Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name
Speaker 1: is Joe McCormick. Today we're running an older episode of
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. This was originally published November seventeenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and it is about the nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: Hong Kong Woosha film The Butterfly Murders. Ooh, this was
Speaker 1: a good one. I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick. In today's pick on Weird
Speaker 1: House is the genre defying nineteen seventy nine Hong Kong
Speaker 1: martial arts bonanza, The Butterfly Murders, directed by Shehawk. This
Speaker 1: movie is great. It has everything. It's part Wusha, part
Speaker 1: eco horror. I didn't expect it to be so much
Speaker 1: like like Frogs and other eco horror movies we've done.
Speaker 1: It's part murder mystery, but it's also all killer butterflies.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: This one's a real treat. It's almost like a fitting
Speaker 3: pre Thanksgiving dinner kind of a film because it's just
Speaker 3: stuff to the gills as we as we'll discuss. No doubt,
Speaker 3: this is perhaps a sense too of like talented filmmakers
Speaker 3: first movie Syndrome, where clearly they had had so many
Speaker 3: ideas that need to be unleashed on the world, and
Speaker 3: they're all present, you know. So it's maybe a little
Speaker 3: a little bit overloaded in that regard. But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: so many interesting elements i'd throw in proto slasher, gothic horror,
Speaker 3: and also there's a little bit of the old reading
Speaker 3: of the Will drama thrown in there as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, you know, one thing I really respect about
Speaker 1: this movie is that I don't actually know what it
Speaker 1: was called in the I guess original Cantonese marketing, but
Speaker 1: the English title delivers on the promise in a quite
Speaker 1: literal fashion. So it's called The Butterfly Murders, and the
Speaker 1: Butterfly Murders is not about like a serial killer who
Speaker 1: draws a butterfly at every crime scene or something. That's
Speaker 1: what you would guess based on that title, right. It's
Speaker 1: always that kind of annoying fake out, But in this case, no,
Speaker 1: it is literally about people who are murdered by swarms
Speaker 1: of bloodthirsty butterflies.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, And I think my initial guess when I
Speaker 3: started running across this title was, oh, it's a serial killer.
Speaker 3: It's some sort of like, oh, he leaves a butterfly
Speaker 3: as his signature or something, but no, it's straight up
Speaker 3: butterfly sworms.
Speaker 1: Well, there are human intelligences behind the butterfly crimes, but
Speaker 1: they really are carried out via swarms of butterflies. Multiple
Speaker 1: reviews i've seen compare this film to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds,
Speaker 1: and yes, I definitely see some similarities. I think there
Speaker 1: may have been some conscious relationship there. Except as absurd
Speaker 1: as the premise of The Birds itself was, at least
Speaker 1: birds have beaks and talons. This is about killer butterflies.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is this movie succeeds at making
Speaker 1: butterflies scary. Well, I don't know that was my opinion.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you agree, Rob, but I was
Speaker 1: shocked at how creepy it makes the butterflies.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I feel like it's essentially a goofy concept right
Speaker 3: because you can break down and say, okay, well, there
Speaker 3: are examples of butterflies and moths that have some level
Speaker 3: of toxicity to them, but there's no such thing as
Speaker 3: a killer butterfly. Butterflies are not threatening, and yet this
Speaker 3: movie on the whole succeeds in making them feel like
Speaker 3: at least sort of an ambient environmental threat.
Speaker 1: However, on top of just that home run of a
Speaker 1: premise killer butterflies, I want to say, across the board,
Speaker 1: I thought this movie was generally number one excellent, like
Speaker 1: really well made, and number two bananas. It is just
Speaker 1: nuts in basic every direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Now I do have to emphasize
Speaker 3: that this movie in its currently available international form is
Speaker 3: not an easy to follow film if you're trying to
Speaker 3: just absolutely absorb every detail of the.
Speaker 1: So much plot.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is, you know. It is a historic martial
Speaker 3: arts fantasy adventure film, a wusha, but it's it's one
Speaker 3: with the complex plot, multiple characters, parallel mysteries and feuding
Speaker 3: factions and all. That's perfectly fair. But the English subtitles
Speaker 3: are rough. And while rough subtitles can prove perfectly serviceable
Speaker 3: for many films, Son of Peach and Thrilling Bloody Sword
Speaker 3: come to mind, and those have some really rough subtitles,
Speaker 3: but with this one, again, given on that complexity, it's
Speaker 3: an uphill battle because there's just so much going on
Speaker 3: to try and understand it just going off the subtitles.
Speaker 3: There's also quite a bit of narration. So I'm not
Speaker 3: pinning any of this on the film itself or the
Speaker 3: people who made it, but it is a struggle to
Speaker 3: piece all this together at times while also taking in
Speaker 3: all the excellent details, those moody sets and the face
Speaker 3: melting action.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that I think you can watch this
Speaker 1: movie and get perfect enjoyment, like at least ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the potential enjoyment of this film without closely following
Speaker 1: what all of the factions and alignments and plot twists are.
Speaker 1: And I was actually wondering when we get into the
Speaker 1: plot description section of this episode, I kind of don't
Speaker 1: know how I'm going to handle it because I made
Speaker 1: detailed notes trying to follow the plot, but it is
Speaker 1: so complicated. I'm like, are we gonna have to skip
Speaker 1: over a bit of this? I don't know. Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: I would not say that all of the complicated plot
Speaker 1: machinations are just like completely extraneous, Like you can enjoy
Speaker 1: the movie without trying to follow too closely, and at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think all of the plot twists
Speaker 1: are like really fun and exciting. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: twist after twist in the second half of the movie. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it never really lets up. There's always something captivating.
Speaker 3: It's almost too captivating. Again, if you're trying to follow
Speaker 3: everything with the subtitles. All right, Joe, what's your elevator
Speaker 3: pitch for the Butterfly Murders.
Speaker 1: Let's say a scholar, a gang boss, and a wireflying
Speaker 1: Marshall heroine walk into a castle haunted by killer butterflies.
Speaker 3: All right, let's hear a little bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 3: Note that this is from a rather long trails, like
Speaker 3: four minutes long. I believe this is the original Hong
Speaker 3: Kong trailer. So we're just gonna hear a little part
Speaker 3: of it, but hopefully getting some of that excellent theme
Speaker 3: music in there. Sang Sunset Sun say Junny.
Speaker 1: Jump sum Away, see saw Babe? What can.
Speaker 3: Now? Before we proceed? You may be wondering, well, how
Speaker 3: can I watch The Butterfly Murders? Well, it's not an
Speaker 3: easy one to get your hands on. Unfortunately. Right now,
Speaker 3: this is a film where the best available quality is
Speaker 3: very watchable, but it has not benefited from restoration. Uh
Speaker 3: English subtitles. They're not hard baked, but they are rough,
Speaker 3: so if you are not a Chinese speaker, you're gonna
Speaker 3: have some difficulties with it. It looks like it has
Speaker 3: streamed on Prime before, back when they had loads of
Speaker 3: weird stuff, but today you're limited to just a few
Speaker 3: hard to find region free DVDs or international release DVDs.
Speaker 3: We rented it from Videodrome here in Atlanta, and you
Speaker 3: might find a watchable unofficial stream somewhere. But yeah, this
Speaker 3: is one that it certainly has a following, and it
Speaker 3: would be nice to see a, you know, a really
Speaker 3: well produced release at some point in the future.
Speaker 1: I agree. I wish there was a really great Blu
Speaker 1: Ray restoration of this because it clearly is a fantastic
Speaker 1: looking movie. But even the DVD we had had a
Speaker 1: lot of I don't know, it was not in good shape.
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of like washed out color
Speaker 1: and weird kind of like pop ins of different color
Speaker 1: shades on certain scenes. So I don't know, it seems
Speaker 1: like whatever source film material they were working from was
Speaker 1: was not in the best of shape. I even found
Speaker 1: there was something of a history of this movie being
Speaker 1: hard to get in good format. I was reading a
Speaker 1: post about it on I think dig hkmovies dot com.
Speaker 1: This seems to be some kind of website about Hong
Speaker 1: Kong cinema that points out that the only way that
Speaker 1: for many years that English speakers could watch the film
Speaker 1: was on a laser disc, which number one had like
Speaker 1: an improperly cropped aspect ratio on the on the screen.
Speaker 1: And also there was a quote commercial for an amusement
Speaker 1: park at the end of side one. So I almost
Speaker 1: kind of want to see it in that format. That's
Speaker 1: like the like the commercials and the Star Wars Holiday special,
Speaker 1: like they're part of the experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess. I mean it's it's details like this,
Speaker 3: and of course, sadly like this is still in play
Speaker 3: for this film, but you know, it reminds you of
Speaker 3: the links folks had to go to to watch some
Speaker 3: of these films back in the day. You know, this
Speaker 3: on top of various VHS dot and you know, VHS
Speaker 3: dubs of a Japanese laser disc of some European release
Speaker 3: and so forth.
Speaker 1: But like we said, there are some sort of under
Speaker 1: the radar rips out there that are not great quality.
Speaker 1: It's not the best way you're going to see it,
Speaker 1: but this movie is worth seeing, so especially if you
Speaker 1: can get access to to the DVD that's out there,
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty cool. I'd recommend it.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely yeah, And again, the best version that's out
Speaker 3: there is very watchable. This isn't one of those situations
Speaker 3: like with pod people or extraterrestrial visitors, where the previously
Speaker 3: available footage was just not great at all. More on
Speaker 3: that because we're going to refeature that one as a
Speaker 3: weird house rewind and I have some updates about the
Speaker 3: available quality on that film.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the old the old version of that was
Speaker 1: almost like watching a movie being projected in a cloud
Speaker 1: of smoke.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, this one though perfectly watchable. All right, let's
Speaker 3: talk about some of the folks behind this. So we
Speaker 3: already mentioned the director here Shika or she Heart or
Speaker 3: Shia Hook. I think you'll hear his name referenced in
Speaker 3: varying ways. We'll just keep referring to him as Hawk here.
Speaker 3: He was born in nineteen fifty Vietnamese born, Texas educated
Speaker 3: Hong Kong film director, producer, and screenwriter. He studied film
Speaker 3: at Southern Methodist University in Texas and then at the
Speaker 3: University of Texas at Austin. Graduated in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 3: worked in New York City for a bit. I believe
Speaker 3: he worked on a documentary about New York's Chinatown and
Speaker 3: then returned to Hong Kong in seventy seven. So this
Speaker 3: was his first film, and it was a bold attempt
Speaker 3: to revitalize with the Wushau genre with various genre influences
Speaker 3: and excellent cinematic craft. While apparently not a huge hit
Speaker 3: at the time, it's now considered a minor masterpiece. I
Speaker 3: saw it referred to as such in an article in
Speaker 3: the South China Morning Post by Richard James Havs, and
Speaker 3: it's also considered something of a new wavessation in Chinese cinema.
Speaker 3: It's long been a cult favorite internationally as well. I
Speaker 3: was not surprised at all to see that Michael Weldon
Speaker 3: had it cataloged in the Psychotronic Video Guide from decades back.
Speaker 3: Now Hawk went on to have an exceptional career, and
Speaker 3: it's still active as a director and producer. His directing
Speaker 3: credits include nineteen eighties Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties were Going to Eat You. That is a
Speaker 3: cannibal film nineteen eighty three, Zoo Warriors from the Magic
Speaker 3: Mountain nineteen ninety ones, Once Upon a Time in China,
Speaker 3: ninety three's Green Snake, and twenty ten's Detective d and
Speaker 3: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain in multiple sources.
