Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today we are going to be talking about the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two Taiwanese fantasy wusha film Wolf Devil Woman aka
Speaker 3: Wolf and Queen aka Wolf and Ninja, which was distributed
Speaker 3: by IFD, a company that apparently really enjoyed giving movies
Speaker 3: an English title with the word ninja in them. Whether
Speaker 3: or not the movie had anything to do with a
Speaker 3: ninja usually, I think it didn't. A bit of just
Speaker 3: slot ninja in there. So Wolf and Ninja, I guess
Speaker 3: that'll kind of work. But I'm gonna call it Wolf
Speaker 3: Devil Woman because I think that is it combines all
Speaker 3: of the themes of the movie. You definitely have a woman,
Speaker 3: she is kind of a woman, and there are major
Speaker 3: themes of devils, even though the Wolf Woman is not
Speaker 3: really a devil.
Speaker 2: I agree, I think this is the title to go with, So.
Speaker 3: Rob, I don't know if you have another contender in
Speaker 3: mind here, but I would say of all the films
Speaker 3: we have ever covered on Weird House, I think Wolf
Speaker 3: Devil Woman is one of the most shrouded in mystery,
Speaker 3: and by that I just mean that we were able
Speaker 3: to turn up very little objective information in English about
Speaker 3: the production history and the people who made this movie,
Speaker 3: at least compared to most of the movies that we
Speaker 3: watch on the show. But one thing that is for
Speaker 3: certain is we know it is. Of course, you know,
Speaker 3: movies are all the work of many people. There's never
Speaker 3: just one creator. But this movie, I think is well
Speaker 3: known as a product of a singular genius by the writer, director, producer,
Speaker 3: and star Zang Ling, known in international releases as Pearl Chang.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pearl Chang is the moniker that I believe IFD
Speaker 2: gave her just to like, you know, to spice it
Speaker 2: up in the same way that suddenly it's a ninja movie.
Speaker 2: Call her Pearl Chang. It's just marketing.
Speaker 3: So Zangling or Pearl Chang wrote and directed four movies
Speaker 3: around the early eighties, and now I have only seen
Speaker 3: one of them. I feel like I've got to see
Speaker 3: the other three because she has such a weird, bizarre,
Speaker 3: pleasing and distinct style. This is a movie that Wolf
Speaker 3: Devil Woman, I mean specifically, is a movie that has
Speaker 3: had a reputation for many years as sort of one
Speaker 3: of as like a low budget bad movie. People thought
Speaker 3: of it as bad, and it was sort of circulated
Speaker 3: on low quality VHS tapes and the kind of movie
Speaker 3: people would put on for a laugh. And it certainly
Speaker 3: does have elements that are very funny. But I also
Speaker 3: think this movie really does have a genius and a
Speaker 3: style of its own that should be appreciated. Like it's
Speaker 3: not just ironically good. This is an exercise in imagination,
Speaker 3: and I really love it for what it is.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's rigally entertaining. It is intentionally comedic throughout.
Speaker 2: So it's not just a situation of like, oh look
Speaker 2: look what they attempted to do, isn't it funny? Now,
Speaker 2: Like they're attempting and succeeding multiple times with comedy. We
Speaker 2: have a great central performance by Pearl Chang, who is
Speaker 2: at once funny, like broadly so, and yet never really
Speaker 2: never in a way that feels mean. Also, she gets
Speaker 2: she does get to be like the complete like stone
Speaker 2: cold action woman who gets to kill multiple batties. She
Speaker 2: gets to do that a lot, so she gets to
Speaker 2: pull those levers as well. But it's just such a
Speaker 2: captivating performance, like if nothing, you know, if nothing else
Speaker 2: in the film caught your eye, like she is like
Speaker 2: the shining star at the center of it.
Speaker 3: So like by the end of the movie, the Wolf
Speaker 3: Woman that the main character played by Pearl Chang is
Speaker 3: she's hardcore, Like she she's a stone cold warrior who
Speaker 3: is coming in to like be the coolest and defeat
Speaker 3: the enemy. But early on in the film there's all
Speaker 3: not just early on in fact, just different scenes in
Speaker 3: the film. It's also like she gets to do pratfalls
Speaker 3: and does like slapstick sort of self deprecating klutz humor.
Speaker 3: There's a scene where she accidentally eats too much chicken
Speaker 3: and gets drunk and then beats up a bunch of
Speaker 3: people in a restaurant.
Speaker 2: It's great. Yeah, you know, it's based on my observations
Speaker 2: of the film and also going off some of the
Speaker 2: extras that we were looking at from Justin to Clue
Speaker 2: from over at Golden Ninja Video. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: you have you have a filmmaker and performer here who
Speaker 2: is who seems to be to varying degrees, like like
Speaker 2: bucking the trends and the expectations of a female performer
Speaker 2: of a female role of a female filmmaker in a
Speaker 2: you know, mostly male dominated world. So it's it's really
Speaker 2: it's really inspiring to watch.
Speaker 3: She really embraces the wolfinness of the wolf character. But
Speaker 3: just in general, this movie is so it's not just
Speaker 3: the main character. The movie is a wild beast howling
Speaker 3: from the eighth dimension. It just has a lot going on,
Speaker 3: and so much of it happens so fast and with
Speaker 3: a little preparation for it. One thing that's been singled
Speaker 3: out about the style of this movie is like the
Speaker 3: fast editing and the action scenes, but also just often
Speaker 3: quite sudden and rapid plot developments. It's it's all really
Speaker 3: great stuff. It's absolutely nuts and it's awesome. One I
Speaker 3: do want to issue one word of warning if you're
Speaker 3: gonna go watch this movie, because there's a kind of
Speaker 3: unusual thing in it. There were some rabbit hunting scenes
Speaker 3: that occur on screen, and it is quite clear that
Speaker 3: they are unsimulated, so large warning. If that's going to
Speaker 3: bother you, you might want to, I don't know, have
Speaker 3: the fast forward button ready or just skip this one
Speaker 3: because there is unsimulated rabbit bow hunting on screen here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, an unfortunate reality of some of these older pictures,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's something like this that you can tell
Speaker 2: looking at it. Other times was often the case with
Speaker 2: a lot of horsemanship on camera. There is some you know,
Speaker 2: ultimately some animal cruelty going on there that may be
Speaker 2: lost to the average viewer because we just don't necessarily
Speaker 2: recognize what goes in to performing stunts with horses, right,
Speaker 2: But anyway, not to forgive it. It's there and if
Speaker 2: you want to avoid it by all means, avoid it
Speaker 2: now it's worth pointing out. This is our third Taiwanese film.
Speaker 2: I believe we previously discussed Thrilling Bloody Sword and Child
Speaker 2: of Peach. Both of those are very weird movies. I
Speaker 2: would say Thrilling Bloody Sword is more unrelenting psychedelic wusha
Speaker 2: and Child of Peach is more intentionally goofy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's.
Speaker 2: Interesting to try and sort of place where Wolf Devil
Speaker 2: Woman is between those two, because it's not nearly as
Speaker 2: psychedelics is Throwing Bloody Sword, but it has its moments,
Speaker 2: and on the other hand, it does have plenty of
Speaker 2: broad comedic moments as well, but certainly not to maybe
Speaker 2: the fantastic extremes of Child of Peach.
Speaker 3: The commentary track on the release of this movie that
Speaker 3: we watched the Golden Ninja release has some sort of
Speaker 3: general thoughts on it about differences you often see between
Speaker 3: Taiwanese woosh of films and those produced in the Hong
Speaker 3: Kong film industry, and some of the things that this
Speaker 3: is by justin the clue of Golden Ninja video, and
Speaker 3: he says several things are like, first of all, Taiwanese
Speaker 3: movies of this sort tended to be lower budgets, they
Speaker 3: would be made faster and cheaper than Hong Kong films,
Speaker 3: but also they tended to kind of make up for
Speaker 3: that by being wackier and more imaginative and having more
Speaker 3: unusual fantasy elements, often more gore. You definitely see that
Speaker 3: here in addition to what we already mentioned. There are
Speaker 3: some unrealistic looking but quite interesting gore effects and just
Speaker 3: more of a kind of wide ranging, fast moving, kind
Speaker 3: of fast and loose feel to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember one thing that he mentioned in some
Speaker 2: of the exers for Thrilling Bloody Sword is that he's
Speaker 2: kind of like the underdog status of Taiwanese cinema of
Speaker 2: the time period where yeah, they really felt like they
Speaker 2: had to do all these things. You know, Hong Kong
Speaker 2: cinema had the advantage, but we Taiwanese cinema could be
Speaker 2: even more daring, daring and stunts, daring and plot elements,
Speaker 2: the magic, the wackiness, what have you.
Speaker 3: I do really love a lot of the stunts in
Speaker 3: this movie, and it is stuff that you will have
Speaker 3: you will have seen in other movies of this type,
Speaker 3: Like there is the Wusha Star often has a kind
Speaker 3: of flying typeability or a weightlessness that they were able
Speaker 3: to manifest, so they can leap up thirty feet in
Speaker 3: the air or sort of zoom across the zoom across
Speaker 3: the room without their feet touching the floor. So there's
Speaker 3: similar kinds of stunts to you would what you would
Speaker 3: find in other movies of this type. But I like
Speaker 3: the way they appear on screen here. Often, like when
Speaker 3: the wolf Devil woman leaps up in the air, like
Speaker 3: you know, up into the treetops, it will be filmed
Speaker 3: in a kind of slow motion that gives her this
Speaker 3: this magical weight.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it has some of these these great woucha
Speaker 2: moments with the floating, the flying, the like strange physical
Speaker 2: interactions occurring by two flying characters nit air that sort
Speaker 2: of thing, Yeah yeah, and then some just straight up
Speaker 2: moratal kombat fatalities.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. There's there's a lot of sorcery too. So,
Speaker 3: like the bad guys in the movie have a habit
Speaker 3: of walking up to people and just blasting these huge,
Speaker 3: billowing gusts of fog out of their sleeves that somehow
Speaker 3: like either burn people or freeze them.
Speaker 2: There's the Lady Demon Minion who covers people with spiders
Speaker 2: and web yes, the Witch. Yeah, so there's plenty of
Speaker 2: magic to go around. It's what we're saying.
Speaker 3: Okay, should we do the elevator pitch?
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 3: A young woman is raised by wolves after her parents
Speaker 3: are murdered by the minions of a sparkly devil. The
Speaker 3: wolves happen to feed this young girl a plant root
Speaker 3: that is a sort of one of a kind plant root,
Speaker 3: a once in a thousand years root that gives her
Speaker 3: amazing powers of weightless leaping and martial arts. And then
Speaker 3: when a pair of heroic adventurers meet the wolf woman,
Speaker 3: they teach her to speak human language and live like
Speaker 3: a human at least sort of and they inadvertently open
Speaker 3: her mind to a bloody path of revenge against the demon.
