Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema we are going to be
Speaker 3: talking about the nineteen eighty three Hong Kong martial arts
Speaker 3: fantasy film Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain, directed by T.
Speaker 3: Sue Hawk, And Oh my god, this movie is so much.
Speaker 3: This is one of the most overwhelming films we have
Speaker 3: ever watched for the show. And I've been wanting to
Speaker 3: cover it for quite a while, or at least for
Speaker 3: several months, because in sometime last year, I think it
Speaker 3: was November of last year, we covered another movie by Soyhawk,
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy nine film The Butterfly Murders, which did
Speaker 3: involve killer butterflies and also had just crazy intrigue, a
Speaker 3: lot of like politics and backstabbing and assassins and cool characters,
Speaker 3: you know, the Big Boss of the Gangs and the
Speaker 3: Green Shadow and all these wonderful characters. I loved that movie.
Speaker 3: But when I went to check that movie out at
Speaker 3: Video Drome, I think they actually didn't have it, but
Speaker 3: they told me about another movie by the same director.
Speaker 3: They were like, oh, yeah, you should see Zoo Warriors.
Speaker 3: That one's really good. And so ever since, it has
Speaker 3: been on the list, and some further investigation online proved
Speaker 3: that this movie has a reputation as an absolute banquet
Speaker 3: of weirdness, just bursting with gonzo sorcery, shrieking demons, and
Speaker 3: relentless exuberance. And now that I've seen it, I can say,
Speaker 3: not only did it deliver on my expectations, it sort
Speaker 3: of goes beyond. I found Zoo Warriors from the Magic
Speaker 3: Mountain to be immensely pleasurable, frankly to the point of exhaustion,
Speaker 3: like a kind of excess of pleasure that became pain,
Speaker 3: And by the end, I was just like, what has
Speaker 3: happened to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those movies that I maybe
Speaker 2: should have watched in short installments. Sometimes I watch movies
Speaker 2: like that sometimes because I'll watch a movie that's maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit boring and I don't want to watch
Speaker 2: it all in one setting because it would be impossible.
Speaker 2: This one, it's it's the opposite. It's everything is just
Speaker 2: so exciting and it just doesn't stop that you feel
Speaker 2: like you almost need a breather between these action sequences
Speaker 2: because the narrative itself doesn't necessarily provide those breathers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and other viewers I've read have commented about this
Speaker 3: quality of the movie that it's absolutely wonderful, but by
Speaker 3: the end it's like literally overwhelming. It's like too much
Speaker 3: to take all at once. So I would just say
Speaker 3: I do highly recommend Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain.
Speaker 3: Once I was done watching it, I was like, I
Speaker 3: must own a copy of this. I ordered a copy
Speaker 3: to keep. But prepare thyself. Prepare thyself for more pinball
Speaker 3: demons and eyebrow to tenta goles and bubble wrap hands
Speaker 3: than you could have possibly imagined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is there's high martial arts magic in
Speaker 2: this film. I was looking around it. You know, this
Speaker 2: is what different folks thought about it, and yeah, everyone
Speaker 2: seems to love this movie.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It was a huge hit, like a cross generational hit
Speaker 2: in China, so you had like the older generations going
Speaker 2: to the theaters and like, yeah, this is great, this
Speaker 2: is the kind of story we want to see, and
Speaker 2: then new generations of film fans also got on board
Speaker 2: with it because it was as we'll discuss kind of
Speaker 2: like a vision of the future. It's high tech, special
Speaker 2: effects cinema. And then you know, likewise, it quickly found
Speaker 2: an audience outside of China as well. You know, for instance,
Speaker 2: Michael Weldon in the Psychotronic Video Guide speaks highly of it,
Speaker 2: like any anybody who saw this film was instantly overpowered
Speaker 2: by it.
Speaker 3: A couple other things that I found really admirable about
Speaker 3: this movie despite it just being aforementioned banquet of weirdness.
Speaker 3: The movie also, I think has a good heart, like
Speaker 3: even though it is a film about war and demons
Speaker 3: and supernatural combat, the moral Refrain is very much about
Speaker 3: trying to find a way for people to live together
Speaker 3: in peace, and so that sort of connects to one
Speaker 3: of the themes, which is that despite how crazy and
Speaker 3: overwhelming the movie is, it also in a strange way
Speaker 3: kind of has a very clear head, like it's organized chaos.
Speaker 3: I think the feeling of chaos is actually a very
Speaker 3: smart depiction of the themes of the story, because you
Speaker 3: could argue that one of the things the story here
Speaker 3: is about is the great number of ways that people
Speaker 3: are distracted and interrupted and divided and set against one
Speaker 3: another always preventing them from achieving what should be their
Speaker 3: noble goals, for example, bringing about peace, ending war, or
Speaker 3: protecting the end. Though in the end of the film
Speaker 3: the persistence, especially of the younger protagonists does pay off
Speaker 3: to some degree. But it's a rob When you and
Speaker 3: I were first talking about it off, Mike, you use
Speaker 3: the word side quests. Yeah, that very much describes a
Speaker 3: lot of the structure of the plot. There's just a
Speaker 3: whole lot of the chaos is used to show this
Speaker 3: process for people always getting distracted from or driven away
Speaker 3: from by like personal infighting and differences from achieving what
Speaker 3: they know they should do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree, And yeah, it is a film
Speaker 2: with a good heart, and it's interesting to think about
Speaker 2: it in terms of Hawk's other films, especially as earlier films,
Speaker 2: and also comparing it dirrectly to The Butterfly Murders. The
Speaker 2: Butterfly Murders is in many way very in many ways
Speaker 2: very dark film. We talked about it's nihilistic tendencies, and
Speaker 2: by this film it seems like he has moved away
Speaker 2: from some of the more controversial or confrontational elements of
Speaker 2: his work, and in this movie he's crafting a film
Speaker 2: that is funny, that is comforting, that is exciting, but yeah,
Speaker 2: ultimately has a good heart and is not here to
Speaker 2: show you deep dark truths or anything of that nature.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it at least has a I guess you
Speaker 3: could say a semi happy ending, like it doesn't have
Speaker 3: a bleak ending like Butterfly Murders where all the good
Speaker 3: characters die. Yeah, not only do you remember Butterfly Murders
Speaker 3: not only die but explode.
