Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today's pick on weird House is the genre defying nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine Hong Kong Martial Arts Bonanza The Butterfly Murders,
Speaker 3: directed by Shehawk. This movie is great. It has everything.
Speaker 3: It's part wusha, it's part eco horror. I didn't expect
Speaker 3: it to be so much like like Frogs and other
Speaker 3: eco horror movies we've done. It's part murder mystery, but
Speaker 3: it's also all killer butterflies.
Speaker 2: That's right. This one's a real tree. It's almost like
Speaker 2: a fitting pre Thanksgiving dinner kind of a film because
Speaker 2: it's just stuff to the gills as we as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: no doubt, this is perhaps a two of like talented
Speaker 2: filmmakers first movie Syndrome, where clearly they had had so
Speaker 2: many ideas that need to be unleashed on the world
Speaker 2: and they're all present, you know. So it's maybe a
Speaker 2: little a little bit overloaded in that regard, but yeah,
Speaker 2: there's so many interesting elements I'd throw in proto slasher
Speaker 2: gothic horror. And also there's a little bit of the
Speaker 2: old reading of the Will drama thrown in there as well.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: You know, one thing I really respect about this movie
Speaker 3: is that I don't actually know what it was called
Speaker 3: in the I guess original Cantonese marketing, but the English
Speaker 3: title delivers on the promise in a quite literal fashion.
Speaker 3: So it's called The Butterfly Murders. And the Butterfly Murders
Speaker 3: is not about like a serial killer who draws a
Speaker 3: butterfly at every crime scene or something. That's what you
Speaker 3: would guess based on that title, right, It's always that
Speaker 3: kind of annoying fake out. But in this case, no,
Speaker 3: it is literally about people who are murdered by swarms
Speaker 3: of bloodthirsty butterflies.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, And I think my initial guess when I
Speaker 2: started running across this title was, oh, it's a serial killer.
Speaker 2: It's some sort of like, oh, he leaves a butterfly
Speaker 2: as his signature or something, But no, it's straight up
Speaker 2: butterfly sworms.
Speaker 3: Well, there are human intelligences behind the butterfly crimes, but
Speaker 3: they really are carried out via swarms of butterflies. Multiple
Speaker 3: reviews I've seen compare this film to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds,
Speaker 3: and yes, I definitely see some similarities. I think there
Speaker 3: may have been some conscious relationship there. Except as absurd
Speaker 3: as the premise of The Birds itself was, at least
Speaker 3: birds have beaks and talons. This is about killer butterflies.
Speaker 3: And the crazy thing is this movie succeeds at making
Speaker 3: butterflies scary. Well, I don't know that was my opinion.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you agree, Rob, but I was
Speaker 3: shocked at how creepy it makes the butterflies.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I feel like it is. It's essentially a goofy
Speaker 2: concept right because you can you can break down and say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: there are examples of butterflies and moths that have some
Speaker 2: level of toxicity to them, but there's no such thing
Speaker 2: as a killer butterfly. Butterflies are not threatening, and yet
Speaker 2: this movie on the whole succeeds in making them feel
Speaker 2: like at least sort of an ambient environmental threat.
Speaker 3: However, on top of just that home run of a
Speaker 3: premise killer butterflies, I'm to say, across the board, I
Speaker 3: thought this movie was generally number one excellent, like really
Speaker 3: well made and number two bananas. It is just nuts
Speaker 3: in basically every direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Now I do have to emphasize
Speaker 2: that this movie in its currently available international form, is
Speaker 2: not an easy to follow film if you're trying to
Speaker 2: just absolutely absorb every detail of the.
Speaker 3: So much plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is, you know. It is a historic martial
Speaker 2: arts fantasy adventure film, a wusha, but it's it's one
Speaker 2: with yeah, complex plot, multiple characters, parallel mysteries and feuding
Speaker 2: factions and all. That's perfectly fair. But the English subtitles
Speaker 2: are rough. And while rough subtitles can prove perfectly serviceable
Speaker 2: for many films, Son of Peach and Thrilling Bloody Sword
Speaker 2: come to mind, and those have some really rough subtitles,
Speaker 2: but with this one, again, given on that complexity, it's
Speaker 2: an uphill battle because there's just so much going on
Speaker 2: to try and understand it just going off the subtitles.
Speaker 2: There's also quite a bit of narration. So I'm not
Speaker 2: pinning any of this on the film itself or the
Speaker 2: people who made it, but it is a struggle to
Speaker 2: piece all this together at times while also taking in
Speaker 2: all the excellent details those moody sets and the face
Speaker 2: melting action.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say that I think you can watch
Speaker 3: this movie and get perfect enjoyment, like at least ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the potential enjoyment of this film without closely
Speaker 3: following what all of the factions and alignments and plot
Speaker 3: twists are. And I was actually wondering when we get
Speaker 3: into the plot description section of this episode, I kind
Speaker 3: of don't know how I'm going to handle it because
Speaker 3: I made detailed notes trying to follow the plot, but
Speaker 3: it is so complicated. I'm like, are we gonna have
Speaker 3: to skip over a bit of this? I don't know. Yeah, However,
Speaker 3: I would not say that all of the complicated plot
Speaker 3: machinations are just like completely extraneous, Like you can enjoy
Speaker 3: the movie without trying to follow too closely. And at
Speaker 3: the same time, I think all of the plot twists
Speaker 3: are like really fun and exciting. It's just sort of
Speaker 3: twist after twist in the second half of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it never really lets up. There's always something captivating.
Speaker 2: It's almost too captivating. Again, if you're trying to follow
Speaker 2: everything with the subtitles. All right, Joe, what's your elevator
Speaker 2: pitch for the Butterfly Murders?
Speaker 3: Let's say a scholar, a gang boss, and a wireflying
Speaker 3: Marshall heroin walk into a castle haunted by killer butterflies.
Speaker 2: All right, let's hear a little bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 2: Note that this is from in rather long trails, like
Speaker 2: four minutes long. I believe this is the original Hong
Speaker 2: Kong trailer. So we're just gonna hear a little part
Speaker 2: of it, but hopefully getting some of that excellent theme
Speaker 2: music in there.
Speaker 4: Lay Fly, Guppi, segm Sunset Sun. Say to Nani family,
Speaker 4: don't sun dow way see Sun Mom, baby, Mama? What
Speaker 4: in nikon ya?
Speaker 2: Now, before we proceed, you may be wondering, well, how
Speaker 2: can I watch the Butterfly Murders? Well, it's not an
Speaker 2: easy one to get your hands on. Unfortunately. Right now,
Speaker 2: this is a film where the best available quality is
Speaker 2: very watchable, but it has not benefitted from restoration. The
Speaker 2: English subtitles they're not hard baked, but they are rough,
Speaker 2: so if you are not a Chinese speaker, you're gonna
Speaker 2: have some difficulties with it. It looks like it has
Speaker 2: streamed on Prime before, back when they had loads of
Speaker 2: weird stuff, but today you're limited to just a few
Speaker 2: hard to find region free DVDs or international release DVDs.
Speaker 2: We rented it from Videodrome here in Atlanta, and you
Speaker 2: might find a watchable unofficial stream somewhere. But yeah, this
Speaker 2: is one that's certainly has a following, and it would
Speaker 2: be nice to see a, you know, a really well
Speaker 2: produced release at some point in the future. I agree.
Speaker 3: I wish there was a really great Blu ray restoration
Speaker 3: of this, because it clearly is a fantastic looking movie.
Speaker 3: But even the DVD we had had a lot of
Speaker 3: I don't know, it was not in good shape, but
Speaker 3: there was a lot of like washed out color and
Speaker 3: weird kind of like pop ins of different color shades
Speaker 3: on certain scenes. So I don't know. It seems like
Speaker 3: whatever source source film material they were working from was
Speaker 3: was not in the best of shape. I even found
Speaker 3: there was something of a history of this movie being
Speaker 3: hard to get in good format. I was reading a
Speaker 3: post about it on I think dig hkmovies dot com.
Speaker 3: This seems to be some kind of website about Hong
Speaker 3: Kong cinema that points out that the only way that
Speaker 3: for many years that English speakers could watch the film
Speaker 3: was on a laser disc which number one one had
Speaker 3: like an improperly cropped aspect ratio on the on the screen.
Speaker 3: And also there was a quote commercial for an amusement
Speaker 3: park at the end of side one, So I almost
Speaker 3: kind of want to see it in that format. That's
Speaker 3: like the like the commercials and the Star Wars Holiday special,
Speaker 3: like they're part of the experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess. I mean it's it's details like this,
Speaker 2: and of course, sadly like this is still in play
Speaker 2: for this film, but you know, it reminds you of
Speaker 2: the links folks had to go to to watch some
Speaker 2: of these films back in the day. You know, this
Speaker 2: on top of various VHS dubs and you know VHS
Speaker 2: dubs of a Japanese laser disc of some European release
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 3: But like we said, there are some sort of under
Speaker 3: the radar rips out there that are not great quality.
Speaker 3: It's not the best way you're going to see it,
Speaker 3: but this movie is worth seeing, so especially if you
Speaker 3: can get access to to the DVD that's out there,
Speaker 3: it's it's pretty cool. I'd recommend it.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah, And again, the best version that's out
Speaker 2: there is very watchable. This isn't one of those situations
Speaker 2: like with pod people or ettraterrestrial visitors, where the previously
Speaker 2: available footage was just not great at all. More on that,
Speaker 2: because we're going to refeature that one as a weird
Speaker 2: House rewind and I have some updates about the available
Speaker 2: quality on that film.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the old version of that was almost like
Speaker 3: watching a movie being projected in a cloud of smoke.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, this one though perfectly watchable. All right, let's
Speaker 2: talk about some of the folks behind this. So we
Speaker 2: already mentioned the director here, Sheika or Shea Hart or
Speaker 2: Shea Hook. I think you'll hear his name referenced in
Speaker 2: varying ways. We'll just keep referring to him as Hawk here.
Speaker 2: He was born in nineteen fifty Vietnamese born, Texas educated
Speaker 2: Hong Kong film director, producer, and screenwriter. He studied film
Speaker 2: at Southern Methodist University in Texas and then at the
Speaker 2: University of Texas at Austin. Graduated in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: worked in New York City for a bit. I believe
Speaker 2: he worked on a documentary about New York's Chinatown, and
Speaker 2: then returned to Hong Kong in seventy seven. So this
Speaker 2: was his first film, and it was a bold attempt
Speaker 2: to revitalize with the Wushau genre with various genre influences
Speaker 2: and excellent cinematic craft. While apparently not a huge hit
Speaker 2: at the time, it's now considered a minor masterpiece. I
Speaker 2: saw it referred to as such in an article in
Speaker 2: the South China Morning Post by Richard James Havas, and
Speaker 2: it's also considered something of a new wave sensation in
Speaker 2: Chinese cinema. It's long been a cult favorite internationally as well.
Speaker 2: I was not surprised at all to see that Michael
Speaker 2: Weldon had it cataloged in the Psychotronic Video Guide from
Speaker 2: decades back. Now Hawk went on to have an exceptional career,
Speaker 2: and it's still active as a director and producer. His
Speaker 2: directing credits include nineteen eighties Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, Were Going to Eat You That Is a
Speaker 2: Cannibal Film nineteen eighty three, Zoo Warriors from the Magic
Speaker 2: Mountain nineteen ninety ones, Once Upon a Time in China
Speaker 2: ninety three is Green Snake, and twenty ten's Detective d
Speaker 2: and The Mystery of the Phantom Flame.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain in multiple sources.