Speaker 2: All right, Joe, what's your what's your tagline for this one?
Speaker 3: Who are you gonna call white gensing? Okay, gen sing root?
Speaker 2: Yeah, white gensing has a major role in this picture,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that, as far as I can understand,
Speaker 2: like white gensing is just a variety of gensying that
Speaker 2: you encounter and you can buy it. So I don't
Speaker 2: know if this was ultimately something where the actual term
Speaker 2: used in the Mandarin it's referring to some sort of
Speaker 2: mythical substance, because there are plenty of things like that,
Speaker 2: you know that we've discussed in the Unstuffed to Blow
Speaker 2: of your Mind before. You know, some sort of mythical
Speaker 2: substance that grows on a sacred mountain and has to
Speaker 2: be harvested. So maybe it was something like that somehow,
Speaker 2: you know, linked to the source material, and it's just
Speaker 2: been replaced in dubs and subtitles as white genzing.
Speaker 3: Hmm. Yeah, I didn't know what to make of that.
Speaker 2: All right. Normally we would we would hit you with
Speaker 2: some trailer audio right now, but as far as I know,
Speaker 2: there is not a theatrical trailer available for this film,
Speaker 2: either for its original market or uh, you know, for
Speaker 2: international markets. So instead, I thought we just might have
Speaker 2: just a quick audio sample of some of the audio
Speaker 2: nuttiness of this film, because there are multiple times while
Speaker 2: I was watching it where I was just like man,
Speaker 2: even if you weren't watching this film, if you're just
Speaker 2: listening to it, it's just absolutely bonkers.
Speaker 3: Maybe we can get some of the English dub of
Speaker 3: the demon talking.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yes he is, he is fabulous. All right,
Speaker 2: let's have.
Speaker 4: It such a great here, it's become my Yeah, I
Speaker 4: understand you came here to kill me, but it looks
Speaker 4: and things have change.
Speaker 2: All right now, if you want to watch Wolf Devil Woman.
Speaker 2: Before we proceed, first of all, bear in mind it
Speaker 2: has all these different titles. If you're searching for it,
Speaker 2: you might need a search for Wolf and Ninja. You'll
Speaker 2: find Queen Wolf and Queen and so forth. You of course,
Speaker 2: also you can always you know, get the original like
Speaker 2: man title and you know, in the Mandarin characters and
Speaker 2: throw that into search and you might be able to
Speaker 2: find it as well.
Speaker 3: But I think we should make clear that if you're
Speaker 3: like looking for versions of this on disc or on
Speaker 3: the internet, and you can't find one where the picture
Speaker 3: is good. Yeah, that's just sort of what you're stuck
Speaker 3: with apparently there as far as I'm aware, there is
Speaker 3: really no good looking version of this movie out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, hopefully that'll change, because I believe that changed
Speaker 2: with Thrilling Bloody Sword. We had the version that came
Speaker 2: out that gold Ninja Video put out, and if memory
Speaker 2: serves correctly, some better source material for it, something that
Speaker 2: can maybe be remastered, has surfaced and we can look
Speaker 2: forward to another even more magical release of Thrilling Bloody Swords. So,
Speaker 2: you know, as films like this become popular, you never
Speaker 2: know what they're going to turn up. We have We've
Speaker 2: discussed cases of this before, such as Santo in the
Speaker 2: Treasure of Dracula, where they thought that, you know, any
Speaker 2: any color print of the movie was just lost, and
Speaker 2: then they found it in a vault.
Speaker 3: I would really love to discover that in this case
Speaker 3: because so, yeah, we both watched it on the disc
Speaker 3: release by Golden Ninja Video, and that disc has two
Speaker 3: different versions of the film, both of which have problems.
Speaker 3: One is one in the original aspect ratio, which is
Speaker 3: like a widescreen version of the movie that the picture
Speaker 3: is really pretty poor, like the colors are kind of
Speaker 3: messed up, and it's not very sharp, and it has
Speaker 3: hard baked in Greek subtitles, which I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: that's your thing, but I guess they kind of pile
Speaker 3: up if you're also watching it with English subtitles or
Speaker 3: whatever subtitles on top of that. But maybe that's a
Speaker 3: good one to watch with a dub. Though in general,
Speaker 3: I can recommend the English dub on this movie, which
Speaker 3: is quite fun, yes.
Speaker 2: And I think that's key. Like one of the things
Speaker 2: about dubs is you want a dub that is at
Speaker 2: least mostly accurate, and you want the dub to more
Speaker 2: or less match the intended tone of the film, Like
Speaker 2: if it's a serious film or it has kind of
Speaker 2: a serious tone, you don't want you don't want the
Speaker 2: dub to be making fun of the picture. You don't
Speaker 2: want the dub to be completely off kilter. And I
Speaker 2: feel like the dub is wacky and fun in a
Speaker 2: way that the movie is wacky and fun, and at
Speaker 2: least to my ear, it never came off as disrespectful.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that is the wide screen version on the disc.
Speaker 3: There was also a full screen version, where from what
Speaker 3: I can tell, the picture is sharper, so it's a
Speaker 3: little bit better looking, but it's badly cropped, so you're
Speaker 3: missing a lot of the original film.
Speaker 2: That's the version I watched. I looked at the other one,
Speaker 2: the wide screen, and I just felt like the picture
Speaker 2: quality was overall two degraded for me to get into
Speaker 2: it as much, so I decided to go with the
Speaker 2: other though I will say it did probably make some
Speaker 2: of the action sequences, especially those in the last quarter
Speaker 2: of the picture, a little more confusing.
Speaker 3: Sure, I think those are somewhat confusing no matter what
Speaker 3: crop you're looking at.
Speaker 2: That's the thing, right, So yeah, that Golden Ninja video
Speaker 2: release was titled Wolf Devil Director the Films of Pearl Chang.
Speaker 2: It was a two disc thing. It's currently out of print,
Speaker 2: but hey, you can go to gold Ninja Video dot com.
Speaker 2: You sign up for their newsletter, maybe hassle them a
Speaker 2: little bit. Who knows, they might put it out again.
Speaker 2: I know they've re released things in the past.
Speaker 3: I would get a copy if they put it out again. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and by the way, we should say that that release
Speaker 3: not only has Wolf Devil Woman that one is sort
Speaker 3: of the main main event, but it also has some
Speaker 3: of Zangling or Pearl Chang's other films in uh. I
Speaker 3: think it In fact, I wonder does it have all
Speaker 3: three of the ones that she wrote and directed. I
Speaker 3: believe it does have matching escort, and I think it
Speaker 3: does have the one about the Flower.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I don't have It's in the
Speaker 2: other room, so I can't pick it up and look
Speaker 2: at it right now, Okay, but it's definitely worth picking
Speaker 2: up if you're interested in these films. Again, we rented
Speaker 2: it from Video Drum here in Atlanta, as we often do.
Speaker 2: So if you are local to Atlanta or visiting Atlanta
Speaker 2: with your Blu Ray Player, you can go over to
Speaker 2: Video Drome and rent it for yourself and just a
Speaker 2: quick shout out here. Video Drome, in cooperation with a
Speaker 2: couple of other parties, are trying to put together wings Fest,
Speaker 2: a film festival devoted to the magical work of Wingshauser.
Speaker 2: We've talked about wings Hauser on the show before because
Speaker 2: he was the villain in Beast Master two. Well, they're
Speaker 2: trying to they're trying to bring him in for as
Speaker 2: a special guest for wings Fest. So if that, if
Speaker 2: you're interested in that at all, if you're in town
Speaker 2: or going to be in town for it, go to
Speaker 2: Video Drum's Instagram account. They are video Drome underscore at
Speaker 2: l and you can find out more. It's currently in
Speaker 2: the kickstarter phase, so yeah, jump in and help fund
Speaker 2: it if that interest you.
Speaker 3: All right, would you like to talk about the connections
Speaker 3: in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna get into it as much as we can.
Speaker 2: This one is definitely a film with the least amount
Speaker 2: of information on the available databases, so we're talking you know,
Speaker 2: the movie database IMDb, also the Hong Kong Movie Database,
Speaker 2: which often provides additional insight into films from Hong Kong,
Speaker 2: Taiwanese and mainland Chinese cinema. But in this case, really
Speaker 2: not so much. Like we said, this is one of
Speaker 2: the more mysterious films that we've looked at. But we're
Speaker 2: gonna walk you through what we know. So starting at
Speaker 2: the top, Yeah, it's Pearl Chang Ling or Pearl Chang
Speaker 2: and so forth, the director, the the writer, the producer,
Speaker 2: the star and also she did the theme song vocals.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Yeah, she sang the theme song to some
Speaker 3: other pros that she was involved in before she was
Speaker 3: directing her own films as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she I mean, she is just a tour de
Speaker 2: force here. So she was born in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 2: According to the Hong Kong Movie Database, she was active
Speaker 2: from seventy two through eighty three, acting in twenty four films,
Speaker 2: writing for directing three. And I want to just add
Speaker 2: an asterisk there because I know that there are some
Speaker 2: films that it's thought that she did direct, but another
Speaker 2: director that may be just a pseudonym is attributed. And
Speaker 2: again we don't have a lot of information to go
Speaker 2: on in the databases here.
Speaker 3: From what I was reading and what was in the
Speaker 3: documentary on the disc, it seems that it is acknowledged
Speaker 3: that she directed four films and one of them has
Speaker 3: a director's credit that is a pseudonym for her.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, the three that are definitely her there's A
Speaker 2: Romantic Night in eighty one, matching Escort in eighty two
Speaker 2: and Wolf Devil Woman in eighty two as well. So
Speaker 2: this picture would seem to appe pretty late in her
Speaker 2: film career, followed only by a trio of nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: three films in which she acted the three famous constables,
Speaker 2: General Invincible, which she also wrote, and is that the
Speaker 2: one that she also may have.
Speaker 3: Directed, possibly, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: And then Fantasy Mission Force.
Speaker 3: She didn't direct that one. That is a movie that
Speaker 3: she started in along with Jackie Chan.
Speaker 2: That's right, yes, Now. IMDb also lists her as an
Speaker 2: uncredited actor in nineteen ninety one's Thunder Ninja Kids The
Speaker 2: Hunt for the Devil Boxer, but this is not reflected
Speaker 2: on Hong Kong Movie Database, and I don't think it
Speaker 2: was mentioned on the extras for the gold Ninja release,
Speaker 2: so I'm tempted to dismiss this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but once again, in the case of Wolf Devil Woman,
Speaker 3: we know that she wrote it, produced it, directed it,
Speaker 3: and starred in it in multiple roles.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I believe she plays her own mother, as
Speaker 2: we'll discuss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rob, I don't know if you've got a chance
Speaker 3: to watch it, but is a short documentary I think
Speaker 3: it's about ten minutes long on the Golden Ninja release
Speaker 3: that focuses on the life and work of Zang Ling
Speaker 3: or Pearl Chang what we were able to know about her.