Speaker 2: Yes in the face as our Yeah, yeah, it's that one, startling.
Speaker 2: I still love Butterfly Murders. That's a great one. Well, Joe,
Speaker 2: what is your elevator pitch? If we dare for Zoo
Speaker 2: Warriors from the Magic Mountain?
Speaker 3: Well, the plot of Zoo Warriors is infamously difficult to
Speaker 3: summarize and describe, So I'm gonna say a deserter from
Speaker 3: Incoherent Wars, a flying scholarly swordsman, a monk amongst apprentice,
Speaker 3: a magic man with prehensile eyebrows, an enchanted countess and
Speaker 3: her loyal bodyguard, a Heaven's Blade, and a bunch of
Speaker 3: blood demon disciples all walk into a bar on a
Speaker 3: magic mountain.
Speaker 2: That sounds about right. Well, let's go ahead and listen
Speaker 2: to an English language trailer for this film.
Speaker 4: Deep in the heart of every culture lives a legend
Speaker 4: that will not die for It is told of an
Speaker 4: enchanted mountain whose dark and vengeful spirit possesses the power
Speaker 4: to destroy all mankind. But now the courage of one
Speaker 4: man must rise to uncover the only weapon on earth
Speaker 4: with the power to bring about its destruction. Now restored
Speaker 4: and remastered for the first time, Hong Kong Legends invite
Speaker 4: you to experience the fantasy adventure which inspired a generation
Speaker 4: Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain.
Speaker 2: All right, it sounds exciting, but without the visuals you
Speaker 2: only have like twenty percent maybe less of the spectacle here. Now,
Speaker 2: if you were interested in watching Zoo Warriors before we
Speaker 2: jump into it here, well, first of all, I do
Speaker 2: want to stress there's more than one film that has
Speaker 2: the title Zoo Warriors in it. There's more than one
Speaker 2: Hawk film that is a Zoo Warrior film. We're talking
Speaker 2: about the nineteen eighty three film to be clear. And
Speaker 2: if you want to watch it, well we watch it
Speaker 2: on the excellent twenty twenty three Blu Ray release from
Speaker 2: Shout Factory. This is a Great Desk comes jam packed
Speaker 2: with extras, some of which I'll be referring to, including
Speaker 2: segments with Peter Koran and academics Victor Fan and Lynn Thing,
Speaker 2: as well as an interview from twenty twenty with Hawk himself.
Speaker 3: I didn't get a chance to get into the extras
Speaker 3: on this disc before I handed it off to you,
Speaker 3: but yeah, it looks like a lot of great stuff
Speaker 3: on there, and so I'm excited for the copy I ordered.
Speaker 3: I also I went for the Shout Factory one, but
Speaker 3: just to clarify in case people come across the other ones,
Speaker 3: there is I think the other version of this movie,
Speaker 3: or some variation on it that Hawk did, was a
Speaker 3: movie I think from two thousand and one, which I've
Speaker 3: heard has a similar kind of approach of just tons
Speaker 3: and tons of visual effects and strange imagery and all that,
Speaker 3: but it uses CGI, though I have so that on
Speaker 3: one hand, you think two thousand and one CGI that
Speaker 3: sounds really awful. But though I haven't seen it, I've
Speaker 3: read some people saying very complimentary things about the movie
Speaker 3: that it sort of stands out as a better use
Speaker 3: of excessive CGI effects than most other films like that
Speaker 3: from that time.
Speaker 2: Well, that would make sense with Hawk, because he seems
Speaker 2: like the kind of director who and I haven't seen
Speaker 2: the remake that you're talking about here, but he seems
Speaker 2: like the kind of director who would embrace the new
Speaker 2: technology but also figure out ways to use it effectively
Speaker 2: and in a way that would maybe hold up better
Speaker 2: than your average sort of scorpion king type usage. All right, well,
Speaker 2: let's talk about the folks involved in this movie before
Speaker 2: we start wading into the plot. First of all, yeah,
Speaker 2: we have Choy Hawk here. If you have not set
Speaker 2: his name out loud or heard people speak his name,
Speaker 2: you may just see it on IMDb and other places,
Speaker 2: and it looks kind of like Sue Hark. That might
Speaker 2: be the way you're kind of like you mentally pronounce it,
Speaker 2: but it's more like Choi Hawk. I've heard also sort
Speaker 2: of a shoe hock, but Hawk will be the way
Speaker 2: that I'm going to predominantly be.
Speaker 3: Referring to him, usually transliterated in English, most often as
Speaker 3: Tsui Hark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's a director here. Born in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: Vietnamese born, Texas educated Hong Kong film director, producer, and screenwriter.
Speaker 2: He studied film at Southern Methodist University and then at
Speaker 2: the University of Texas in Austin. Graduated in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: worked in New York City for a bit, I believe
Speaker 2: on a Chinatown documentary, and then returned to Hong Kong
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven. Now, we previously discussed Hawk in
Speaker 2: our episode again on his wild nineteen seventy nine film
Speaker 2: The Butterfly Murders, which was his first attempt to breathe
Speaker 2: new life into the wusha genre via the incorporation of
Speaker 2: sort of cross genre influences and a general zeal for weirdness.