Speaker 1: I've seen that movie highlighted as sort of his masterpiece,
Speaker 1: or at least his masterpiece. If you're looking for like
Speaker 1: like weird Hong Kong cinema more instead of his Western.
Speaker 3: Movies, all right, we may have to come back and
Speaker 3: look at that one now. Purely Western audiences might know
Speaker 3: him best from his films from two films particular, Double
Speaker 3: Team from ninety seven. This is a film that starred
Speaker 3: Jean Claude Van Dam, Dennis Rodman, Paul Freeman, and Mickey Rourke.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this one, Joe, I don't remember if
Speaker 1: I did. I saw it before I could appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I think I look back to see what Ebert had
Speaker 3: to say about it. Roger Ebert wrote, Double Team is
Speaker 3: one of the most preposterous action films ever made. And
Speaker 3: I do not mean that as a criticism. It will
Speaker 3: give you some notion of this movie strangeness. If I
Speaker 3: tell you that Dennis Rodman does not play the most
Speaker 3: peculiar character.
Speaker 1: Great, I mean, I want to see it. Now.
Speaker 3: Another film that he did that international audiences might have
Speaker 3: heard of his Black Mask two City of mass from
Speaker 3: two thousand and two. It has a cast that includes
Speaker 3: Tobin Bell that's old Jigsaw where he saw fans, pro
Speaker 3: wrestler Rob van Dam, Tracy Lords of Blade Fame, and
Speaker 3: also Tyler Maine, who I think he played Michael Myers
Speaker 3: and some of the Rob Zombie films, didn't they And
Speaker 3: he played saber Tooth in the first X Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, I have not seen it. I have
Speaker 1: not seen it either. I guess I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't think I've seen any of his other movies that
Speaker 1: I recall, and I've got to fix that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, because there's so many of them, and it's
Speaker 3: he's had such a long career. Certainly the weirder entries.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in Zoo Warriors, I'm interested in the Cannibal flick,
Speaker 3: and who knows what else is in there?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: The writers on this, we have Chiu Ming Lamb, who
Speaker 3: is active from nineteen seventy nine through nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 3: probably best known for this film along with nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: The Buddhist Fist in nineteen eighty four is the Ghost Informer,
Speaker 3: and then the other writer is Fan Lynn. This is
Speaker 3: their only credit on multiple databases, including Hong Kong Movie Database.
Speaker 3: All right, now, getting into the actors a bit. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to highlight everyone, but try and hit our
Speaker 3: main main ones here and Joe you may have to
Speaker 3: jump in here because the names that I have are
Speaker 3: mostly the character are mostly off of IMDb. You might
Speaker 3: have a different version from the subtitles because I think
Speaker 3: the subtitles to dB eight a little bit spelled differently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so our main character, according to the subtitles was
Speaker 1: known as Fong. This is the scholar, the nerd of
Speaker 1: the film if you like.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the actor here is Assuming Lao born nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty one, Hong Kong actor known for nineteen eighty sevens
Speaker 3: a Chinese Ghost Story, which we watched. He plays the
Speaker 3: tree devil in that nice two thousand and six is
Speaker 3: recycle nineteen eighty Seven's A Better Tomorrow two, as well
Speaker 3: as the two thousand and three film the Medallion. I
Speaker 3: think that's a Jackie Chan film. I don't recall offhand.
Speaker 3: I'm also going to just looking sometimes I just enjoy
Speaker 3: finding strange titles on especially international films. There's nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: nine film titled Eat a Bowl of Tea? So why not?
Speaker 3: Why not eat a Bowl of Tea?
Speaker 1: I like his portrayal of this character. So he is
Speaker 1: the essentially the only non warrior character completely surrounded by
Speaker 1: warriors in every other direction. So he's not he's a
Speaker 1: he's a lover, not a fighter. But he's not really
Speaker 1: a lover either. He's a chronicler.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And yet they don't portray him as like a like
Speaker 1: a coward. He is a brave non fighter in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like other move other movies might have positioned him
Speaker 3: as more of kind of like you're sniveling even comic
Speaker 3: relief character, but he's more of a scholar in sort
Speaker 3: of the traditional It's so it's sort of in the
Speaker 3: traditional Chinese sense of of like, you know, he is
Speaker 3: he is a he is a noble scholar who is
Speaker 3: recording these strange events and sharing them with a with
Speaker 3: with the with the with the surviving world. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: we also have Oh what a character we have Green Shadow.
Speaker 1: I love Green Shadow. Sign me up for the Green
Speaker 1: Shadow fan club.
Speaker 3: Hees Green Shadow for specialty. Seems to be flying around
Speaker 3: on wires and grappling hooks, and he's in like wire
Speaker 3: based martial arts.
Speaker 1: I don't know when exactly this started in film, but yeah,
Speaker 1: this is. Her performance in this movie is cited as
Speaker 1: an example of what's sometimes called like wire fu or
Speaker 1: like wire work in martial arts films, but it's not
Speaker 1: one of those cases where like in some films, characters
Speaker 1: are depicted as having kind of a energy or magic
Speaker 1: power that allows them to sort of like fly or
Speaker 1: leap beyond what would be normally physically possible for humans,
Speaker 1: and that is achieved via wire based special effects. In
Speaker 1: this case, she explicitly and openly uses wires. That that
Speaker 1: is her martial arts style, Like she swings from chords
Speaker 1: and wires and zips along on them and dangles from
Speaker 1: apparently just out of the sky on wires. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, she's a wire specialist and she's a
Speaker 3: light played by Michelle Young born nineteen fifty six, Hong
Speaker 3: Kong cinema actress. This was not her first film and
Speaker 3: I think it kind of shines through because she has
Speaker 3: this kind of I don't know, just this sort of
Speaker 3: this effortless charisma in the film. Yeah, just just very likable.
Speaker 3: She's a lovable scamp and just did a light every
Speaker 3: time she's on the screen.
Speaker 1: In this situation of like death and disease and high
Speaker 1: stakes conflict and factional fighting and betrayal and secret murders,
Speaker 1: she's just always extremely cheerful and two steps ahead of
Speaker 1: everybody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, she's a lot of fun. She's also
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighty cannibal movie We're Going to Eat You,
Speaker 3: and she was also apparently a popular force on Hong
Speaker 3: Kong television for a long time.
Speaker 1: Love Green Shadow, but I would say this movie actually
Speaker 1: has a lot of really charismatic martial arts heroes in it.
Speaker 1: The other main fighter hero we follow in this movie
Speaker 1: is Boss ten or ten Fung, and he I also
Speaker 1: found him super charismatic, even though he's less of a
Speaker 1: nice character than Green Shadow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he's you know, he's a professional criminal in
Speaker 3: and gang leader, but has this great stern face, this
Speaker 3: great presence. I would almost compare him to sort of
Speaker 3: a snake pluskin sort of a vibe, you know, an
Speaker 3: Old West kind of a vibe. You know again, very
Speaker 3: stern face, very stern presence, solid performance, great at great
Speaker 3: great action role here. The actor is Shutong Wong, who
Speaker 3: lived nineteen forty four through twenty twenty one, Hong Kong
Speaker 3: actor and director, whose other acting credits include nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: two's Five Fingers of Death. He also worked as a
Speaker 3: stunt coordinator on various films, including this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so obviously his stunt work in the martial arts
Speaker 1: scenes is great since he's the stunt coordinator. But also
Speaker 1: I think he does really well as an actor. He's
Speaker 1: got a great face for the role. He has this
Speaker 1: kind of stone like kind of immovability in many scenes
Speaker 1: where you're just like, you know, no, he's not gonna
Speaker 1: budge all right.
Speaker 3: The next character we have is the Master of the Castle,
Speaker 3: Master Shum. I've also seen it as Shin in the credits.
Speaker 3: This is another strong screen presence for reasons we'll get into.
Speaker 3: But the actor here is Ku Chu Cheng born nineteen
Speaker 3: forty eight Taiwanese actor, active from seventy four through present.
Speaker 3: His other films include nineteen ninety one's a Brighter Summer Day.
Speaker 3: Ninety six is Maijong and nineteen eighty one's Love Massacre.
Speaker 3: That's not a horror movie. It looks like it's some
Speaker 3: sort of a drama for some reason, as the English
Speaker 3: name Love Massacre Oki doki. All right. Now, there are
Speaker 3: a number of other like gang members and specialized fighters
Speaker 3: we'll get into. I'm not going to highlight all of them,
Speaker 3: but I have to mention the magic fire guy here. Yeah, Guya,
Speaker 3: who's played by Eddie Coe born nineteen thirty seven. Easily
Speaker 3: recognizable Shaw Brothers veteran active from nineteen sixty seven through present.
Speaker 3: He acted in a lot of Wusha and did some
Speaker 3: notable Hong Kong TV back in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 3: Eventually migrated to Canada and has appeared in such Western
Speaker 3: films as ninety eight's Lethal Weapon four and twenty fifteen
Speaker 3: The Martian, though I believe he's still quite active in
Speaker 3: Chinese cinema and TV as well. But he has this
Speaker 3: very expressive face, and in this movie he spends a
Speaker 3: lot of time blowing stuff up, catching his enemies on fire,
Speaker 3: and then laughing maniacally.
Speaker 1: You know, I was kind of surprised by the Thunders.
Speaker 1: Like when they were first showing up, it really catches
Speaker 1: you off guard because you don't really know whether they're
Speaker 1: good guys are bad guys. And that really continues, like
Speaker 1: long after they have appeared. You're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to sort them mentally because this guy in some
Speaker 1: scenes he's kind of You're kind of with him, he's
Speaker 1: kind of one of the good guys, but also he
Speaker 1: is like he is a nasty fire shooting killer and
Speaker 1: he ultimately I don't well, I don't want to spoil
Speaker 1: the ending just yet. We will have spoilers later in
Speaker 1: this episode, but the ending is a shock and it
Speaker 1: involves him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so fun character. I did. When a Thunder
Speaker 3: started really showing up in Earnest, I was also a
Speaker 3: little bit worried because I'm like, oh, my goodness, is
Speaker 3: getting more complex. Yeah, I'm not gonna give track of everyone,
Speaker 3: all right, Just one other actor I'll mention Tino Wong
Speaker 3: plays Thousand Hands Lea Kim. He was also the action
Speaker 3: director on the film. I'm not necessarily all in the
Speaker 3: clear on who did what on this movie, but he
Speaker 3: is credited as action director and not just a you know,
Speaker 3: like a stunt coordinator or whatever. His other films include
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight Drunken Master and seventy eight Snake in
Speaker 3: the Eagle Shadow.
Speaker 1: Another great martial arts focused performance here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the score is by Frankie Chan born
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty one, Hong Kong cinema composer, actor and director, who,
Speaker 3: in my non expert opinion here absolutely knocks it out
Speaker 3: of the park with a score full of more traditional
Speaker 3: feeling wusha motifs as well as bonkers synth notes that
Speaker 3: hit you right in the boards of Canada.
Speaker 1: And then there are funky parts.