Speaker 3: I did watch this, Oh, okay's quite good. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is good. So some of the things that they
Speaker 3: talk about in there is that she starred in over
Speaker 3: twenty movies. According to their research, she wrote and directed
Speaker 3: four feature films, not three. That there really is. I
Speaker 3: think it's not just a lack of available materials in English.
Speaker 3: This made it sound more like that there really just
Speaker 3: is not a whole lot that is publicly known about her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like she was She's thought to have
Speaker 2: ultimately been kind of a private person anyway, And yeah,
Speaker 2: that certainly factors into the lack of information here.
Speaker 3: Once again, the name Pearl Chang is the name is
Speaker 3: like her work name that appeared on international releases distributed
Speaker 3: by IFD. IFD once again they like specialize in releasing
Speaker 3: movies with the word ninja in the English title. So ye,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of mingo. Look them up. Ninja Terminator,
Speaker 3: the Ninja Squad, Ninja Silent Assassin, Diamond Ninja Force.
Speaker 2: Not to be confused with Lady Terminator. But it's interesting
Speaker 2: here that you would release it as Ninja Terminator. Just
Speaker 2: go ahead and dip it into both buckets, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder how much it has to do with
Speaker 3: Ninja's or Terminators. I don't think I've seen that one,
Speaker 3: but yeah. Anyway, So we learn in this documentary that
Speaker 3: Pearl Chang was trained as a singer but also in ballet,
Speaker 3: taekwon do and in journalism. So she acted in some
Speaker 3: films that seem now to be lost, but her big
Speaker 3: break was around nineteen seventy four or seventy five when
Speaker 3: she starred in a TV show called The Protectors, which
Speaker 3: was apparently hugely popular in Taiwan. So this was a
Speaker 3: show about, you know, sort of fantasy heroes, Marshall heroes,
Speaker 3: people doing martial arts and sword play. It was kind
Speaker 3: of a swashbuckler, and Pearl Chang sang the theme song
Speaker 3: to the show. She also played a wandering swordswoman who
Speaker 3: apparently became a breakout character. And then after being in
Speaker 3: this show, she would appear in a movie where the
Speaker 3: title translates to Armed Escort or China Armed Escort, which
Speaker 3: was it seems an unofficial movie adaptation of this TV
Speaker 3: show The Protectors, which had been her big hit. And
Speaker 3: then after this she would go on to write and
Speaker 3: direct her own features, which are generally Woosha revenge stories.
Speaker 3: One of them is called Miraculous Flower, released in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one. I think basically all of these had multiple
Speaker 3: different English titles, so there can be some confusion there,
Speaker 3: but one is referred to in the documentary as Miraculous Flower.
Speaker 3: This is sort of considered notable because a lot of
Speaker 3: the films of this type produced around this time would
Speaker 3: be shot mostly on indoor stage sets. But apparently Miraculous
Speaker 3: Flower had a lot of outdoor filming locations and it
Speaker 3: was quite lovely looking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This extra included one clip from some sort of
Speaker 2: a waterfall that looked a lot like the waterfall from
Speaker 2: Child Peach. I'm not certain, but I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 2: more than one waterfall in Taiwan. But at any rate,
Speaker 2: very very interesting use of outdoor filming locations for sure,
Speaker 2: as opposed to these indoor sets, which I don't know.
Speaker 2: I love a great over the top Taiwanese Wu shaw set,
Speaker 2: and we can get those in this picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get a great temple set for they kick
Speaker 3: off the movie with a rollicking crucifixion at an indoor
Speaker 3: temple set, let's see. According to this documentary, this seems
Speaker 3: less well founded, but just sort of general rumors about
Speaker 3: Zengling's reputation. She was considered something of a loaner and
Speaker 3: was characterized by some as maybe difficult to work with,
Speaker 3: or as a perfectionist and difficult to work with, but
Speaker 3: Declu argues in this documentary that it's quite possible that
Speaker 3: having a reputation for being difficult to work with was
Speaker 3: just like men in a male dominated industry reacting with
Speaker 3: alarm to a woman who is insisting on doing things
Speaker 3: her way. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We've touched on the whole difficult to work with a
Speaker 2: label before on the show, which can mean a lot
Speaker 2: of things. You can see it applied to people like
Speaker 2: say Kloskinski, who I think was legitimately difficult, if not
Speaker 2: impossible to work with.
Speaker 3: That was a hymn thing, not an other people thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but other times who can say, you know, it
Speaker 2: could be just the slightest thing possible that just goes
Speaker 2: to the echo chamber and then it becomes difficult to
Speaker 2: work with, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I can certainly imagine in any national context, really
Speaker 3: that a woman making films might well just like be
Speaker 3: have a creative vision of her own and she's like,
Speaker 3: this is the way we need to do it, and
Speaker 3: maybe some guys around her are just freaked out by that.
Speaker 3: But anyway, in nineteen eighty three, I think this is
Speaker 3: one of her final credits. She acted alongside Jackie Chan
Speaker 3: but also Jimmy Wang Yu and Brigent Lynn in Fantasy
Speaker 3: Mission Force, which was a Hong Kong a sort of
Speaker 3: martial arts fantasy horror movie. And then she also released
Speaker 3: her final film, General Invincible in nineteen eighty three, after
Speaker 3: which she apparently just disappeared from public view. So there
Speaker 3: is not really, as far as I could tell, anything
Speaker 3: known about what she did after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's been no death date for her,
Speaker 2: so one presumes that she's still alive, but doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to have been a public persona in any way after
Speaker 2: this last film, which is fine. We've talked about this before,
Speaker 2: like Warhawk Tanzania made basically just a very small handful
Speaker 2: of pictures and then disappeared. I'mbly still alive, but maybe
Speaker 2: just didn't want to be part of the limelight after that,
Speaker 2: And if so, more power to him and more power
Speaker 2: to Pearl Chang if that is the case here.
Speaker 3: Yes, retiring from a public facing profession and just living
Speaker 3: your life. I give that my full blessing. It's a
Speaker 3: choice I support.
Speaker 2: Now. I don't know about you, Joe, but you know
Speaker 2: it's you can't help but compare a performer, especially you know,
Speaker 2: a real larger than a live performer, to try and
Speaker 2: find some comparison to them, either like in current or
Speaker 2: recent or like a different nationality of cinema. And the
Speaker 2: main person that I kept thinking of watching Pearl Chang
Speaker 2: on screen is Amy Sedaris. I'm a big Amy Sedaris fan.
Speaker 2: And there's just something, especially in the comedic scenes, the
Speaker 2: way that Amy Sedaris really commits to these you know,
Speaker 2: weird and wacky moments. I felt like she had a
Speaker 2: similar energy here Pearl Chang did.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, maybe like hopping around and falling on your
Speaker 3: face with the rabbit blood all over your chin. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: There are multiple parts in the film where I was
Speaker 2: like this, Amy Sedaris would have totally done this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, the restaurant chicken disaster scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So stuff like that, And I don't know, Also,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm you know, I can't help but compare, and
Speaker 2: you know, think about Amy Sedaris as someone who also
Speaker 2: has like a very seems to have a very singular
Speaker 2: vision and you know, a big personality, but also is
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think Amy Sides is a loner
Speaker 2: by any means, but she also I've seen things where
Speaker 2: she talks about, like, you know, enjoying crafting by herself
Speaker 2: and her apartment and that sort of thing, So you know,
Speaker 2: I can kind of line them up in my own
Speaker 2: imagination on that level as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I no offense to Amy Sidaris at all. I
Speaker 3: can see her less in some of the other aspects
Speaker 3: of this role that Pearl Chang does so wonderfully, like
Speaker 3: the when she actually becomes the like the cold, the
Speaker 3: cold steel warrior at the end.
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree, when she gets into the like the
Speaker 2: stone cold killer mode. Yeah, it's a different act altogether,
Speaker 2: all right. Now, one of the challenges that and a
Speaker 2: challenge we're not really going to be able to overcome here,
Speaker 2: is that on all of the databases we had access to,
Speaker 2: none of the actors are matched up with a character name.
Speaker 2: And on top of that, the character name's very depending
Speaker 2: if you're doing the dub or you're doing the subtitles,
Speaker 2: so it gets very confusing and difficult to chart exactly
Speaker 2: who everyone is supposed to be. Luckily, Pearl Chang's character
Speaker 2: in this snowflower or wolf woman or wolf and queen,
Speaker 2: the various monikers that are attributed to her. She's the
Speaker 2: main character. She's see really the only one. You have
Speaker 2: to be super invested in and know what her name is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but as far as we can tell, I believe Sifing
Speaker 2: is the actor who plays Master Lee. Master Lee being
Speaker 2: the sort of he's sort of in the mold of
Speaker 2: the traditional male hero in the picture.
Speaker 3: He's the wandering prince with the powerful sword. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So not a lot about this particular actor either. He
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen forty two. This may be his
Speaker 2: most well known film internationally, but he was also in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six's Adventure of Shaolin, seventy eight's The Zodiac Fighters,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty two's The Hell and just basically a character.
Speaker 2: I don't know who played these characters. But he has
Speaker 2: a sidekick named Wong but also possibly Rudy I think,
Speaker 2: but will probably refer to him as Wong. And then
Speaker 2: he has a master, like a Shaolin master that he
Speaker 2: studied under, by the name of Master Chew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, all right.
Speaker 2: And then Master Lee's father I'm not sure if we
Speaker 2: know his name, but he has a father that he
Speaker 2: meets with and is sent on missions by This character
Speaker 2: is played by Se Wang, who lived nineteen thirty through
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, an actor who appeared in two films we've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show before. Nineteen seventy five is
Speaker 2: The Super Inframan, in which he plays a professor at
Speaker 2: one point, and also nineteen seventy six is The Oily Maniac.
Speaker 2: This was a Shaw Brothers melt monster movie. He has
Speaker 2: a I think it's a small part that he plays
Speaker 2: a lawyer in that man.
Speaker 3: Those are like the two ends of the spectrum, like
Speaker 3: the like with Inframan, you've got the most beautiful, holy,
Speaker 3: pure imagination ever and then with The Oily Maniac, just
Speaker 3: the seediest thing we've ever watched.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And to be clear, we do avoid most
Speaker 2: CED films, but this one has some CD elements that
Speaker 2: kind of like slipped in early on in weird house
Speaker 2: cinema that we have we generally avoid later on. But
Speaker 2: still very cool monster and I'm guessing a great performance
Speaker 2: by Weighing here as a lawyer. His other film credits
Speaker 2: include nineteen eighty six Is a Better Tomorrow directed by
Speaker 2: John Wu and starring Chawion Fat and the Leslie Chung.
