, The
Speaker 1: Magic Begins. He plays Gohan. If that means anything to
Speaker 1: you dragon Ball fans. He was also in Hello Dracula one, two, three,
Speaker 1: and five. Note they seem to go up to six.
Speaker 1: So he's a very fun actor in this. He has
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, old man act kung fu comedy.
Speaker 1: He has one hundred and seventy acting credits on the
Speaker 1: Hong Kong Movie data base. He's also in Magic of Spells.
Speaker 3: This is one half of our Bamboo Forest power couple
Speaker 3: who end up adopting Peach Kid from.
Speaker 1: The Peach Oh. Yeah, there are a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of nuances to them and their relationship. Yes,
Speaker 1: old woman and again there I think these are their names,
Speaker 1: at least in the subtitles, because they refer to each
Speaker 1: other as such. They like old man to do this,
Speaker 1: and then he's like, old woman, do this and so forth.
Speaker 1: But anyway, The old Woman is played by Yume Fong
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty eight. She's apparently only in eight films,
Speaker 1: including Magic of Spell and Hello Dracula three. But I
Speaker 1: thought she was delightful in this very funny obviously a
Speaker 1: much younger actor playing an older woman, but it was.
Speaker 1: It's a very spirited performance.
Speaker 3: She she does great.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: There's a whole like chase scene between her and the
Speaker 3: peach where it involves the peach peeing on her. It
Speaker 3: involves her butt catching on fire because she's going too
Speaker 3: fast at one point. Uh. But it's great, and she
Speaker 3: and the old man have some really great exchanges that
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what is getting lost in the translation,
Speaker 3: but like the uh the moments where she says like
Speaker 3: I could born a melon and the old man says,
Speaker 3: you can't even born a potato.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're One of the main themes with her character
Speaker 1: is that, yeah, she desperately wants to raise a child.
Speaker 1: And at one point and their their their their agent.
Speaker 1: As they remind each other by the they're like, should
Speaker 1: we just raise melanite? What if we raised Melanite. What
Speaker 1: if Melanite was our son sent from the Buddha And
Speaker 1: they seem to entertain this idea until something better comes along.
Speaker 3: Melanite, who is a very large, full grown man. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: but they do note that he looks cute like a baby.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he does have those big cheeks. All right.
Speaker 1: One of the villains we encounter in this is I've
Speaker 1: seen her credited as Zombie Mother, but I think we
Speaker 1: can think of her as the Witch. She's very much
Speaker 1: a witch character. There's some big Baba yaga energy to
Speaker 1: this role. And I didn't realize it was a drag
Speaker 1: performance for the entire my entire viewing of the film.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I started looking through the credits that
Speaker 1: I realized this was the case played by actor Lin
Speaker 1: Koang jung dates unknown to me, but a stunt performer
Speaker 1: and actor who has a lot of fun as are
Speaker 1: over the top hell Escape matriarch of Evil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are multiple really good cross gender performances in
Speaker 3: this and yeah, the Witch is fantastic. She wears a
Speaker 3: ziggy stardust wig. Basically, Am I right about that?
Speaker 1: I believe so? Yes, Yeah, so she has a lot
Speaker 1: of pizazz. She's a fun witch and basically she just
Speaker 1: wants to find a good match for her two sons,
Speaker 1: a nice princess for one of them or both of them.
Speaker 3: To Mary, that's right, kidnaps a princess from a castle
Speaker 3: and like brings the princess back to Hell and she's like, well,
Speaker 3: you will marry my two sons now, and the princess
Speaker 3: is not interested, and then she yells at the prince.
Speaker 3: She calls the princess some cuss words, but she also says,
Speaker 3: you're engaging in fault finding with my sons.
Speaker 1: So yeah, fun performance. This particularly actor. I think it
Speaker 1: looks like maybe did a lot of like smaller roles,
Speaker 1: but maybe some bigger ones as well. So a lot
Speaker 1: of like swordsmen, a lot of thug credits, so you know,
Speaker 1: in action film, so one of the underlings who gets
Speaker 1: into fights with the hero, that sort of thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: but then let's talk about night Melon. Also sometimes credited
Speaker 1: as Watermelon Boy. This is played by the actors Sam Ping.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes a movie like this will just cast
Speaker 3: a big guy because they like he looks funny in
Speaker 3: the scenes, or so they think, but it's it's not
Speaker 3: actually as funny as they think it is. In this case,
Speaker 3: it is like this guy has a lot of I mean,
Speaker 3: his character is written in a hilarious way, but also
Speaker 3: he has a lot of just kind of look into
Speaker 3: the camera moments where I don't know it works, he
Speaker 3: just looks funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean they also he has kind of
Speaker 1: a ridiculous haircut. Yes, he's constantly in kind of silly
Speaker 1: looking clothes. So yeah, it's really played up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is we're talking about a guy who's you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a heavy set, comedic Taiwanese actor, and you look
Speaker 1: at the various roles he's played and you see, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, in Hello Dracula, he just plays fat cop,
Speaker 1: which there's no way that that's not just a comedic
Speaker 1: bit part. You know, I'm imagining just a cop that
Speaker 1: is frightened by a vampire and runs away. I would
Speaker 1: bet money on that being the case.
Speaker 3: But in this movie, while he is certainly the butt
Speaker 3: of jokes and pranks by the demons and so forth,
Speaker 3: he's also a genuine hero. So he's like he is
Speaker 3: in this film both a figure of fun and a
Speaker 3: figure of strength and courage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I think something that really is
Speaker 1: telling about this is that this actor also played the
Speaker 1: character Pigsy from Journey into the West and at least
Speaker 1: three films. Pigsy for anyone who's not aware, this is
Speaker 1: one of the major characters in Journey into the West,
Speaker 1: alongside the Monkey King. And you know, I think this
Speaker 1: is that's kind of the energy of that character. It's
Speaker 1: like a rotund, poor sign character who is humorous but
Speaker 1: also is a hero is also you know, very much
Speaker 1: fighting on the side of good. So that might be
Speaker 1: part of it, and we've maybe seeing some Pigsy energy
Speaker 1: in this role, because yeah, he certainly gets to act
Speaker 1: cowardly at times, he you knows, some pratfalls and lots
Speaker 1: of humor, but he also gets to just really kick
Speaker 1: butt too. He busts out a suplex at one point.