Speaker 3: I have seen that movie highlighted as sort of his masterpiece,
Speaker 3: or at least his masterpiece. If you're looking for like
Speaker 3: weird Hong Kong cinema more instead of his Western.
Speaker 2: Movies, all right, we may have to come back and
Speaker 2: look at that one now. Purely Western audiences might know
Speaker 2: him best from his films from two films in particular,
Speaker 2: Double Team from ninety seven. This is a film that
Speaker 2: starred Jean Claude Van Dam, Dennis Rodman, Paul Freeman, and
Speaker 2: Mickey Rourke. Have you seen this one, Joe, I don't
Speaker 2: remember if I did. I saw it before I could
Speaker 2: appreciate it. I think I looked back to see what
Speaker 2: Ebert had to say about it. Roger Ebert wrote, Double
Speaker 2: Team is one of the most preposterous action films ever made.
Speaker 2: And I do not mean that as a criticism. It
Speaker 2: will give you some notion of this movie strangeness. If
Speaker 2: I tell you that Dennis Rodman does not play the
Speaker 2: most peculiar character.
Speaker 3: Great, I mean I want to see it now.
Speaker 2: Another film that he did that International audiences might have
Speaker 2: heard of his Black Mask two City of mass from
Speaker 2: two thousand and two. It has a cast that includes
Speaker 2: Tobin Bell that's old Jigsaw where he saw fans, pro
Speaker 2: wrestler Rob Van Dam, Tracy Lords of Blade Fame, and
Speaker 2: also Tyler Maine who I think he played Michael Myers
Speaker 2: and some of the Rob Zombie films, didn't they And
Speaker 2: he played saber Tooth in the first X Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, I have not seen it. I have
Speaker 3: not seen it either. I guess I feel like I
Speaker 3: don't think I've seen any of his other movies that
Speaker 3: I recall, and I've got to fix that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, because there's so many of them, and he's
Speaker 2: had such a long career. Certainly the weirder entries. I'm
Speaker 2: interested in Zoo Warriors, I'm interested in the Cannibal flick,
Speaker 2: and who knows what else is in there? All right.
Speaker 2: The writers on this, we have Chiu Ming Lamb, who
Speaker 2: is active from nineteen seventy nine through nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: probably best known for this film along with nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: The Buddhist Fist in nineteen eighty four is the Ghost Informer,
Speaker 2: and then the other writer is Fan Lynn. This is
Speaker 2: their only credit on multiple databases, including Hong Kong Movie
Speaker 2: Database All right now. Getting into the actors a bit.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to highlight everyone, but try and hit
Speaker 2: our main main ones here and Joe you may have
Speaker 2: to jump in here because the names that I have
Speaker 2: are mostly the character names are mostly off of IMDb.
Speaker 2: You might have a different version from.
Speaker 3: The subtitles, because I think the subtitles to deb eight
Speaker 3: a little bit spelled differently. Yeah, so our main character,
Speaker 3: according to the subtitles, was known as Fong. This is
Speaker 3: the scholar, the nerd of the film, if you like.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the actor here is Sueming Lao born nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty one, Hong Kong. Actor known for nineth eighty Seven's
Speaker 2: a Chinese Ghost Story, which we watched. He plays the
Speaker 2: tree devil in that nice two thousand and six is Recycle,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty Seven's A Better Tomorrow two, as well as
Speaker 2: the two thousand and three film The Medallion. I think
Speaker 2: that's a Jackie Chan film. I don't recall off hand.
Speaker 2: I'm also going to just looking sometimes. I just enjoy
Speaker 2: finding strange titles on especially international films. There's nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine film titled eat a Bowl of Tea, so why not?
Speaker 2: Why not eat a bowl of Tea.
Speaker 3: I like his portrayal of this character. So he is
Speaker 3: the essentially the only non warrior character completely surrounded by
Speaker 3: warriors in every other direction. So he's not he's a lover,
Speaker 3: not a fighter, but he's not really a lover either.
Speaker 3: He's a chronicler. And yet they don't portray him as
Speaker 3: like a like a coward. He is a brave non
Speaker 3: fighter in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like other movies might have positioned him as more
Speaker 2: of kind of like you're sniveling even comic relief character,
Speaker 2: but he's more of a scholar in sort of the
Speaker 2: traditional it's sort of in the traditional Chinese sense of
Speaker 2: of like you know, he is he is a He
Speaker 2: is a noble scholar who is recording these strange events
Speaker 2: and sharing them with with with the with the surviving world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, we also have oh what a character we
Speaker 2: have Green Shadow.
Speaker 3: I love Green Shadow. Sign me up for the Green
Speaker 3: Shadow fan club.
Speaker 2: Yes, Green Shadow. Her specialty seems to be flying around
Speaker 2: on wires and grappling hooks and using like wire based
Speaker 2: martial arts.
Speaker 3: I don't know when exactly this started in film, but yeah,
Speaker 3: this is her performance in this movie is cited as
Speaker 3: an example of what's sometimes called like wire fu or
Speaker 3: like wire work in martial arts films, but it's not
Speaker 3: one of those cases where like in some films, characters
Speaker 3: are depicted as having kind of a energy or magic
Speaker 3: power that allows them to sort of like fly or
Speaker 3: leap beyond what would be normally physically possible for humans,
Speaker 3: and that is achieved via wire based special effects. In
Speaker 3: this case, she explicitly and openly uses wires that that
Speaker 3: is her martial arts style, Like she swings from chords
Speaker 3: and wires and zips along on them and dangles from
Speaker 3: apparently just out of the sky on wires.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, she's a wire specialist and she's
Speaker 2: a light. Played by Michelle Young born nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: Hong Kong cinema actress. This was not her first film,
Speaker 2: and I think it kind of shines through because she
Speaker 2: has this kind of god, I don't know, just this
Speaker 2: sort of this effortless charisma in the film. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: just very likable. She's a lovable scamp and just did
Speaker 2: a light every time she's on the screen.
Speaker 3: In this situation of like death and disease and high
Speaker 3: stakes conflict and factional fighting and betrayal, and secret murders.
Speaker 3: She's just always extremely cheerful and two steps ahead of
Speaker 3: everybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, she's a lot of fun. She's also
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighty cannibal movie We're Going to Eat You,
Speaker 2: and she was also apparently a popular force on Hong
Speaker 2: Kong television for a long time.
Speaker 3: Love Green Shadow, but I would say this movie actually
Speaker 3: has a lot of really charismatic martial arts heroes in it.
Speaker 3: The other main fighter hero we follow in this movie
Speaker 3: is Boss ten or ten Fung, and he I also
Speaker 3: found him super charismatic, even though he's less of a
Speaker 3: nice character than Green Shadow.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's you know, he's a professional criminal and gang leader.
Speaker 2: But has this great stern face, this great presence. I
Speaker 2: would almost compare him to sort of a snake pluskin
Speaker 2: sort of a vibe, you know, an Old West kind
Speaker 2: of a vibe.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Again, very stern face, very stern presence, solid performance, great
Speaker 2: at great great action role here. The actor is Shutong Wong,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen forty four through twenty twenty one, Hong
Speaker 2: Kong actor and director, whose other acting credits include nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two's Five Fingers of Death. He also worked as
Speaker 2: a stunt coordinator on various films, including this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so obviously his stunt work in the martial arts
Speaker 3: scenes is great since he's the stunt coordinator, but also
Speaker 3: I think he does really well as an actor. He's
Speaker 3: got a great face for the role. He has this
Speaker 3: kind of stone like kind of immovability in many scenes
Speaker 3: where you're just like, you know, no, he's not gonna
Speaker 3: budge all right.
Speaker 2: The next character we have is the master of the Castle,
Speaker 2: Master Shum. I've also seen it as Shin in the credits,
Speaker 2: but this is another strong screen presence for reasons we'll
Speaker 2: get into. But the actor here is Ku chu Cheng
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty eight, Taiwanese actor, active from seventy four
Speaker 2: through present. His other films include nineteen ninety one's A
Speaker 2: Brighter Summer Day, ninety six is Maijong, and nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: one's Love Massacre. That's not a horror movie. It looks
Speaker 2: like it's some sort of a drama for some reason,
Speaker 2: as the English name Love Massacre. All right. Now, there
Speaker 2: are a number of other like gang members and specialized
Speaker 2: fighters we'll get into. I'm not going to highlight all
Speaker 2: of them. But I have to mention the magic fire
Speaker 2: guy here. Yeah, Guya, who's played by Eddie Coe born
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven, easily recognizable Shaw Brothers veteran active from
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven through present. He acted in a lot
Speaker 2: of Wusha and did some notable Hong Kong TV back
Speaker 2: in the seventies and eighties. Eventually migrated to Canada and
Speaker 2: has appeared in such Western films as ninety eight's Lethal
Speaker 2: Weapon four and twenty fifteen's The Martian, though I believe
Speaker 2: he's still quite active in Chinese cinema and TV as well.
Speaker 2: But he has this very expressive face, and in this
Speaker 2: movie he spends a lot of time blowing stuff up,
Speaker 2: catching his enemies on fire, and then laughing maniacally.
Speaker 3: You know, I was kind of surprised by the thunders,
Speaker 3: Like when they were first showing up. It really catches
Speaker 3: you off guard because you don't really know whether they're
Speaker 3: good guys are bad guys. And that really continues like
Speaker 3: long after they have appeared. You're trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how to sort them mentally. Because this guy, in some
Speaker 3: scenes he's kind of you're kind of with him. He's
Speaker 3: kind of one of the good guys. But also he
Speaker 3: is like he is a nasty fire shooting killer and
Speaker 3: he ultimately I don't well, I don't want to spoil
Speaker 3: the ending just yet. We will have spoilers later in
Speaker 3: this episode. But the ending is a shock and it
Speaker 3: involves him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so fun character I did. When a thunder
Speaker 2: started really showing up in Earnest, I was also a
Speaker 2: little bit worried because I'm like, oh my goodness, it's
Speaker 2: getting more complex. Yeah, I'm not gonna give track of everyone,
Speaker 2: all right, Just one other actor I'll mention Tino Wong
Speaker 2: plays thousand Hands leak him. He was also the action
Speaker 2: director on the film. I'm not necessarily all in the
Speaker 2: clear on who did what on this movie, but he
Speaker 2: is credited as action director and not just a you know,
Speaker 2: like a stunt coordinator or whatever. His other films include
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight Drunken Master and seventy eight Snake in
Speaker 2: the Eagle Shadow.
Speaker 3: Another great martial arts focused performance here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the score is by Frankie Chan born
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty one, Hong Kong cinema composer, actor and director, who,
Speaker 2: in my non expert opinion here absolutely knocks it. Out
Speaker 2: of the park with a score full of more traditional
Speaker 2: feeling wusha motifs as well as bonkers synth notes that
Speaker 2: hit you right in the boards of Canada and the funk.
Speaker 3: There are funky parts.