Speaker 3: There's a little funk there too. Now I'm not clear
Speaker 3: on like how I couldn't find any details about the score,
Speaker 3: and I know sometimes you're dealing with a score in
Speaker 3: these movies that maybe are borrowing from multiple sources, So
Speaker 3: I can't say with any clarity how it all came together,
Speaker 3: or if this is all original, or if it's coming
Speaker 3: from other films or stock et c. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: loved everything I heard in the movie. That first synth
Speaker 3: cascade upon seeing a butterfly that really knocked my socks off.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of moments in this movie where
Speaker 1: you suddenly get an extreme close up of a butterfly,
Speaker 1: and then there's something that's I don't even know if
Speaker 1: I would call it music. There's kind of a rhythmic
Speaker 1: thumping or drumming sound that becomes very loud. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you are hearing the movements of the butterfly's legs
Speaker 1: or wings on the scale of an insect. But it's
Speaker 1: like a John Bonham drum fill and it's really cool.
Speaker 3: He's credited with composing on a number of other films,
Speaker 3: including seventy eight's The thirty Sixth Chamber of Shaolin, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty's Encounter of the Spooky Kind, seventy six is Mass
Speaker 3: sur of the Flying Guillotine, And that one gives me
Speaker 3: pause on this whole, like how the music come together,
Speaker 3: because I know that's one that give memory serves famously
Speaker 3: draws from Western music sources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, too great effect, I mean, in a brilliant way. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He also is credited on seventy five's The Super Inframan,
Speaker 3: seventy six is The Oily Maniac. A lot of movies
Speaker 3: we've covered, yeah, And his directorial credits include nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: Outlaw Brother.
Speaker 1: All Right, you want to get into the plot. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's get into it, all right. So, as I teased earlier,
Speaker 1: it's kind of difficult to figure out how to approach
Speaker 1: this one, Like should we try to explain the whole
Speaker 1: plot or employed the skip a bit brother principle from
Speaker 1: Monty Python. I'm going to start off talking in some detail,
Speaker 1: and then if if we find this is too too much,
Speaker 1: maybe we can we can zoom out a little bit.
Speaker 3: Okay, sounds good, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So the film begins with narration. It shows a
Speaker 1: mist blowing in front of a full moon, and the narrator,
Speaker 1: who we will later find out is Fong. The scholar
Speaker 1: tells us quote, in the thirty six year period before
Speaker 1: the New Era, two devastating wars took place in the
Speaker 1: Marshal world, and the idea of a martial world seems
Speaker 1: to be a sort of concept in this movie where
Speaker 1: it's like, this is the world in which all of
Speaker 1: the martial arts fighters sort of compete for power, and
Speaker 1: it includes especially whatever this character will get to in
Speaker 1: a minute, Boss Ten is doing. He's in charge of
Speaker 1: something that seems to me to be maybe like mercenary armies,
Speaker 1: maybe a criminal gang, maybe some sort of pseudo or
Speaker 1: quasi governmental thing. But he just commands a lot of fighters.
Speaker 1: So he's big in the marshal world. Is that how
Speaker 1: you understood it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he's kind of like a master of
Speaker 3: a guild or guild of warriors kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Fong tells us a narration that there was
Speaker 1: this first war in the dim Chong Mountain. Many were killed,
Speaker 1: Hungry condors filled the skies. There was a second war
Speaker 1: in Wodong Mountain or in the bottom of Wodong Mountain.
Speaker 1: It says there many were killed again. And then it
Speaker 1: says from that time onwards, quote, most masters in the
Speaker 1: martial world were all dead. Thus the martial world entered
Speaker 1: the Quiet Period, lasting over thirty years. On the surface,
Speaker 1: it was a strange truce. In fact, there were undercurrents
Speaker 1: of unrest. Then emerged seventy two new forces termed these
Speaker 1: seventy two Trails of Smoke, heralding the dawn of the
Speaker 1: new era. And then here, while the narration goes on,
Speaker 1: we see this barren sandy landscape with smooth white sand,
Speaker 1: almost like a beach, though I don't think it's a beach.
Speaker 1: I think it's a desert. There are mountains in the distance,
Speaker 1: and then in the foreground there is a single, lonely
Speaker 1: tree branch blowing in the wind.
Speaker 3: So already we're kind of in the deep end here.
Speaker 3: But I love the texture that has presented because, at
Speaker 3: least as far as I was understanding the subtitles on
Speaker 3: all of this, like it's almost the post apocalyptic setting,
Speaker 3: Like the warriors have become so skilled that they killed
Speaker 3: each other and killed everyone off, and so we're in
Speaker 3: this momentary, peaceful period, but there are still these undercurrents
Speaker 3: of like reaching and grasping for the old military technologies
Speaker 3: and tactics that will of course inevitably bring us back
Speaker 3: up to where we were before.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Yeah, that's how I understood the setting.
Speaker 1: There used to be a bunch of martial arts heroes.
Speaker 1: They all killed each other. Then there were thirty years
Speaker 1: without martial arts heroes, and now the martial world is returning.
Speaker 3: This would be a great They keep doing, you know,
Speaker 3: sequels to all these fighting games, and it's always the
Speaker 3: same thing every time, like do this instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a good prim Okay, But the
Speaker 1: narrator goes on to explain his own place in this,
Speaker 1: he says. In these warring years, a traveling scholar, untrained
Speaker 1: in martial arts, recorded the important events of the era
Speaker 1: and sold them for a living. His name is Pong,
Speaker 1: and I am that one, he says, to this martial world.
Speaker 1: I was an observer, but inevitably I become totally involved.
Speaker 3: This is a good sort of taste of the subtitle character. Yes,
Speaker 3: is that it's it's you can follow it, but there's
Speaker 3: a little but there's some nuance missing there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some translation issues and things get clearly getting
Speaker 1: lost in the translation to the English subtitles. We can
Speaker 1: mention a few more moments like that as we go on,
Speaker 1: but overall, yeah, you can follow what's happening. So we
Speaker 1: see we see a man come over the horizon and
Speaker 1: crunching through the sand. He wears simple robes, appears to
Speaker 1: be a humble and quiet fellow, and this is Pong.
Speaker 1: Fong approaches a castle surrounded by tall grass, and then
Speaker 1: there is an explosion in one of its towers, and
Speaker 1: then the narration continue. Returning from Tibet in the twenty
Speaker 1: fourth of the New Era, I met ten Phone, leader
Speaker 1: of the Ten Flags, and intriguing encounter and then in
Speaker 1: a quite funny way, there's a sudden cut to just
Speaker 1: like funk music like heavy funk groove and wikiwiki guitars.
Speaker 1: So on screen we see a hand of an unknown
Speaker 1: person reaching for the sky, fingers curled into a fist,
Speaker 1: and then the hand opens to reveal in its palm
Speaker 1: a butterfly. The butterfly flies away title screen, the butterfly murders,
Speaker 1: and we get a song with lyrics. So I want
Speaker 1: to say what the lyrics are. As translated in the
Speaker 1: subtitles here, the lyrics are Smoke arises, Blood is in
Speaker 1: the air, life of death. I must face it, trying
Speaker 1: to escape, yet you are already trapped. Suspicious arise, Confidence shattered,
Speaker 1: one whiff and I am down forever. Who is to grieve?
Speaker 1: Who is to be glad? Isn't this all?
Speaker 3: From the Bridge to Metallica? Is one? Like I can
Speaker 3: just imagine it, James Hetfield belting it out like da
Speaker 3: da da da.
Speaker 1: Dut confidence shot dada. But no, it's it's a kind
Speaker 1: of uh lilting ballad sort of melody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nice. I think you probably hurt part of
Speaker 3: it in the trailer audio we played. But now you
Speaker 3: know what it's said roughly.
Speaker 1: All the while this opening credit sequence, while the music
Speaker 1: is playing, it is trying really hard to make butterflies
Speaker 1: look menacing, and to my surprise, succeeding. We see butterflies
Speaker 1: landing and alighting from rocks along the bank of a
Speaker 1: mountain stream. Then there are several shots where butterflies are
Speaker 1: not flying, but perched on the rocks and just sort
Speaker 1: of pumping their wings rhythmically while they stay perched there.
Speaker 1: I've seen this movement before, of course, never thought to
Speaker 1: interpret it as threatening, But for some with the right focus,
Speaker 1: somehow it does look a bit that way. It does
Speaker 1: look a bit like like some kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: like predatory animal flexing its jaws. It's interesting how framing
Speaker 1: can change the way you see an utterly harmless animal.
Speaker 1: Oh but also I thought, before the song is finished,
Speaker 1: it just cuts off like in mid line and smash
Speaker 1: edits to a roaring waterfall with no music playing. So
Speaker 1: here it goes on introducing the characters. It says, the
Speaker 1: powerful Tinfong leads his ten flags of men, so I
Speaker 1: think he rules. The ten flags are ten different gangs
Speaker 1: or guilds of martial arts fighters, and so overall what
Speaker 1: he leads I think is known as the Tin Clan,
Speaker 1: but there are ten different gangs within it, and they're
Speaker 1: like color coded, so there's like the red flags and
Speaker 1: the white flags and so forth. And the camera pans
Speaker 1: and we see the bodies of many swordsmen lying dead
Speaker 1: on the rocks in the middle of a river, with
Speaker 1: blood running into the foamy rapids and swirling around them.
Speaker 1: I think this is supposed to indicate like, these are
Speaker 1: the enemies of Boston. Boston has defeated them all. When
Speaker 1: it cuts to something else, it's like, Okay, here's here's
Speaker 1: a scene for you. It happened in the twenty fourth
Speaker 1: of the New Era, on the sixth day of the
Speaker 1: sixth month in bar Bridge paper mill founded for over
Speaker 1: eighty years, an unusual incident happened. That's the narration. So
Speaker 1: here we see a pre industrial paper mill in operation.
Speaker 1: Workers are boiling down wood products and rags in water,
Speaker 1: pounding out sheets of paper and hanging them up to dry.
Speaker 1: But it's not just a paper mill. This appears to
Speaker 1: be a combination paper mill and printing press. So some
Speaker 1: of the workers are in like a different part of
Speaker 1: the setting, are arranging type blocks and pressing them with
Speaker 1: ink and then pressing paper against them.
Speaker 3: I loved all the little details in this sequence. I
Speaker 3: feel like he does a really great job establishing the
Speaker 3: setting and the sense of enterprise here. It was just
Speaker 3: really drawn in. Again, this is a technically a very
Speaker 3: proficient film, so you know, all this stuff that might
Speaker 3: be sort of wasted motion in a lesser film is
Speaker 3: all very ink.
Speaker 1: I agree. I feel like this director is really skilled
Speaker 1: with setting and situation. This is a movie where you
Speaker 1: always have a really good feeling of where you are
Speaker 1: and what it feels like where the scene is taking place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now here we get our first real time scene with dialogue.