Speaker 1: There's a part where he does like a really killer
Speaker 1: centon drop. This is where like there's a demon on
Speaker 1: the ground and he jumps and brings all his weight
Speaker 1: down on the demon, like back first onto him. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets to whoop some butt as well.
Speaker 3: He also gets powered up for extra heroics at the
Speaker 3: end of this movie. I thought the mechanism they chose
Speaker 3: here was interesting. The way they power him up is
Speaker 3: they have the little fairy like do a cupid's arrow
Speaker 3: into him and the princess, so they, against all odds,
Speaker 3: fall in love with each other, and this brings him
Speaker 3: extra strength to fight the devils to rescue her.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, love is his energy source.
Speaker 3: And then once she's out of her jail cell, they're
Speaker 3: just like kissing through the entire final battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So lots of lots of fun with that character.
Speaker 1: I ended up. It grew on me, Like at first
Speaker 1: I thought, it's like, this is just going to be
Speaker 1: a one note, one dimensional comedic character. But there at
Speaker 1: least two dimensions in play here.
Speaker 3: Oh totally. I love night Melon. I think he's great.
Speaker 1: Okay, now this is a much smaller character, but at
Speaker 1: one point one of the demon underlings that they battle
Speaker 1: is referred to, at least in the subtitles as Hercules.
Speaker 1: He's very much this kind of muscly ogre character played
Speaker 1: by Wong gin Wii. And if you're wondering, hey, is
Speaker 1: this the same big muscled ogre dude there was in
Speaker 1: Thrilling Bloody Sword that got stabbed up the butt with
Speaker 1: the thrill Bloody Sword. Well, let me assure you that
Speaker 1: it absolutely is no way. Yeah, it's him. He has
Speaker 1: sixteen bulging acting credits on the Hong Kong movie database,
Speaker 1: playing mostly like giants, muscle men and bodyguards, you know
Speaker 1: the type. His earliest credit his nineteen seventy three's Kung
Speaker 1: Fu Inferno, and this is actually his penultimate role before
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine's King of the Children aka Hello Dracula four.
Speaker 3: What does he play a vampire?
Speaker 1: I'm assuming he plays a muscle dude. I don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of muscle did.
Speaker 3: Maybe a muscle vampire in this So he's a muscle
Speaker 3: demon here. But in Thrilling Bloody Sword, he was a
Speaker 3: statue that came to life. It was in that scene
Speaker 3: where each statue had only a specific place on their
Speaker 3: body where they could be wounded. And then with the
Speaker 3: I think he was the last one left and it's like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, we cannot find his weakness until finally The
Speaker 3: Thrilling Bloody Sword also had a little fairy character. Yes,
Speaker 3: strange thing in common, but the little fairy in that
Speaker 3: movie like used her X ray vision on him to
Speaker 3: determine that he had to be stabbed, and I think
Speaker 3: I think euphemistically called it the thigh and then but
Speaker 3: when they show it, he stabs him in the butt.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they had a different person on subtitle translation
Speaker 1: duties for that film. Yeah, I feel like the subtitles
Speaker 1: for Child of Peach would have been a little cruder.
Speaker 1: But speaking of that fairy, not the same actor playing
Speaker 1: the fairy in this film, Shadow Lou plays the fairy
Speaker 1: born nineteen seventy eight, a child actor who was in
Speaker 1: I think mostly Hello Dracula movie. She played ten ten
Speaker 1: in Hello Dracula's one, two, three, and five, and I
Speaker 1: think she is actually a Dracula, a vampire, a hopping
Speaker 1: vampire O Junghi in that movie.
Speaker 3: You mean the actresses in real life?
Speaker 1: Maybe? Maybe? And then finally, there are other wonderful cast
Speaker 1: members in this But the last one I'm gonna mention
Speaker 1: is Hwang Chong Yu playing the Demon King or the
Speaker 1: Spirit King. There are various ways he's describe the main villain.
Speaker 1: Born nineteen sixty one, Taiwanese actor who seems to have
Speaker 1: played a fair number of wise masters, vampires, and so forth.
Speaker 1: He was also a martial arts choreographer and director.
Speaker 3: King Devil also rules the villains in this just across
Speaker 3: the board have an awesome Hellish charisma. King Devil is great,
Speaker 3: the Witch is great, all the little demon fighters. We
Speaker 3: should get into more about the individual demon fighters as
Speaker 3: we talk about the plot, but yeah, everything from Hell
Speaker 3: is good in here.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's break down the plot here, all right.
Speaker 3: Well, it gets right into it. We just start somewhere
Speaker 3: in the mountains, and it is clearly it's an indoor
Speaker 3: set meant to represent the mountains. It's kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like the guts agro Crag, but with
Speaker 3: like trees and happy vegetation everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're told that this is somewhere in the
Speaker 1: Himalaya Mountain. It's the Peach Garden. It's lush and warm
Speaker 1: due to the power of the Sword of the Sun,
Speaker 1: which is embedded in the hilltop ex caliber style.
Speaker 3: Now, pretty much right off the bat, you start figuring
Speaker 3: out that you're not going to be able to read
Speaker 3: some of the hard burned subtitles because it tells you,
Speaker 3: you know, we're here in the Peach Garden. And then
Speaker 3: you see but right there in the peak, there is
Speaker 3: a different world the Peach Garden as the natural power
Speaker 3: absorbed by the Sword of sun It and then it's
Speaker 3: just a white text on white background, so something about
Speaker 3: the garden I'm not sure. But then a song kicks
Speaker 3: off and I rewound and listen to the opening song
Speaker 3: probably fourteen times. It's a great tune, really puts you
Speaker 3: in the mood for happy, happy fighting. And we get
Speaker 3: to see all of the Guardians of the Peach Garden
Speaker 3: going about their business and doing transformations. So who are
Speaker 3: the guardians.