Speaker 3: I see a lot of commonality between these two movies,
Speaker 3: even though they are very different in some ways. So
Speaker 3: like The Butterfly Murderers is a much darker movie. I
Speaker 3: think you could say that it's more focused, it's less
Speaker 3: ambitious in some ways. But what's behind them is in
Speaker 3: both cases what feels like just like a very steady
Speaker 3: narrative hand and in terms of directing, like it is
Speaker 3: a confidently told story in both cases, and also in
Speaker 3: both cases it's just there's this kind of like really powerful,
Speaker 3: relentless narrative drive, a lot of energy, no dullness, and
Speaker 3: like incredible density of platam.
Speaker 2: And definitely weirdness. Like I want to stress that this
Speaker 2: isn't just a case of Hawk's work, especially as early
Speaker 2: work being weird to westernize, only because I believe it
Speaker 2: was Victor Fan and one of the extras on the
Speaker 2: disc who mentioned weird storytelling is being a key hallmark
Speaker 2: of his films, something we could of course tie into
Speaker 2: the long tradition of weird stories in Chinese tradition, as
Speaker 2: well as the global realm of sort of psychotronic cinema
Speaker 2: now based on Thing and Hark's own comments on the
Speaker 2: disc there, I think a few things to keep in
Speaker 2: mind about the filmmaker here. So his earlier films prior
Speaker 2: to this are more confrontational. Like a lot of creatives,
Speaker 2: he had more of a zeal for that in his
Speaker 2: earlier films, but then he moved away from that. Is
Speaker 2: his career developed, challenging sensors, less, challenging viewer expectations, maybe
Speaker 2: a little less, while also retaining originality and creativity. But
Speaker 2: even as he moved out of that kind of confrontational phase,
Speaker 2: he remained fearless when it came to bucking traditions, combining genres,
Speaker 2: and exploring filmmaking possibilities, Like they described him as being
Speaker 2: this kind of filmmaker who if you told him you
Speaker 2: don't do that or you can't do that, he would ask, well,
Speaker 2: why not, Why can't we do this? Why can't we
Speaker 2: try doing a film like this? Why can't we incorporate
Speaker 2: this influence or another influence? And in Zoo Warriors we
Speaker 2: see this especially in his use of cutting edge Hollywood
Speaker 2: special effects via American experts brought in to work on
Speaker 2: the project. And we'll mention the in a bit, and
Speaker 2: ultimately the creation of a film that is at once
Speaker 2: old fashioned and based on a nineteen thirty two novel,
Speaker 2: but also futuristic in many ways. So Hawk himself cites
Speaker 2: this idea that the film is in many ways science
Speaker 2: fiction but extending backwards through time instead of into the future.
Speaker 2: I've seen this idea explored concerning Western fantasy fiction before.
Speaker 2: I think I saw our Scott Baker talking about this,
Speaker 2: but in a way that's more perhaps more based in
Speaker 2: myth and meaning. While I feel like Zoo Warriors exhibits
Speaker 2: this more visually, you know, like we are seeing a
Speaker 2: presentation of the mythic, legendary, literary past, but it has
Speaker 2: all the zeal of a futuristic effects movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I would say that it comes through in
Speaker 3: the like the relationship between the characters and their magical
Speaker 3: implements and spells, because a lot of times in fantasy
Speaker 3: movies where there is magic, there's a kind of a
Speaker 3: kind of reverence with which the magic is treated, or
Speaker 3: a kind of old fashioned, almost kind of high Church
Speaker 3: mentality and relation to it, Whereas in this movie, I
Speaker 3: feel like the magic and the magical instruments are treated
Speaker 3: much more like technology in sci fi movies is treated
Speaker 3: like people have a very just kind of like familiar
Speaker 3: instrumental relationship with their magical items and body parts and
Speaker 3: powers and stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a great point. Absolutely. Another way to
Speaker 2: think about all of this is, you know, we've covered
Speaker 2: several films already on Weird House that come in the
Speaker 2: wake of nineteen seventy seven Star Wars and attempt to
Speaker 2: cash in on its success. In this film, Hawk successfully
Speaker 2: does something similar. He takes inspiration from its effects, from
Speaker 2: its visual storytelling, but translates all of that into something
Speaker 2: distinctly Chinese and also distinctly his own. As a director.
Speaker 2: Hawk remains a huge name in Hong Kong cinema and
Speaker 2: continues to play in active part in some of the
Speaker 2: biggest Chinese film projects out there as both a director
Speaker 2: and as a producer. Now a note, I'm the source
Speaker 2: material here. I mentioned like a nineteen thirty two novel.
Speaker 2: This would be Legend of the Swordsmen of the Mountains
Speaker 2: of Shu and this is by Han Chu Lao Chu,
Speaker 2: which I believe translates to Master of Returning Pearl Loft.
Speaker 2: This is an author that lived nineteen oh two through
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one, and this work is considered one of
Speaker 2: the most influential of the Wusha fiction and it's apparently
Speaker 2: the first work of that genre translated into English. I've
Speaker 2: not read it, but there are translations available online, and
Speaker 2: it appears to be a very traditional adventure saga in
Speaker 2: many respects, but with lots of fascinating myth and magic
Speaker 2: woven into it. So I'm no expert on the genre,
Speaker 2: literary or cinematic, but I'd say that the text seems traditional,
Speaker 2: but yeah, also just full of the sort of magic
Speaker 2: that opens up the possibility for just wild visual interpretation.