Speaker 1: A man, a kind of suspiciously behaving man, comes into
Speaker 1: the paper mill with a proposition for the boss. They
Speaker 1: sit down and share a cup of tea. The boss
Speaker 1: I believe he smokes his pipe or something, and the
Speaker 1: visitor produces a book in what looks like scroll form
Speaker 1: from his satchel. He asks if the mill would be
Speaker 1: able to print five thousand copies of this document within
Speaker 1: ten days.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: The mysterious visitor says he came across this book by accident,
Speaker 1: but that it is the memoirs of Pong describing the
Speaker 1: quote unusual events of the last ten years, and this
Speaker 1: causes like a music sting. The boss is surprised. He
Speaker 1: almost sort of spits out his pipe, and the visitor
Speaker 1: says that the boss will make lots of money by
Speaker 1: selling this book. Okay, so the boss of the paper
Speaker 1: mill is not just making paper, not just printing on it,
Speaker 1: but I think also operating a bookstore and selling books.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the visitor is like, okay, print up this book,
Speaker 1: sell a bunch of copies. You'll make money. Oh and
Speaker 1: just in the middle here we get this little interlude
Speaker 1: where it's just showing us the printing the printing press
Speaker 1: workers who are arranging the words on the type blocks,
Speaker 1: and they're narrating. One is narrating the text to the
Speaker 1: other while he puts the characters in place, and the
Speaker 1: narration goes, my beloved came riding on a bamboo horse,
Speaker 1: and the guy kind of sings along. I just really
Speaker 1: liked this moment. Yeah, But the boss says he does
Speaker 1: not think that these pages are authentically the work of
Speaker 1: Fong because they do not match Fong's handwriting, so he
Speaker 1: knows what Pong's handwriting looks like. And then next thing,
Speaker 1: paper mill workers find the boss dead, hanging upside down
Speaker 1: in the back of the print shop, and the visitor
Speaker 1: is gone. He seems to have busted out through one
Speaker 1: of the windows. It's very eerie. There are all these
Speaker 1: papers hung up on clotheslines for the ink to dry,
Speaker 1: and they're they're flapping in the wind from a smashed window.
Speaker 3: So already we have printing press drama in this film.
Speaker 3: What was going on? What was this mysterious apparently fraudulent
Speaker 3: work that was they were trying to get published and distributed.
Speaker 3: We'll we'll find out later on in the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why would this guy kill a print boss for
Speaker 1: refusing to or for refusing to print this book or
Speaker 1: for recognizing that it was not Fong's handwriting? Well, next
Speaker 1: to the narration tells us that the bar bridge, the
Speaker 1: place where the printing press was and the paper mill was,
Speaker 1: was in the territory of tin Clan's White Flag. So
Speaker 1: that's one of Boston's gangs. So it's like they control
Speaker 1: that area. Uh, And so it says several days afterwards,
Speaker 1: we see someone in a wide brimmed hat running through
Speaker 1: a field of tall weeds pursued by a gang of
Speaker 1: men with hooked blades. He has caught and unmasked, and
Speaker 1: it is the guy from the paper mill, the visitor
Speaker 1: who brought the who brought the scroll and apparently killed
Speaker 1: the boss there, and the White Flag warrior who captures
Speaker 1: him says, poisonous Wasp, you killed the paper mill's boss.
Speaker 1: The White Flag leader tries to interrogate him, He's like,
Speaker 1: why did you kill the boss, but the stranger doesn't answer. Instead,
Speaker 1: he tries to fight his way out of the situation,
Speaker 1: and he gets killed. So no answers there.
Speaker 3: They'll refer back to him, I believe as wasp. So
Speaker 3: apparently poisonous Wasp was not like they weren't caught, you know,
Speaker 3: it wasn't profanity. It was like, that's just his name.
Speaker 3: He's poisonous Wasp.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. Narrator goes on to say in the sixth
Speaker 1: of the New Era, drought struck bandits abounded. The living
Speaker 1: was difficult, starvation caused cannibalism. Those still strong enough were
Speaker 1: busy digging up graves. Thirteen royal tombs in Wei Ying
Speaker 1: were dug up in one night. General Ping Nam's tomb
Speaker 1: in Butterfly Valley was rumored to be full of treasures.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, so there's a grave full of treasures. And
Speaker 1: we cut to a spooky scene of workers out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, swinging pickaxes in a grove
Speaker 1: of trees by yellow lamplight, and suddenly they stop digging.
Speaker 1: One of the workers asks what's wrong. Another one says,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're being watched. Then a lamp swings
Speaker 1: from a branch, and these patterns of light and shadow
Speaker 1: rock back and forth in the tree canopy while the
Speaker 1: workers are watching, almost like they are expecting something to
Speaker 1: come down at them from above, and there's this whispering wind.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere in the scene is so cool, and after
Speaker 1: listening for a moment, the workers start digging again. But
Speaker 1: in the foreground we see a single black butterfly flutters
Speaker 1: down from the sky and it lands softly on the
Speaker 1: bark of a tree branch. Then you pan to tree
Speaker 1: limbs directly over the worker's heads to reveal the branches
Speaker 1: are covered in butterflies. Normally that wouldn't seem so menacing.
Speaker 1: Here it really does. There are these very effective close
Speaker 1: ups of the wings flexing and the spiral shaped probosis
Speaker 1: like unfurling and catching the light. And so just when
Speaker 1: the workers strike a hard surface at the dig site,
Speaker 1: suddenly the butterflies explode with activity, swarming all around the men.
Speaker 1: The men scream in pain, They're terrified. They fall to
Speaker 1: the ground. Somehow the butterflies are killing them.
Speaker 3: And again like it's effectively done. The animals attack element
Speaker 3: of this film is on the whole more believable than
Speaker 3: most of the other all animals attack sort of films
Speaker 3: that we've talked about in the past, Like far more
Speaker 3: terrifying than frogs.
Speaker 1: Yes. Agree. Also, there was a green fireball in the scene.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, all right. So amid
Speaker 1: all these hard times and bad things going on, we
Speaker 1: finally see a meeting of multiple tin Clan warriors. So
Speaker 1: the White Flag Warriors meet with warriors dressed all in red.
Speaker 1: I guess these are the Red Flag Warriors. They are
Speaker 1: gathering on a cliff on a misty mountain slope. The
Speaker 1: Red Flag gang is led by a woman named number ten.
Speaker 1: The White Flag gang is led by a man named
Speaker 1: number three. Number three says their boss has been acting
Speaker 1: very strange since he acquired the twelve districts. I guess
Speaker 1: that means he gained power over twelve territories. I don't
Speaker 1: think this information is important, but just to give you
Speaker 1: a flavor of like all the complicated like numbers and
Speaker 1: factional naming that happens here. One of number three says,
Speaker 1: since the Yellow Flags ran down the Pangs, the ten
Speaker 1: Klan is the third most powerful of the seventy two.
Speaker 1: Since then, Boss has quietened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it does. Again. Part of it is the
Speaker 3: fact that the subtitles are a little bit confusing. It
Speaker 3: may not be the case if you're watching it, you know,
Speaker 3: as part of the intended original audience. But yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of this feels like maybe we could have cut
Speaker 3: this and maybe simplified it a little bit, because it's
Speaker 3: not all going to be essential once we get into
Speaker 3: the second half of the picture.
Speaker 1: But the Red Flag Leader and the White Flag Leader
Speaker 1: discussed it. They talk about how they think Boss ten
Speaker 1: is trying to gain repute and that there there's a
Speaker 1: vendetta among the seventy two. I guess the seventy two
Speaker 1: what was it called smoke trails? Yeah, that I guess
Speaker 1: are different different gangs arising in this new era. And
Speaker 1: so the fights between them cannot be solved. And their boss,
Speaker 1: the boss of their gangs, is trying to look good.
Speaker 1: I guess trying to get repute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a great deal of martial arts gang drama
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then done, dun done. Suddenly heavy music sting,
Speaker 1: heavy bass and sudden, and the boss is here. The
Speaker 1: boss pops up. This is the first time I think
Speaker 1: we've seen Tinfung. He's also got another guy with him.
Speaker 1: They sort of jump out from behind a rock and
Speaker 1: everybody's like boss, and oh boy, Tinfong the boss has
Speaker 1: magnificent hair. He's standing with one leg up on a
Speaker 1: kind of pulpit of rock on the mountain side, overlooking
Speaker 1: the gang members. Underneath him stands some kind of lieutenant
Speaker 1: that we later find out is named Big Eyed, who's
Speaker 1: wearing like pink robes and a cape. Tinfong himself is
Speaker 1: wearing a cape or a cloak and this like cool
Speaker 1: black outfit with kind of a V neck. He's just
Speaker 1: got rock star hair. He looks really cool and stern
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, he would be a good gang boss.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah.
Speaker 3: If he were to ask if we could dig it,
Speaker 3: I would have to agree.
Speaker 1: We can dig it. Yeah, yeah, But he explains to
Speaker 1: his fighters. He says, three days ago, Shume Castle sent
Speaker 1: me a secret letter. The master of Shume Castle and
Speaker 1: I only met once five years ago, yet he's asking
Speaker 1: for my help. An unusual event occurred at the castle recently.
Speaker 1: They say what event, and the Boss says, butterflies. Bathel
Speaker 1: looks all around.
Speaker 3: Now we have we have a call to adventure here,
Speaker 3: we have the invite to the spooky Castle.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Then and then specifically, this is another one where I
Speaker 1: would guess that the original line is delivered in a
Speaker 1: very hard hitting fashion, but the way it's phrased in
Speaker 1: the subtitles doesn't quite capture it. The sentence that he
Speaker 1: speaks is they found butterflies which kill in the castle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it, clearly it's better in the
Speaker 3: original language, but that's what we get via subtitles.
Speaker 1: But here we get like a cut to an extreme
Speaker 1: close up of a butterfly head. The heavy drumming sound
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, and it's laying that groundwork. It's making
Speaker 1: butterflies scary. So the Boss says, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: to the castle. I need the white flags and the
Speaker 1: red flags to go ahead and set up checkpoints on
Speaker 1: the paths around the castle, to surround the castle and
Speaker 1: monitor who comes and goes ahead of time, and I'll
Speaker 1: be there in three days. Meanwhile, just to emphasize again,
Speaker 1: like how cool a lot of the settings are here.
Speaker 1: The landscape are Boston. While he's giving the speech is
Speaker 1: just livid, like there are jagged rocks everywhere, the earth
Speaker 1: is belching out these clouds of fog, and there is
Speaker 1: just a steady rumbling sound under everything, like there's maybe
Speaker 1: a volcano erupting in the distance or something. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Also, Tinfung sends his lieutenant Big Eyed, to the castle
Speaker 1: ahead of time to sneak into the castle find out
Speaker 1: what's going on. So Big Eyed says, all right, boss,
Speaker 1: and he goes to do that. But next we follow
Speaker 1: Tinfung on the road, traveling alone, apparently in disguise in
Speaker 1: a hood and cloak. There are a lot of disguises
Speaker 1: in this movie, but he's walking along a path in
Speaker 1: the country and then he suddenly stops and calls out,
Speaker 1: you've been following me for two days, come on out.
Speaker 1: And so whoever he saw he do does come out,
Speaker 1: and it's green Shadow yeah, yeah, yeah, first Green Shadow scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's just instantly delightful.
Speaker 1: So Green Shadow swings through the air, crosses the path
Speaker 1: in front of him, then appears dangling from a rope.
Speaker 1: Green Shadow is a young woman dressed in sort of
Speaker 1: forest green robes. She is kind of a cross between
Speaker 1: Spider Man and Predator. So, like like the Predator, she
Speaker 1: uses the trees, you know, she swings from branch to branch,
Speaker 1: but like Spider Man, she's kind of a web slinger,
Speaker 1: like she swings from wires and ropes and zips around
Speaker 1: on them. But also she's just so positive, Like Green
Speaker 1: Shadow has a really friendly and exuberant personality and she
Speaker 1: always knows something that other people don't. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's on top of the situation and she's she's
Speaker 3: she's here for a good time.