Speaker 1: Here, Well, the subtitles tell us that they are. Well,
Speaker 1: the songs, the song that says us tells us they
Speaker 1: are the Naughty Angels, right, They're the Guardians of the
Speaker 1: Peach Garden.
Speaker 3: It says, it says turning into rainbows something I can't
Speaker 3: read that. Dad and moms start playing magic Naughty Angels
Speaker 3: dance on the roof.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exaccurate. So yeah, these three Elfish guardians, the
Speaker 1: subtitles tell us that they are tiny cock, tiny dog,
Speaker 1: and tiny monkey. I believe in general these characters are
Speaker 1: associated with the pheasant, with a domestic dog, and with
Speaker 1: a monkey of some sort, and we encounter them in
Speaker 1: their animal forms, and then we see them in this
Speaker 1: scene transform into their human forms, and don't worry. They
Speaker 1: have a third form that we won't find out about
Speaker 1: until the final battle. But they are the guardian angels
Speaker 1: of the Garden, and the Garden is ruled over by
Speaker 1: what is described as an intimate couple. I take that
Speaker 1: Demeano cult power couple who are raising a plump, cute
Speaker 1: baby boy on the magic nectar of a giant peach,
Speaker 1: the Holy Peach. So Mother Peach tends to the baby
Speaker 1: while Father Peach makes swords fly around their cavern home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does sword telekinesis in the cave while the
Speaker 3: mother like harvests the nectar that drips off of I
Speaker 3: don't know if there's a word for this. What is
Speaker 3: the little nub on the bottom of a peach called?
Speaker 1: Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know, but it's
Speaker 1: prominently featured in many of the peach designs we see
Speaker 1: in this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So the little peach nub drips nectar into
Speaker 3: a big glass punch bowl.
Speaker 1: It's a punch bowl.
Speaker 3: And then I guess she gets it from the punch
Speaker 3: bowl and then does she feed it to their baby.
Speaker 1: I believe that this is like the sacred elixir that
Speaker 1: is making peach baby strong.
Speaker 3: But these two are the masters of the garden. And
Speaker 3: then so they're living in peace and harmony. It seems
Speaker 3: like almost kind of like a perfect existence it's implied
Speaker 3: to be. But then uh oh they they one day
Speaker 3: some I think something feels a miss and they say,
Speaker 3: stranger is coming.
Speaker 1: What is this?
Speaker 3: And then like four big balls just roll into the garden.
Speaker 1: Yep, and they explode. Out of them come devils where
Speaker 1: this is the Devil king or King Devil and his cronies.
Speaker 1: They have come to claim the magic sword better protect
Speaker 1: the baby. And just another myth note or folklore note here.
Speaker 1: I think this character is generally referred to as an
Speaker 1: one in the Japanese tradition and certainly has ony notes
Speaker 1: into the character design here.
Speaker 3: So how to describe the King Devil? He's wearing armor?
Speaker 3: Is this kind of a Samurai armor?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks very very Japanese and it's inspiration which
Speaker 1: makes sense given the origin of the folk tale. And
Speaker 1: has big onwy teeth.
Speaker 3: Huge fangs that it almost like fangs that look funny
Speaker 3: to try to fit inside his mouth.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, like it's a mouthful like Luckily this guy's
Speaker 1: not actually having to too much live vocal acting. I
Speaker 1: think he's just kind of got ah and somebody dubs
Speaker 1: over it.
Speaker 3: But he's got a huge red wigs, a red hair,
Speaker 3: gigantic bushy red eyebrows. He's got a pail makeup on
Speaker 3: his face, the sort of samuraiish armor. His helmet has
Speaker 3: a big oh what do you call that kind of
Speaker 3: the upward facing crescent moon shape on it, like horns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he cuts a great profile.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, King Devil is so stylish. And so he
Speaker 3: gets there and he says, I want the sword, and
Speaker 3: of course, you know the Master is the gardener, not
Speaker 3: just going to give him the sword. So he manifests.
Speaker 3: He has his balls explode and they transform into these
Speaker 3: devils with green hair and horns who are wielding these
Speaker 3: long like pole arm weapons. And then there's a big
Speaker 3: battle that breaks out and the battle is amazing. I
Speaker 3: watched the first ten minutes of this film multiple times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a film where I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people you might not expect the martial arts action
Speaker 1: to be this good, but the martial arts action and
Speaker 1: this is great. I think maybe the martial arts is
Speaker 1: stronger in this film than thrilling, bloody sword that was
Speaker 1: still really impressive and thrilling, bloody sword. Like, no matter
Speaker 1: what your issues are with not being be able to
Speaker 1: understand all the subtitles or know what's going on plot
Speaker 1: wise at any given point, the action sequences absolutely make sense,
Speaker 1: like they have build to them, they have callbacks, they
Speaker 1: tell a story with the action, and I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a testament to just the tradition of Taiwanese
Speaker 1: and Hong Kong cinema at the time that this was
Speaker 1: just sort of this was so important to making a film,
Speaker 1: So it's great, highly recommend the action. We'll keep talking
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: But while the battle is going on with so you
Speaker 3: get the Master, the man from the cave, and the
Speaker 3: three guardians fighting off the devils, the king Devil goes
Speaker 3: up to the Sword of Sun and pulls it out
Speaker 3: of the stone, I guess, and then it's like shooting
Speaker 3: this green electricity all over the place. So as soon
Speaker 3: as he takes it, the garden turns dark and snow
Speaker 3: starts falling. So again I think it was established earlier
Speaker 3: that the sword is what makes the top of the
Speaker 3: mountain habitable and a lush garden instead of just a
Speaker 3: you know, snow capped rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then things go downhill from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the King Devil. Unfortunately, he kills the man
Speaker 3: and the woman, murders them, and casts the Guardians off
Speaker 3: of the mountaintop.
Speaker 1: But not before Mom makes a plan for Peach baby.