Speaker 2: There's a little funk there too. Now I'm not clear
Speaker 2: on like how I couldn't find any details about the score,
Speaker 2: and I know sometimes you're dealing with a score in
Speaker 2: these movies that maybe are borrowing from multiple sources, So
Speaker 2: I can't say with any clarity how it all came together,
Speaker 2: or if this is all original, or if it's coming
Speaker 2: from other films or stock, et cetera. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: loved everything I heard in the movie. That first synth
Speaker 2: cascade upon seeing a butterfly that really knocked my socks off.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of moments in this movie where
Speaker 3: you suddenly get an extreme close up of a butterfly,
Speaker 3: and then there's something that's I don't even know if
Speaker 3: I would call it music. There's kind of a rhythmic
Speaker 3: thumping or drumming sound that becomes very loud. It's almost
Speaker 3: like you are hearing the movements of the butterfly's legs
Speaker 3: or wings on the scale of an insect. But it's
Speaker 3: like a John Bonham drum fill, and it's really cool.
Speaker 2: He's credited with composing on a number of other films,
Speaker 2: including seventy eight's The thirty Sixth Chamber of Shaolin, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties Encounter of the Spooky Kind seventy six is Master
Speaker 2: of the Flying Guillotine, And that one gives me pause
Speaker 2: on this whole, like how the music come together, because
Speaker 2: I know that's one that give memory. Serves famously draws
Speaker 2: from Western music sources.
Speaker 3: Yeah, too great effect, I mean, in a brilliant way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also is credited on seventy five's The Super Inframan,
Speaker 2: seventy six is The Oily Maniac. A lot of movies
Speaker 2: we've covered, yeah, in His directorial credits include nineteen nineties Outlaw.
Speaker 4: Brother m.
Speaker 3: All right, you want to get into the plot.
Speaker 2: Oh, let's get into.
Speaker 3: It all right. So, as I teased earlier, it's kind
Speaker 3: of difficult to figure out how to approach this one,
Speaker 3: like should we try to explain the whole plot or
Speaker 3: employed the skip a bit brother principle from Monty Python.
Speaker 3: I'm going to start off talking in some detail, and
Speaker 3: then if we find this is too too much, maybe
Speaker 3: we can zoom out a little bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, sounds good, all.
Speaker 3: Right, So the film begins with narration. It shows mist
Speaker 3: blowing in front of a full moon, and the narrator,
Speaker 3: who we will later find out is Fong. The scholar,
Speaker 3: tells us quote in the thirty six year period before
Speaker 3: the New Era, two devastating wars took place in the
Speaker 3: martial world, and the idea of a martial world seems
Speaker 3: to be a sort of concept in this movie, where
Speaker 3: it's like, this is the world in which all of
Speaker 3: the martial arts fighters sort of compete for power, and
Speaker 3: it includes especially whatever this character will get to in
Speaker 3: a minute, Boss ten is doing. He's in charge of
Speaker 3: something that seems to me to be maybe like mercenary armies,
Speaker 3: maybe a criminal gang, maybe some sort of pseudo or
Speaker 3: quasi governmental thing. But he just commands a lot of fighters.
Speaker 3: So he's big in the marshal world. Is that how
Speaker 3: you understood it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I mean he's kind of like a master
Speaker 2: of a guild or guild of warriors kind of a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Fong tells us a narration that there was this
Speaker 3: first war in the dim Chong Mountain. Many were killed,
Speaker 3: hungry condors filled the skies. There's a second war in
Speaker 3: wu Doong Mountain or in the bottom of Wudong Mountain.
Speaker 3: It says there many were killed again, and then it
Speaker 3: says from that time on where it's quote, most masters
Speaker 3: in the martial world were all dead. Thus the martial
Speaker 3: world entered the Quiet period, lasting over thirty years. On
Speaker 3: the surface, it was a strange truce. In fact, there
Speaker 3: were undercurrents of unrest. Then emerged seventy two new forces
Speaker 3: termed these seventy two Trails of Smoke, heralding the dawn
Speaker 3: of the new era. And then here, while the narration
Speaker 3: goes on, we see this barren, sandy landscape with smooth
Speaker 3: white sand, almost like a beach, though I don't think
Speaker 3: it's a beach. I think it's a desert. There are
Speaker 3: mountains in the distance, and in in the foreground there
Speaker 3: is a single, lonely tree branch blowing in the wind.
Speaker 2: So already we're kind of in the deep end here.
Speaker 2: But I love the texture that has presented because, at
Speaker 2: least as far as I was understanding the subtitles on
Speaker 2: all of this, like it's almost a post apocalyptic setting,
Speaker 2: like the warriors have become so skilled that they killed
Speaker 2: each other and killed everyone off. And so we're in
Speaker 2: this momentary, heathful period, but there's still these undercurrents of
Speaker 2: like reaching and grasping for the old military technologies and
Speaker 2: tactics that will, of course inevitably bring us back up
Speaker 2: to where we were before.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Yeah, that's how I understood the setting.
Speaker 3: There used to be a bunch of martial arts heroes.
Speaker 3: They all killed each other. Then there were thirty years
Speaker 3: without martial arts heroes, and now the marshal world is returning.
Speaker 2: This would be a great They keep doing you a
Speaker 2: sequels to all these fighting games, and it's always the
Speaker 2: same thing every time, Like do this instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a good premise, Okay, But the
Speaker 3: narrator goes on to explain his own place in this.
Speaker 3: He says, in these warring years, a traveling scholar, untrained
Speaker 3: in martial arts recorded the important events of the era
Speaker 3: and sold them for a living. His name is Fong,
Speaker 3: and I am that one, He says, to this martial world.
Speaker 3: I was an observer, but inevitably I become totally involved.
Speaker 2: This is a good sort of taste of the subtitle character. Yes,
Speaker 2: is that it's it's you. You can follow it, but
Speaker 2: there's a little but there's some nuance missing there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some translation issues and things get clearly getting
Speaker 3: lost in the translation of the English subtitles. We can
Speaker 3: mention a few more moments like that as we go on,
Speaker 3: but overall, yeah, you can follow what's happening. So we
Speaker 3: see we see a man come over the horizon and
Speaker 3: crunching through the sand. He wears simple robes, appears to
Speaker 3: be a humble and quiet fellow, and this is Pongong
Speaker 3: approaches a castle surrounded by tall grass, and then there
Speaker 3: is an explosion in one of its towers, and then
Speaker 3: the narration continues. Returning from Tibet in the twenty fourth
Speaker 3: of the New Era, I met ten Phone, the leader
Speaker 3: of the Ten Flags, and intriguing encounter. And then in
Speaker 3: a quite funny way, there's a sudden cut to just
Speaker 3: like funk music, like heavy funk groove and wikiwiki guitars.
Speaker 3: So on screen we see a hand of an unknown
Speaker 3: person reaching for the sky, fingers curled into a fist,
Speaker 3: and then the hand opens to reveal in its palm
Speaker 3: a butterfly. The butterfly flies away. Title screen the butterfly murders,
Speaker 3: and we get a song with lyrics, So I want
Speaker 3: to say what the lyrics are. As translated in the
Speaker 3: subtitles here, the lyrics are Smoke arises, blood is in
Speaker 3: the air, life of death. I must face it, trying
Speaker 3: to escape, Yet you are already trapped. Suspicious arise, confidence shattered?
Speaker 3: One whiff, and I am down forever. Who is to grieve?
Speaker 3: Who is to be glad?
Speaker 2: Isn't this all? From the Bridge to Metallica? Is one
Speaker 2: like I can just imagine it, James Headfield like belting
Speaker 2: it out like dat confidence shattered?
Speaker 3: But no, it's it's a kind of lilting ballad sort
Speaker 3: of melody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nice. I think you probably heard part of
Speaker 2: it in the trailer audio we played, but now you
Speaker 2: know what it's said. Roughly.
Speaker 3: All the while this opening credit sequence, while the music
Speaker 3: is playing, it is trying really hard to make butterflies
Speaker 3: look menacing, and to my surprise, succeeding. We see butterflies
Speaker 3: landing and alighting from rocks along the bank of a
Speaker 3: mountain stream. Then there are several shots where butterflies are
Speaker 3: not flying but perched on the rocks and just sort
Speaker 3: of pumping their wings rhythmically while they stay perched there.
Speaker 3: I've seen this movement before, of course, never thought to
Speaker 3: interpret it as threatening. But for some with the right focus,
Speaker 3: somehow it does look a bit that way. It does
Speaker 3: look a bit like some kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: like predatory animal flexing its jaws. It's interesting how framing
Speaker 3: can change the way you see an utterly harmless animal.
Speaker 3: Oh but also I thought, before the song is finished,
Speaker 3: it just cuts off like in mid line and smash
Speaker 3: edits to a roaring waterfall with no music playing. So
Speaker 3: here it goes on introducing the characters. It says the
Speaker 3: powerful Tinfong leads his ten flags of men, so I
Speaker 3: think he rules. The ten flags are ten different gangs
Speaker 3: or guilds of martial arts fighters, and so overall what
Speaker 3: he leads I think is known as the Tin Clan,
Speaker 3: But there are ten different gangs within it, and they're
Speaker 3: like color coded, so there's like the red flags and
Speaker 3: the white flags and so forth. And the camera pans
Speaker 3: and we see the bodies of many swordsmen lying dead
Speaker 3: on the rocks in the middle of a river, with
Speaker 3: blood running into the foamy rapids and swirling around them.
Speaker 3: I think this is supposed to indicate like, these are
Speaker 3: the enemies of Boss in Boston has defeated them all.
Speaker 3: Then it cuts to something else. It's like, okay, here's
Speaker 3: here's a scene for you. It happened in the twenty
Speaker 3: fourth of the New Era, on the sixth day of
Speaker 3: the sixth month, in bar Bridge paper mill founded for
Speaker 3: over eighty years, an unusual incident happened. That's the narration.
Speaker 3: So here we see a pre industrial paper mill in operation.
Speaker 3: Workers are boiling down wood products and rags in water,
Speaker 3: pounding out sheets of paper and hanging them up to dry.
Speaker 3: But it's not just a paper mill. This appears to
Speaker 3: be a combination paper mill and printing press. So some
Speaker 3: of the workers are in like a different part of
Speaker 3: the setting, are arranging type blocks and pressing them with
Speaker 3: ink and then pressing paper against them.
Speaker 2: I loved all the little details in this sequence. I
Speaker 2: feel like he does a really great job establishing the
Speaker 2: setting and the sense of enterprise here. It was just
Speaker 2: really drawn in. Again, this is a technically a very
Speaker 2: proficient film, so you know, all this stuff that might
Speaker 2: be sort of wasted motion in a lesser film is
Speaker 2: all very engaging.
Speaker 3: I agree. I feel like this director is really skilled
Speaker 3: with setting and situation. This is a movie where you
Speaker 3: always have a really good feeling of where you are
Speaker 3: and what it feels like where the scene is taking place.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now here we get our first real time scene with dialogue.
Speaker 3: A man, a kind of suspiciously behaving man, comes into
Speaker 3: the paper mill with a proposition for the boss. They
Speaker 3: sit down and share a cup of tea. The boss
Speaker 3: he smokes his pipe or something, and the visitor produces
Speaker 3: a book in what looks like scroll form from his satchel.
Speaker 3: He asks if the mill would be able to print
Speaker 3: five thousand copies of this document within ten days.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: The mysterious visitor says he came across this book by accident,
Speaker 3: but that it is the memoirs of Pong, describing the
Speaker 3: quote unusual events of the last ten years, and this
Speaker 3: causes like a music sting. The boss is surprised. He
Speaker 3: almost sort of spits out his pipe, and the visitor
Speaker 3: says that the boss will make lots of money by
Speaker 3: selling this book. Okay, so the boss of the paper
Speaker 3: mill is not just making paper, not just printing on it,
Speaker 3: but I think also operating a book store and selling books.