Speaker 2: He has one hundred and ninety credits on Hong Kong
Speaker 2: Movie Database, so it seems like he was kind of
Speaker 2: like a workhorse performer that they brought in for this one.
Speaker 2: That's my interpretation anyway. And then as far as the
Speaker 2: music goes, the credited composer is Huang Mao Sean born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty, Taiwanese film composer whose credits include eighty two's
Speaker 2: The Green Green Grass of Home and also nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: one's The Devil. I will say the music and overall
Speaker 2: soundscape in this movie tends to rapidly move in and
Speaker 2: out of just electronic madness with demon growls, demon laughter,
Speaker 2: and howling wolves to like sort of traditional East Asian themes.
Speaker 3: There was one review I read where I couldn't confirm
Speaker 3: whether this was true or not, but it alleged that
Speaker 3: this movie also used some music from Dawn of the Dead.
Speaker 2: That would be believable. Yeah, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: these pictures that seem to play a little fast and
Speaker 2: loose with their soundtrack. I mean you find that in
Speaker 2: others as well. I was watching Ramsey Brothers Indian horror movie,
Speaker 2: just like last week, and there at one point where
Speaker 2: they just go straight into Friday the thirteenth music purchase,
Speaker 2: even with the sound effect, all of it just blatant
Speaker 2: legend ground here. Yeah, just blatantly ripped from Friday the thirteenth.
Speaker 2: So you know that sort of thing occurs.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's good, but I'd be really impressed if it
Speaker 3: just started featuring the Darkest Side of Night from Jason
Speaker 3: Takes Manhattan.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that was the rock number.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Fallen Angels into the Street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing is obvious as all that here though.
Speaker 3: All right, you ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's talk about this plot.
Speaker 3: Okay, Rob, I've pulled in some screenshots from the first
Speaker 3: couple of minutes of the movie that you can peruse
Speaker 3: while I'm trying to describe what happens here, because it's
Speaker 3: a lot to take in really fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first three minutes of this movie are incredibly
Speaker 2: weird and captivating. So if you're just on the fence,
Speaker 2: go check out the first three minutes on tuby or
Speaker 2: wherever you find a rip of it. I think you'll
Speaker 2: be convinced.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the film begins with lightning ripping across the
Speaker 3: sky that is covered in smoke. We see a dead
Speaker 3: tree with barren limbs burning in the night. Then we
Speaker 3: see a golden idol in the crude shape of a
Speaker 3: man photographed in a room with violet walls. Then some
Speaker 3: kind of throne room or temple with like an elevated
Speaker 3: area above, you know, in the center of the room,
Speaker 3: big old platform in the center. Hooded figures in black
Speaker 3: and white carry candles across the floor and gather in
Speaker 3: advance of an ominous ceremony. Then we get our title screen.
Speaker 3: In this version it says wolf and ninja. So the
Speaker 3: hooded figures begin to approach the altar, the head of
Speaker 3: the temple, and they are carrying with them a man.
Speaker 3: The man is prone and tied to a beam. But wait,
Speaker 3: it's not just a beam. It is a cross. It
Speaker 3: is a man tied to a blocky red crucifix, and
Speaker 3: the man on the cross is hoisted up above the
Speaker 3: gathered congregation of evil. He's tied to the cross, and
Speaker 3: then a horrible figure takes center stage. It is someone
Speaker 3: in dark clothing wearing a red and gold cape and
Speaker 3: a glittering silver conical hat with a veil that falls
Speaker 3: over the face and hangs down in front and back,
Speaker 3: and on the front of the conical part of the
Speaker 3: hat there is a hot pink skull and crossbones. So
Speaker 3: it is essentially a pirate glam rock capirote or like
Speaker 3: a penitent's hood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the Red Devil, which we'll find out later.
Speaker 2: And he's just fabulous, just dressed to the nines here
Speaker 2: and seem conceived in a way to where it does
Speaker 2: seem like multiple influences are coming together, Like this is
Speaker 2: not sort of your stereotypical like Hong Kong action picture
Speaker 2: Wu Shaw villain. Like there are elements like you said
Speaker 2: of like you know, Spanish Spanish inquisition perhaps and penitents
Speaker 2: and also I guess pirates and also like disco warriors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the pink skull and crossbones. Yeah, but the sparkles,
Speaker 3: it's like glittering.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So already just like three minutes into the picture,
Speaker 2: we have this character. We have a black magic crucifixion.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on.
Speaker 3: So we got several observers looking on in fear, others
Speaker 3: looking on with excitement. Some of the people in the
Speaker 3: room here are like vampires and Orcs. There's one guy
Speaker 3: that's just I don't know is the like, is the
Speaker 3: green orc mask supposed to be a vampire. I don't
Speaker 3: know exactly what this guy's deal is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of spirit Halloween mask masks going on
Speaker 2: that are not convincing as actual fleshy faces. They look
Speaker 2: like Halloween masks. But I wouldn't change them for anything. No, No,
Speaker 2: they they ultimately work within the context of this film,
Speaker 2: but they are, I guess, if you want to get critical,
Speaker 2: some of the weakest choices in the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the glam rock demon priest who he also
Speaker 3: has I didn't even get to this part yet. He's
Speaker 3: got knives for fingers, but they're not like Freddy Krueger knives,
Speaker 3: which are oriented what you might say, perpendicular to like
Speaker 3: the knuckles on the on the fingers. These are like
Speaker 3: sort of knife shovels that extend about a foot out
Speaker 3: from the tips of the fingers, like fingernails, essentially along
Speaker 3: the contours of what a fingernail would be, but more
Speaker 3: curved inward and sharper.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the dub for this character's voice is terrific.
Speaker 2: It's just just the right level of cheesy over the
Speaker 2: top villain. That works perfectly with such a cheesy over
Speaker 2: the top villain, so again that the dub matches the
Speaker 2: context of a picture perfectly.
Speaker 3: Here. Yes, so the demon priest picks up a doll
Speaker 3: or an idol and then pierces its heart with a stick.
Speaker 3: And then this, by the principle commonly associated in movies
Speaker 3: with a voodoo doll, causes an equivalent wound to explode
Speaker 3: on the chest of the man tied to the cross.
Speaker 3: So the wound is the wound here is actually rendered
Speaker 3: with cell animation, which I love. And so like a
Speaker 3: hole that looks almost like a gap blasted in rock
Speaker 3: with cracks all around, it opens up over the man's
Speaker 3: heart and red blood pours out. And again this is
Speaker 3: on a on a film like film like still film
Speaker 3: of the guy, and it's animated on top of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's I love it. It's just it's like
Speaker 2: they could have done more of just like a traditional
Speaker 2: blood effect, and that would have been that would have
Speaker 2: been great. Years later, this would have probably been cgi blood,
Speaker 2: but instead we have this. We're between those two and
Speaker 2: it ultimately looks really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some really great cell animation that comes in
Speaker 3: later too, Like in the very last scene there's some
Speaker 3: cell animated fire that is beautiful. Also, I should say,
Speaker 3: throughout the scene, the demon or the demon priest, he
Speaker 3: keeps making a grunting sound which then echoes back a lot.
Speaker 3: So imagine it's this voice that goes like yo, but
Speaker 3: then it echoes thirty times.
Speaker 2: Yes, there is a lot of that. Like I said,
Speaker 2: the soundscape for this picture is pretty Bonker's just on
Speaker 2: its own.
Speaker 3: Then the demon priest takes the doll and turns it
Speaker 3: upside down and dunks it headfirst into this big old
Speaker 3: vat of frothy red goo, and this causes some kind
Speaker 3: of pain and suffering for the man on the cross.
Speaker 3: And then in the background of the room there is
Speaker 3: a couple holding a baby wrapped in yellow swaddling, and
Speaker 3: I'm just like, this is not the kind of event
Speaker 3: you bring a baby to.
Speaker 2: And I think they're having the same realization. They're like, honey,
Speaker 2: I think it's time we fled the cult. I think
Speaker 2: the devil Colt has gotten a little too heavy for us,
Speaker 2: and we need to think about raising this child somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Exactly, they're observing this ritual torture in horror, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what they're doing here, but they obviously
Speaker 3: don't like it. And then we see the man on
Speaker 3: the cross. He spits blood and dies. The doll falls
Speaker 3: to the floor and shatters, and then suddenly we just
Speaker 3: smash cut to the mother and the father we saw
Speaker 3: in the room. They're now outside on a snow covered
Speaker 3: mountain side, surrounded by evergreen trees, fleeing for their lives
Speaker 3: with their baby in their arms. The man and the
Speaker 3: woman are frightened and exhausted, and we see them both
Speaker 3: carrying swords, so I guess this is like a married
Speaker 3: pair of warriors. And while running through the snow, the
Speaker 3: man and woman are attacked by fighters rest in red,
Speaker 3: wielding swords and pole arms. And then the leader of
Speaker 3: the demon fighters appears, and he is one of the
Speaker 3: guys we saw at the ceremony, the guy in the
Speaker 3: goofiest of all the masks. It's like the vampire orc mask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the other mask looked cooler, So I do wonder
Speaker 2: why they take this one to do these things with.
Speaker 3: It's good, so he said, the demon leader. He goes
Speaker 3: to the he's talking to the parents and he says, traitor,
Speaker 3: you will be punished for your treachery, and the mother
Speaker 3: says to him, we'd rather die than go back to
Speaker 3: your hell and serve under you. So did they come
Speaker 3: from Hell? Possibly? Well maybe al And then the parents
Speaker 3: they the parents are brave fighters, so they finned off
Speaker 3: the demon hnchmen. Initially they sort of duel with them
Speaker 3: while they try to escape up the mountain. I think
Speaker 3: we do learn that the mother's name is Jade. And
Speaker 3: then when the parents are eventually cornered by the fighters
Speaker 3: from Hell, they decide to.
Speaker 2: Things.
Speaker 3: I was about to say things start getting weird, but
Speaker 3: they've been weird. Here's another weird thing. They decide to
Speaker 3: sacrifice themselves to protect their baby. And the way they
Speaker 3: decide to do this is they stab each other with
Speaker 3: swords and then rapidly slam their heads into the ground
Speaker 3: until the headbutting of the mountain causes an avalanche, and
Speaker 3: the avalanche comes down and covers everything with snow. And
Speaker 3: then they bleed on their child and they say the
Speaker 3: blood will keep the baby warm and protect her from
Speaker 3: the snow.