Speaker 1: She takes Peach baby, puts him inside, puts the baby
Speaker 1: inside of the Holy Peach, and the Holy Peach flies off.
Speaker 3: That's right, So it is. You know, it's Moses in
Speaker 3: the basket, except it's a baby in a peach.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, since the peach is alive and
Speaker 1: has personality, it's not just like random like where will
Speaker 1: this baby wash up? It's like, no, the peach must
Speaker 1: find suitable parents for the baby.
Speaker 3: That's right, it does a sentient peach. Also, while the
Speaker 3: peach is flying away, this is where we first meet
Speaker 3: the fairy. I think a fairy just randomly shows up, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and just says it's strange the peach garden is gone.
Speaker 1: She's mostly here, I think, to move the plot along
Speaker 1: in multiple ways.
Speaker 3: Oh and also, as the peach is leaving, she goes
Speaker 3: and talks to the dying woman in the cave, who
Speaker 3: she calls the woman Landlord. I thought was interesting. It
Speaker 3: was like, is the fairy paying rent? But okay, we
Speaker 3: cut from here to meet the old man and the
Speaker 3: old woman. They are living together in the bamboo forest
Speaker 3: and they are going to a shrine of the Buddha
Speaker 3: to pay homage. We see that they are a you know,
Speaker 3: they kind of crack wise, but they are also in
Speaker 3: many ways a pious and kind hearted couple. And they
Speaker 3: go to the shrine of the Buddha and have a
Speaker 3: conversation about how they are unable to have children. But
Speaker 3: when the woman goes off to wash clothes at the
Speaker 3: side of the river, she comes across a giant peach
Speaker 3: and from here unfolds an amazing chase scene. Rob, I
Speaker 3: don't know if there's anything you want to mention about this,
Speaker 3: but well, it goes over sea, not see over river, water,
Speaker 3: air and land. It has like a sort of dragging
Speaker 3: scene where the lady's butt catches on fire. It does
Speaker 3: involve the peach peeing on her, but she also does
Speaker 3: sort of catch it in the end.
Speaker 1: Right, right, It is a frantic chase. This chase sequence
Speaker 1: is well represented in that two minute. Everything is terrible
Speaker 1: cut and yeah, it's just includes a lot of antics
Speaker 1: with indeed, the peach peeing on her to put out
Speaker 1: the fire and so forth. But eventually she catches it
Speaker 1: and kind of locks it in a room back at
Speaker 1: the house, and so when the old man shows up,
Speaker 1: she's like, old man, you got to get in here
Speaker 1: and deal with this peach. And he's like, oh, old woman,
Speaker 1: you were just making things up. I can handle this,
Speaker 1: and then goes in and encounters the peach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he says he's going to eat it up. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go in and eat the peach up.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: There's also a very funny moment where in the foreground
Speaker 3: the old man and the old woman are talking and
Speaker 3: he's saying, you know, that's okay, I'm hungry, prepare a
Speaker 3: meal for me, and she's like, no, there's a haunted peach.
Speaker 3: And then in the background you just see the peach
Speaker 3: zooming around like behind their backs. It's like a ghost
Speaker 3: in a horror movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just zooming around ominously in the back. They
Speaker 1: have no idea what's about to happen.
Speaker 3: And it's doing Poultery guy stuff. It makes the furniture
Speaker 3: dance and spin around in the air, almost exactly like
Speaker 3: Trumpy from Pod People. It has similar powers yeah, but
Speaker 3: I think the fight stops when the fairy shows up
Speaker 3: to convince the peach to stop doing satanic black magic.
Speaker 1: Is she Yeah, there's kind of a fight that happens,
Speaker 1: where like the old man jumps up on the rafters
Speaker 1: and the Peach chases him and he's like, you stink, peach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, then the fairy shows up and she's like, hey, Peach,
Speaker 1: cut it out. These are some good folks. I think
Speaker 1: you need to open up and let them raise the baby.
Speaker 3: That's all right, he says, this couple are good persons.
Speaker 3: And then so the peach cracks open, it hatches, this
Speaker 3: beautiful holy light comes out of it, and then there's
Speaker 3: the baby. And so the old woman grabs the baby
Speaker 3: and she says, old man, take a look at it.
Speaker 3: Real cute. And from here they adopt the baby, they
Speaker 3: make it their own, and it is actually shockingly sweet.
Speaker 3: Like there's this sort of montage of her rocking the
Speaker 3: baby and singing to it as it falls asleep, and
Speaker 3: then we see the baby growing older in this bontage,
Speaker 3: and Rachel and I were watching this and she was like,
Speaker 3: what and why am I having feelings?
Speaker 1: I know, I felt the same way, like, the baby
Speaker 1: is very adorable, and she's there's the part where she's singing,
Speaker 1: touching your head and touching your hands like a little lullaby,
Speaker 1: and it's very sweet. It's legitimately sweet.
Speaker 3: Oh and we should mention earlier when they were at
Speaker 3: the Buddha shrine in the forest before they get Peach kid,
Speaker 3: this is when they met night Melon. So they're like,
Speaker 3: they're saying, we wish we could have a son. And
Speaker 3: then I don't know where night Melon comes from. It's
Speaker 3: like he falls out of the sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. He's on some sort of adventure.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and he drops down and at first you're like,
Speaker 3: who is this But they're like, oh, here's a big baby,
Speaker 3: let's raise him. And then they realize like, oh no,
Speaker 3: he is cute like a baby, but this is a
Speaker 3: grown man. And then we discovered this is night Melon.
Speaker 3: He's out hunting birds, I think, with his retainers, and they, oh,
Speaker 3: he shows off his strength by chopping down a giant
Speaker 3: stock of bamboo, like a tree sized one with his
Speaker 3: hands to get the bird out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now there's a wonderful jarring transition though, because we
Speaker 1: have this wonderful lullaby, you know, rocking, nice, sweet, my
Speaker 1: sweet peach kid into into slumber, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But then immediately we cut and it's like, meanwhile in Hell,
Speaker 1: in Hell.