Speaker 3: But anyway, the visitor is like, okay, print up this book,
Speaker 3: sell a bunch of copies, you'll make money.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: In just in the middle here we get this little
Speaker 3: interlude where it's just showing us the printing the printing
Speaker 3: press workers who are arranging the words on the type blocks,
Speaker 3: and they're narrating. One is narrating the text to the
Speaker 3: other while he puts the characters in place, and the
Speaker 3: narration goes, my beloved came riding on a bamboo horse,
Speaker 3: and the guy kind of sings along. I just really
Speaker 3: liked this moment. Yeah, But the boss says he does
Speaker 3: not think that these pages are authentically the work of
Speaker 3: Fong because they do not match Fong's handwriting, so he
Speaker 3: knows what Fong's handwriting looks like. And then next thing,
Speaker 3: paper mill workers find the boss dead, hanging upside down
Speaker 3: in the back of the print shop, and the visitor
Speaker 3: is gone. He seems to have busted out through one
Speaker 3: of the windows. It's very eerie scene. There are all
Speaker 3: these papers hung up on clotheslines for the ink to dry,
Speaker 3: and they're flapping in the wind from a smashed window.
Speaker 2: So already we have printing press drama in this film.
Speaker 2: What was going on? What was this mysterious apparently fraudulent
Speaker 2: work that was they were trying to get published and distributed. Well,
Speaker 2: we'll find out later on in the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why would this guy kill a print boss for
Speaker 3: refusing to or for refusing to print this book or
Speaker 3: for recognizing that it was not Fong's handwriting. Well, next
Speaker 3: to the narration tells us that the bar bridge, the
Speaker 3: place where the printing press was and the paper mill was,
Speaker 3: was in the territory of tin Clan's White Flag. So
Speaker 3: that's one of Bosston's gangs. So it's like they control
Speaker 3: that area, and so it says. Several days afterwards, we
Speaker 3: see someone in a wide brimmed hat running through a
Speaker 3: field of tall weeds, pursued by a gang of men
Speaker 3: with hooked blades. He's caught and unmasked, and it is
Speaker 3: the guy from the paper mill, the visitor who brought
Speaker 3: the who brought the scroll and apparently killed the boss there.
Speaker 3: And the White Flag warrior who captures him says, poisonous wasp,
Speaker 3: you killed the paper mill's boss. The White Flag leader
Speaker 3: tries to interrogate him, He's like, why did you kill
Speaker 3: the boss, but the stranger doesn't answer. Instead, he tries
Speaker 3: to fight his way out of the situation and he
Speaker 3: gets killed. So no answers there.
Speaker 2: They'll refer back to him, I believe Wasp. So apparently
Speaker 2: poisonous Wasp was not like they weren't caught, you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't profanity. It was like, that's just his name.
Speaker 2: He's poisonous Wasp.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. Narrator goes on to say in the sixth
Speaker 3: of the New Era, droughtstruck, bandits abounded, the living was difficult,
Speaker 3: starvation caused cannibalism. Those still strong enough were busy digging
Speaker 3: up graves. Thirteen royal tombs in Wei Ying were dug
Speaker 3: up in one night. General Ping Nam's tomb in Butterfly
Speaker 3: Valley was rumored to be full of treasures. Ah okay,
Speaker 3: so there's a grave full of treasures. And we cut
Speaker 3: to a spooky scene of workers out in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night, swinging pickaxes in a grove of trees
Speaker 3: by yellow lamplight, and suddenly they stopped digging. One of
Speaker 3: the workers asks what's wrong. Another one says, it seems
Speaker 3: like they're being watched. Then a lamp swings from a branch,
Speaker 3: and these these patterns of light and shadow rock back
Speaker 3: and forth in the tree canopy while the workers are watching,
Speaker 3: almost like they are expecting something to come down at
Speaker 3: them from above, and there's this whispering wind. The atmosphere
Speaker 3: in the scene is so cool, and after listening for
Speaker 3: a moment, the workers start digging again. But in the
Speaker 3: foreground we see a single black butterfly flutters down from
Speaker 3: the sky and it lands softly on the bark of
Speaker 3: a tree branch. Then you pan to tree limbs directly
Speaker 3: over the worker's heads to reveal the branches are covered
Speaker 3: in butterflies. Normally that wouldn't seem so menacing. Here it
Speaker 3: really does. There are these very effective close ups of
Speaker 3: the wings flexing and the spiral shaped prebocess like unfurling
Speaker 3: and catching the light. And so just when the workers
Speaker 3: strike a hard surface at the dig site, suddenly the
Speaker 3: butterflies explode with activity, swarming all around the men. The
Speaker 3: men scream in pain, they're terrified, they fall to the
Speaker 3: ground somehow the butterflies are killing them.
Speaker 2: And again, like it's effectively done. The animals attack element
Speaker 2: of this film is on the whole more believable than
Speaker 2: then most of the other all animals attack sort of
Speaker 2: films that we've talked about in the past, like far
Speaker 2: more terrifying than frogs. Yes. Agree.
Speaker 3: Also, there was a green fireball in the scene. I
Speaker 3: don't know what that means, all right, So I made
Speaker 3: all these hard times and bad things going on. We
Speaker 3: finally see a meeting of multiple tin Clan warriors. So
Speaker 3: the White Flag warriors meet with warriors dressed all in red.
Speaker 3: I guess these are the Red Flag warriors. They are
Speaker 3: gathering on a cliff on a misty mountain slope. The
Speaker 3: Red Flag gang is led by a woman named number ten.
Speaker 3: The White Flag Gang is led by a man named
Speaker 3: number three. Number three says their boss has been acting
Speaker 3: very strange since he acquired the twelve districts. I guess
Speaker 3: that means he gained power over twelve territories. I don't
Speaker 3: think this information is important, but just to give you
Speaker 3: a flavor of like all the complicated like numbers and
Speaker 3: factional naming that happens here. One of number three says,
Speaker 3: since the Yellow Flag ran down the Pangs, the ten
Speaker 3: Klan is the third most powerful of the seventy two.
Speaker 3: Since then, Boss has quietened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does. Again. Part of it is the
Speaker 2: fact that the subtitles are a little bit confusing. It
Speaker 2: may not be the case if you're watching it, you know,
Speaker 2: as part of the intended original audience. But yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of this feels like maybe we could have cut
Speaker 2: this and maybe simplified it a little bit, because it's
Speaker 2: not all going to be essential once we get into
Speaker 2: the second half of the picture.
Speaker 3: But the Red Flag Leader and the White Flag Leader
Speaker 3: discussed it. They talk about how they think Boss ten
Speaker 3: is trying to gain repute and that there's a vendetta
Speaker 3: among the seventy two I guess the seventy two what
Speaker 3: was it called smoke trails. Yeah, that I guess are different,
Speaker 3: different gangs arising in this new era, and so the
Speaker 3: fights between them cannot be solved, and their boss, the
Speaker 3: boss of their gangs, is trying to look good, I guess,
Speaker 3: trying to trying to get repute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a great deal of martial arts gang drama
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then done dun doune. Suddenly heavy music, sting,
Speaker 3: heavy bass and sudden and the boss is here. The
Speaker 3: boss pops up. This is the first time I think
Speaker 3: we've seen Tinfung. He's also got another guy with him.
Speaker 3: They sort of jump out from behind a rock and
Speaker 3: everybody's like, boss and oh boy, Tinfong the boss has
Speaker 3: magnificent hair. He's standing with one leg up on a
Speaker 3: kind of pulpit of rock on the mountain side, overlooking
Speaker 3: the gang members. Underneath him stands some kind of lieutenant
Speaker 3: that we later find out is named Big Eyed, who's
Speaker 3: wearing like pink robes and a cape. Tinfong himself is
Speaker 3: wearing a cape or a cloak and this like cool
Speaker 3: black outfit with kind of a V neck. He's just
Speaker 3: got rock star hair. He looks really cool and stern
Speaker 3: and like, yeah, he.
Speaker 2: He would be a good gang boss. I think, yeah.
Speaker 2: If he were to ask if we could dig it,
Speaker 2: I would have to agree we can take yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But he explains to his fighters. He says, three days ago,
Speaker 3: Shume Castle sent me a secret letter. The master of
Speaker 3: Shum Castle and I only met once five years ago.
Speaker 3: Yet he's asking for my help. An unusual event occurred
Speaker 3: at the castle recently. They say what event, and the
Speaker 3: Boss says, butterflies baffled looks all around.
Speaker 2: Now we have we have a call to adventure. Here
Speaker 2: we have the invite to the spooky castle.
Speaker 3: That's right then and then specifically, this is another one
Speaker 3: where I would guess that the original line is delivered
Speaker 3: in a very hard hitting fashion, but the way it's
Speaker 3: phrased in the subtitles doesn't quite capture it. The sentence
Speaker 3: that he speaks is they found butterflies which kill in
Speaker 3: the castle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it, clearly it's better in the
Speaker 2: original language, but that's what we get via subtitles.
Speaker 3: But here we get like a cut to an extreme
Speaker 3: close up of a butterfly head. The heavy drumming sound
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, and it's laying that groundwork. It's making
Speaker 3: butterflies scary. So the boss says, I'm going to go
Speaker 3: to the castle. I need the white flags and the
Speaker 3: red flags to go ahead and set up checkpoints on
Speaker 3: the paths around the castle, to surround the castle and
Speaker 3: monitor who comes and goes ahead of time, and I'll
Speaker 3: be there in three days. Meanwhile, just to emphasize again,
Speaker 3: like how cool a lot of the settings are here.
Speaker 3: The landscape around Boston while he's giving the speech is
Speaker 3: just livid, like there are jagged rocks everywhere, the earth
Speaker 3: is belching out these clouds of fog, and there is
Speaker 3: just a steady rumbling sound under everything, like there's maybe
Speaker 3: a volcano erupting in the distance or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, Tinfung sends his lieutenant Big Eyed to the castle
Speaker 3: ahead of time to sneak into the castle find out
Speaker 3: what's going on. So Big Eyed says, right, boss, and
Speaker 3: he goes to do that. But next we follow Tinfung
Speaker 3: on the road, traveling alone, apparently in disguise in a
Speaker 3: hood and cloak. There are a lot of disguises in
Speaker 3: this movie. But he's walking along a path in the country,
Speaker 3: and then he suddenly stops and calls out, you've been
Speaker 3: following me for two days, come on out. And so
Speaker 3: whoever he saw hen do does come out, and it's
Speaker 3: Green Shadow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, first Green Shadow scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's just instantly delightful.
Speaker 3: So Green Shadow swings through the air, crosses the path
Speaker 3: in front of him, then appears dangling from a rope.
Speaker 3: Green Shadow is a young woman dressed in sort of
Speaker 3: forest green robes. She is kind of a cross between
Speaker 3: Spider Man and Predator, so like like the Predator, she
Speaker 3: uses the trees, you know, she swings from branch to branch.
Speaker 3: But like Spider Man, she's kind of a web slinger,
Speaker 3: like she swings from wires and ropes and zips around
Speaker 3: on them. But also she's just so positive, Like Green
Speaker 3: Shadow has a really friendly and exuberant personality, and she
Speaker 3: always knows something that other people don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, she's on top of the situation and she's
Speaker 2: here for a good time.