Speaker 1: Also in the scene, I don't know if tinfoone is
Speaker 1: just he happens to be crushing a butterfly in his fist,
Speaker 1: but he gets around asking Green Shadow, why are you
Speaker 1: following me? And she says, I've always been interested in
Speaker 1: other secrets. Yeah, we can tell Green Shadow you know
Speaker 1: everybody's secrets before. Yeah, you clearly are are nosy. Now
Speaker 1: they appear to have some kind of pass like they
Speaker 1: know each other. It's not not really fully explained, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if they've been enemies in the past
Speaker 1: or allies, but they know each other somehow. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you caught any detail on that I missed, Rob.
Speaker 3: Now I just kind of picked up like maybe it's
Speaker 3: like a professional thing, you know. It's like, well, of
Speaker 3: course I know Green Shadow. Everybody's heard about the exploits
Speaker 3: of Green Shadow, and of course Fung is the boss,
Speaker 3: so everybody knows who Fung is.
Speaker 1: But we do know she's not one of the seventy
Speaker 1: two factions that are fighting because Green Shadow warns him.
Speaker 1: She says, many amongst the seventy two are coming for you.
Speaker 1: Boss Ten says they'll all end up the same. Green
Speaker 1: Shadow says, I'm not amongst the seventy two, so I
Speaker 1: should be the exception. So Green Shadow offers to help him.
Speaker 1: At first, he's kind of stand offish, but she reveals
Speaker 1: she knows a lot. She knows what's going on. She
Speaker 1: knows he's going to the Shum Castle. She knows what
Speaker 1: happened at the Barbridge paper Mill. She knows about the
Speaker 1: murder and the eight pages of Fung's memoirs. She reveals
Speaker 1: that she knows about the killer butterflies since they are
Speaker 1: mentioned in the memoirs that were that the guy was
Speaker 1: trying to get published at this paper mill. Tin Fung
Speaker 1: is like, you believe in Fong's memoirs, and she says, yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually knows a lot. And Ten reveals his anti
Speaker 1: scholar bias here. He's like, it's easy for scholars to talk,
Speaker 1: but there's a great difference between writing and fighting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this will come up time and time again.
Speaker 1: Good point, So Ten isn't going to trust Fong. But
Speaker 1: then Green Shadow makes a good point. She's like, at
Speaker 1: least he's not amongst the seventy two, so you know,
Speaker 1: Ten knows he's not one of the enemies that's coming
Speaker 1: for him. So they agree to go to Schum Castle together,
Speaker 1: just as he ordered. Tin Fung's gang is already there
Speaker 1: ahead of him, and they report that there has been
Speaker 1: neary a peep from the castle, no lights, no smoke,
Speaker 1: it's like there's no one there. And Big Eyed, the
Speaker 1: lieutenant who is sent ahead ahead of time to investigate
Speaker 1: the castle and report back, nobody's heard anything from him,
Speaker 1: so they go inside inside the castle walls. At first,
Speaker 1: everything appears deserted. The courtyard is kind of barren. It's
Speaker 1: the sandy rectangle of earth with no signs of life.
Speaker 1: It's almost even like a lot of the like. All
Speaker 1: the furniture has been removed from the castle. It's just empty.
Speaker 1: And Tin Fung's men and they scour the grounds. They
Speaker 1: run along the battlements at the top of the walls.
Speaker 1: They run in and out of the buildings. Tin Fung
Speaker 1: himself wanders into one room where a massive shape of
Speaker 1: some sort is hidden underneath a curtain. He pulls the
Speaker 1: curtain away to reveal a demonic statue. Seems to be
Speaker 1: some kind of malevolent, predatory or dragon like figure. It's
Speaker 1: got real like Pazuzu statue from The Exorcist energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely has more of the vibe of a
Speaker 3: European or American Gothic castle set as opposed to like
Speaker 3: a really ornate Chinese dragon. Because I mean, it is
Speaker 3: obviously a set, and we'll see it later when it
Speaker 3: of course explodes, because you can tell, you can tell
Speaker 3: this was made to blow up. This thing's blow up
Speaker 3: and crash at some point, and it will in spectacular fashion.
Speaker 3: But yeah, this scene and all the other Like again,
Speaker 3: the director just does a great job establishing location. You know,
Speaker 3: where you are in the castle, and especially as we
Speaker 3: begin to add on different sections of it.
Speaker 1: I agree as an aside, I feel like that is
Speaker 1: a really important and underappreciated skill in filmmaking, underappreciated by
Speaker 1: a lot of audiences. The importance of a director making
Speaker 1: you using film to make you understand and feel a setting.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some filmmakers who are really good at this,
Speaker 1: like I would pull it, like the Coen Brothers are
Speaker 1: really good at making you, like understand the feeling of
Speaker 1: a room where the scene is taking place. Of course,
Speaker 1: a lot of good directors are able to do this,
Speaker 1: but a common feature of bad filmmaking is that like,
Speaker 1: scenes are taking place in a setting where you don't
Speaker 1: feel like you understand where you are right And this
Speaker 1: is the opposite as we were saying, that the settings
Speaker 1: are really well established, you feel them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's effortless and it doesn't require language at all.
Speaker 3: So it's one of those things that the subtitles don't
Speaker 3: get in the way of that because it's speaking directly
Speaker 3: to you no matter what your native tongue is right.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the White Flag fighters come to Tinfong to
Speaker 1: inform him that they have found Big Eyed. Big Eyed
Speaker 1: is dead, his body lying beside a pond in the courtyard.
Speaker 1: His skin is covered in scorch marks and black smudges,
Speaker 1: and inside his clenched fist is a butterfly. Of course,
Speaker 1: Tinfung is furious at this to find his lieutenant dead.
Speaker 1: Just then he and Green Shadow finally meet someone who
Speaker 1: appears to be an inhabitant of the castle. It's a
Speaker 1: young woman holding a lantern. Tinfong runs up to her
Speaker 1: and tries to question her, but she seems either unable
Speaker 1: or unwilling to speak, and she also seems afraid of him,
Speaker 1: and they wonder why. Tinfongs like, why is she carrying
Speaker 1: a lantern in the daytime, but Green Shadow, who again
Speaker 1: always seem to be mentally one step ahead, says it's
Speaker 1: because she came from underground. Green Shadow's right. They rush
Speaker 1: around the corner to find a cellar door propped open,
Speaker 1: and then the young woman with the lantern leads Tinfung
Speaker 1: and Green Shadow down the stairs into an underground tunnel,
Speaker 1: where they meet the master of the castle. It is
Speaker 1: Master Schum. He's very glad they've come, and he escorts
Speaker 1: them deeper into the rocky catacombs, where they find a
Speaker 1: kind of improvised living space illuminated by torchlight. So down
Speaker 1: in the space is Master Shum. There is the girl
Speaker 1: with the lantern, whose name we learn is Chi. And
Speaker 1: there is the Madam of the castle, Madam Schumer, Ladyshum.
Speaker 1: Also there is another guest who has arrived. It is
Speaker 1: the scholar Pong, remember him from earlier, He was the narrator.
Speaker 1: This is the alleged author of the eight pages of
Speaker 1: memoir from the incident at the paper mill. And as
Speaker 1: we could expect, there is tension between Tinfung and Pong.
Speaker 1: Boston does not trust him. He says, although your memoirs
Speaker 1: have some repute, a scholar like you can only get
Speaker 1: in the way and make things worse. He's not a
Speaker 1: fan of these nerdy scholars. But Master Schum says, hey,
Speaker 1: he needs Fong here. He invited him here to chronicle
Speaker 1: the events that have happened and to make an accurate
Speaker 1: report of what's going on at the castle, to serve
Speaker 1: as a warning to others.
Speaker 3: All right, so already you know We've got this strong
Speaker 3: mystery gothic plot developing here, mysterious castle, strange events. People
Speaker 3: with diverse backgrounds have been invited to witness what is
Speaker 3: unfolding there.
Speaker 1: Here. Master Shum explains the backstory, and so we see
Speaker 1: it like re enacted as he tells it. He says,
Speaker 1: earlier this year, on the fifth day of the fifth month,
Speaker 1: there was it was a day to commemorate his ancestor's death,
Speaker 1: and so we see a sort of temple shrine within
Speaker 1: the castle grounds and there are offerings. There's like a
Speaker 1: roasted chicken and a pig's head and a fish being
Speaker 1: offered up, I guess in honor of his ancestor. And
Speaker 1: the first strange occurrence here is that during the celebration,
Speaker 1: a servant finds a reeking display in one of the
Speaker 1: rooms of the castle. It looks like some kind of
Speaker 1: dead tropical bird hanging upside down with its feathers covered
Speaker 1: in blood, and it has a butterfly in its beak.
Speaker 1: Second event is one night Lady Shum is weaving in
Speaker 1: her chambers and is bitten so that blood is drawn,
Speaker 1: but she's bitten by a butterfly that lands on her
Speaker 1: neck and then on her hand. After this, the servants
Speaker 1: decide the castle is cursed. They start running away, leaving
Speaker 1: the Schum family by themselves. One day, Master Shum finds
Speaker 1: that masses of butterflies are swarming around the outside of
Speaker 1: the windows, and the butterflies attack. They kill his last
Speaker 1: loyal servant, as Master Shum himself barely escapes with his
Speaker 1: life into the underground tunnels. So now it appears to
Speaker 1: be just Schum, Lady Shum and she living down there
Speaker 1: in the tunnels. Everybody else is dead or has fled
Speaker 1: the castle.
Speaker 3: And this is a great set, Like the more details
Speaker 3: we get, the more amazing it is. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: they're living underneath the Gothic castle in this complex that
Speaker 3: it seems just increasingly. I mean, it's expressly described as
Speaker 3: a labyrinth later on, with lots of confusing twists and
Speaker 3: secret passages.
Speaker 1: So just great setting, agree, And I love the rooms
Speaker 1: they find in these passageways later on. But oh, we
Speaker 1: also get some backstory about the third person there, about Chi,
Speaker 1: the servant. Lady Schum explains that she found her alone
Speaker 1: while traveling away from the castle years ago, that she
Speaker 1: was deaf and mute. So the lady. So Lady Shum
Speaker 1: brought Chi back to the castle with her to live
Speaker 1: there and serve as her personal maid. So we met
Speaker 1: all the characters here now. Later that night, Fong the
Speaker 1: scholar and Master Schum have a conversation in Master Shum's
Speaker 1: secret meditation chamber where he's got like a he's got
Speaker 1: a go boards.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I guess it's supposed to be like
Speaker 3: a study. I think we might more realistically think of
Speaker 3: it as his secret study.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Fong says, why did you bring me here?
Speaker 1: And Schum says, do you believe in ghosts? Fong takes
Speaker 1: a diplomatic view that I think could be read multiple
Speaker 1: different ways. He says, ghosts exist if you believe in them,
Speaker 1: otherwise they don't. And I feel like you could there
Speaker 1: are a few different ways you could take that. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you read it, Rob.
Speaker 3: I mean, I took it to be like Thong is
Speaker 3: a no nonsense kind of guy. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: that that realizes that belief in ghosts is a powerful thing,
Speaker 3: even if ghosts don't exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's sort of how I took it too.
Speaker 1: But then I also wondered if, well, maybe he means, like,
Speaker 1: ghosts do exist and have power, but only over those
Speaker 1: that believe in them. And yeah, but I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: either way it works. Yeah, anyway, Master Shum starts talking
Speaker 1: about the anniversary of the death of his father, and
Speaker 1: there is a there was a funny moment here with
Speaker 1: like the way the subtitles work, with like the timing.