Speaker 3: So the King Devil returns to Hell where there is
Speaker 3: a frozen old witch and all her evil demon children.
Speaker 3: And this scene is actually I think quite atmospheric and spooky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is supposed to be one of the
Speaker 1: cold hells. Now, there are numerous cold and narakas in Buddhism.
Speaker 1: I've seen it listed that there are total of like
Speaker 1: maybe eight cold hells, and they're defined by the cold
Speaker 1: sounds that the inhabitants make and or what sort of
Speaker 1: damage it does to the body. So are your teeth
Speaker 1: chattering at at hat in the cold? Or are you
Speaker 1: going ah ha in pain? Is your body merely covered
Speaker 1: with cold blisters? Are those blisters bursting and then the
Speaker 1: pus freezing over your body? Or are you so cold
Speaker 1: that like parts of your flesh have fallen away and
Speaker 1: we can see your internal organs?
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's one of those. It seems real
Speaker 3: bad here because the demons are crying out for relief.
Speaker 3: You see the demon children walking up to a mound
Speaker 3: and and then this old witch comes up out of
Speaker 3: the mound, like she pushes away the earth at the
Speaker 3: top of it. And the demons are saying or I
Speaker 3: don't know if they're demons, that maybe they're damned people.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: The people there they're saying, get up, mom, get up, mom,
Speaker 3: And they say, Mom, we don't want to stay here.
Speaker 3: But the witch says it's destined because we've done evil
Speaker 3: things before. I think that means, like in life, maybe
Speaker 3: they did evil things. So they're stuck here in jail.
Speaker 3: She says, we're all cursed. We're locked up in jail.
Speaker 3: And they say, Grandma, get us out of here. And
Speaker 3: then she says, it's impossible. Let's spend our life.
Speaker 1: Like this.
Speaker 3: Again. I think maybe something is getting lost in the
Speaker 3: subtitles here. But then the King Devil shows up and
Speaker 3: he's got the sort of Sun with him, and with
Speaker 3: the power of the sort of Sun, he turns Hell
Speaker 3: into a kind of peach garden. He's like, Okay, now
Speaker 3: Hell isn't cold anymore, y'all can chill out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he's recruiting himself some minions here with the
Speaker 1: power of the the sort of the Sun. And yeah, instantly,
Speaker 1: all of these newly won demonic minions take on a
Speaker 1: new air, a new likeness. So the old mom, the
Speaker 1: old witch here is suddenly suddenly has the ziggy stardust Wig.
Speaker 1: We see Hercules, the big muscly ogre dude. There's some
Speaker 1: other specialized demon troops as well. I think one of
Speaker 1: my favorites is the wind guy. He's like this demon
Speaker 1: underling that has a big sack of wind that he
Speaker 1: uses in battles either to blow his adversaries away or
Speaker 1: to create a really stiff wind that they can't walk into,
Speaker 1: kind of comedically.
Speaker 3: And the payoff on the wind bag demon is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Oh yes.
Speaker 3: But so the King Devil has defrosted the demons of Hell,
Speaker 3: and the Witch says, thank you, my King Devil, you
Speaker 3: give us new life and interesting, interesting take on the
Speaker 3: harrowing of Hell here, And so the Witch is obviously interested.
Speaker 3: She's like, King Devil, what's the sword in your hand?
Speaker 3: And the King Devil explains that he's taken it from
Speaker 3: the peach garden, and I think he explains what he
Speaker 3: plans to do with the sword. But most of the
Speaker 3: subtitles here are against a white background. So I do
Speaker 3: not know what he says his plan is, but it
Speaker 3: seems to me that his plan is to do evil
Speaker 3: maybe and to rule over the people of the world
Speaker 3: and make them miserable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, not to get too deep on this,
Speaker 1: but in freeing these people from one of the hells,
Speaker 1: like from the Buddhist perspective, like he's interfering with like
Speaker 1: the natural order of the universe, because again in Eastern traditions,
Speaker 1: the hells and hell realms are more about transforming into
Speaker 1: something better like this is No matter what the subtitles
Speaker 1: might say, I think we might infer that these are
Speaker 1: people who are being processed through this realm and eventually,
Speaker 1: in another incarnation, will be better for it. So he's
Speaker 1: interrupting that, he's and he's breaking out so they can
Speaker 1: continue to be bad in a way that's out of
Speaker 1: alignment with the universe.
Speaker 3: I think in one of the subtitles they do say, well,
Speaker 3: we've got a thousand more years here. Yeah, but yes,
Speaker 3: he breaks it breaks it off short. They clearly are
Speaker 3: are not redeemed. They have not improved their souls at all,
Speaker 3: So there's they still just want to do evil and
Speaker 3: they're going to help King Devil in that regard by
Speaker 3: brutally attacking a village. This is the next thing we
Speaker 3: see them do, Like the the witch shows up and
Speaker 3: she says, hmm, I get a thrill as I smell
Speaker 3: these people. I want to taste their blood, and she
Speaker 3: gets all excited, and they just attack all these people
Speaker 3: in a village. That one part, they're like setting fire
Speaker 3: to houses and beating people down and just slaughtering them.
Speaker 3: And there's one part where I think a demon attacks
Speaker 3: some kids that are swimming in a lake and their
Speaker 3: dad is on the on the lake shore and he
Speaker 3: I think he calls them like Bobby and Denny or
Speaker 3: something in these subtitles, and then he jumps into the
Speaker 3: water to save them, and then they send like a
Speaker 3: mutant shark after him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're shark demons, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those will come up again later.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they just they burn this city to the
Speaker 1: ground or this town to the grounds, village. And this
Speaker 1: is something this film has in common with Throwing Bloody Sword.
Speaker 1: Both films have, at least to my terrifying fire effects.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just more sensitive to this kind of thing now,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, oh, geez, It's like, like, that's that's
Speaker 1: not just a magic staff shooting a little bit of flame.
Speaker 1: I think they're using a flamethrower that looks like cheldy gasoline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we do see what seemed to be unsimulated
Speaker 3: footage of like houses burning down, so they burned some
Speaker 3: real huts and stuff for this.