Speaker 3: Also in the scene, I don't know if Tenfong is
Speaker 3: just he happens to be crushing a butterfly in his fist,
Speaker 3: but he gets around asking Green Shadow, why are you
Speaker 3: following me? And she says, I've always been interested in
Speaker 3: other secrets. Yeah, we can tell Green Shadow you know
Speaker 3: everybody's secrets before. Yeah, you clearly are nosy. Now they
Speaker 3: appear to have some kind of past, like they know
Speaker 3: each other. It's not really fully explained, but I don't
Speaker 3: know if they've been enemies in the past or allies,
Speaker 3: but they know each other somehow. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you caught any detail on that I missed, Rob.
Speaker 2: Now I just kind of picked up like maybe it's
Speaker 2: like a professional thing, you know, It's like, well, of
Speaker 2: course they know Green Shadow everybody's heard about the exploits
Speaker 2: of Green Shadow, and of course Fung is the boss,
Speaker 2: so everybody knows who Fun is.
Speaker 3: But we do know she's not one of the seventy
Speaker 3: two factions that are fighting because Green Shadow warns him.
Speaker 3: She says, many amongst the seventy two are coming for you.
Speaker 3: He says, Boss Ten says they'll all end up the same.
Speaker 3: Green Shadow says, I'm not amongst the seventy two, so
Speaker 3: I should be the exception. So Green Shadow offers to
Speaker 3: help him. At first, he's kind of stand offish, but
Speaker 3: she reveals she knows a lot. She knows what's going on.
Speaker 3: She knows he's going to the Shum Castle. She knows
Speaker 3: what happened at the Barbridge paper mill. She knows about
Speaker 3: the murder and the eight pages of Fong's memoirs. She
Speaker 3: reveals that she knows about the killer butterflies, since they
Speaker 3: are mentioned in the memoirs that the guy was trying
Speaker 3: to get published at this paper mill. Tenfung is like,
Speaker 3: you believe in Fong's memoirs, and she says, yeah, he
Speaker 3: actually knows a lot, and Ten reveals his anti scholar
Speaker 3: bias here. He's like it's easy for scholars to talk,
Speaker 3: but there's a great difference between writing and fighting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will come up time and time again.
Speaker 2: Good point.
Speaker 3: So Ten isn't going to trust Fong. But then Green
Speaker 3: Shadow makes a good point. She's like, at least he's
Speaker 3: not amongst the seventy two, So you know, Ten knows
Speaker 3: he's not one of the enemies that's coming for him.
Speaker 3: So they agree to go to Shum Castle together, just
Speaker 3: as he ordered. Tin Fung's gang is already there ahead
Speaker 3: of him, and they report that there has been neary
Speaker 3: a peep from the castle. No lights, no smoke. It's
Speaker 3: like there's no one there. And Big Eyed, the lieutenant
Speaker 3: who is sent ahead ahead of time to investigate the
Speaker 3: castle and report back, nobody's heard anything from him. So
Speaker 3: they go inside inside the castle walls. At first, everything
Speaker 3: appears deserted. The courtyard is kind of barren. It's the
Speaker 3: sandy rectangle of earth with no signs of life. It's
Speaker 3: almost even like a lot of the like all the
Speaker 3: furniture has been removed from the castle. It's just empty.
Speaker 3: And Tin Fung's men they scour the grounds, They run
Speaker 3: along the battlements at the top of the walls, they
Speaker 3: run in and out of the buildings. Tin Fung himself
Speaker 3: wanders into one room where a massive shape of some
Speaker 3: sort is hidden underneath a curtain. He pulls the curtain
Speaker 3: away to reveal a demonic statue. Seems to be some
Speaker 3: kind of malevolent, predatory or dragon like figure. It's got
Speaker 3: real like Pazuzu statue from The Exorcist energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely has more of the vibe of a
Speaker 2: European or American Gothic castle set as opposed to like
Speaker 2: a really ornate Chinese dragon, because I mean, it is
Speaker 2: obviously a set, and we'll see it later when it
Speaker 2: of course explodes, because you can tell, you can tell,
Speaker 2: like this was made to blow up. This thing's going
Speaker 2: to blow up and crash at some point, and it
Speaker 2: will in spectacular fashion. But yeah, this scene and all
Speaker 2: the other like again, the director just does a great
Speaker 2: job establishing location. You know where you are in the castle,
Speaker 2: and especially as we begin to add on different sections
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: I agree, as an aside, I feel like that is
Speaker 3: a really important and underappreciated skill in filmmaking, underappreciated by
Speaker 3: life of audiences. The importance of a director making you
Speaker 3: using film to make you understand and feel a setting.
Speaker 3: You know, there's some filmmakers who are really good at this,
Speaker 3: like I would pull it, like the Coen Brothers are
Speaker 3: really good at making you, like understand the feeling of
Speaker 3: a room where the scene is taking place. Of course,
Speaker 3: a lot of good directors are able to do this,
Speaker 3: but a common feature of bad filmmaking is that like,
Speaker 3: scenes are taking place in a setting where you don't
Speaker 3: feel like you understand where you are, right, And this
Speaker 3: is the opposite as we were saying, that the settings
Speaker 3: are really well established, you feel them, yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's effortless and it doesn't require language at all.
Speaker 2: So it's one of those things that the subtitles don't
Speaker 2: get in the way of that because it's speaking directly
Speaker 2: to you, no matter what your native tongue is.
Speaker 3: Right, But anyway, the White Flag fighters come to Tinfong
Speaker 3: to inform him that they have found Big Eyed. Big
Speaker 3: Eyed is dead, his body lying beside a pond in
Speaker 3: the courtyard. His skin is covered in scorch marks and
Speaker 3: black smudges, and inside his clenched fist is a butterfly.
Speaker 3: Of course, Tinfung is furious at this to find his
Speaker 3: lieutenant dead. Just then he and Green Shadow finally meet
Speaker 3: someone who appears to be an inhabitant of the castle.
Speaker 3: It's a young woman holding a lantern. Tinfung runs up
Speaker 3: to her or tries to question her, but she seems
Speaker 3: either unable or unwilling to speak, and she also seems
Speaker 3: afraid of him, and they wonder why. Tinfung's like, why
Speaker 3: is she carrying a lantern in the daytime? But Green Shadow,
Speaker 3: who again always seems to be mentally one step ahead,
Speaker 3: says it's because she came from underground. Green Shadow's right.
Speaker 3: They rush around the corner to find a cellar door
Speaker 3: propped open, and then the young woman with the lantern
Speaker 3: leads Tinfung and Green Shadow down the stairs into an
Speaker 3: underground tunnel where they meet the master of the castle.
Speaker 3: It is Master Shum. He's very glad they've come, and
Speaker 3: he escorts them deeper into the rocky catacombs, where they
Speaker 3: find a kind of improvised living space illuminated by torchlight.
Speaker 3: So down in the space is Master Schum, there is
Speaker 3: the girl with the lantern, whose name we learn is Chi,
Speaker 3: And there is the Madam of the castle, Madame Schumer,
Speaker 3: Ladyshum Also, there is another guest who has arrived. It
Speaker 3: is the scholar Pong, remember him from earlier, He was
Speaker 3: the narrator. This is the alleged author of the eight
Speaker 3: pages of memoir from the incident at the paper Mill.
Speaker 3: And as we could expect, there is tension between Tinfung
Speaker 3: and Fong. Boston does not trust him. He says, although
Speaker 3: your memoirs have some repute, a scholar like you can
Speaker 3: only get in the way and make things worse. Not
Speaker 3: a fan of these nerdy scholars. But Master Schum says, hey,
Speaker 3: he needs Fong here. He invited him here to chronicle
Speaker 3: the events that have happened and to make an accurate
Speaker 3: report of what's going on at the castle, to serve
Speaker 3: as a warning to others.
Speaker 2: All right, so already you know we've got this strong
Speaker 2: mystery gothic plot developing here, mysterious castle, strange events. People
Speaker 2: with diverse backgrounds have been invited to witness what is
Speaker 2: unfolding there here.
Speaker 3: Master Shum explains the backstory, and so we see it
Speaker 3: like re enacted as he tells it. He says, earlier
Speaker 3: this year, on the fifth day of the fifth month,
Speaker 3: it was a day to commemorate his ancestor's death, and
Speaker 3: so we see a sort of temple shrine within the
Speaker 3: castle grounds, and there are offerings. There's like a roasted
Speaker 3: chicken and a pig's head and a fish being offered up,
Speaker 3: I guess in honor of his ancestor. And the first
Speaker 3: strange occurrence here is that during the celebration, a servant
Speaker 3: finds a reeking display in one of the rooms of
Speaker 3: the castle. It looks like some kind of dead tropical
Speaker 3: bird hanging upside down with its feathers covered in blood,
Speaker 3: and it has a butterfly in its beak. Second event
Speaker 3: is one night Lady Shum is weaving in her chamber
Speaker 3: and is bitten so that blood is drawn, but she's
Speaker 3: bitten by a butterfly that lands on her neck and
Speaker 3: then on her hand. After this, the servants decide the
Speaker 3: castle is cursed. They start running away, leaving the Schum
Speaker 3: family by themselves. One day, Master Schum finds that masses
Speaker 3: of butterflies are swarming around the outside of the windows,
Speaker 3: and the butterflies attack. They kill his last loyal servant,
Speaker 3: as Master Shum himself barely escapes with his life into
Speaker 3: the underground tunnels. So now it appears to be just Schum,
Speaker 3: Lady Shum, and she living down there in the tunnels.
Speaker 3: Everybody else is dead or has fled the castle.
Speaker 2: And this is a great set, Like, the more details
Speaker 2: we get, the more amazing it is. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: they're living underneath the Gothic castle in this complex that
Speaker 2: it seems just increasingly. I mean it's expressly described as
Speaker 2: a labyrinth later on. Yeah, with lots of confusing twists
Speaker 2: and secret passages.
Speaker 3: So just great setting, agree, And I love the rooms
Speaker 3: they find in these passageways later on. But oh, we
Speaker 3: also get some backstory about the third person there, about Chi,
Speaker 3: the servant. Lady Schum explains that she found her alone
Speaker 3: while traveling away from the castle years ago, that she
Speaker 3: was deaf and mute the lady, so Lady Schum brought
Speaker 3: Chi back to the castle with her to live there
Speaker 3: and serve as her personal maid. So we met all
Speaker 3: the characters here now. Later that night, Fong the scholar
Speaker 3: and Master Schum have a conversation in Master Shum's secret
Speaker 3: meditation chamber where he's got a go board setup.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I guess it's supposed to be like
Speaker 2: a study. I think we might more realistically, think of
Speaker 2: it as his secret study.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Fong says, why did you bring me here?
Speaker 3: And Schum says, do you believe in ghosts? Fong takes
Speaker 3: a diplomatic view that I think could be read multiple
Speaker 3: different ways. He says, ghosts exist if you believe in them,
Speaker 3: otherwise they don't. And I feel like you could there
Speaker 3: are a few different ways you could take that.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you read it, Rob, I mean,
Speaker 2: I took it to be like Fong is a no
Speaker 2: nonsense kind of guy, you know, it's like that that
Speaker 2: realizes that belief in ghosts is a powerful thing, even
Speaker 2: if ghosts don't exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's sort of how I took it too.