Speaker 2: The screenwriter on the film is Chuck Hon Zetto, who
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen fifty four, Hong Kong screenwriter who's
Speaker 2: actually come up on the show before because he was
Speaker 2: a writer on nineteen eighty five's Mister Vampire. Ah yeah,
Speaker 2: so this is one of his earlier credited screenplays, but
Speaker 2: he started out really strong working on films directed by
Speaker 2: the likes of Hawk and John Wu. I should also
Speaker 2: note that there is another screenwriter that is like a
Speaker 2: credited as being an uncredited writer on the film on
Speaker 2: both IMDb and the Hong Kong Movie Database, and that
Speaker 2: is Chung Yu Shu. Now, this film has a lot
Speaker 2: of actors in it. We're not going to touch on
Speaker 2: all of them, but hopefully we have some of the
Speaker 2: main actors lined up to briefly discuss.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of characters, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So we have a master swordsman in this master
Speaker 2: ting Yin ting Yin, played by Adam Chang born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty seven, Hong Kong actor whose credits go back to
Speaker 2: the late sixties, and he also seems to have had
Speaker 2: a solid pop music career going back to the mid seventies.
Speaker 2: His other films include nineteen eighty threes, Titanium Blade, nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three is the Legend in nineteen ninety four's Drunken
Speaker 2: Master three. I looked him up on discogs, as I
Speaker 2: usually do for anybody has a pop music background, and
Speaker 2: I included a nice album cover here for you, Joe.
Speaker 3: Oh Yeah. He's wearing a leather jacket with wide lapels
Speaker 3: and a cowboy hat. He looks super cool.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: Another character we have, the Countess, played by Bridget Lynn.
Speaker 2: Lynn was born nineteen fifty four, iconic Taiwanese star of
Speaker 2: both films both in Taiwanese and Hong Kong cinema. Her
Speaker 2: best known films include nineteen eighty five's Police Stories starring
Speaker 2: Jackie Chan, nineteen ninety four's Chun King Express, and Ashes
Speaker 2: of Thyme nineteen ninety three is The Bride with the
Speaker 2: White Hair, and Hawk's nineteen eighty six five film Peaking
Speaker 2: opera Blues. We also have a monk. This is Abbott Sauyu,
Speaker 2: played by Damian Lao born nineteen forty nine, Hong Kong
Speaker 2: actor whose credits include nineteen seventy nine's Last Tu Raw
Speaker 2: for Chivalry, nineteen eighty three is Duel to the Death,
Speaker 2: and nineteen ninety two's Royal tramp.
Speaker 3: Now this next actor you've got here, Rob, I'm very
Speaker 3: excited to talk about because I made it all the
Speaker 3: way through my first viewing of the movie without realizing
Speaker 3: that he had a second role in the film. He
Speaker 3: plays two characters.
Speaker 2: I had the same experience. I thought, because the actor
Speaker 2: is Samo Cambo Hunk or Samo Hunk, as many of
Speaker 2: you are going to be familiar with him. If you're
Speaker 2: not familiar with any of these other actors, you probably
Speaker 2: know Samo Hunk because yeah, the rotun martial arts acting
Speaker 2: and stunt legend. But yeah, at my first viewing of
Speaker 2: the film, I was like, oh man, they introduced him
Speaker 2: as this sort of side character and then we don't
Speaker 2: see him again for the rest of the film's runtime.
Speaker 2: He just comes back again at the very end, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's not enough Samo. And then I found out,
Speaker 2: oh no, he was in it pretty much. It's the
Speaker 2: whole time, because he plays two characters.
Speaker 3: Right, So in the first fifteen minutes or so of
Speaker 3: the movie, they're setting it up like the movie is
Speaker 3: gonna be like sort of a buddy comedy adventure between
Speaker 3: our arguably our main character, Die ming Chi and this
Speaker 3: red Army soldier played by Samo Hung, who I don't
Speaker 3: know if we ever learned that character's real name, do we?
Speaker 3: Or is he called Chubby?
Speaker 2: He is referred to as Chubby, and I think he
Speaker 2: is often credited in English translation as Red Army Soldier. Okay,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the other character plays is Chang Mee, also
Speaker 2: known as long Browse Long Brows. Yes, yes, so he
Speaker 2: plays this one character who you think is going to
Speaker 2: be a major character in the movie, and then disappears
Speaker 2: for most of the movie but has an incredible payoff
Speaker 2: return in the last couple minutes and then he shows up.
Speaker 3: We didn't realize it was the same actor, but he
Speaker 3: shows up as the wizard in the film, who has
Speaker 3: eyebrows that function like squid tentacles, like they can shoot
Speaker 3: out and grab hoole of things and even graft onto
Speaker 3: other people's eyebrows and become part of their eyebrows.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're not exaggerating. If anything, we're under selling the
Speaker 2: weirdness of this.
Speaker 3: But Samo Hung is fantastic in both of his roles.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he brings fabulous energy. Yeah. His work
Speaker 2: as a stunt coordinator goes back to the late sixties,
Speaker 2: and his action acting credits go back to the early sixties,
Speaker 2: and along with Hawk and other actors and directors, he's
Speaker 2: often credited as part of the overall Hong Kong New
Speaker 2: wave cinema movement of the nineteen seventies. He was also
Speaker 2: very active as a producer for several decades. In fact,
Speaker 2: he was a producer on Mister Vampire. We did mention
Speaker 2: him briefly in that episode. He played a huge part
Speaker 2: in the surge of spooky Hong Kong films and Jungshi
Speaker 2: hopping vampire movies, not only with the Mister Vampire film
Speaker 2: and its sequels and imitators, but also Encounters of the
Speaker 2: Spooky Kind from nineteen eighty and The Dead and the
Speaker 2: Deadly from nineteen eighty three. Other films of note from
Speaker 2: Samo includes seventy Three's Entered the Dragon, He's In There,
Speaker 2: twenty Tens, It Man two, and two thousand and fours
Speaker 2: Around the World in eighty Days. He's worked extensively with
Speaker 2: Jackie Chan, among other Hong Kong cinema legends. Now, another
Speaker 2: character that is a whole lot of fun in this
Speaker 2: movie is Lee Iichi, the Ice Queen.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this character I believe appears in the second half,
Speaker 3: where it's becoming harder to keep track of all the
Speaker 3: new plot developments. But is this the character who has
Speaker 3: retreated to the Heavens Blade Mountain to be in solitude
Speaker 3: with the two legendary swords.