Speaker 1: So the devil is up to some bad business and
Speaker 1: it really needs to stop. We need a hero, is
Speaker 1: what we need.
Speaker 3: We need a hero. And what do you know, back
Speaker 3: in the bamboo forest, Peach kids all grown up, super strong.
Speaker 3: Now he's split in wood with his bare hands. He
Speaker 3: goes and he digs out a well for his parents
Speaker 3: so they can have water.
Speaker 1: Now at this point, yeah, that the fairy has intervened
Speaker 1: sped up the development of Peach Kid because the fairies
Speaker 1: like this isn't happening fast enough. We need to hear
Speaker 1: out pronto. And so by this point it is the
Speaker 1: grown actor Peach Baby playing the Peach Kid.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think there'd been some earlier scenes where
Speaker 3: they were just like, wow, Peach Kid sure eats a lot,
Speaker 3: but needs to grow up faster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the grandma and the grandpa, the old man
Speaker 1: and the old woman. They couldn't be happier because there's like, oh,
Speaker 1: our son is so strong he can carry us around.
Speaker 3: Yes, So we see peach kid carrying there. I think
Speaker 3: they work as like, I don't know, loggers in the forest.
Speaker 3: We see peach kid, I think, by himself carrying a
Speaker 3: whole tree that has been feld. But then also just yeah,
Speaker 3: carrying the old man around in the forest, and the
Speaker 3: old man says.
Speaker 1: This is my son. Me up, yep, yep, he's very proud,
Speaker 1: very proud.
Speaker 3: Now somewhere in here, the king Devil and the Witch
Speaker 3: attack a castle and kidnap a princess. I recall this
Speaker 3: going by very fast, but suddenly they've just got a
Speaker 3: princess captive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then I forgot about the princess for a
Speaker 1: while until she becomes important again. So yeah, it comes
Speaker 1: by it very fast.
Speaker 3: But the witch says, it's your lock to have a
Speaker 3: chance to marry my son, and princess doesn't want to
Speaker 3: marry her sons, and the witch doesn't like this. She
Speaker 3: cusses the princess out and she says, you're indulging in
Speaker 3: fault finding on my good sons. And then the sons
Speaker 3: say mom, I want the princess. But anyway, the fact
Speaker 3: that the King Devil has kidnapped the princess leads to
Speaker 3: the organization of a gigantic rescue effort. So they're like
Speaker 3: these armies as symbol they're going to go to Devil
Speaker 3: Island to get the princess back. And who's in charge
Speaker 3: of this rescue plan but Night Melon himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There are a couple of other kind of military
Speaker 1: individuals who there's one one guy that is referred to
Speaker 1: as Bowie and the subtitles for a smug priest, the
Speaker 1: Dallas Priest.
Speaker 3: He's very yeah, he's very like full of himself. When
Speaker 3: he shows up, he's like, I will defeat you know,
Speaker 3: I will go with you. We will defeat the King Devil,
Speaker 3: and Knight Mellan taunts him by saying, like, what, You're
Speaker 3: going to defeat him by praying at him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, he's very cowardly in this too. The first
Speaker 1: peeing scene comes about though, because our hero, the peach
Speaker 1: Kid shows up and it's like I'm strong, I'm ready
Speaker 1: to help. There's also a lot of back and forth
Speaker 1: where the father, the old man, is like, I will
Speaker 1: go to war. You shouldn't have to go to war
Speaker 1: and fight the Tavil. But then they realize the old
Speaker 1: man is too old. He can't do it. It's got
Speaker 1: to be peach Kid, so tears in their eyes. Peach
Speaker 1: Kid goes off to join the army. But then the
Speaker 1: aren't The generals in the army are like, you're too young,
Speaker 1: you can't do this, And then the three Guardian animals
Speaker 1: show up in there, like how can they bully our master?
Speaker 1: Like that, let's go pee in their drinks. And so
Speaker 1: that's right. The monkey and the dog go and pee
Speaker 1: in their drinks that are set out without anybody, you know,
Speaker 1: looking out for them. And then they show up and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, let's have our alcohol now, And so
Speaker 1: they start drinking their drinks that now have animal urine
Speaker 1: in them, and they start making comedic gross faces about
Speaker 1: how weird it tastes.
Speaker 3: I think they have to run a night Melon and
Speaker 3: Priest Bowie have to run behind a curtain to vomit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a good time is had by all, Oh.
Speaker 3: But Peach Kid eventually, so yeah, we assemble the characters.
Speaker 3: So you've got night Melon and Priest Bowie and the
Speaker 3: armies and then Peach Kid eventually proves his worth by
Speaker 3: wrestling a bull I think, is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, like slams it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, slams a bull down. And then also Peach Kid
Speaker 3: is joined by the three animal guardians from the Peach
Speaker 3: Shrine on the mountaintop. So they're allied with Peach Kid. Now,
Speaker 3: I think maybe were they recruited by the fairy?
Speaker 1: I think so, yeah, yeah, because they were a part
Speaker 1: of the original guardian crew for the Peach Baby, so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're loyal. And they also eventually tell Peach Kid what's up, like,
Speaker 1: tells Peach Kid about Peach Kid's birth parents and so forth.
Speaker 3: Right, so they pee in the food and all that.
Speaker 3: But eventually Peach Kid is accepted into the Night Melon's
Speaker 3: retinue here and they're going to go attack the Devil
Speaker 3: Island together, but unfortunately Night Melon's forces are decimated by
Speaker 3: a vicious witch attack on the army encampment that involves
Speaker 3: an attempted seduction of Night Melon the destruction of his forces. Rob,
Speaker 3: do you're going to describe this in some more detail?
Speaker 3: What all goes down here?
Speaker 1: Oh? I mean, it's a frenzied action sequence with also
Speaker 1: that seductive sequence of where the Witch shows up pretendis
Speaker 1: to be the princess. Night Melon's like, oh, I will
Speaker 1: kiss you, and then she transforms into the Witch before
Speaker 1: he can kiss her, and hilarity ensues. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: the demon force attacks and yeah, it's a great action sequence.