Speaker 1: Master Shum says he's killed by butterflies ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and then there's a music sting and Fong bolts up
Speaker 1: from his chair. But then Master Shum says kind of
Speaker 1: sadly that his father didn't believe in ghosts, and for
Speaker 1: this reason, he had no worries about trying to dig
Speaker 1: up the buried treasures of the General of Pinan or
Speaker 1: General Pinan. I think this is maybe the same tomb
Speaker 1: we saw being dug up by people earlier in the movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: depiction of the same scene, but you know, people digging
Speaker 1: for treasure in a general's tomb, though the general's name
Speaker 1: appeared to be spelled differently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has to be the same, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Master Shum says his father lived peacefully for ten years
Speaker 1: after this act of grave robbing. But then one day
Speaker 1: ten years later was attacked by a swarm of killer butterflies.
Speaker 1: They assaulted the castle in the form of a cloud
Speaker 1: and descended to slaughter many men that day, and in
Speaker 1: the reenactment we see butterflies circling the towers in the
Speaker 1: castle walls. They leave soldiers and servants lying bloody in
Speaker 1: the courtyard. There are a lot of these sickening close
Speaker 1: ups of butterflies crawling over dead men. And then another
Speaker 1: line where I think it's not supposed to be funny,
Speaker 1: but something gets lost in the In the subtitle, Fong says,
Speaker 1: don't worry over it, let's work out together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The subtitles are again generally confusing in places, but
Speaker 3: rarely like actually, goofy, This is I think maybe the
Speaker 3: one real exception, And I had a nice hearty laugh
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: I think what it must mean is let's work it
Speaker 1: out together. I think he's saying like, we will solve
Speaker 1: the problem. That's how I took it, right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I think clearly what they meant. But I also I
Speaker 1: couldn't help it. Then imagine like, yeah, let's go work out,
Speaker 1: let's let's hit the weights Yeah, some of these characters
Speaker 1: might work out together, but I don't think it would
Speaker 1: be Fong who would do it. He does not even lift. Okay. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we get a report to Tinfung about Big Eyed and
Speaker 1: how he died. They say that his wounds are made
Speaker 1: of numerous tiny holes and his skin is swollen, all
Speaker 1: symptoms of poison. And in a line that will be
Speaker 1: repeated by many characters many times throughout the film, someone says,
Speaker 1: are there really killer butterflies? It's sort of unanswered. It
Speaker 1: seems like maybe there are. There are some general creepy
Speaker 1: stalking around in the tunnels in the dark. Who's following who?
Speaker 1: I don't always know, but Green Shadow is in the
Speaker 1: mix here somewhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of the Scooby Doo section of the film.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of creeping around. Who's creeping? You're not
Speaker 3: really entirely sure, but hopefully masks will be pulled off
Speaker 3: later on.
Speaker 1: Oh boy will they? So Suddenly the sneaking around is
Speaker 1: interrupted by a scream. One of Tinfung's White Flag soldiers
Speaker 1: is found lifeless on the ground up above, killed in
Speaker 1: the same way as Big Eyed. I guess by the butterflies,
Speaker 1: they're really piling on the butterfly deaths at this point,
Speaker 1: so Bosston he comes up with a solution, gets his
Speaker 1: warriors together, and he says, cover the castle in nets.
Speaker 1: So surely these nets will prevent any butterflies from getting in.
Speaker 1: Is that going to work? Is it going to work?
Speaker 1: Of course not?
Speaker 3: But will it look cool? You bet it will.
Speaker 1: They're like, they're really just like stacking butterfly murders every
Speaker 1: couple minutes at this point between the flashbacks and and
Speaker 1: what's happening in the present, So we also see the
Speaker 1: Red Flags out hunting. It's mostly like the White Flag
Speaker 1: warriors who are hanging out at the castle with Boss Ten.
Speaker 1: We see the Red Flags out hunting for butterflies with
Speaker 1: handheld nets, and they remark that there is not a
Speaker 1: single butterfly to be found in a twenty mile radius.
Speaker 1: Where could the killer insects be hiding. But here we're
Speaker 1: about to get into some investigation scenes, and just a
Speaker 1: warning if you want to go into this movie without
Speaker 1: any of the surprises spoiled, you know we're about to
Speaker 1: spoil things as we go along, So before warned. Inside it,
Speaker 1: Night Fong, the Scholar, and Green Shadow meet in one
Speaker 1: of the tunnels to discuss the castle. They conclude that
Speaker 1: there has to be a secret entrance to the underground labyrinth,
Speaker 1: but they cannot find the door, even though they've both
Speaker 1: been looking for it. So while they go looking around,
Speaker 1: they come across a hidden room with these hanging screens
Speaker 1: covered in thousands of dead butterfly specimens. It's like a
Speaker 1: lepidoptery collection.
Speaker 3: Now this is highly suspicious. Now we seem to be
Speaker 3: getting somewhere with the butterfly mystery.
Speaker 1: Right, So Fong and Green Shadow discuss whose work the
Speaker 1: collection could be, possibly the servant Chi. They note that
Speaker 1: they both thought that Chi had been with them separately
Speaker 1: at the time the White Flag soldier was found killed
Speaker 1: the previous night. So how could Chi have been in
Speaker 1: two places at once. Hmmm, we'll come back to that,
Speaker 1: but oh no. Next, Master Shum is attacked by butterflies
Speaker 1: inside his meditation room. He's but he's like locked inside
Speaker 1: the room, so they cannot go in help him. The
Speaker 1: door is locked from the inside, and everybody's watching through
Speaker 1: a grate in the door as he is killed by
Speaker 1: a swarm of butterflies. Eventually they are able to blast
Speaker 1: the doors open with gunpowder but it's too late. Master
Speaker 1: Shum lies dead on the floor, surrounded by pieces from
Speaker 1: his go board. Oh boy, Rob, I know you like
Speaker 1: a will reading scene, don't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where we get the will reading, where
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, he left a will? Should we read it?
Speaker 3: Should we gather everyone together? Are there agents or individuals
Speaker 3: out there who don't want us to read the will? Oh?
Speaker 3: I think that might be the case.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Lady Shum says, Master Shum left an unusual will.
Speaker 1: It says, quote, my dear wife, I have a wish left.
Speaker 1: Let out the message carrying pigeon, and in three days time, Shin,
Speaker 1: Quack and Lee will arrive. I have a letter to
Speaker 1: be read to them. Remember, read it in all three's presence. Remember,
Speaker 1: So these new characters are being introduced in Quak and Lee.
Speaker 1: Who are they? Well? Fong says that it's rumored that
Speaker 1: ten years ago a very knowledgeable hermit lived. Not only
Speaker 1: was he an excellent martial artist, he was also learned
Speaker 1: in the human sciences, and he had four students known
Speaker 1: as the Thunders. Now one of the students, one of
Speaker 1: the Thunders, was named You, and You is now dead,
Speaker 1: but the other three are Lee Schin, and Quak, and
Speaker 1: they are the three mentioned in the Will. So here
Speaker 1: we get a summary of the three Thunders courtesy of Fong.
Speaker 1: Fong says, first of all, Lee, Lee is best at
Speaker 1: small hand weapons. He is called the Thousand Hands. His
Speaker 1: attacks are totally unexpected. His expertise is second to none.
Speaker 1: Second we have Quawk. Quak is also known as magic Fire.
Speaker 1: He quote has the most killing power. And here we
Speaker 1: cut to a raven flying a scream and men lying
Speaker 1: scorched on the rocks. And apparently he wiped out a
Speaker 1: sect known as Fireball in one night. So there's some
Speaker 1: indication that Quak can like send a bird that somehow
Speaker 1: leaves men lying scorched on the earth. How does that work?
Speaker 1: Who knows. Finally, there's Shin, who is known as Flying Cloud.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows what he looks like, and he once went
Speaker 1: through the Forbidden Palace. They say, I don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. Do we eventually see Flying Cloud. I'm a
Speaker 1: little hazy on this. I you know, I'm confused. There
Speaker 1: may be something I missed. I totally admit that it
Speaker 1: may have gone past me, But I don't think Shin
Speaker 1: actually appears in the film. Okay, unless it's like the
Speaker 1: secret identity of another pre existing character and that's revealed
Speaker 1: at some point and I missed it. Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: alone there, Okay, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Okay. The other two we definitely see though, and they
Speaker 3: play important parts, especially Quark, who mentioned in the cast.
Speaker 1: But they're both really cool. So the Thunders are on
Speaker 1: their way, and Tinfoam warns his fighters not to confront
Speaker 1: the Thunders. This is a danger situation because on one hand,
Speaker 1: you've got Tinpholm's warriors. You know, they're fighting for power.
Speaker 1: But the Thunders are these other extremely dangerous martial heroes,
Speaker 1: you know, these people from the martial world, and you
Speaker 1: put the put them all in the place together, They're
Speaker 1: they're going to fight. I think at some point Boston says,
Speaker 1: two Tigers can't exist at the same time.
Speaker 3: Now, not discounting other influences, of course, but I mean,
Speaker 3: one can't help but be reminded of John Carpenter's later
Speaker 3: film A Big Trouble in Little China, in which we
Speaker 3: have the four Storms, who are exceptional martial artists slash
Speaker 3: sorcerers who have all sorts of crazy weapons and abilities,
Speaker 3: and you know, here we have the three Thunders. So
Speaker 3: you know, I can't help but wonder if this had
Speaker 3: any influence on the ultimate form.
Speaker 1: Of that film. Well, I think I've read somewhere that
Speaker 1: the same directors other film, Zoo Warriors and the Magic Mountain,
Speaker 1: was a major influence. It's on a big trouble.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll have to come back to Zoo lawyers.
Speaker 3: It just sounds too entyson, but.
Speaker 1: The film goes a great length to express and it's
Speaker 1: good to hammer home here that this is a dangerous
Speaker 1: situation having Boss ten and the Thunders in the same place.
Speaker 1: Because these are rivals, they are likely to come into conflict. Now. Next,
Speaker 1: there's a scene where Fong, the scholar, questions Chi, the
Speaker 1: servant at the castle. He asks her about the lepidoptery
Speaker 1: room with all the butterfly specimens, and she confirms that
Speaker 1: it is Master Schum's room. And then Fong asks her
Speaker 1: why there are two cheese, because you know, remember he
Speaker 1: and Green Shadow both were with Chi in different places
Speaker 1: at the same time. She acts frightened by this question
Speaker 1: and tries to run away, but she leads Fong to
Speaker 1: a different hidden room, a strange room that is revealed
Speaker 1: to be something like a cross between an arsenal and
Speaker 1: an alchemist's lab. It's full of these weird ancient scientific instruments,
Speaker 1: things that look like weapons, and containers of powders, and
Speaker 1: these like wooden planks with burn marks on them, almost
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like explosives or incendiaries have been
Speaker 1: tested here. And so here Fong meets with Green Shadow.
Speaker 1: They explore the room and they discuss the the sort
Speaker 1: of a principle of like gunpowder I think being explored here.
Speaker 1: They discuss a sort of secret history of gunpowder weapons,
Speaker 1: including a legendary secret weapon known as the fire gun.
Speaker 1: So it's a question I think, like was the owner
Speaker 1: of this room trying to create a like secret gunpowder weapon.