Speaker 3: But then I also wondered if, well, maybe he means like,
Speaker 3: ghosts do exist and have power, but only over those
Speaker 3: that believe in them. And yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, either way it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, Master Shum starts talking about the anniversary of
Speaker 3: the death of his father, and there is a there
Speaker 3: was a funny moment here with like the way the
Speaker 3: subtitles work, with like the timing. Master Shum says he's
Speaker 3: killed by butterflies ten years ago and then there's a
Speaker 3: music sting and Fong bolts up from his chair. But
Speaker 3: then Master Shum says kind of sadly that his father
Speaker 3: didn't believe in ghosts, and for this reason he had
Speaker 3: no worries about trying to dig up the buried treasures
Speaker 3: of the General of Pinan or General Pinan. I'm I
Speaker 3: think this is maybe the same tomb we saw being
Speaker 3: dug up by people earlier in the movie. I don't
Speaker 3: know if it was supposed to be a depiction of
Speaker 3: the same scene, but you know, people digging for treasure
Speaker 3: in a general's tomb, though the general's name appeared to
Speaker 3: be spelled differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has to be the same, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Mastershriam says his father lived peacefully for ten years after
Speaker 3: this act of grave robbing, but then one day ten
Speaker 3: years later was attacked by a swarm of killer butterflies.
Speaker 3: They assaulted the castle in the form of a cloud
Speaker 3: and descended to slaughter many men that day, and in
Speaker 3: the re enactment we see butterflies circling the towers and
Speaker 3: the castle walls. They leave soldiers and servants lying bloody
Speaker 3: in the courtyard. There are a lot of these sickening
Speaker 3: close ups of butterflies crawling over dead men, and then
Speaker 3: another line where I think it's not supposed to be funny,
Speaker 3: but something gets lost In the subtitle, Fong says, don't
Speaker 3: worry over it, let's work out together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The subtitles are again generally confusing in places, but
Speaker 2: rarely like actually, goofy. This is I think maybe the
Speaker 2: one real exception, and I had a nice hearty laugh
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: I think what it must mean is let's work it
Speaker 3: out together. I think he's saying like, we will solve
Speaker 3: the problem. That's how I took it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I think clearly what they meant. But I
Speaker 2: also I couldn't help it. Then imagine like, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: go work out, let's hit the weights.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of these characters might work out together, but
Speaker 3: I don't think it would be Fong who would do it.
Speaker 3: He does not even lift. Okay. Meanwhile, we get a
Speaker 3: report to ten Funk about Big Eyed and how he died.
Speaker 3: They say that his wounds are made of numerous tiny
Speaker 3: holes and his skin is swollen, all symptoms of poison,
Speaker 3: and in a line that will be repeated by many
Speaker 3: characters many times throughout the film, someone says, are there
Speaker 3: really killer butterflies? It's sort of unanswered. That seems like
Speaker 3: maybe there are. There are some general creepy stalking around
Speaker 3: in the tunnels in the dark. Who's following who? I
Speaker 3: don't always know? But Green Shadow is in the mix
Speaker 3: here somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of the Scooby Doo section of the film.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of creeping around. Who's creeping? You're not
Speaker 2: really entirely sure, but hopefully masks will be pulled off
Speaker 2: later on?
Speaker 3: Oh boy will they? So suddenly the sneaking around is
Speaker 3: interrupted by a scream. One of Tin Fong's White Flag
Speaker 3: soldiers is found lifeless on the ground up above, killed
Speaker 3: in the same way as Big Eyed. I guess by
Speaker 3: the butterflies. They're really piling on the butterfly deaths at
Speaker 3: this point, so Bosston he comes up with a solution.
Speaker 3: Tin Fong gets his warriors together and he says, cover
Speaker 3: the castle in nets. So surely these nets will prevent
Speaker 3: any butterflies from getting in. Is that gonna work? Is
Speaker 3: it gonna work? Of course not?
Speaker 2: But will it look cool? You bet it will.
Speaker 3: They're like they're really just like stacking butterfly murders every
Speaker 3: couple minutes at this point between the flashbacks and and
Speaker 3: what's happening in the present, so we also see the
Speaker 3: Red fl out hunting. It's mostly like the White Flag
Speaker 3: warriors who are hanging out at the castle with Boss Ten.
Speaker 3: We see the Red Flags out hunting for butterflies with
Speaker 3: handheld nets, and they remark that there is not a
Speaker 3: single butterfly to be found in a twenty mile radius.
Speaker 3: Where could the killer insects be hiding. But here we're
Speaker 3: about to get into some investigation scenes, and just a warning.
Speaker 3: If you want to go into this movie without any
Speaker 3: of the surprises spoiled, you know we're about to spoil
Speaker 3: things as we go along, so be fore warned. Inside
Speaker 3: at night, Fong, the Scholar, and Green Shadow meet in
Speaker 3: one of the tunnels to discuss the castle. They conclude
Speaker 3: that there has to be a secret entrance to the
Speaker 3: underground labyrinth, but they cannot find the door even though
Speaker 3: they've both been looking for it. So while they go
Speaker 3: looking around, they come across a hidden room with these
Speaker 3: hanging screens covered in thousands of dead butterfly specimens. It's
Speaker 3: like a lepidoptery.
Speaker 2: Now, this is highly suspicious. Now we seem to be
Speaker 2: getting somewhere with the butterfly mystery.
Speaker 3: Right, So Fong and Green Shadow discuss whose work the
Speaker 3: collection could be, possibly the servant Chi. They note that
Speaker 3: they both thought that Chi had been with them separately
Speaker 3: at the time the White Flag soldier was found killed
Speaker 3: the previous night. So how could Chi have been in
Speaker 3: two places at once. Hmmm, we'll come back to that,
Speaker 3: but oh no. Next, Master Schum is attacked by butterflies
Speaker 3: inside his meditation room. He's but he's like locked inside
Speaker 3: the room, so they cannot go in and help him.
Speaker 3: The door is locked from the inside, and everybody's watching
Speaker 3: through a grate in the door as he is killed
Speaker 3: by a swarm of butterflies. Eventually they are able to
Speaker 3: blast the doors open with gunpowder, but it's too late.
Speaker 3: Master Schum lies dead on the floor, surrounded by pieces
Speaker 3: from his go board. Oh boy, Rob, I know you
Speaker 3: like a will reading scene, don't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where we get the will reading, where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, he left a will? Did we read it?
Speaker 2: Should we gather everyone together? Are there agents or individuals
Speaker 2: out there who don't want us to read the will?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: I think that might be the case.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Lady Shum says, Master Shum left an unusual will.
Speaker 3: It says, quote, my dear wife, I have a wish
Speaker 3: left let out the message carrying pigeon, and in three
Speaker 3: days time, Shin, Quak and Lee will arrive. I have
Speaker 3: a letter to be read to them. Remember read it
Speaker 3: in all threes presence. Remember, So these new characters are
Speaker 3: being introduced, Shin, Quack, and Lee. Who are they?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Fong says that it's rumored that ten years ago a
Speaker 3: very knowledgeable hermit lived. Not only was he an excellent
Speaker 3: martial artist, he was also learned in the human sciences,
Speaker 3: and he had four students known as the Thunders. Now
Speaker 3: one of the students, one of the Thunders, was named You,
Speaker 3: and you is now dead. But the other three are Lee,
Speaker 3: Shin and Quak, and they are the three mentioned in
Speaker 3: the will. So here we get a summary of the
Speaker 3: three Thunder's courtesy of Pong. Fong says, First of all,
Speaker 3: Lee Lee is best at small hand weapons. He is
Speaker 3: called the thousand Hands. His attacks are totally unexpected. His
Speaker 3: expertise is second to none. Second we have Quak. Quak
Speaker 3: is also known as magic Fire. He quote has the
Speaker 3: most killing power, and here we cut to a raven
Speaker 3: flying a scream and men lying scorched on the rocks.
Speaker 3: And apparently he wiped out a sect known as Fireball
Speaker 3: in one night. So there's some indication that Quak can
Speaker 3: like send a bird that somehow leaves men lying scorched
Speaker 3: on the earth. How does that work? Who knows. Finally
Speaker 3: there's Shin, who is known as Flying Cloud. Nobody knows
Speaker 3: what he looks like, and he once went through the
Speaker 3: Forbidden Palace. They say, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2: Do we eventually see Flying Cloud. I'm a little hazy
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm confused. There may be some one
Speaker 3: thing I missed. I totally admit that it may have
Speaker 3: gone past me. But I don't think Shin actually appears
Speaker 3: in the film, Okay, unless it's like the secret identity
Speaker 3: of another pre existing character and that's revealed at some
Speaker 3: point and I missed it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm I'm not alone there, Okay, I don't think so. Okay.
Speaker 2: The other two we definitely see, though, and they play
Speaker 2: important parts, especially Clark, who I mentioned in the cast.
Speaker 3: But they're both really cool. So the thunders are on
Speaker 3: their way, and Tinfong warns his fighters not to confront
Speaker 3: the Thunders. This is a dangerous situation because on one hand,
Speaker 3: you've got Tin Phong's warriors. You know, they're fighting for power.
Speaker 3: But the Thunders are these other extremely dangerous martial heroes,
Speaker 3: you know, these people from the martial world, and you
Speaker 3: put the put them all in the place together, They're
Speaker 3: they're gonna fight. I think at some point Boston says,
Speaker 3: two tigers can't exist at the same time.
Speaker 2: Now, not discounting other influences, of course, but I mean,
Speaker 2: one can't help but be reminded of John Carpenter's later
Speaker 2: film A Big Trouble in Little China, in which we
Speaker 2: have the four Storms, who are exceptional martial artists slash
Speaker 2: sorcerers who have all sorts of crazy weapons and abilities,
Speaker 2: and you know, here we have the three Thunders. So
Speaker 2: you know, I can't help but wonder if this had
Speaker 2: any influence on the ultimate form of that film.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I've read somewhere that the same director's
Speaker 3: other film, Zoo Warriors in the Magic Mountain, was a
Speaker 3: major influence on Big Trouble.
Speaker 2: All Right, we'll have to come back to Zoo Warriors
Speaker 2: it just sounds too Entyson.
Speaker 3: But the film goes a great length to express and
Speaker 3: it's good to hammer home here that this is a
Speaker 3: dangerous situation having Boston and the Thunders in the same place,
Speaker 3: because these are rivals, they are likely to come into conflict.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Next, there's a scene where Fong, the scholar, questions Chi,
Speaker 3: the servant at the castle. He asks her about the
Speaker 3: lepidoptery room with all the butterfly specimens, and she confirms
Speaker 3: that it is Master Shum's room. And then Fong asks
Speaker 3: her why there are two cheese, because you know, remember
Speaker 3: he and Green Shadow both were with Chi in different
Speaker 3: places at the same time. She acts frightened by this
Speaker 3: question and tries to run away, but she leads Fong
Speaker 3: to a different hidden room, a strange room that is
Speaker 3: revealed to be something like a cross between an arsenal
Speaker 3: and an alchemist's lab. It's full of these weird ancient
Speaker 3: scientific instruments, things that look like weapons, and containers of powders,
Speaker 3: and these like wooden planks with burn marks on them,
Speaker 3: almost like I don't know, like explosives or incendiaries have
Speaker 3: been tested here. And so here Fong meets with Green shadow.
Speaker 3: They explore the room and they discuss the the sort
Speaker 3: of a principle of like gunpowder I think being explored here.
Speaker 3: They discuss a sort of secret history of gunpowder weapons,
Speaker 3: including a legendary secret weapon known as the fire gun.
Speaker 3: So it's a question I think, like, was the owner
Speaker 3: of this room trying to create a like secret gunpowder weapon.