Speaker 1: Stuff flaming in the night. We get to see the
Speaker 1: wind Demon and yeah, I think one of my favorite
Speaker 1: mini battles in the whole picture is Peach Kid versus
Speaker 1: Wind Demon. And we see this first tussle between these
Speaker 1: two in this sequence, and win Demon kind of gets
Speaker 1: the better of Peach Kid.
Speaker 3: By blowing the wind out of the bag through a pipe, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we realize, like this isn't over. These two
Speaker 1: have a scored a settle later on.
Speaker 3: So night Melon survives this attack. I think, does Priest
Speaker 3: Boe just run away?
Speaker 1: I think he does. He's like, I better pretend to
Speaker 1: be dead so I can survive, and then he does
Speaker 1: that and then he kind of crawls away.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the forces that are going to oppose the Devil
Speaker 1: King are decimated, but our key heroes survive. And at
Speaker 1: this point it becomes clear that this this effort is
Speaker 1: not going to succeed as a as a pure military
Speaker 1: venture with siege equipment like it originally was headed. No,
Speaker 1: this is going to be have to be a hero
Speaker 1: squad oriented action. We're gonna have to send our heroes
Speaker 1: in to the inner sanctum of the Devil King and
Speaker 1: stop him.
Speaker 3: That's right. So for the final for the Final showdown,
Speaker 3: peach Kid, Night Melon and the three Animal Guardians mountain
Speaker 3: assault on Devil Island. And I don't know we can
Speaker 3: talk about the various elements of this, but I will
Speaker 3: just say the final battle is a religious experience. It
Speaker 3: will open eyes you did not know you had.
Speaker 1: Oh Man so much. There's so much to talk about
Speaker 1: in it. Just for starters, since I mentioned the first
Speaker 1: part of it already, we get the second half of
Speaker 1: the battle of peach Kid versus the Wind Demon. And
Speaker 1: in this one, like peach Kid has learned the tricks
Speaker 1: and like the language, like the physical language of the
Speaker 1: fight sequence is so great. And eventually peach Kid gets
Speaker 1: the upper hand and they do this bit where they
Speaker 1: both have this tube and they're blowing into the tube
Speaker 1: and peach Kid can blow harder and stronger at this
Speaker 1: point than win Demon, and she makes the Wind Demon's
Speaker 1: head explode scanners style, and we get a freeze frame
Speaker 1: of like head chunks and gore exploding from this creature's head.
Speaker 3: Peach Kid as Michael Ironside as Darryl Revick, Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely wonderful. Like if the movie had ended at
Speaker 1: that point, I would have been like, fine, that's great,
Speaker 1: I can go home happy. Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, before the fight starts to get a return of
Speaker 3: the mutant sharks.
Speaker 1: Yep, there's a brutal fight with them in which was
Speaker 1: one of the sharks has the shark mutants has their
Speaker 1: fins sliced off by peach Kid, and then after the battle,
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, where'd Melon go? And then Melon comes
Speaker 1: swimming up with like a bunch of shark fins from
Speaker 1: the shark demons, and he's like, these are nutritious. I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat them. So we get a shark fin
Speaker 1: soup joke in there, which you know, I wasn't crazy about, though,
Speaker 1: I guess we have to keep in mind this was
Speaker 1: the eighties, and I think the messaging against the you know,
Speaker 1: the ecologically harmful and ethically problematic practice of shark finning,
Speaker 1: it didn't really come until like two thousand and five
Speaker 1: or so, and so yeah, and then also, I guess
Speaker 1: it's better in that at least it's played up as
Speaker 1: kind of a dufust move on Melon's part, because they're like,
Speaker 1: don't eat that Melon, You're gonna poison yourself, and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh okay.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, because they're demon shark fins, not regular shark fins,
Speaker 3: so yeah, oh, I didn't think of that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they get him to leave the shark Fins
Speaker 1: and then they keep going into the inner sanctum for
Speaker 1: this big battle yet and then the battle ensues. The
Speaker 1: action is just sizzling. We get that final encounter between
Speaker 1: Peach Kid and the Wind Demon. Meanwhile, we have Melon
Speaker 1: going to rescue the princess. And we mentioned earlier how
Speaker 1: that the Fairy uses love to power him up, and
Speaker 1: it's also in this sequence where he has to battle Hercules.
Speaker 3: Hercules, remember the is the demon from hell who's got
Speaker 3: big muscles and like a spiked club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much, this kind of onny ogre, kind of
Speaker 1: a figure brute strength, and it's it's ultimately a really
Speaker 1: fun fight because Melan holds his own his own pretty
Speaker 1: well against Hercules, but he's he's just not getting it done.
Speaker 1: But after the love sinks in and takes effect. He's
Speaker 1: able to just kind of like casually kill Hercules like
Speaker 1: he's walking away with his princess, and then he kind
Speaker 1: of like flicks a spear with his foot back behind
Speaker 1: him and impales Hercules through the heart. Is beautiful.
Speaker 3: That's the power of love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they could have played it would have fit perfectly.
Speaker 3: But but but we haven't gotten yet to the most
Speaker 3: amazing thing that happens in this film, which is the
Speaker 3: emergence of mecha Peach.
Speaker 1: Oh. Yeah, because everybody's at this point trying to I
Speaker 1: think the Witch gets dispatched. She gets blown up with
Speaker 1: a rocket shot by one of the three animal Guardian kids,
Speaker 1: and then it so it's just them against the demon King.
Speaker 1: But the demon King has this magical sword, and it's
Speaker 1: quickly becoming obvious that the crew cannot take him out.
Speaker 1: Like he's busting busting out against melon. Melon hits the dirt.
Speaker 1: The three kids take on hybrid forms, which are hilarious
Speaker 1: because one has long monkey arms, one has like a
Speaker 1: dog claws, and the other one has a single uh
Speaker 1: pheasant wing. And so they jump into battle and these
Speaker 1: these these sort of wild form path of the beast.