Speaker 2: Yes, and she has freezing powers. She has like sub
Speaker 2: zero powers that are as magical and convincing as anything
Speaker 2: you'll see in a Mortal Kombat game or movie, but
Speaker 2: without the use of computer generated effects. But anyway. She's
Speaker 2: played by Judyong born nineteen fifty Taiwanese Japanese singer and
Speaker 2: actress who made her debut in the nineteen sixty one
Speaker 2: Japanese US production The Big Wave, based on the Pearl
Speaker 2: Buck novel. This is the film that launched her career.
Speaker 2: But she wasn't really a Wusha star prior to this movie.
Speaker 2: She was more of like a romance, comedy and drama star.
Speaker 2: But this kind of pointed her in different directions, I think,
Speaker 2: at least for a little bit. I think she did
Speaker 2: some other Wusha films after this, But yeah, she has
Speaker 2: a great presence in this movie. She has like an
Speaker 2: elfin energy.
Speaker 3: And there's another character we meet around the same time
Speaker 3: later in the film, who is sort of like an
Speaker 3: Atlas type figure, but he is chained to a giant
Speaker 3: ball on the mountain peak. And this is this is
Speaker 3: the Heavens Blade embodiment.
Speaker 2: Yes, he rolls around comically at times.
Speaker 3: Too quite truly funny.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's another thing I just want to drive home
Speaker 2: about the movie. As we'll discuss. It's very funny and
Speaker 2: intentionally so. But yeah, Heaven's Blade is played by Norman
Speaker 2: Chew born nineteen fifty five, Hong Kong actor and director,
Speaker 2: known for seventy five is the Flying Guillotine nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: We're Going to Eat. That's also Hawk eighty three is
Speaker 2: Duel to the Death in nineteen eighty eight's The Dragon Family.
Speaker 2: Has something like one hundred and sixty credits on the
Speaker 2: Hong Kong Movie Database.
Speaker 3: So at this point you're probably thinking, Oh, that's got
Speaker 3: to be all of the weird magical characters right now.
Speaker 3: I don't think we've even talked about half of them yet.
Speaker 2: No, I'm leaving out like whole central characters. I'm sure
Speaker 2: I didn't even credit the deserter or the monks, the
Speaker 2: Abbot's assistant. These are also vital characters, but these are.
Speaker 3: Like our two main heroes basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, basically, and yeah. When it comes to the
Speaker 2: antagonists of the film, we have our kind of big bads,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to, you know, our blood Demon and whatnot,
Speaker 2: but we also have these sort of lesser antagonists who
Speaker 2: could easily be the big bad in any other Wushaw film.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking specifically of the Devil disciple Leader, which is
Speaker 2: a super fun character in this Oh yes, there's some
Speaker 2: great sorceress actions scenes with this character and both, but
Speaker 2: two different actors are credited as playing the role on
Speaker 2: both databases that I was looking at. One is hark
Speaker 2: On Fung, who lived nineteen forty eight through twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: and the other is Korey Jun born nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: who we've talked about before on the show. I think
Speaker 2: maybe kore June is playing the action parts, like is
Speaker 2: essentially the stunt actor here, but I'm not sure on that.
Speaker 2: Korey June had a bit part in The Oily Maniac
Speaker 2: and went on to have a really impressive career. Co
Speaker 2: directed The Transporter for Western audiences. I did two thousand
Speaker 2: and six's doa Dead or Alive along with some really
Speaker 2: big Hong Kong films, and he was the stunt coordinator
Speaker 2: on this movie.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Fung, on the other hand, made a career out of
Speaker 2: playing bad guys. He appears in such films as Police Story,
Speaker 2: It Man two and two thousand and four is Kung
Speaker 2: Fu Hustle in a bit part. He's definitely the actor
Speaker 2: that we're looking at in most of the scenes where
Speaker 2: where you see the face of the Devil Disciple leader,
Speaker 2: he's the.
Speaker 3: One who's like leading the Devil Disciple church service basically. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, like the call and response sections where he
Speaker 3: is like, what do we do to nice people kill?
Speaker 3: What do we do to people who help others kill?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a funny character too. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: he gets to bust out some really cool like nightmare
Speaker 2: lightning effects that are a whole lot of fun. Speaking
Speaker 2: of effects, yeah, this is a big effects movie. It's
Speaker 2: just wall to wall after a while, and it certainly
Speaker 2: involved multiple Hong Kong effects talents, but the film notably
Speaker 2: again makes use of Western effects specialists. Key here are
Speaker 2: Robert Blallack, who lived nineteen forty eight through twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: Peter Kuran, who's interviewed on the disc and then Chris Cassidy.
