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