Speaker 2: You know, it's again kind of interesting synchronicity here because
Speaker 2: for our Crossbow episodes that aired earlier this week, I
Speaker 2: was reading, you know a great deal and need them
Speaker 2: about about gunpowder innovations and gunpowder weaponry in ancient China,
Speaker 2: many of which used crossbow or crossbow related elements, and
Speaker 2: and you know, none of what we see in this
Speaker 2: film here even really captures like the weird variety of
Speaker 2: gunpowder based weaponry that was developed in China over the centuries.
Speaker 2: It's pretty pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 3: Now, next we're going to meet some of the Thunders.
Speaker 3: Not they don't arrive at the castle conventionally because like
Speaker 3: the White Flag warriors are sort of outside awaiting the
Speaker 3: arrival of the Thunders. Instead, we see the Thunders meeting
Speaker 3: each other in secret, already underneath the castle. They're in
Speaker 3: the tunnels beneath the castle. It's a very cool, creepy
Speaker 3: scene where Lee and Quak here appear in shadow, wearing
Speaker 3: hoods and cloaks at first, so their faces are hidden
Speaker 3: in darkness. At first, they're almost even a little suspicious
Speaker 3: of each other. They say, why did Master Schum invite
Speaker 3: them to the castle early? They say, Shin used to
Speaker 3: be the first to come here. Why isn't he here yet?
Speaker 3: But then suddenly their little rendezvous is interrupted by discovering
Speaker 3: that Green Shadow is there. Green Shadows spying on them again,
Speaker 3: always one step ahead, and they try to They try to,
Speaker 3: like throw weapons at her and stuff, but she's too quick.
Speaker 3: They can't catch it, and so here eventually all of
Speaker 3: the characters meet one another. We get the full all
Speaker 3: cast introduction, and the Thunders kind of get up to
Speaker 3: speed on what has happened so far at the castle,
Speaker 3: but they're still a waiting for Shin, the third Thunder
Speaker 3: to arrive so that the letter can be read. And
Speaker 3: more characters ask the same question, and that keeps coming up.
Speaker 3: Do killer butterflies really exist? The Thunders discuss this in
Speaker 3: secret between each other. They're very wary of the others.
Speaker 3: Lee and quak. They say that anyone who is in
Speaker 3: our friend is our enemy, and these people don't seem
Speaker 3: to be friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of distrust here, but yeah, but it
Speaker 2: would also seem like, well, we finally have all of
Speaker 2: the characters in play that are going to be in play.
Speaker 2: He might well think this, but he would also seemingly
Speaker 2: be wrong, because there are more mysterious individuals who are
Speaker 2: going to show up and impact the plot.
Speaker 3: Right, But before the last really important character shows up,
Speaker 3: we get a few more sort of like scenes of
Speaker 3: Green Shadow and Fong, our two main investigators working out
Speaker 3: what's going on here. So they meet one night. But
Speaker 3: first of all, it's funny because Fong's just like out
Speaker 3: for a walk and Green Shadow does wire stunts, like
Speaker 3: just dropping in on him while nothing's going on. So
Speaker 3: they talk about killer butterflies. But then Fong and Green
Speaker 3: Shadow sort of compare notes. They say, you know, the
Speaker 3: Thunders seem to know the castle well, and they were
Speaker 3: close with Master Shum. Why didn't he call them for
Speaker 3: help initially? Why did he call Boss ten instead of
Speaker 3: the Thunders?
Speaker 2: You know, coming back to where he said about Green Shadow,
Speaker 2: it really does feel like Green Shadow has not just
Speaker 2: walked down a hallway or just strolled from point A
Speaker 2: to point B in a very long time. It's always
Speaker 2: on wires.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love it. She's living that wire life, you know.
Speaker 3: Also more plot updates. Remember those eight pages of Fong's
Speaker 3: memoirs from the paper Mill, Well, Tinfong shows them to
Speaker 3: Fong and Pong confirms, Yeah, the guy the paper Mill
Speaker 3: was right. I did not write this. This is not mine.
Speaker 3: Somebody is forging works in my name. Pong reasons from
Speaker 3: this because the pages of his memoirs are stories about
Speaker 3: killer butterfly attacks. He says, there must be someone trying
Speaker 3: to use my name to spread the rumor of killer butterflies.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that same person is controlling the butterflies.
Speaker 3: And then oh whoa. Things totally do a major shift
Speaker 3: once again, we get our first slasher movie. Basically, Madam
Speaker 3: Schum in her chambers at night is attacked by this
Speaker 3: film's Jason Vorhees the Armored Warrior, rob what do you
Speaker 3: want to say about the Armored Warrior And the scene.
Speaker 2: Oh, the Armored Warrior is just absolutely terrifying. Just you know,
Speaker 2: black armor seemingly just impossible to hurt. You can't maim
Speaker 2: him or stop him. Just a strong proto slasher vibe here,
Speaker 2: and he eventually busts out. A lot of his action
Speaker 2: is just more like punches and grabs and throws, and
Speaker 2: then like some sort of like more minor cloth type stuff.
Speaker 2: But he also has this other strange weapon that he'll
Speaker 2: bust out that looks kind of like a cross between
Speaker 2: a lacrosse stick and a deep friar basket, only you know,
Speaker 2: more deadly looking, and it seems to slash and shred
Speaker 2: when it comes into contact with human flesh.
Speaker 3: I was going to compare his weapon to the goat
Speaker 3: foot lever that we talked about in the Crossbow episode.
Speaker 3: It's like it's a claw hook weapon that's got like
Speaker 3: two toes on it. But yeah, this rough material, almost
Speaker 3: like barbed wire strung between the two toes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I looked around a little bit. I couldn't find
Speaker 2: anybody talking about this and comparing it to known weapons.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if it actually has anything like
Speaker 2: a real world analog, if it has something it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be inspired by, something to do with butterflies, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm assuming for now that it's just you know,
Speaker 2: purely a creation of fantasy, but it's very effective.
Speaker 3: But the scene is interesting because it starts as like
Speaker 3: it's like a slash or horror scene. This you know,
Speaker 3: this monstrous warrior attacks Lady Shum in her chamber.
Speaker 2: She escapes.
Speaker 3: The fighters get there in time to defend her and
Speaker 3: chase this warrior off. But then there's like a series
Speaker 3: of awesome fight scenes. So it's like Tinfong versus the
Speaker 3: Armored Warrior and Tin Fong is cool. He we finally
Speaker 3: see him in action. He fights with this another strange weapon.
Speaker 3: It's like a very short baton. Know what this would
Speaker 3: be called?
Speaker 2: Rob I'm not sure now does this baton shoot things?
Speaker 2: Or am I thinking this is just a straight up baton?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: There are some things that shoot things. I don't remember
Speaker 3: if his shoots things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things get very The fighting is again kind of
Speaker 2: mind melting, and there are a number of unique weapons
Speaker 2: being utilized. Pure fantasy action here.
Speaker 3: But then there's also Green Shadow versus armored warrior, and
Speaker 3: she uses wires in her fighting of him. But eventually
Speaker 3: the armored warrior escapes into the night. He gets away,
Speaker 3: so they don't get to catch him, and they don't
Speaker 3: get to unmask him or know the identity of the killer.
Speaker 3: Now Madam Schum thinks she knows the identity of the killer.
Speaker 3: She thinks it must be the third Thunder who hasn't
Speaker 3: arrived yet, Shin, And she's like, maybe he wants to
Speaker 3: get to the letter or the will that Master Schum
Speaker 3: left before everybody else does. But hey, remember that thing
Speaker 3: about how Bosston was saying, you know, two tigers can't exist.
Speaker 3: At the same time, we see some real confick breaking
Speaker 3: out because the red Flags and the White Flags end
Speaker 3: up fighting with the Thunders, and the Thunders just mess
Speaker 3: them up. There's like a scene where the Thunders attack
Speaker 3: the red Flags in the forest and are just like
Speaker 3: chopping their arms off and stuff, and they fight with
Speaker 3: the white flags. The white Flags are no match either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Thunders are not to be messed with. You're
Speaker 2: gonna get shredded, you're gonna get blown up, you're gonna
Speaker 2: get caught on fire.
Speaker 3: But then later the two Thunders we see Investigator. They're
Speaker 3: running around in the tunnels underneath the castle and this
Speaker 3: is Lee and Quak and they catch sight of the
Speaker 3: armored Killer. So they see him and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: and they chase after him in the dark, and this
Speaker 3: leads to the Butterfly room, the one with all the
Speaker 3: butterfly specimens mounted on screens and another amazing fight scene.
Speaker 3: So there is an attack where the armored Warrior like
Speaker 3: tries to attack the thunders by throwing I guess the
Speaker 3: poison butterflies at them and the thousand hand thunder Lee
Speaker 3: he intercepts the butterflies with darts and it's this awesome,
Speaker 3: scary fight scene tight quarters. I thought this was a
Speaker 3: really good one. Again the armored warrior whose identity is hidden.
Speaker 3: He's using the strange claw hook weapon. It's very visceral
Speaker 3: and scary and up close and personal. And there's one
Speaker 3: moment where you think Lee has won because like the
Speaker 3: armored Warrior goes down, but then he suddenly pops back
Speaker 3: up and he is victorious. He kills Lee by like
Speaker 3: ramming his head into a clay pot.
Speaker 2: This is a great kill sequence, and it's one of
Speaker 2: these where like the way we describe it, like Okay
Speaker 2: puts them in a headlock, rams his head into a pot,
Speaker 2: that doesn't sound as impressive, but the way that it
Speaker 2: shot it's very thrilling and feels like just very viscerally violent,
Speaker 2: even though it's not like super bloody or anything.
Speaker 3: Okay, next we get some big reveals. Like we said,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of twists that come in this movie.
Speaker 3: So next we follow Chi in the underground tunnel by herself.
Speaker 3: Remember she's the servant who carries the lantern, and she
Speaker 3: wanders with her lantern wearing a mask over the bottom
Speaker 3: of her face. What's she doing? Oh, suddenly we see
Speaker 3: her walking not just through the tunnels, but she's walking
Speaker 3: into a cavern like an opening in the tunnels, where
Speaker 3: she's surrounded by butterflies, and yet she's not afraid of them.
Speaker 3: They don't seem to be harming her. She kneels beside
Speaker 3: an underground pool and then she puts something in the
Speaker 3: water and makes it foam and sizzle, and it produces
Speaker 3: these white fumes. The butterflies seem like affected by the fumes.
Speaker 3: Rob what did you did? It seem almost kind of
Speaker 3: like the butterflies were like boiling up out of the
Speaker 3: water or something.
Speaker 2: I guess. Yeah, this was one of the moments where
Speaker 2: I'm kind of piecing it together, but I'm blaming the
Speaker 2: subtitles for my lack of a pure understanding of what
Speaker 2: we're dealing with here, because again, so many things in
Speaker 2: the film like just makes sense on a visual level.
Speaker 2: You don't need the subtitles to explain what's happening. But
Speaker 2: there's some sort of like magical potion based ex explanation here,
Speaker 2: and we're not getting all of it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I'm following what's happening. I could
Speaker 3: be making mistakes, but essentially here she is caught Green
Speaker 3: Shadow and the scholar Fong appear they have been watching her,
Speaker 3: and they reveal they say, we know you're not Chi.