Speaker 2: Wow. So many, so many issues of this plan. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: and I have to say too, in that crazy moment
Speaker 2: when this first happens, it's not entirely clear that they
Speaker 2: are stabbing themselves. It look I thought they were stabbing
Speaker 2: the baby and running the baby. Yeah, Like I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this movie got so strange and weird
Speaker 2: and dark all of a sudden I had It wasn't
Speaker 2: until the second time I was going through it with
Speaker 2: the dub and the subtitle of them like, Okay, they're
Speaker 2: clearly stabbing themselves, And then I understood this ridiculous plots
Speaker 2: of theirs to bleed all over their baby so that
Speaker 2: their warm blood will keep the baby warm, as if
Speaker 2: blood is has self sustaining warmth for us. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: you know, within a mythic context, fine.
Speaker 3: I criticize this plan as not realistic.
Speaker 2: I probably supposed to be more symbolic than realistic, I recognize.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the avalanche comes down and buries them, but
Speaker 3: the Devil warriors are not satisfied. They go digging in
Speaker 3: the snow to find the three of them, and they
Speaker 3: eventually do find the two parents, but before they can
Speaker 3: collect the child from underneath the avalanche, they are driven
Speaker 3: away by wolves. Wolves come out howling and chase away
Speaker 3: the demon fighters, but actually are these wolves?
Speaker 4: Know?
Speaker 3: They're they're sweet doggies. They're they look like good boys.
Speaker 2: They're just straight up German shepherds without anything ad like
Speaker 2: they're not wearing anything weird, like they didn't put extra
Speaker 2: fur or anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, uh, but so I love these dogs. The dogs
Speaker 3: run up and they start eating the parents' bodies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they distress the bodies to pieces and big
Speaker 2: bloody splashes in the white snow.
Speaker 3: So yeah, they're like ripping arms off and stuff. But
Speaker 3: then when a quote wolf finds the baby, the wolf
Speaker 3: does not harm the baby and instead brings her back
Speaker 3: to the wolf den, which is like a cave of ice,
Speaker 3: a frosty cave where the wolves make their home, and
Speaker 3: we see the wolf carrying the baby along the way,
Speaker 3: which is, by the way, clearly just like a weightless
Speaker 3: yellow bundle of cloth. But then back at the cave,
Speaker 3: the wolf mother takes care of the baby and crouches
Speaker 3: over her to protect her, and then we see time
Speaker 3: is passing.
Speaker 2: This includes multiple shots though, of the baby crying quite
Speaker 2: audibly while the wolf like growls at the baby and
Speaker 2: the baby's covered with blood, and this feels like it
Speaker 2: goes on for about five minutes.
Speaker 3: Yes, but the wolf is it is weird, but the
Speaker 3: wolf is protecting the baby. Yes. So years into the
Speaker 3: future we see that the child is growing up now
Speaker 3: that I don't know how old she's supposed to be
Speaker 3: in the scene, but she's older now. She can walk
Speaker 3: around and stuff. She's living with the wolves, and she
Speaker 3: is dressed in furs and pelts and just like tearing
Speaker 3: into a big, old, bloody hunk of raw meat, just
Speaker 3: like eating the raw meat, getting blood everywhere. And we
Speaker 3: see her practicing hunting. She tries to hunt a rabbit
Speaker 3: like her wolf family here does, but she fails and
Speaker 3: she ends up tumbling down a hill and getting injured
Speaker 3: and then lying back in the cave covered in blood
Speaker 3: from her injuries while trying to hunt. The wolf girl
Speaker 3: is nursed back to health by her wolf mother, and
Speaker 3: in fact, the wolf mother brings her some kind of medicine.
Speaker 3: The wolf I guess has medical knowledge and brings her
Speaker 3: strange plant matter found from outside. What could this be?
Speaker 3: I believe this is going to be the special ginseng
Speaker 3: root that we learn about later.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're all a part of the wolf devil
Speaker 2: woman diet. If you may be adherence to the Wolf
Speaker 2: Devil Woman diet. It's just raw meat and white genzy.
Speaker 2: But you can eat as much white gen sing as
Speaker 2: you want.
Speaker 3: Oh but when you follow the Wolf Devil Woman diet,
Speaker 3: your your hair turns white and then turns black again.
Speaker 3: But then at intermittent periods for the rest of your life,
Speaker 3: we'll just turn white at certain times.
Speaker 2: There are side effects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, time okay, So time passes once again, and when
Speaker 3: we once again meet the Wolf Girl, she has become
Speaker 3: the Wolf Devil Woman. So now we see Pearl Chang
Speaker 3: Zengling is out hunting. She's like better at hunting now,
Speaker 3: except so we see her hunting rabbits and she's she's
Speaker 3: dressed in the garb of the wilderness, so it's all furs,
Speaker 3: but also a wolf's head cap. And I was just thinking,
Speaker 3: so is this it looks it's almost like it's supposed
Speaker 3: to be a camouflage for her hunting rabbits, so she's
Speaker 3: like camouflaged as the rabbit's natural predator.
Speaker 2: This is the reveal of this CopM and of the
Speaker 2: adult Wolf Devil Woman is just this is one of
Speaker 2: those moments where you watch in the film and it's
Speaker 2: like you feel like you're going crazy for a moment
Speaker 2: because it's like a snowbank. And then here is this
Speaker 2: what looks like a like a stuffed wolf or a
Speaker 2: stuffed fox or a stuffed German shepherd head peeking over
Speaker 2: like muppeting up at you, and you're thinking like what
Speaker 2: is this? Is this a puppet effect? And then you're like, no,
Speaker 2: this head is on top of Pearl Chang's head. This
Speaker 2: is a hat or a costume. She is wearing some
Speaker 2: sort of a head dress. And then she commences to
Speaker 2: hunt rabbits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot. And so now grown up and
Speaker 3: having learned the ways of the wolves and also benefited
Speaker 3: from the potency of the white Gensen root, we see
Speaker 3: that the Wolf Woman has extraordinary powers, so she can
Speaker 3: make herself weightless in classic Wusha Wireworks style, so she
Speaker 3: dump jumps dozens of feet into the air glides like
Speaker 3: a spirit on the wind. But I think it's funny
Speaker 3: that it's cool that while she is shown to have
Speaker 3: this power, she is also shown to be clumsy in
Speaker 3: a sense, like failing to capture rabbits and reacting with
Speaker 3: anger and frustration. So she'll like leap up thirty feet
Speaker 3: in the air, and try to like come down and
Speaker 3: catch a rabbit and miss. But eventually she succeeds in
Speaker 3: catching a rabbit, not with her mighty leaps, but instead
Speaker 3: by using another strange power, digging tunnels under the snow,
Speaker 3: So she like digs down and then comes up and
Speaker 3: snatches the rabbit from below.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a wolf? Is that? Maybe wolves hunt and
Speaker 2: then the wild they dig under and they come up
Speaker 2: like like a sandwhorm go for powers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, somewhere around here, we get an interlude on
Speaker 3: the demon, which is what people are yelling, so we're
Speaker 3: cutting back to some other actions somewhere else where. The
Speaker 3: editing is so rapid it's really hard to tell what
Speaker 3: you're looking at, but we get like rapid shots of
Speaker 3: things happening and then people yelling the demon. So there's
Speaker 3: like something on fire and somebody yells the demon. One
Speaker 3: we see one of the vampire orcs beating somebody up.
Speaker 3: We see the guy in the conical hat and the
Speaker 3: silver glam veil blasting a guy with white smoke out
Speaker 3: of his hands, saying you have betrayed me, and the
Speaker 3: guy is blasted and shown frozen against the bark of
Speaker 3: a tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that The only thing we're just supposed
Speaker 2: to take from the scene, I assume, is just that
Speaker 2: the demon and his forces are still out in the
Speaker 2: world doing harm and perhaps and perhaps they're looking for something.
Speaker 2: That's all we know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're causing problems. Yeah, but okay, we're about to
Speaker 3: meet a couple of other major characters, master Lee and Wong,
Speaker 3: and this is a kind of duo you might have
Speaker 3: seen in adventure films before. Master Lee is a very
Speaker 3: typical martial hero. He's a dashing and honorable, wandering swordsman,
Speaker 3: you know, he's this kind of character is usually a
Speaker 3: prince or some of their kind of high born and
Speaker 3: then he's got his comedy sidekick, often a cowardly comedy sidekick.
Speaker 3: Though with Wong, I don't know if you've got a
Speaker 3: similar kind of thing. Rob. When we first meet Wong,
Speaker 3: I interpreted him as being sort of hapless and cowardly
Speaker 3: and not very able to take care of himself. But
Speaker 3: then by the end of the movie, he's like he's
Speaker 3: kicking butt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like we've seen this before in Taiwanese
Speaker 2: action films. I think there was a character in Child
Speaker 2: of Peach like this who was very much there for
Speaker 2: comedic effect, but also really good. Did get to tear
Speaker 2: it up in some of the action scenes.
Speaker 3: I guess it's just that you don't get a sense
Speaker 3: early on that this character will would be like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but anyway, when we first meet them, they've been traveling
Speaker 3: for days on an important mission, and Wong is tired
Speaker 3: and is complaining. He has started complaining by this point,
Speaker 3: but I don't know how early he started, so he
Speaker 3: may have been complaining for a long time. He keeps
Speaker 3: falling into holes in the ground and has to be
Speaker 3: rescued over and over. Yeah, Wong and Master Lee catch
Speaker 3: a rabbit for dinner, and warning this is this is
Speaker 3: one scene where you can quite clearly see what looks
Speaker 3: like an unsimulated killing of a rabbit with an arrow.
Speaker 3: There are other scenes with rabbits where something might be
Speaker 3: going on, but it's harder to tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like sometimes wolf Woman may tear a rabbit's body
Speaker 2: in half or and then eat it's bloody pieces. I'm
Speaker 2: assuming she's not eating actual raw rabbit. But then there
Speaker 2: are also scenes where she tears humans in half, and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm one hundred percent positive those are not real
Speaker 2: humans being torn in half by wolf woman.
Speaker 3: But if you're if you're looking for the place where
Speaker 3: you would really want to fast forward, it's going to
Speaker 3: be right around in here. When when Wong starts trying
Speaker 3: to get after a rabbit.
Speaker 2: Right even though there's there's a fun gag there where
Speaker 2: he's trying to throw a knife at the rabbit, and
Speaker 2: then he gets over to the rabbit, he's like, there's
Speaker 2: an arrow in this rabbit. I thought, I hit the
Speaker 2: rabbit with my knife, And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's not worth watching the animal cruelty if you don't
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 3: But so anyway, they cook it up for dinner, and
Speaker 3: then Master Lee plays his flute and unfortunately, here they
Speaker 3: have an ill fated encounter with the wolf woman. She
Speaker 3: sneaks up on them in their camp and attacks Wong,
Speaker 3: and in reaction, oh no, they shoot her with an arrow.