Speaker 3: You know, it's again kind of interesting synchronicity here because
Speaker 3: for our Crossbow episodes that aired earlier this week, I
Speaker 3: was reading, you know a great deal and need them
Speaker 3: about about gunpowder innovations and gunpowder weaponry in ancient China,
Speaker 3: many of which used crossbow or crossbow related elements, And
Speaker 3: you know, none of what we see in this film
Speaker 3: here even really captures like the weird variety of gunpowder
Speaker 3: based weaponry that was developed in China over the centuries
Speaker 3: is pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: Now, next we're going to meet some of the Thunders.
Speaker 1: They don't arrive at the castle conventionally because, like the
Speaker 1: White Flag Warriors are sort of outside awaiting the arrival
Speaker 1: of the Thunders. Instead, we see the Thunders meeting each
Speaker 1: other in secret, already underneath the castle. They're in the
Speaker 1: tunnels beneath the castle. It's a very cool creepy scene
Speaker 1: where Lee and Quak here appear in shadow, wearing hoods
Speaker 1: and cloaks at first, so their faces are hidden in darkness.
Speaker 1: At first. They're almost even a little suspicious of each other.
Speaker 1: They say, why did Master Schuman invite them to the
Speaker 1: castle early? They say, Shin used to be the first
Speaker 1: to come here. Why isn't he here yet? But then
Speaker 1: suddenly their little rendezvous is interrupted by discovering that Green
Speaker 1: Shadow is there. Green Shadows spying on them again, always
Speaker 1: one step ahead, and they like try to they try
Speaker 1: to like throw weapons at her and stuff, but she's
Speaker 1: too quick. They can't catch her. And so here eventually
Speaker 1: all of the characters meet one another. We get the
Speaker 1: full all cast introduction, and the Thunders kind of get
Speaker 1: up to speed on what has happened so far at
Speaker 1: the castle, but they're still a waiting for Shin the
Speaker 1: third Thunder to arrive so that the letter can be read,
Speaker 1: and more characters ask the same question that keeps coming
Speaker 1: up to kill her. Butterflies really exist? The Thunders discuss
Speaker 1: this in secret between each other. They're very wary of
Speaker 1: the others Lee and Quak. They say that anyone who
Speaker 1: is in our friend is our enemy, and these people
Speaker 1: don't seem to be friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of distrust here, but yeah, but it
Speaker 3: would also seem like, well, we finally have all of
Speaker 3: the characters in play that are going to be in play.
Speaker 3: He might well think this, but he would also seemingly
Speaker 3: be wrong, because they are more mysterious individuals who are
Speaker 3: going to show up and impact the plot.
Speaker 1: Right, But before the last really important character shows up,
Speaker 1: we'd get a few more sort of like scenes of
Speaker 1: Green Shadow and Fong, our two main investigators working out
Speaker 1: what's going on here. So they meet one night. First
Speaker 1: of all, it's funny because Pong's just like out for
Speaker 1: a walk and Green Shadow does wire stunts like just
Speaker 1: dropping in on him while nothing's going on. So they
Speaker 1: talk about killer butterflies. But then Fong and Green Shadow
Speaker 1: sort of compare notes. They say, you know, the Thunders
Speaker 1: seemed to know the castle well and they were close
Speaker 1: with Master Shum. Why didn't he call them for help initially?
Speaker 1: Why did he call Boss ten instead of the Thunders?
Speaker 3: You know, coming back to where he said about Green Shadow,
Speaker 3: it really does feel like Green Shadow has not just
Speaker 3: walked down a hallway or just strolled from point A
Speaker 3: to point B in a very long time. It's always
Speaker 3: on wires.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love it. She's living that wire life, you know.
Speaker 1: Also more plot updates. Remember those eight pages of Fong's
Speaker 1: memoirs from the paper Mill, Well, Tinfong shows them to
Speaker 1: Fong and Pong confirms, Yeah, the guy the paper Mill
Speaker 1: was right. I did not write this. This is not mine.
Speaker 1: Somebody is forging works in my name. Fong reasons from
Speaker 1: this because the pages of his memoirs are stories about
Speaker 1: killer butterfly attacks. He says, there must be someone trying
Speaker 1: to use my name to spread the rumor of killer butterflies.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that same person is controlling the butterflies.
Speaker 1: And then oh whoa. Things totally do a major shift
Speaker 1: once again, we get our first slasher movie scene, basically
Speaker 1: Madame Schum in her chambers at night is attacked by
Speaker 1: this film's Jason Voorhees, the Armored Warrior. Rob What do
Speaker 1: you want to say about the armored Warrior?
Speaker 3: And the scene, Oh, the armored Warrior is just absolutely terrifying,
Speaker 3: just you know, black armor, seemingly just impossible to hurt.
Speaker 3: You can't name him or stop him. Just a strong
Speaker 3: proto slasher vibe here. And he eventually busts out. A
Speaker 3: lot of his action is just more like punches and
Speaker 3: grabs and throws and then like some sort of like
Speaker 3: more minor cloth type stuff. But he also has this
Speaker 3: other strange weapon that he'll he'll bust out that looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a cross between a lacrosse stick and
Speaker 3: a deep fryer basket, only you know, more deadly looking,
Speaker 3: and it seems to slash and shred when it comes
Speaker 3: into contact with human flesh.
Speaker 1: I was going to compare his weapon to the goat
Speaker 1: foot lever that we talked about in the Crossbow episode.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a claw hook weapon that's got like
Speaker 1: two toes on it. But yeah, this rough material almost
Speaker 1: like barbed wire strung between the two toes. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I looked around a little bit. I couldn't find anybody
Speaker 3: talking about this and comparing it to known weapons. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if it actually has anything like a
Speaker 3: real world analog, if it has something it's supposed to
Speaker 3: be inspired by, something to do with butterflies. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming for now that it's just, you know, purely
Speaker 3: a creation of fantasy. But it's very effective.
Speaker 1: But the scene is interesting because it starts as like
Speaker 1: it's like a slash or horror scene. This, you know,
Speaker 1: this monstrous war attacks Lady Shum in her chamber. She escapes,
Speaker 1: the fighters get there in time to defend her and
Speaker 1: chase this warrior off. But then there's like a series
Speaker 1: of awesome fight scenes. So it's like Tinfong versus the
Speaker 1: armored Warrior, and Tinfong is cool. We finally see him
Speaker 1: in action. He fights with this another strange weapon. It's
Speaker 1: like a very short baton. Do you know what this
Speaker 1: would be called?
Speaker 3: Rob I'm not sure now does this baton shoot things?
Speaker 3: Or am I thinking this is just a straight up baton?
Speaker 1: I don't know. There are some things that shoot things.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if his shoots things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things get very The fighting is again kind of
Speaker 3: mind melting, and there are a number of unique weapons
Speaker 3: being utilized. Pure fantasy action here.
Speaker 1: But then there's also Green Shadow versus Armored Warrior, and
Speaker 1: she uses wires in her fighting of him. But eventually
Speaker 1: the Armored Warrior escapes into the night. He gets away,
Speaker 1: so they don't get to catch him. They don't get
Speaker 1: to unmask him or know the identity of the killer.
Speaker 1: Now Madam Schum thinks she knows the identity of the killer.
Speaker 1: She thinks it must be the third Thunder who hasn't
Speaker 1: arrived yet, Shin, And she's like, maybe he wants to
Speaker 1: get to the letter or the will that Master Shum
Speaker 1: left before everybody else does. But hey, remember that thing
Speaker 1: about how Boss ten was saying, you know, two tigers
Speaker 1: can't exist. At the same time, we see some real
Speaker 1: conflict breaking out because the Red Flags and the White
Speaker 1: Flags end up fighting with the Thunders, and the Thunders
Speaker 1: just mess them up. There's like a scene where the
Speaker 1: Thunders attack the Red Flags in the forest and are
Speaker 1: just like chopping their arms off and stuff, and they
Speaker 1: fight with the White Flags. The White Flags are no
Speaker 1: match either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Thunders are not to be messed with. You're
Speaker 3: gonna get shredded, you're gonna get blown up, you're gonna
Speaker 3: get caught on fire.
Speaker 1: But then later the two Thunders we see investigator. They're
Speaker 1: running around in the tunnels underneath the castle and this
Speaker 1: is Lee and Quak and they catch sight of the
Speaker 1: Armored Killer. They see him and they're like hey, and
Speaker 1: they chase after him in the dark, and this leads
Speaker 1: to the Butterfly room, the one with all the butterfly
Speaker 1: specimens mounted on screens, and another amazing fight scene. So
Speaker 1: there is an attack where the armored Warrior like tries
Speaker 1: to attack the Thunders by throwing I guess the poison
Speaker 1: butterflies at them and the thousand hand Thunder Lee he
Speaker 1: intercepts the butterflies with darts and it's this awesome, scary
Speaker 1: fight scene in tight corners. I thought this was a
Speaker 1: really good one. Again, the armored warrior, whose identity is hidden,
Speaker 1: he's using the strange claw hook weapon is very visceral
Speaker 1: and scary and up close and personal. And there's one
Speaker 1: moment where you think Lee has won because like the
Speaker 1: armored Warrior goes down, but then he suddenly pops back
Speaker 1: up and he is victorious. He kills Lee by like
Speaker 1: ramming his head into a clay pot.
Speaker 3: This is a great kill sequence, and it's one of
Speaker 3: these where like the way we describe it, like okay
Speaker 3: puts them in a headlock, rams his head into a
Speaker 3: pot that it doesn't sound as impressed, but the way
Speaker 3: that it shot, it's very thrilling and feels like just
Speaker 3: very viscerally violent, even though it's not like super bloody
Speaker 3: or anything.
Speaker 1: Okay. Next we get some big reveals. Like we said,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of twists that come in this movie.
Speaker 1: So next we follow Chi in the underground tunnel by herself.
Speaker 1: Remember she's the servant who carries the lantern, and she
Speaker 1: wanders with her lantern and wearing a mask over the
Speaker 1: bottom of her face. What's she doing? Oh, suddenly we
Speaker 1: see her walking not just through the tunnels, but she's
Speaker 1: walking into a cavern like an opening in the tunnels
Speaker 1: where she's surrounded by butterflies, and yet she's not afraid
Speaker 1: of them. They don't seem to be harming her. She
Speaker 1: kneels beside an underground pool and then she puts something
Speaker 1: in the water and makes it foam and sizzle. And
Speaker 1: it produces these white fumes. The butterflies seem like affected
Speaker 1: by the fumes. Rob, what did you did? It seem
Speaker 1: almost kind of like the butterflies were like boiling up
Speaker 1: out of the water or something.
Speaker 3: I guess, Yeah, this was one of the moments where
Speaker 3: I'm kind of piecing it together. But I'm blaming the
Speaker 3: subtitles for my lack of a pure understanding of what
Speaker 3: we're dealing with here, because again, so many things in
Speaker 3: the film like just makes sense on a visual level.
Speaker 3: You don't need the subtitles to explain what's happening. But
Speaker 3: there's some sort of like magical potion based explanation here,
Speaker 3: and we're not getting.
Speaker 1: All of it. I mean, I think I'm following what's happening.
Speaker 1: I could be making mistakes, but essentially here Chi is
Speaker 1: caught Green Shadow and the scholar Fong appear they have
Speaker 1: been watching her, and they reveal they say, we know
Speaker 1: you're not Chi. You are Madam Schum disguised as Chi.