Speaker 2: All three of these individuals I believe worked on the
Speaker 2: original Star Wars and that's kind of like one of
Speaker 2: the main ends here, Like they were individuals who at
Speaker 2: the time we had been involved in and the biggest
Speaker 2: groundbreaking special effects movies that Hollywood was producing. Piles additional
Speaker 2: credits include the likes of Altered States and Wolfin Kuran
Speaker 2: also had worked again on Star Wars, but also just
Speaker 2: tons of famous practical effects movies such as Conan the Barbarian,
Speaker 2: at least the first two RoboCop films, Grimlins, Critters two,
Speaker 2: John Carpenter's The Thing, and much more. Cassidy worked on
Speaker 2: the first two Star Wars movies, Tron Freaked, Highlander two again,
Speaker 2: just to name a few selections. And so some of
Speaker 2: these I think most of them were more like consultants
Speaker 2: from Afar, but at least one of them was on set.
Speaker 2: I think maybe Chriscasity was on set if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2: So it was a matter of consulting, but also someone
Speaker 2: being there to practically show the Hong Kong team how
Speaker 2: to do some of these effects and to help them
Speaker 2: pull it off. For this movie.
Speaker 3: This movie is truly a feast for the eyes. And
Speaker 3: I think everything about it looks wonderful, not just the
Speaker 3: special effects of the you know, animating the sorcery and
Speaker 3: having people like walk on ceilings and fly around and
Speaker 3: stuff that stuff. I do love the way that looks,
Speaker 3: but everything looks great. I love the look of the sets,
Speaker 3: both like the real location shots and the sets that
Speaker 3: use like models and interior sets and set design there
Speaker 3: of the temples and the palaces and all of that.
Speaker 3: It's wonderful stuff. I love the costuming, especially like the
Speaker 3: costuming of the armies, and the way that like the
Speaker 3: different colorful uniforms of the armies when they're clashing, really
Speaker 3: enlivens what otherwise might be some of the duller action scenes.
Speaker 3: It's just it's a great movie to look at in
Speaker 3: every possible way.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely. And the effects are I don't know
Speaker 2: if this makes any sense, but so sometimes great effects
Speaker 2: are you utilized very well to enhance a scene that
Speaker 2: otherwise makes sense without those effects. But so many of
Speaker 2: the effects sequences in this film are just like reality
Speaker 2: is transformed. You know, It's like you're just completely in
Speaker 2: the matrix at any given moment, certainly for what felt
Speaker 2: like two thirds of the picture, but in a way
Speaker 2: that feels practical and grounded and you completely buy.
Speaker 3: Into yes, totally.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: One thing we haven't talked about yet that people do
Speaker 3: bring up about this movie is the idea of Zoo
Speaker 3: Warriors from the Magic Mountain being a major influence on
Speaker 3: Big Trouble in Little China by John Carpenter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I think you know, once you've seen
Speaker 2: both films, you see this connection. You can see that
Speaker 2: the heightened martial arts sorcery that you see in Big
Speaker 2: Trouble in Little China does feel inspired by this film.
Speaker 2: You know, Like this, like Big Trouble Little China is
Speaker 2: like a cocktail. It combines several different different elements, and
Speaker 2: one of those elements is like the hard stuff from
Speaker 2: this picture.
Speaker 3: It's kind of Zoo Warriors meets Buckero Bonzai.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in those extras on the Shout
Speaker 2: Factory disc Peter Karan mentions this a little bit. They
Speaker 2: ask him, and it does seem like Carpenter and a
Speaker 2: company were inspired by the visionary effects and use of
Speaker 2: traditional Hong Kong stunts in this film, and it seems
Speaker 2: like they wanted to channel that energy and Big Trouble
Speaker 2: in Little China, and this may have included attempts to
Speaker 2: recruit some of the same stuntmen, according to Koran, or
Speaker 2: at least stunt men with expertise and some of the
Speaker 2: traditional Hong Kong fight techniques, like he mentioned specifically some
Speaker 2: of the wire stuff. I don't think that that was
Speaker 2: necessarily an art form that people in the West were
Speaker 2: able to imitate at that point, But I don't know
Speaker 2: to what extent they fully pulled that off, because you
Speaker 2: look at the credits and La born James Lou was
Speaker 2: the fight choreographer and Big Trouble for instance, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of those guys that were stunt actors,
Speaker 2: you know, had sort of like La connections. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you still you do see the possible influence of this
Speaker 2: film on Big Troubles, high magic and martial arts, though
Speaker 2: to my eyes, not in a way that feels at
Speaker 2: all like a rip off or anything. It's it's kind
Speaker 2: of it's a lot like the way Hawk himself took
Speaker 2: Hollywood's Hollywood effect techniques and made them his own for
Speaker 2: this film, while John Carpenter and his crew took the
Speaker 2: flavor of this kind of high wusha action and used
Speaker 2: it in telling their own story.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean the way that you can see a movie
Speaker 3: and you're not going to copy the movie, but it
Speaker 3: just sort of fills you with a kind of energy
Speaker 3: and you want to take that energy and make your
Speaker 3: own version. And so I think a lot of filmmakers,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know, they saw Star Wars and
Speaker 3: it filled them with that kind of energy and they
Speaker 3: wanted to go make their own thing. And I can
Speaker 3: totally see Zoo Warriors having that same kind of effect
Speaker 3: on people. It has just such an infectious, exuberant sense
Speaker 3: of joy in storytelling and filmmaking. It's hard to imagine
Speaker 3: being a director in the eighties and seeing a movie
Speaker 3: like this and not just feeling like pumped up to
Speaker 3: go make your own you know, to take that feeling
Speaker 3: and go make something yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, And one more note. I just mentioned
Speaker 2: really quickly here that the music is credited to Kwan Signal,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen forty four through twenty eleven, Asia television
Speaker 2: musical director with only a handful of credits. But I
Speaker 2: like the music in this film. There's one pitty that
Speaker 2: plays over and over again on the Blu Ray menu
Speaker 2: that I kept coming back to, and it's it's nice
Speaker 2: and sweeping and epic.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I really like the music in it too.