Speaker 3: That's not what we wanted. But once they realize she
Speaker 3: is a human woman and not a wolf, they tried
Speaker 3: to treat her with medicine, but then the rest of
Speaker 3: the wolves attack their camp. They like jump over the
Speaker 3: fire repeatedly. There is whiplash editing, until finally Master Lee
Speaker 3: manages to kill one of the wolves in the fighting,
Speaker 3: and oh no, it seems that the wolf he killed
Speaker 3: may have been the woman's wolf mother. But the wolf
Speaker 3: woman is unconscious with her wound. She doesn't know that
Speaker 3: this happens initially, so they track the They fall unconscious
Speaker 3: also for a bit, I think and I forget exactly
Speaker 3: the samequence here, but they eventually track the wolf and
Speaker 3: the wolf woman back to their cave. The woman attacks
Speaker 3: them again at first, revealing that she has great powers,
Speaker 3: like she's flying around on wires and stuff, and Wong
Speaker 3: wants to fight back with lethal force, but Master Lee
Speaker 3: restrains him. Clearly, Master Lee takes pity on the wolf woman,
Speaker 3: and when she passes out from her injuries, they treat
Speaker 3: her with medicine that they have among their supplies, and
Speaker 3: Master Lee is like, I know what's going on here.
Speaker 3: She is a creature of the wilderness. She is a
Speaker 3: human raised by wolves, and thus she does not know
Speaker 3: any human language and does not understand what death is.
Speaker 3: So she goes on trying to feed to the mother
Speaker 3: wolf even though it has died. And then there is
Speaker 3: some time that passes, so we see wolf Lady, Lee
Speaker 3: and Wong hanging out in the cave. There's some scene
Speaker 3: I don't remember how this starts, but where the wolf
Speaker 3: lady is biting him, is biting Lee on the hand,
Speaker 3: and we see Wong lying to her and telling her
Speaker 3: that the wolf mother is still alive somewhere like he
Speaker 3: sort of has to act this out in charades, but
Speaker 3: says she's off getting food somewhere. And then meanwhile we
Speaker 3: get another cut back to civilization. We see in a
Speaker 3: palace somewhere there is a king being attended by servants
Speaker 3: and subjects. This king is named Master You, and they say, Master,
Speaker 3: the Blue Devil commanded us to give him the Amulet
Speaker 3: or he'll kill us all. We have to hurry up
Speaker 3: and find a way to stop him. Another says Master,
Speaker 3: terror is everywhere. Too many people have died already. And
Speaker 3: then the subjects all say in unison, Master You, we
Speaker 3: implore you to help us in this time of horror
Speaker 3: and death. And Master You is he's an older man
Speaker 3: with a stern face, angry eyebrows, and very solid beard,
Speaker 3: and he says that he understands the devil must be stopped,
Speaker 3: but he cannot do it without the aid of terrible magic.
Speaker 3: And there is only one thing on Earth that possesses
Speaker 3: enough power to feet this plague of demons, and that
Speaker 3: is the White Gensing Route. And then like smash cut
Speaker 3: before he even finishes saying the last word of his
Speaker 3: speech back to the cave.
Speaker 2: Now, is Master you Lee's dad?
Speaker 3: Yes? Okay, Yes, he has sent Lee on a journey
Speaker 3: to retrieve the great White Gensing Route because it is
Speaker 3: the only thing that can that they think can stop
Speaker 3: the demon from attacking them. Now here's something I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure about, is like Witch Devil is the blue Devil,
Speaker 3: because there's another devil they call the Red Devil. I
Speaker 3: think the one in the conical hat is the red Devil.
Speaker 3: So is the blue Devil a different one? I don't
Speaker 3: quite know.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if they it was just a mistake
Speaker 2: that like blue Devil and Red Devil are the same devil,
Speaker 2: because otherwise, who would blue devil be one of the
Speaker 2: spirit Halloween guys?
Speaker 3: Possibly the Witch, but they're saying he, so I think
Speaker 3: not her, So it could be one of the two
Speaker 3: Orc guys. I don't know either way.
Speaker 2: Team Devil, team Demon. Yeah, is what they're up against,
Speaker 2: and the only way to do it, the only way
Speaker 2: to defeat them is white gen Sying route, not red
Speaker 2: gen saying it's got to be white gen sing. Right.
Speaker 3: So back at the Cave of Wolves. How long have
Speaker 3: Lee and Wong been here now unclear, but they're kind
Speaker 3: of settled in and Lee wakes Wong up, telling him, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's time to move on. So, you know, we learned
Speaker 3: that Lee's father sent them on the quest for the
Speaker 3: great the gens En route. They've been looking for it,
Speaker 3: they can't find it. We find out it's also a
Speaker 3: thousand year gen sing route maybe it only appears once
Speaker 3: every thousand years, and they've been digging holes for it everywhere.
Speaker 3: So I think these are the holes that Wong was
Speaker 3: falling into earlier, with the holes that were digging looking
Speaker 3: for the root.
Speaker 2: That makes more sense than I had thought originally he
Speaker 2: was falling into a holes that she was digging out
Speaker 2: to catch rabbits.
Speaker 3: That could be the case also, Actually I don't know
Speaker 3: for sure. But so they go out digging again. They
Speaker 3: get attacked by wolves again. But if they are just
Speaker 3: cute little doggies like sniffing around at their feet, and
Speaker 3: they are saved by the wolf woman who calls off
Speaker 3: the pack. So the wolves obey her. And around here
Speaker 3: it starts to be quite obvious that Master Lee and
Speaker 3: the wolf Lady are interested in each other. They stare
Speaker 3: at each other. They got like laser beams of love
Speaker 3: coming out of their eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, how could they not fall in love?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then there's this weird scene where I don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on here. It's Master Lee starts adjusting
Speaker 3: the wolf woman's bones, like he sees that she's walking
Speaker 3: around with a hunched posture and a strange gait, like
Speaker 3: like there's something wrong with her spine. So he grabs
Speaker 3: her suddenly, and we see an animation of her bones,
Speaker 3: like her vertebrae realigning, and then she starts biting him,
Speaker 3: and Wong says, oh, no, she's biting him again. But
Speaker 3: after her bones are fixed, and she seems grateful. She's
Speaker 3: kind of sheepish about the biting, like her mouth is
Speaker 3: covered in blood, but she I think realizes that her
Speaker 3: bones have been fixed.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, I mean I just took the
Speaker 2: the bye. It's like I thought of my cat a lot.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, she's biting me again, Like it's like
Speaker 2: my relationship with the cat, a wild animal that lives
Speaker 2: in my house.
Speaker 3: But they, yeah, they mend, they mend this, like she
Speaker 3: the wolf Woman puts moss on Lee's hand and wraps
Speaker 3: it in a leather strap, and it's it's just clearly
Speaker 3: true love, uh Lee. Lee and Wong start trying to
Speaker 3: teach her how to talk and how to have manners.
Speaker 3: So they they say, you have a heart of gold,
Speaker 3: a spirit like spring mist, a face like a flower. Snowflower. Yes,
Speaker 3: Snowflower will be your name. And this name only half
Speaker 3: sticks for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it is used again. I think I
Speaker 2: can't remember as the dub or the subtitles also call
Speaker 2: her winter High Biscus or snow High Biscus or something,
Speaker 2: but Snowflower is what sticks.
Speaker 3: Right after they call her Snowflower. They're trying to teach her.
Speaker 3: They're trying to teach her grammar basically, and so she
Speaker 3: learns to say her own name and everybody else's. And
Speaker 3: there's this scene where she's arguing with Wong where she's
Speaker 3: like talking to Wong saying you're wolf woman, and he's saying, no,
Speaker 3: you're a wolf woman.
Speaker 2: I have forgotten any elemental Mandarin that I attempted to learn.
Speaker 2: But I have a feeling there might be a little
Speaker 2: bit more to this exchange in the original language, you know,
Speaker 2: like maybe it's a little more clever, and I mean
Speaker 2: it's still hokey, it's still played for laughs, but it
Speaker 2: might be it might play out a little bit differently
Speaker 2: in the native language.
Speaker 3: That seems quite likely. Yeah, we also get an education
Speaker 3: montage here, so you know, wolf woman is learning how
Speaker 3: to be a human. And one day Wolf Woman in
Speaker 3: Masterlea get to talking. She asks him if he's sad,
Speaker 3: and he says yeah. In the place he comes from,
Speaker 3: things are very dire. There is a wicked devil who
Speaker 3: rules over everything with extraordinary magic, killing many people, terrifying others.
Speaker 3: And Lee explains that he came to the mountain because
Speaker 3: he needs to find the great White gen sing route,
Speaker 3: the only thing in the world powerful enough to defeat
Speaker 3: the demon. But of course the gensing is too strong
Speaker 3: for a mortal human to consume. It would just wreck them.
Speaker 3: And then the wolf lady gets curious. She's like, what
Speaker 3: is this white gen sing like? And he describes it
Speaker 3: and she's like, oh, yeah, I ate that years ago
Speaker 3: and there won't be another for a thousand years. Whoops. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so Wong is mad, but Lee says, perhaps it's for
Speaker 3: the best, and so he's got to go home and
Speaker 3: tell his father that the route will not be found,
Speaker 3: and they sort of they convince wolf Woman to come
Speaker 3: with them, but first they have to admit to her
Speaker 3: that her wolf mother is dead. I think they've been
Speaker 3: lying to her about this the whole time so far,
Speaker 3: which is weird, messed up. And then the wolf woman
Speaker 3: is greatly saddened by this, and the grief over her
Speaker 3: dead wolf mother causes her to turn blonde suddenly, and
Speaker 3: like I think, hair grows down over the front of
Speaker 3: her face. And this is not the last time she
Speaker 3: will like activate her gensing powers through profound emotion and
Speaker 3: turn blonde.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it will happen again, and it's not permanent.
Speaker 2: When it happens here, I thought, maybe she's just gonna
Speaker 2: look like this the rest of the picture, but she
Speaker 2: does not.
Speaker 3: So Master Lee and Wong go down the mountain and
Speaker 3: arrive at the home of Lee's master, his own teacher,
Speaker 3: and this is Master Chew. Master Chew is your classic sage.
Speaker 3: He's dressed in all white, with long white hair, gigantic eyebrows,
Speaker 3: like a mintat long flowing mustache and facial hair. And
Speaker 3: they meet him and he's like, I know everything that happened.