Speaker 1: That's why there were two cheese. There's the real Chi
Speaker 1: and then Madam Schum has a Chi costume that she
Speaker 1: puts on and she like hides part of her face
Speaker 1: to pretend to be her. They say that she has
Speaker 1: quote butterfly controlling medicine and that Lady Shum has discovered
Speaker 1: the art of controlling butterflies. Apparently, Fong talks about it
Speaker 1: almost like the art of controlling butterflies is something that
Speaker 1: is known to have been known in the past, but
Speaker 1: was lost and now has been rediscovered.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, fair enough, Okay, it's all making sense now.
Speaker 1: So Green Shadow and Fong here are confronting her. They're like,
Speaker 1: now you're gonna tell us everything that's going on, because
Speaker 1: we know you're in on it. But they're interrupted by
Speaker 1: the armored warrior in the black armor, the mask, the weapon.
Speaker 1: He comes out and Madam Schum is killed, and the
Speaker 1: armored warrior escapes, and we see butterflies crawling over Lady
Speaker 1: Shum's dead body as if to mourn it. And then
Speaker 1: later the armored warrior comes back and caresses Lady Shum's
Speaker 1: body as well. Here's the scene with the killer reveal.
Speaker 1: The killer is unmasked and it is Master Schum himself,
Speaker 1: the Master of the Castle. He's not dead after all,
Speaker 1: and he's confronted by Fong alone this time, who's put
Speaker 1: all the pieces together. He says that Master Schum is
Speaker 1: actually you. Remember when they were describing the thunder there
Speaker 1: are three thunders still living, but one of the thunders
Speaker 1: was already dead. Well, it turns out that that thunder
Speaker 1: was you, and he wasn't dead. It's Schum, the master
Speaker 1: of the castle. So this is a plan of the Thunders,
Speaker 1: many years in the making to create secret weapons here
Speaker 1: at the castle, to protect the secret of the weapons.
Speaker 1: And now you must be doing some new stage of
Speaker 1: the plan.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm buying all of that, but I still don't
Speaker 3: know why we invited people to the castle. I don't
Speaker 3: know why the secret will. I feel like there's a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff that I can't quite stitch together.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, I think I understand it. So
Speaker 1: take me Master Schum and Madam Schum here. They used
Speaker 1: killer butterflies first of all, to get rid of all
Speaker 1: the spies in the castle, because there were spies here
Speaker 1: sent by the other thunders to keep track of you. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they drive all the spies out with butterflies that
Speaker 1: either killed them or made them flee. And then they
Speaker 1: keep using the butterflies and attack so all around to
Speaker 1: create a confusion. Then Schum created the false memoirs of
Speaker 1: Fongs to spread stories about the killer butterflies killed the
Speaker 1: paper mill owner when he saw through it. The whole
Speaker 1: point of this was to get the other Marshal heroes
Speaker 1: to get Tin Fong and Green Shadow to the castle
Speaker 1: to make them fight with the thunders, because you wants to,
Speaker 1: I think, rule over everything. He wants to be in charge.
Speaker 1: So he wants all the other Marshal heroes to get
Speaker 1: together into a tight space, to be in the same
Speaker 1: place and have to fight each other, just like what
Speaker 1: happened and we heard in the backstory when all the
Speaker 1: Marshal heroes fought each other and wiped each other out. Okay,
Speaker 1: he wants to be the last one standing.
Speaker 3: Okay, so everything is going is going according to plan here.
Speaker 3: It's about getting these all these great warriors together, having
Speaker 3: them destroy each other so that he can rule over
Speaker 3: everyone instead.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that's right, all right, I could again.
Speaker 3: I feel like I would have been on top of
Speaker 3: it had the sub titles binge is a little tighter, ye,
Speaker 3: But I'm there now.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a complicated plot, but I think
Speaker 1: it's a good twist, and so Schum basically admits, yep, Fong,
Speaker 1: you figured it out. But men who know too much
Speaker 1: cannot live. So he reveals his claw weapon and he's
Speaker 1: gonna kill Fong. There's like a chase, and then all
Speaker 1: kinds of different fighting happens. Schum ends up killing Chi,
Speaker 1: the actual servant. Chum then fights Green Shadow. Fong watches
Speaker 1: as Shum fights Green Shadow. He's helpless, he's not a fighter,
Speaker 1: he can't intervene, and then Tin Fong shows up and
Speaker 1: he gets involved in the fight again. It's like trading
Speaker 1: off between the different heroes fighting the Armored Warrior. But
Speaker 1: Schum once again escapes into a tunnel.
Speaker 3: I have to and I have to drive home here
Speaker 3: that you know, I'm not like a Hong Kong action
Speaker 3: completist or anything. There are a number of like very
Speaker 3: prestigious Hong Kong action films that I haven't seen, so
Speaker 3: I can't like speak universally in all of this. But
Speaker 3: all of this action is just blistering. It's just very
Speaker 3: like technically proficient, you know, well shot inventive. It's just
Speaker 3: you never know what's going to happen next. And so
Speaker 3: even though you get just multiple fights and different pair ups,
Speaker 3: everything is just captivating.
Speaker 1: And I really love that the different heroes have their
Speaker 1: different like fighting styles, so when they trade off fighting
Speaker 1: the villain. There there's a lot of variety in the
Speaker 1: fight scenes. It's not just like a samey kind of
Speaker 1: fighting over and over. You get Green Shadow with her
Speaker 1: like wire stuff, you get Boss ten with this little baton,
Speaker 1: you get of course, the you know, the Armored Warrior
Speaker 1: with his scary visceral kind of fighting with the claw weapon,
Speaker 1: and then of course you get the Thunders. So after
Speaker 1: showm escapes, Fong says, this is the terrible situation. This
Speaker 1: is going to turn into an all out war between
Speaker 1: Tin Fung and the remaining Thunders. So Fong leaves the
Speaker 1: castle at dawn to avoid the battle, and then we
Speaker 1: see the final battle going on. Again. Two tigers can't
Speaker 1: exist at the same time. So we've got ten Verse
Speaker 1: says the magic Fire Thunder, he's the one left alive.
Speaker 1: The Armored Warrior returns and it's a three way fight.
Speaker 1: They're sort of like all trying to kill each other.
Speaker 1: They end up there's like an explosion. I think it's
Speaker 1: when the statue, the demonic statue explodes. They fighters fall
Speaker 1: through the floor into the catacombs below, magic Fire is
Speaker 1: pinned by a falling pillar. Then you and magic Fire
Speaker 1: have this like conversation. You says, you know I was
Speaker 1: left here to protect the secret gun. Why did you
Speaker 1: other thundersind spies to report on me? And you know,
Speaker 1: they're like hashing out their grievances, and you is giving
Speaker 1: a speech as the victorious villain. But meanwhile Boss Tin
Speaker 1: sneaks up on you and as he does a maniacal laugh,
Speaker 1: Boston springs from cover and there's another fight again. There's
Speaker 1: some ground grappling, there's some sliding along on wires, and
Speaker 1: then finally the villain is defeated when Tin like slams
Speaker 1: his head into to a rock face while while running
Speaker 1: down a done the length of a wire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of like a hyper accelerated zip line death
Speaker 3: sequence that if I when I explain it like that,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really sound like like you probably can't picture it,
Speaker 3: but within the context of this ridiculously elaborate three way
Speaker 3: fight scene, it's highly effective.
Speaker 1: Oh but it's not over because Magic Fire is still
Speaker 1: alive even though he's like trapped under a pillar. He
Speaker 1: sends his killer bird after ten and you don't know
Speaker 1: what the bird's gonna do. It's just like a bird
Speaker 1: flying around chasing Boss ten. What's going to happen? Well,
Speaker 1: you think Green Shadow comes to the rescue. She's here
Speaker 1: to save ten. She flies through on a wire, She's
Speaker 1: going to save the day. But then, oh, the most
Speaker 1: devastating ending do you want to explain, rob.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: say that the stunningly nihilistic ending came out of nowhere
Speaker 3: because issues with subtitles aside, it does seem like we
Speaker 3: were ratcheting up to it. Like there's this sequence when
Speaker 3: the sky there's leaving where Hang and Fung have this
Speaker 3: last little conversation and Fung is like, I hope you win,
Speaker 3: and it feels you know, very stark and and and
Speaker 3: in dark, and we end up like flashing back to
Speaker 3: that here in a bit. But yeah, so Green Shadow
Speaker 3: like zips into the scene with her you know, general optimism. Uh,
Speaker 3: and she goes and like catches the bird in mid air,
Speaker 3: and the bird explodes like a hand grenade, just blowing
Speaker 3: Green Shadow up. Like there's no way she survives this,
Speaker 3: like just killed instantly, and and you know, Fung is
Speaker 3: like like no, and then it comes flying right at
Speaker 3: Fung's face and explodes in his face freeze frame, and
Speaker 3: that's pretty much the end. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 3: like that was just jaw dropping, because again with this
Speaker 3: feels like a major Wusha subversion here, like this is
Speaker 3: not our heroes conquering evil or it's not a you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of tropes that you would expect to encounter
Speaker 3: in a film like this. No, this is like all
Speaker 3: of our heroes are dead except for the scholar who
Speaker 3: only survived because he left ahead of the cataclysmic final battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there is a symmetry like it talked about
Speaker 1: in the backstory with the narration at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: The movie seems to end with all of the martial
Speaker 1: heroes have killed each other. They're all gone now, and
Speaker 1: the only one left is the chronicler to tell the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean it really really packs a punch. Again,
Speaker 3: just a fitting way to cap all of this just
Speaker 3: you know, essentially like high tech fantasy martial arts that's
Speaker 3: happening here and just have this just again just very
Speaker 3: nihilistic ending where everybody dies. But again, like I say,
Speaker 3: it doesn't it. They were clearly building up to this
Speaker 3: in many ways, so it doesn't feel forced in any
Speaker 3: fashion either.
Speaker 1: So in the end, I'd give a big thumbs up
Speaker 1: to the Butterfly Murders. It is not only it's Bonker's
Speaker 1: premise of killer Butterflies. It is that, but it is
Speaker 1: so much else. It just gives you so much to
Speaker 1: work with and it keeps you guessing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, so, yeah, highly recommend this one. And you know,
Speaker 3: I hope it gets a better release at some point
Speaker 3: in the future. It would be great. But on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I didn't see any indication that that's coming,
Speaker 3: So I would say, don't you know, don't waste time.
Speaker 3: If this interests you, go watch it in whatever format
Speaker 3: you can find it in, because it's it's worth the journey.
Speaker 3: All Right, Well, that's it for this episode of Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema. We're going to go ahead and close out,
Speaker 3: but a reminder that we're primarily a science podcast with
Speaker 3: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 3: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 3: weird film here on the Weird House Cinema. If you
Speaker 3: want to see a list of all the movies we've
Speaker 3: covered over the years. Go to letterbox dot com. It's
Speaker 3: l E T T E r box d dot com.
Speaker 3: Our user name is weird House, and we have a
Speaker 3: list of all the movies and sometimes a peek ahead
Speaker 3: at what's to come. If you would like to follow
Speaker 3: us on social media, while we're in the usual places
Speaker 3: as Stuff to Blow your Mind on Instagram, we are
Speaker 3: stbym podcast and that's worth following for Weird House fans
Speaker 3: because currently our social media crew is putting up a
Speaker 3: little video kind of like teaser of the film, so
Speaker 3: you can quickly go there and get maybe a taste
Speaker 3: of the trailer in addition to the trailer audio that
Speaker 3: you'll hear in the actual episode.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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