Speaker 3: All throughout I did notice there's one part in it
Speaker 3: that either just is or sounds like Night on Bald Mountain.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, now that you mention it, I do remember that.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was just a incorporation of
Speaker 3: Night on Bald Mountain into the score, or if it
Speaker 3: was something that was just kind of inspired by and
Speaker 3: similar to it, and pay close enough attention, but it
Speaker 3: brings that kind of feeling of just like the demons
Speaker 3: are gathering on the mountaintop and looking down on the
Speaker 3: civilization and they are ready to strike.
Speaker 2: Now, before we dive here into the story, I also
Speaker 2: want to mention really quickly, they didn't include like all
Speaker 2: of the questions that went along with the responses, But
Speaker 2: Peter Karan on the interview segments on the Shop Factory
Speaker 2: disc stresses three or four times that this movie does
Speaker 2: have a story and points out that you might not
Speaker 2: catch it on your first viewing of the film, but
Speaker 2: it's there and it's really good. He had a lot
Speaker 2: of great things to say about the production, but I
Speaker 2: did find it funny that he stressed a few different
Speaker 2: times that there is a story. There's a story here,
Speaker 2: It's not just wall to wall eye melting special effects.
Speaker 3: This is a good disclaimer to insert at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the place where we would normally do a full
Speaker 3: plot breakdown. So if you've seen this movie, you will
Speaker 3: understand trying to do a detailed plot recap may indeed
Speaker 3: drive a person mad. Current is right. It's not because
Speaker 3: the movie doesn't have a story. It does. It's just
Speaker 3: that the movie is so thick with NonStop plot developments
Speaker 3: and strange things that you would want to make note of.
Speaker 3: If you were making notes normally on the plot of
Speaker 3: a movie, it's really almost impossible to keep up. So
Speaker 3: I was watching it initially trying to make pretty detailed notes.
Speaker 3: At a certain point I just started getting overwhelmed. I
Speaker 3: had to step back. And so part of what makes
Speaker 3: this movie so pleasing is the same thing that makes
Speaker 3: it difficult to recap, that sort of relentless, enthusiastic drive
Speaker 3: of the story toward new characters, strange new details and events.
Speaker 3: So that is absolutely not a criticism of it. That
Speaker 3: is one of the things that's most wonderful about the film.
Speaker 3: But I think what this means is my notes about
Speaker 3: the plot are going to have to be more detailed
Speaker 3: early on, and at a certain point we're gonna have
Speaker 3: to step back a bit and give a more zoomed
Speaker 3: out summary and maybe just focus on some individual things
Speaker 3: after that point that we want to talk about. But
Speaker 3: I do want to set the scene in detail. So
Speaker 3: the first of all, after the beautiful Golden Harvest production
Speaker 3: pre roll, which you know, it feels so good to see,
Speaker 3: we get an opening voice over narration. It plays as
Speaker 3: the camera zooms through a model landscape of jagged, narrow
Speaker 3: mountain peaks and bottomless canyons with lonely scrubby trees clinging
Speaker 3: to the rocks, and everything is just wrapped in a
Speaker 3: cloak of fog, and the narrator says, Mount Chu was
Speaker 3: the collective name for the mountain chain in ancient Shoe
Speaker 3: in western China. It is also the Sichuan of today.
Speaker 3: Mount Hue was of great military and strategic importance in
Speaker 3: ancient China. As such, it was constantly in a state
Speaker 3: of war, regardless of rain and dynasty. But in Chinese
Speaker 3: legends and folklore. Mount Shoe was also a place of mystique,
Speaker 3: for it harbored numerously exotic peaks and old temples from
Speaker 3: which many legends were born. This was where our story began.
Speaker 3: Then we see a sky boiling with columns of milky
Speaker 3: gray smoke, and we get some hanzi flying out of
Speaker 3: the smoke. It's sort of like these characters flying out
Speaker 3: of the smoke like space ships, and the characters are
Speaker 3: Shoe and Mountain. And then there's the full title Zoo
Speaker 3: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. Wonderfully dramatic credits, and again
Speaker 3: they're set to this orchestral music that sounds like night
Speaker 3: on bald Mountain, so it's it's like, got your your
Speaker 3: adrenaline is pumping. Post credits, we see a sunrise half
Speaker 3: obscured by local clouds over the sea scape of breaking waves,
Speaker 3: and the narration goes on. It says it was in
Speaker 3: the fifth century, China has been suffering from decades of
Speaker 3: civil wars and unrest. And then we see soldiers mounted
Speaker 3: on horseback galloping in formation across dunes of sand at
Speaker 3: the beach, and further out on the shore there are
Speaker 3: foot soldiers who are assembled in rows with pole arms
Speaker 3: and banners flapping in the wind, and an officer on horseback.
Speaker 3: One of the two commanders of the army gathered on
Speaker 3: the beach says, get me the scout immediately, so we
Speaker 3: get a big entrance for the scout. And the scout
Speaker 3: is one of our heroes, Deeming Chi, and we see
Speaker 3: him coming in doing horseback riding tricks. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: why he's doing them, but they're great. So he's like
Speaker 3: doing wirefu essentially, as he is just like coming to
Speaker 3: the generals to make a report, and he does a
Speaker 3: leaping somersault off of his horse to address the commanders.