Speaker 3: Don't tell your father about the wolf lady, because he
Speaker 3: will just accuse you of wasting your time chasing women
Speaker 3: instead of accomplishing your quest. And then he also gives
Speaker 3: him a gift. He gives him a little box and
Speaker 3: he says, the thing in this box, it will protect
Speaker 3: you as soon as you open it, and then Master
Speaker 3: Chou flies away.
Speaker 2: The other thing I like about Master Choo is that he,
Speaker 2: like you encounter this sort of performance and characterization a
Speaker 2: lot in like Hong Kong action films, with shot films
Speaker 2: and so forth, where it's clearly a much younger actor
Speaker 2: who's been dressed up to look like an old, sagely individual.
Speaker 2: So on one level, like it's obvious, but on the
Speaker 2: other level it kind of works because it's like this
Speaker 2: concept of like a Taoist immortal, Like yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: an old young in or young oldie, whichever way you
Speaker 2: want to look at it, Like, yeah, he's an old man,
Speaker 2: but he also there's something unnaturally young about him too,
Speaker 2: And I don't know how much of that was ultimately
Speaker 2: like accident of filmmaking, because you need this older individual
Speaker 2: to also do death defying stuff.
Speaker 3: Uns.
Speaker 2: However it comes together. It's kind of a staple of
Speaker 2: the genre that I like.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 3: Would you agree that there's almost something kind of impish
Speaker 3: or mischievous about Master Chew in the way that he
Speaker 3: just pops up to to with ease deliver information that
Speaker 3: other people had been struggling to learn or whatever. He
Speaker 3: just pops up and is like, hey, I know everything,
Speaker 3: or he just wanders into a scene and says, here's
Speaker 3: the real truth. Here's who the devil is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he is. There is an infish quality to it.
Speaker 3: We also see inside the gift, the box that Lee
Speaker 3: is given, there is some kind of highly reflective mirror
Speaker 3: in there. It's is it kind of an amulet?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some sort of an amulet in there. So
Speaker 2: we're like, okay, magic guide.
Speaker 3: Him for later. Okay, So next we get a homecoming.
Speaker 3: Lee and Wong returned to Lee's father and they admit
Speaker 3: that they were unable to find the gen Sing. So
Speaker 3: there's got to be another way to stop the demon.
Speaker 3: Next thing is they commence a mission. There's like they're
Speaker 3: going to go raid the the demon hideout. I guess so.
Speaker 3: Like Lee, his father and a group of warriors, all
Speaker 3: dressed in different colors, trek into this lush green forest,
Speaker 3: which I get. Did you understand this to be the
Speaker 3: demon's camp?
Speaker 2: I guess so. Yeah, going into demon country.
Speaker 3: This was a very cool looking and dangerous feeling seen.
Speaker 3: We hear strange bird calls echoing through the trees, and
Speaker 3: at the camp there are the bodies of warriors hanging
Speaker 3: from the trees. But then it's a fake out because
Speaker 3: they think these are the demon's victims, but actually the
Speaker 3: bodies hanging there are the devils pretending to be corpses,
Speaker 3: and they attack.
Speaker 2: And from this week get into the first of many
Speaker 2: action sequences here, where one of the core objectives is
Speaker 2: to nail demons to trees with arrows and or swords.
Speaker 2: This happens a lot and it never gets old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good stuff. And the frenzied editing the demons
Speaker 3: appear and disappear. They use trickery and magic. We see
Speaker 3: the Witch from the opening scene using this. She's wearing
Speaker 3: like a jeweled veil and she uses magic to knock
Speaker 3: Lee unconscious, and then later Lee awakes in the temple
Speaker 3: slash throne room from the beginning of the movie, and
Speaker 3: he now is the one affixed to the red cross.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, this doesn't look good for him.
Speaker 3: They mock him, and the gist is basically, you're a
Speaker 3: student of Master Chew, so you think you're really hot,
Speaker 3: but are you strong enough to defeat my fingernails? And
Speaker 3: the Demon Priest really likes laughing at nothing and then
Speaker 3: spraying people with dust from his sleeves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's constantly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the Demon Priest also wants to know what
Speaker 3: happened to the White Gensen route, and after torture, Lee
Speaker 3: tells him it was eaten by the Wolf Woman, and
Speaker 3: the demon is mad about this. He does not like
Speaker 3: this information.
Speaker 2: This exchange is great because he's like, somebody ate it?
Speaker 2: And he's like, somebody ate it? Who ate it?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, anyway, we got to get back to the
Speaker 3: wolf woman. What's she been up to? I missed the ye.
Speaker 3: She finally comes down out of the mountain and she
Speaker 3: is now using a fraying knotted rope like Indiana Jones
Speaker 3: uses a whip. Rob did you think that maybe this
Speaker 3: this rope slash whip was made out of rabbit pelts.
Speaker 2: That was the sense I got that this is like
Speaker 2: some sort of a super elaborate ninja whip weapon made
Speaker 2: out of rabbit pelts stitch together, but then with some
Speaker 2: sort of a four pronged animal claw situation going on
Speaker 2: at either end of said weapon.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she also has like bird claw feet bird
Speaker 3: feet claws that she uses as weapons. Yes, but she's
Speaker 3: using this whip to swing around through tree branches and
Speaker 3: fly through the forest. And then the Wolf Woman she
Speaker 3: walks into the Kingdom of the Demon. Now, first, she
Speaker 3: goes into a barn, finds a chicken, rips its head
Speaker 3: off and starts eating it raw. And the farmers catch
Speaker 3: her stealing the chicken, and they attack her with weapons,
Speaker 3: and she violently defends herself. So there's another action scene.
Speaker 3: We get a brainwashing scene with Master Lee. So the
Speaker 3: Demon Priest uses the Golden Needle to essentially brainwash Lee
Speaker 3: into making him one of them, to making him loyal
Speaker 3: to the demon. And now Lee goes around doing he's
Speaker 3: an enforcer for the Demon Priest. Basically, he's like going
Speaker 3: up to people's houses telling them to surrender to the
Speaker 3: devil power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's decked out in red. Now cutting like a
Speaker 2: red veil covering half his face.
Speaker 3: So, oh no, Lee has become a bad guy. We
Speaker 3: even see him like he goes to people's houses and
Speaker 3: like beats them up. Yeah, there's one house he goes
Speaker 3: to and the demon priest shows up there when the
Speaker 3: guy won't submit, and he's like, you worm, you have
Speaker 3: the guts to stand up to me, And we get
Speaker 3: a sleeve blast of course, you know, he loves to
Speaker 3: shoot the smoke out of his sleeve. Elsewhere, we get
Speaker 3: a scene of the wolf Woman going to a rest stawt.
Speaker 3: This is one we've alluded to, I think a couple
Speaker 3: of times now. So she's wandering, she's in civilization now,
Speaker 3: and she's wandering through a city and she discovers that
Speaker 3: she likes the smell of food. So she goes into
Speaker 3: this restaurant. She doesn't know what to order, but she
Speaker 3: listens to what others at the table next to her say.
Speaker 3: And this is a large group of people and they
Speaker 3: end up ordering boiled eggs, half of a roasted chicken,
Speaker 3: and five jugs of wine. And so she just orders
Speaker 3: the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, She's like, I'll have what they're happening and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the guy's like, that's too much wine, but
Speaker 3: they bring it to her and she doesn't know how
Speaker 3: to use chopsticks, and she gets drunk, and drunken wolf
Speaker 3: Woman is a problem. She like freaks out, rips out
Speaker 3: her own hair and turns into the Gensing blonde. And
Speaker 3: then the gensing Blonde is like, is a violent, drunken
Speaker 3: mess and wrecks the restaurant and beats up all the
Speaker 3: guys who try to stop her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a mess. And this this whole sequence is wonderful.
Speaker 2: Like it's just it's played for laughs. It's ridiculous, and
Speaker 2: I loved every minute of it. The comedic sections of
Speaker 2: some of these older movies they don't necessarily always stand
Speaker 2: the test of time or translate all that well.
Speaker 3: But this is all perfect, Yes, But unfortunately she is
Speaker 3: eventually overpowered, I think because she's she's sort of on.
Speaker 3: She's not at her full potential because of the five
Speaker 3: jugs of wine. Right, So the townspeople capture her, They
Speaker 3: beat her with rods, they tie her in a sack,
Speaker 3: and then they dunk her up and down in the
Speaker 3: well in a sad song plays this one.
Speaker 2: This was another just outrageous moment for me though, because
Speaker 2: at least in the dub or the or the subtitles,
Speaker 2: they were like, throw her in the well, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: is this standard operating procedure? Like, there is a magical
Speaker 2: monster that has been arrested in your town, let us
Speaker 2: throw her into the town's primary water source. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: just doesn't seem like the best use of your well water.
Speaker 2: I'm I mean, I'm assuming you're drinking that water or
Speaker 2: you're using it for for purposes around town. Let's not
Speaker 2: let's not drain and drown supernatural beings in that water
Speaker 2: just to be on the safe side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm confused about the strategy of the town's people here.
Speaker 3: But then we get an intervention by a familiar face.
Speaker 3: Wong shows up. He just happens to be walking by,
Speaker 3: that's right, So he like goes and tries to help her,
Speaker 3: but ultimately they are both thrown down into the well,
Speaker 3: and then something there was a disconnect here. I didn't
Speaker 3: understand what happened. Somehow, Wong and the wolf woman are
Speaker 3: both washed out of the well into a fishing hole
Speaker 3: where Master Chew is there fishing. Yeah, did you understand
Speaker 3: what that was?
Speaker 2: It kind of felt like a scene was missing there,
Speaker 2: But I guess basically it's like down the well in
Speaker 2: water flushed out to another body of water. I guess
Speaker 2: it's just it's all connected.
Speaker 3: So here is the scene where she meets with master
Speaker 3: Chew and Master Chew tells her about her history. He says,
Speaker 3: long ago, about twenty years ago, your father, the warrior
Speaker 3: of steel Spare, fell under the charms of the Red Devil.
Speaker 3: When he discovered the evils of the Devil, he took
Speaker 3: your mother and you and escaped. They could not outrun
Speaker 3: the Devil's men, and when they killed themselves, you used
Speaker 3: their warm. There was a typo in the subtitles here
Speaker 3: that said blow dough. I think that means blood to
Speaker 3: protect you. Then you were rescued by the White Wolf.