Speaker 1: Uh weapons seem to work well against the demon underlings,
Speaker 1: but they are no match for the King. The he's
Speaker 1: punching in with the wing. Yeah, and so it evenings
Speaker 1: are good for I don't know, but they can't they
Speaker 1: can't do it. They can't pull it off. And even
Speaker 1: Peach kid it seems unable to get the upper hand
Speaker 1: against Demon King.
Speaker 3: So they've got a they've got a power up and
Speaker 3: we get we get a power up here.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's the return of the Holy Peach. Peach comes
Speaker 1: flying back in Demon King. What slices the Peach up
Speaker 1: with the sword and the slices become other Peaches.
Speaker 3: I forget exactly how we get the transformation into Meca Peach.
Speaker 3: What is the sequence here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Peach shows up, Peach gets sliced by
Speaker 1: the sword, but then the Peach pieces a symbol voltron
Speaker 1: style into this large kind of like a Peach golum,
Speaker 1: like a big Peach marionette. Every time Mecha Peach is
Speaker 1: on screen on the screen in this movie, it manages
Speaker 1: to be the weirdest scene ever committed to screen. It's
Speaker 1: just such a god Bonker's presentation.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it it's and it looks so weird
Speaker 3: but also so familiar. This is something we were talking
Speaker 3: about before we started. I was like, Mecca Peach feels
Speaker 3: like something I've seen before, even though I know I haven't.
Speaker 3: I think it's just that Mecha Peach in its puppet
Speaker 3: form has like some visual similarities to other objects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I was getting notes of mister Bill, notes
Speaker 1: of a QP doll, and notes of Panic Peete, that
Speaker 1: little squeeze toy with the bulging eyeballs.
Speaker 3: That's really good.
Speaker 1: But then very much is its own thing as well.
Speaker 1: And it's it's got a weird energy too, because it
Speaker 1: laughs with a Donald Duck laugh or something very much
Speaker 1: like a Donald Duck laugh, going.
Speaker 3: Like so like the King Devil tries to rush it,
Speaker 3: but Mecha Peach blows a bunch of I don't know,
Speaker 3: the fog in his face and knocks him back. And
Speaker 3: then Mecha Peach peas on him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, peas right in the Devil King's face, and he
Speaker 1: makes a he makes a weird face about it, and
Speaker 1: the subtitle say tiss off and that. But the Devil
Speaker 1: King's not gonna, not gonna stop. He comes in again
Speaker 1: with the sword. This time, there's some like back and
Speaker 1: forth with the sword, and then the mecha Peach like
Speaker 1: bites the sword out of his hand and seems to
Speaker 1: swallow the sword, and then we get this awesome moment
Speaker 1: so that there's like, I think the first thing that
Speaker 1: happens is Mecha Peach just like knocks the Devil King
Speaker 1: away and like slams him through a pillar, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty spectacular looking stunt on its own right. And
Speaker 1: then he gets up. He's standing in front of his
Speaker 1: devil throne and Mecha Peach opens its mouth. Out of
Speaker 1: his mouth comes flying Peach Kid with the Sword of
Speaker 1: the Sun in hand, and Peach Kid violently skewers the
Speaker 1: Devil King like through his torso and stewers him to
Speaker 1: the throne in just an absolutely quality kill.
Speaker 3: Magnificent. I don't know what else we could say.
Speaker 1: Just great. Like the only really way to close things
Speaker 1: out at that point is to have a jumping freeze
Speaker 1: frame ending, which they do.
Speaker 3: They do, Yeah, and the credits are all and we
Speaker 3: get the song again.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god, and it's just so yeah, so
Speaker 1: delightful to end on that note. Where here are heroes,
Speaker 1: here's the Peach monstrosity still standing behind them, which again,
Speaker 1: is this this perfect balance of like awkward, weird. I
Speaker 1: guess it was a marion that like a large marionette
Speaker 1: that they used like cranes or scaffolding to create Like
Speaker 1: this was not a it's not stop motion, it's not
Speaker 1: you know, certainly not CGI. So it has a It
Speaker 1: looks kind of bad as you might expect, but also wonderful,
Speaker 1: and it definitely has a physical reality that you can
Speaker 1: get behind.
Speaker 3: Naughty angels dance on the roof once again. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: do you have anything else or should we wrap it
Speaker 3: up there?
Speaker 1: Oh? We should probably wrap it up there. But there's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many little details in this movie.
Speaker 1: It's like, I say, you can watch the two minute cut,
Speaker 1: but you won't. You certainly won't get everything. And then
Speaker 1: once you watch it, you may have to go back
Speaker 1: through it and watch it again to appreciate all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that they just pack into this This.
Speaker 3: Picture, Child of Peach truly a monumental achievement. I've never
Speaker 3: seen anything quite like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot of fun. So you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not the most Saint Patti's Day of movies. We
Speaker 1: could have picked, but a lot of fun. And you know, i'
Speaker 1: like today is also my This is my fifteen year
Speaker 1: work anniversary since I started with How Stuff Works. So
Speaker 1: you know, this movie's a party, so it's my party.
Speaker 3: Congratulations, Oh thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, Well we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 1: this one out, but we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there. Are you familiar with Child of Peach? Where
Speaker 1: are you familiar with it? Or are you familiar with
Speaker 1: it now? What are your thoughts on it? We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Also love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: who's just more more expertise in like Taiwanese cinema in general.
Speaker 1: If you want to see a complete list of the
Speaker 1: movies that we've covered on Weird House Cinema, well you
Speaker 1: can go to a couple of places like, I say,
Speaker 1: a blog about visas summutamusic dot com. It's a personal
Speaker 1: blog of mine. And then also the show Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema has a profile at letterbox dot com that's L
Speaker 1: E T T E R B O x D dot com. Great,
Speaker 1: you know movie reviewing cataloging website that I recommend We're
Speaker 1: a weird house on there, and if you follow us,
Speaker 1: you'll find a list has all the movies we've covered,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a snapshot ahead of what we're covering in
Speaker 1: the week to.
Speaker 3: Follow, thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuffto Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.