Speaker 3: You are Madam Schum disguised as Chi. That's why there
Speaker 3: were two cheese. There's the real Chi. And then Madame
Speaker 3: Schum has a Chi costume that she puts on and
Speaker 3: she like hides part of her face to pretend to
Speaker 3: be her. They say that she has quote butterfly controlling
Speaker 3: medicine and that lady Schum has discovered the art of
Speaker 3: controlling butterflies. Apparently Fong talks about it almost like the
Speaker 3: art of controlling butterflies is something that is known to
Speaker 3: have been known in the past but was lost and
Speaker 3: now has been rediscovered.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, fair enough, Okay, it's all making sense now.
Speaker 3: So Green Shadow and Fong here are confronting her. They're like,
Speaker 3: now you're going to tell us everything that's going on,
Speaker 3: because we know you're in on it. But they're interrupted
Speaker 3: by the armored Warrior in the black armor, the mask
Speaker 3: the weapon. He comes out and Madame Schum is killed,
Speaker 3: and the armored Warrior escapes, and we see butterflies crawling
Speaker 3: over Lady Shum's dead body as if to mourn it,
Speaker 3: and then later the armored Warrior comes back and caresses
Speaker 3: Lady Shum's body as well. Here's the scene with the
Speaker 3: killer reveal. The killer is unmasked and it is Master
Speaker 3: Schum himself, the Master of the Castle. He's not dead
Speaker 3: after all, and he's confronted by Pong alone this time,
Speaker 3: who's put all the pieces together. He says that Master
Speaker 3: Schum is actually you remember when they were describing the thunders.
Speaker 3: There are three thunders still living, but one of the
Speaker 3: thunders was already dead. Well, it turns out that that
Speaker 3: thunder was you, and he wasn't dead. It's Schum, the
Speaker 3: Master of the Castle. So this is a plan of
Speaker 3: the Thunders, many years in the making, to create secret weapons.
Speaker 3: Here at the castle to protect the secret of the weapons.
Speaker 3: And now you must be doing some new stage of
Speaker 3: the plan.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm buying all of that, but I still don't
Speaker 2: know why we invited people to the castle. I don't
Speaker 2: know why the secret will. I feel like there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that I can't quite stitch together.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, I think I understand it. So
Speaker 3: take me Master Schum and Madam Schum here. They used
Speaker 3: killer butterflies first of all, to get rid of all
Speaker 3: the spies in the castle, because there were spies here
Speaker 3: sent by the other Thunders to keep track of you. Okay,
Speaker 3: so they drive all the spies out with butterflies that
Speaker 3: either killed them or made them flee, and then they
Speaker 3: keep using the butterflies in attacks all around to create
Speaker 3: a confusion. Then Schum created the false memoirs of Fongs
Speaker 3: to spread stories about the killer butterflies killed the paper
Speaker 3: mill owner when he saw through it. The whole point
Speaker 3: of this was to get the other Marshall heroes to
Speaker 3: get Tin Fong and Green Shadow to the castle to
Speaker 3: make them fight with the Thunders. Because you wants to,
Speaker 3: I think, rule over everything. He wants to be in charge,
Speaker 3: so He wants all the other martial heroes to get
Speaker 3: together into a tight space, to be in the same
Speaker 3: place and have to fight each other, just like what
Speaker 3: happened and we heard in the backstory when all the
Speaker 3: Marshal heroes fought each other and wiped each other out.
Speaker 3: He wants to be the last one standing.
Speaker 2: Okay, so everything is going is going according to plan here.
Speaker 2: It's about getting these all these great warriors together, having
Speaker 2: them destroy each other so that he can rule over
Speaker 2: everyone instead. Okay, yeah, that's right, all right, I could again.
Speaker 2: I feel like I would have been on top of
Speaker 2: it had the subtitles bing just a little tighter. But
Speaker 2: I'm there now.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is a complicated plot, but I think
Speaker 3: it's a good twist. And so Schum basically admits, Yepfong,
Speaker 3: you figured it out. But men who know too much
Speaker 3: cannot live. So he reveals his claw weapon and he's
Speaker 3: going to kill Fong. There's like a chase, and then
Speaker 3: all kinds of different fighting happens. Schum ends up killing Chi,
Speaker 3: the actual servant. Chum then fights Green Shadow. Fong watches
Speaker 3: as Shum fights Green Shadow. He's helpless, He's not a fighter.
Speaker 3: He can't intervene, and then Tin Fung shows up and
Speaker 3: he gets involved in the fight again. It's like trading
Speaker 3: off between the different heroes fighting the Armored Warrior, but
Speaker 3: Schum once again escapes into a tunnel.
Speaker 2: I have to and I have just drive home here
Speaker 2: that you know, I'm not like a Hong Kong action
Speaker 2: completist or anything. There are a number of like very
Speaker 2: prestigious Hong Kong action films that I haven't seen, so
Speaker 2: I can't like speak universally in all of this. But
Speaker 2: all of this action is just blistering. It's just very
Speaker 2: like technically proficient, you know, well shot inventive. It's just
Speaker 2: you never know what's going to happen next. And so
Speaker 2: even though you get just multiple fights and different pair ups,
Speaker 2: everything is just captivating.
Speaker 3: And I really love that the different heroes have their
Speaker 3: different like fighting styles, so when they trade off fighting
Speaker 3: the villain. There there's a lot of variety in the
Speaker 3: fight scenes. It's not just like a samey kind of
Speaker 3: fighting over and over. You get Green Shot with her
Speaker 3: like wire stuff, you get Boss ten with this little baton.
Speaker 3: You get of course, the you know, the Armored Warrior
Speaker 3: with his scary visceral kind of fighting with the claw weapon,
Speaker 3: and then of course you get the Thunders. So after
Speaker 3: showm escapes, Fong says, this is the terrible situation. This
Speaker 3: is going to turn into an all out war between
Speaker 3: Tin Fung and the remaining Thunders. So Fong leaves the
Speaker 3: castle at dawn to avoid the battle, and then we
Speaker 3: see the final battle going on again. Two Tigers can't
Speaker 3: exist at the same time, so we've got ten versus
Speaker 3: the Magic Fire Thunder. He's the one left alive. The
Speaker 3: Armored Warrior returns and it's a three way fight. They're
Speaker 3: sort of like all trying to kill each other. They
Speaker 3: end up there's like an explosion. I think it's when
Speaker 3: the statue, the demonic statue explodes. They fighters fall through
Speaker 3: the floor into the catacombs below. Magic Fire is pinned
Speaker 3: by a falling pillar. Then you and Magic Fire have
Speaker 3: this like conversation. Who says, you know, I was left
Speaker 3: here to protect the secret gun. Why did you other
Speaker 3: thundersind spies to report on me? And you know, they're
Speaker 3: like hashing out their grievances and you is giving a
Speaker 3: speech as the victorious villain. But meanwhile Boston sneaks up
Speaker 3: on you, and as he does a maniacal laugh, bost
Speaker 3: Tin springs from cover and there's another fight again. There's
Speaker 3: some ground grappling, there's some sliding along on wires, and
Speaker 3: then finally the villain is defeated when Tin like slams
Speaker 3: his head into to a rock face while while running
Speaker 3: down down the length of a wire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like a hyper accelerated zip line death
Speaker 2: sequence that if I when I explain it like that,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really sound like like he probably can't picture it.
Speaker 2: But within the context of this ridiculously elaborate three way
Speaker 2: fight scene, it's highly effective.
Speaker 3: Oh but it's not over because Magic Fire is still
Speaker 3: alive even though he's like trapped under a pillar. He's
Speaker 3: sends his killer bird after Ten. And you don't know
Speaker 3: what the bird's gonna do. It's just like a bird
Speaker 3: flying around chasing bost ten. What's going to happen? Well,
Speaker 3: you think Green Shadow comes to the rescue. She's here
Speaker 3: to save ten. She flies through on a wire. She's
Speaker 3: gonna save the day. But then, oh, the most devastating
Speaker 3: ending do you want to explain rob?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 2: that the stunningly nihilistic ending came out of nowhere because
Speaker 2: issues with subtitles aside, it does seem like we were
Speaker 2: ratcheting up to it, Like there's this sequence when the
Speaker 2: scholars leaving where Hang and Fung have this last little
Speaker 2: conversation and Fung is like, I hope you win, and
Speaker 2: it feels you know, very stark and in dark, and
Speaker 2: we end up like flashing back to that here in
Speaker 2: a bit. But yeah, so Green Shadow like zips into
Speaker 2: the scene with her you know, general optimism, and she
Speaker 2: goes and like catches the bird in mid air and
Speaker 2: the bird explodes like a hand grenade, just blowing Green
Speaker 2: Shadow up. Like there's no way she survives this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just killed instantly, and and you know, Fung is like
Speaker 2: like no, and then it comes flying right at Fung's
Speaker 2: face and explodes in his face. Freeze frame and that's
Speaker 2: pretty much the end. Yeah, And I was like wow,
Speaker 2: Like that was just jaw dropping, because again with this
Speaker 2: feels like a major Wusha subversion here, like this is
Speaker 2: not our heroes conquering evil or it's not a you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of tropes that you would expect to encounter
Speaker 2: in a film like this. No, this is like all
Speaker 2: of our heroes are dead except for the scholar, who
Speaker 2: only survived because he left ahead of the cataclysmic final battle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so, but there is a symmetry like it
Speaker 3: talked about in the backstory with the narration at the
Speaker 3: very beginning. The movie seems to end with all of
Speaker 3: the Marshall heroes have killed each other. They're all gone
Speaker 3: now and the only one is the chronicler to tell
Speaker 3: the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it, I mean it really really packs a punch. Again,
Speaker 2: just a fitting way to cap all of this just
Speaker 2: you know, essentially like high tech fantasy martial arts that's
Speaker 2: happening here and just have this just again just very
Speaker 2: nihilistic ending where everybody dies. But again, like I say,
Speaker 2: it doesn't it. They were clearly building up to this
Speaker 2: in many ways, so it doesn't feel forced in any
Speaker 2: fashion either.
Speaker 3: So in the end, I'd give a big thumbs up
Speaker 3: to the Butterfly Murders. It is not only its Bonker's
Speaker 3: premise of killer butterflies. It is that, but it is
Speaker 3: so much else. It just gives you so much to
Speaker 3: work with and it keeps you guessing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so, Yeah, highly recommend this one and you know,
Speaker 2: I hope it gets a better release at some point
Speaker 2: in the future. It would be great. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, I didn't see any indication that that's coming,
Speaker 2: So I would say, don't you know, don't waste time.
Speaker 2: If this interests you, go watch it in whatever whatever
Speaker 2: format you can find it in, because it's it's worth
Speaker 2: the journey. All right, Well, that's it for this episode
Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema. We're going to go ahead and
Speaker 2: close out, but a reminder that we're primarily a science
Speaker 2: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film here on the Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: If you want to see a list of all the
Speaker 2: movies we've covered over the years, go to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 2: It's l E T T e r box d dot com.
Speaker 2: Our username is weird house and we have a list
Speaker 2: of all the movies and sometimes a peek ahead at
Speaker 2: what's to come. If you would like to follow us
Speaker 2: on social media while we're in the usual places as
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Speaker 2: podcast and that's worth following for Weird House fans, because
Speaker 2: currently our social media crew is putting up a little
Speaker 2: video kind of like teaser of the film, so you
Speaker 2: can quickly go there and get maybe a taste of
Speaker 2: the trailer in addition to the trailer audio that you'll
Speaker 2: hear in the actual episode.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always are excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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