Speaker 3: All this has been predestined. And Master Chew also tells
Speaker 3: her that it is her destiny to fight back because
Speaker 3: the Red Devil has wronged her, has killed her parents,
Speaker 3: and he is the Wolf Woman's enemy, so she must
Speaker 3: get revenge against the devil. It is her destiny. And
Speaker 3: then there is some double take editing here. Suddenly we
Speaker 3: go straight from the scene where she's like being told
Speaker 3: this into combat scenes, just action where the Wolf Woman
Speaker 3: is riding on horseback and whipping devil warriors heads off
Speaker 3: with the knotted rope and they're like on a beach
Speaker 3: and then a desert and she's whipping the rope. Their
Speaker 3: heads are everywhere. She's also flying off of city walls
Speaker 3: and attacking the devil soldiers again with the whip. And
Speaker 3: we also see her wearing a different outfit, a very
Speaker 3: cool costume change where it almost suggests she is now
Speaker 3: fulfilling some kind of religious function.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like some sort of divine warrior garb all
Speaker 2: in white. So now she was like wolf Devil Woman,
Speaker 2: the white come back to avenge everyone.
Speaker 3: Ah, yes, so wolf devil Woman not devil Wolf Woman
Speaker 3: and Wong they attack the devil's hide out in the woods,
Speaker 3: the one that Master Lee and his father and all
Speaker 3: their men attacked earlier. And there are whoa what to
Speaker 3: say about the scene. There's like flaming bats flying all around.
Speaker 3: Suddenly Wong does seem like a competent fighter. Here we
Speaker 3: see wolf Woman versus the vampire orc that was chasing
Speaker 3: her parents and she pins himTo a tree with swords,
Speaker 3: just general crazy wooshat action, and then we cut from
Speaker 3: there to Wolf Woman and Wong trekking through the desert,
Speaker 3: and there's there are more fight scenes. Here's one that's
Speaker 3: a great payoff where we see Wolf Woman's wolf hunting
Speaker 3: skills that she used against rabbits used against the Devil warriors,
Speaker 3: where she's like digging tunnels and popping up from under
Speaker 3: the sand to yank them down and destroy them. Also,
Speaker 3: there's just the gore effects here. I think fans of
Speaker 3: the show will know. I'm not typically a gore hound.
Speaker 3: Having a lot of blood and guts and stuff in
Speaker 3: a movie is not something I usually get excited about,
Speaker 3: but in this case it is because it's like the
Speaker 3: way the Wolf Woman will like hit one of the
Speaker 3: Devil fighters. She'll hit them and then we just see
Speaker 3: like bloody severed limbs falling to the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's almost just the right level of slightly over
Speaker 2: the top but unbelievable practical bloody violence in a picture
Speaker 2: can yeah take on its own reality, like this isn't
Speaker 2: in the Story of Ricky Territory, But like Story of
Speaker 2: Ricky is a film that I haven't seen it a
Speaker 2: long time, so I don't know if it would still
Speaker 2: hold up this way for me. But I remember enjoying
Speaker 2: it on that level, and that it's like everyone but
Speaker 2: the hero's body is made out of just paper mache
Speaker 2: and jello and just comes apart immediately and nothing can
Speaker 2: withstand our hero. And it's the same with Wolf Devil women.
Speaker 3: It's like those action figure I don't remember what they
Speaker 3: were called, but there were these action figures that had
Speaker 3: like a button you could press and all of their
Speaker 3: labels would just fall off of them at once.
Speaker 2: Yeap, that's exactly what it's like with anyone who dares
Speaker 2: stand up against our Snowflower.
Speaker 3: So now Wolf Woman and Wong are suddenly in the
Speaker 3: Devil's temple. How'd they get there, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 3: they see Lee dressed in the garb of the Red Devil.
Speaker 3: He's got the you know, the red veil on and
Speaker 3: they're like, Lee, what happened to you? They want him back,
Speaker 3: but the witches and the devils say, no, you can't
Speaker 3: have him. He's with us. Now there's more fighting, just
Speaker 3: general great fight scenes. I can't recount every point here,
Speaker 3: but I love them. Somewhere in here, somebody says, huh,
Speaker 3: she fights like a wolf. But this seems to me
Speaker 3: using a whip and jumping a lot yep and the demon.
Speaker 3: The demon comes and tries to spray them with his
Speaker 3: sleeve dust, which of course is very very dangerous potent magic,
Speaker 3: and they beg Lee for help, and this suddenly snaps
Speaker 3: Lee out of his trance or something, and he jumps
Speaker 3: in to save them, and then he flies away carrying
Speaker 3: Wolf Woman and Wong, and Wong has been sleeve sprayed
Speaker 3: real bad, but he's not dead. And then suddenly they're
Speaker 3: just somewhere else being treated by Master Chew. It all happens.
Speaker 3: There's a very loose spatial logic to what's going on here,
Speaker 3: and it happens so fast with so little explanation. But
Speaker 3: I think Rob correct me if I'm wrong. I think
Speaker 3: Lee explains that he was never actually like hypnotized by
Speaker 3: the Devil. He was just a spy learning how the
Speaker 3: Devil's palace works.
Speaker 2: That's right, because Master Choo's amulet protected him from being
Speaker 2: brainwashed by the Demon cult. So he's just been in
Speaker 2: deep cover the whole time, which, as he pointed out,
Speaker 2: includes beating the crap out of innocence in earlier scenes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I guess he thinks it was worth it.
Speaker 3: Because he learned the secret of the demon, which is
Speaker 3: that there's this golden needle which has this great power.
Speaker 3: We saw it at the beginning being inserted into a
Speaker 3: doll to cause pain, and it can be used on
Speaker 3: the demons too, I guess. So we get a final
Speaker 3: showdown scene where Lee Wong and the Wolf Woman team up.
Speaker 3: They go back to the Red Devil Temple and they're like, uh,
Speaker 3: for there's some exchange. I'm afraid I'm getting this wrong,
Speaker 3: but they're like, we're here to kill you, and the
Speaker 3: Devil's like, you can't be serious, and they're like, no,
Speaker 3: that is correct, we're here to kill you.
Speaker 2: There's a great scene where they're they're, you know, they're
Speaker 2: attacking the d Dnomonic Temple here and in comes the
Speaker 2: lead demon priest and he said, or at least the
Speaker 2: Subtime'll say, and I think maybe the dub did this too.
Speaker 2: He says, look at me, fools, you know, I am
Speaker 2: I am doing it, does this huge intro number, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, it's just crazy fighting from there on out.
Speaker 2: There was this It was established earlier that our lead
Speaker 2: demon here has like frozen would be heroes in a
Speaker 2: state of undeath. Aout the temple and they can be
Speaker 2: brought back to life by removing their needles, and when
Speaker 2: they come back to life, they are essentially jungshi. They
Speaker 2: are the hopping vampires, so without all the rules of
Speaker 2: hopping vampires, but they are moving like hopping vampires in
Speaker 2: these sequences.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's that going on. There's just a lot
Speaker 3: of tremendous fighting in this final showdown. There's the Witch
Speaker 3: who's using her spider and cobweb powers, and then there's
Speaker 3: also a big twist slash identity revealed that is then
Speaker 3: double twisted and undermined if I understood correctly, yes, sort of,
Speaker 3: So like the Red Devil, they get his mask off
Speaker 3: and he reveals his identity and oh no, it is
Speaker 3: Master Lee's father, bump bum bum bum Bomb, and he's like,
Speaker 3: I wanted the White gen Sen route so that we
Speaker 3: could rule over the world, and you know, you and
Speaker 3: I as father and son, we could rule the galaxy
Speaker 3: his father and son. But then I think Master Chew
Speaker 3: walks in and is is like, no, he's not actually
Speaker 3: your father. He's just a shape shifter who can look
Speaker 3: like anyone.
Speaker 2: Bump Bump Bomb. But yeah, she just like strolls out
Speaker 2: from behind a pillar and tells everybody does.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's so good. Yeah uh, and of course the
Speaker 3: good guys win in the end, and yeah, I loved
Speaker 3: Wolf Devil Woman.
Speaker 2: It kind of comes to an abrupt end though after
Speaker 2: that it's just kind of like, okay, forces of evil
Speaker 2: or defeat it and that's it. Everybody can go home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not clear what's happening to Wolf Woman at
Speaker 3: the end, Like they defeat the devil. Oh, and Master
Speaker 3: Chew reveals that he was his evil brother, I think,
Speaker 3: and that he killed Lee's father and then turned to
Speaker 3: look like him. But anyway, they defeated the devil. Devil
Speaker 3: turns to ash. But we were told earlier by Master
Speaker 3: two that it would take all of Snowflower's magical ginsing
Speaker 3: strength to defeat the devil, and then after the conflict,
Speaker 3: she would wither and die. And now here we are,
Speaker 3: after the conflicts. They have defeated the Devil, and Wolf
Speaker 3: Woman is shown to be woozy and reeling, and Lee
Speaker 3: goes to kind of steady her, and I guess we're
Speaker 3: supposed to be in suspense, like, oh, is she gonna
Speaker 3: be okay? But we don't find out. They just cut
Speaker 3: to the end, so no resolution on what happens to
Speaker 3: Wolf Woman. I do wish there was a happy epilogue.
Speaker 3: I wanted to see them going to restaurants again, all
Speaker 3: four of the heroes going to restaurants together.
Speaker 2: That would have been good, like see if she has
Speaker 2: really learned how to use chopsticks yet or if she's
Speaker 2: just gonna, you know, end up eating the fish with
Speaker 2: her hands again.
Speaker 3: More more Wolf Woman eating too many boiled eggs and
Speaker 3: drinking too much wine.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that is Wolf Devil Woman. Quite a picture.
Speaker 2: Never a dull moment. This is not one that is
Speaker 2: a slog to watch by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 3: Hats off to Pearl Chang. I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close up
Speaker 2: this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we would love
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there. Are you a fan
Speaker 2: of Wolf Devil Woman. Do you have additional context to
Speaker 2: share regarding Wolf Devil Woman and Taiwanese cinema. Do you
Speaker 2: have a personal history with this film or did you
Speaker 2: watch it for the first time after hearing us bringing
Speaker 2: it bring it up? If so, maybe you have some
Speaker 2: thoughts as well. Anything's fair game, you know, if you
Speaker 2: want to talk about right into us, talk about past
Speaker 2: episodes of Weird House, cinema movies we covered, ages back,
Speaker 2: movies we just covered, as well as movies we might
Speaker 2: potentially cover in the future. We're always open for suggestions
Speaker 2: and those suggestions can come sometimes, you know, push things
Speaker 2: up on our possible list of future episodes. So yeah,
Speaker 2: keep it coming. We'd love to hear from you. And
Speaker 2: if you do want to see what we've covered in
Speaker 2: the past on the show, well, you can go over
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. That's l E T T e
Speaker 2: r box d dot com, which is in general just
Speaker 2: a really cool sort of social media site for reviewing
Speaker 2: films and tracking films and putting films on lists and
Speaker 2: to watch list and all. While we are on there,
Speaker 2: our username is weird House and we have a singular
Speaker 2: list there of all the movies we've covered so far,
Speaker 2: and sometimes there's a peak ahead what we're covering in
Speaker 2: the next week or two.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact That's Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.