Speaker 2: Now, this actor is Val Jung, who is born in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, and his other film include The Prodigal
Speaker 2: Sun from eighty one, Shanghai Nun from two thousand. I
Speaker 2: think it just has a small part in that Righting
Speaker 2: Wrongs from eighty six, and Project A from nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3: It's an ensemble story in the end, but he is
Speaker 3: I think the closest thing to a single protagonist the
Speaker 3: story has. He's our good hearted youngster who is constantly
Speaker 3: exhorting the distractable other characters to like, shape up and
Speaker 3: try to do something good, to make a difference in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we can relate to him. You know, this
Speaker 2: is not a guy who knows a bunch of crazy magic,
Speaker 2: or at least not yet.
Speaker 3: He can do some writing tricks though, Yes. So the scout,
Speaker 3: the two commanders, and the troops on the beach, they
Speaker 3: all have blue uniforms and blue flags, so these are
Speaker 3: representatives of the Blue Army. They make it pretty easy
Speaker 3: to follow the politics here because each army is color coded.
Speaker 3: There are at least two other forces we learn about here,
Speaker 3: the Red Army and not that Red Army, just a
Speaker 3: fifth century army with red un and also the Yellow Army.
Speaker 3: So when deeming Chi arrives before the officers, they demand
Speaker 3: to know what he has learned of the position of
Speaker 3: the Yellow Army, and he says they have been routed
Speaker 3: in battle, and the surviving remnants of the Yellow troops
Speaker 3: are hiding down at Sanzan Creek. And so the left
Speaker 3: commander of the Blue Army says, that's wonderful, we will
Speaker 3: attack by water and finish them off. But the scout says, well,
Speaker 3: they're already wounded and disorganized and if the Blue army
Speaker 3: attacks Sanzan Creek, the civilians living around the creek will
Speaker 3: be harmed. And then the commander on the right says,
Speaker 3: then we will go after them on land. The left
Speaker 3: commander says, the land route meanders and is too dangerous.
Speaker 3: Deeming Chi, lead the attack by water. The right commander says, no,
Speaker 3: the waters take too long and will give the enemy
Speaker 3: an opportunity to retreat. Lead the attack by land. So
Speaker 3: the left commander and the right commander argue back and forth,
Speaker 3: and instead of coming to an agreement between themselves, they
Speaker 3: each give deeming Chi contradictory orders and threaten to kill
Speaker 3: him if he does not obey. Uh. I didn't realize
Speaker 3: upon first viewing, but this is really going to be
Speaker 3: in keeping with one of the themes that that carries
Speaker 3: throughout the movie is the sort of like, uh, the
Speaker 3: the fractiousness and bickering that prevents useful things from happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's ultimately it's a great way to
Speaker 2: start the film because again we have the the absurdity
Speaker 2: of these these brightly colored armies. Like if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, you might be wondering how yellow, how red?
Speaker 2: I just power rangers. Yeah, think of that, like, that's
Speaker 2: that's it's it's a ridiculous level of colored coordination here.
Speaker 2: And then you know, to be put in this absurd scenario, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean the real world is is goofy and frustrating
Speaker 2: and uh and it's in a way we see more
Speaker 2: sense in the world of magical fantasy.
Speaker 3: That's right. So he first tries to say that he
Speaker 3: will follow both orders. They say this is insubordination and
Speaker 3: he must die. Then he says he will follow neither order.
Speaker 3: They also say this is this is even worse in subordination,
Speaker 3: and they order their troops to kill him, and a
Speaker 3: fight breaks out. So all of the soldiers are trying
Speaker 3: to kill Deeming Chi and it leads to this thrilling
Speaker 3: chase scene. He manages to fight off a bunch of
Speaker 3: armed infantry with spears, then he leaps over the cavalry
Speaker 3: to escape on horseback. Eventually, he jumps from his horse
Speaker 3: and hides in the tall grass until he so he
Speaker 3: like crawls away through the grass and he comes across
Speaker 3: a fishing boat piloted by a whimsical old man, and
Speaker 3: here he meets the Red Army soldier aka Chubby played
Speaker 3: by Samo Hung, and they start to fight for control
Speaker 3: of the boat. So like he orders the old man
Speaker 3: to you know, take him away to safety. But this
Speaker 3: Red Army soldier, who I think is also a deserter
Speaker 3: from his army, he's got a he's got a sword
Speaker 3: at the boat pilot's back and and he's like, no, this.
Speaker 2: Is my boat.
Speaker 3: Go find your own boat. So they they've initial start fighting.
Speaker 4: They know.
Speaker 3: One of them says, your army killed four generations of
Speaker 3: my ancestors, and the other one says, well, your army
Speaker 3: killed five generations of mine. And they attack and attack
Speaker 3: and attack until the Yellow Army shows up and starts
Speaker 3: firing arrows at both of them, and they have to
Speaker 3: escape by diving into the water.
Speaker 2: It's an hilarious sequence though, but also deceptive because at
Speaker 2: this point in the film, you're like, I can follow this.
Speaker 2: This is going to be sensible, it's nice, it's color coded.
Speaker 2: Nothing could possibly confuse me. That feeling will not last.
Speaker 3: Right, So later, after swimming away to escape, we catch
Speaker 3: up with the Red Army soldier and Deeming Chi and
Speaker 3: they're camping together on a rocky shore. They're still wary
Speaker 3: of one another, and at one moment, Red Army soldier
Speaker 3: raises his sword, but it is only to tell Deeming
Speaker 3: Chi that he should not worry because he's tired of fighting.
Speaker 3: He wipes his sword on the bottom of his boot
Speaker 3: and leaves camp on his own. Only Deeming Chi notices
Speaker 3: that Samo Hung has left his water goard behind, so
Speaker 3: Deeming Chi picks it up and runs after him to
Speaker 3: give it back to him, But Samo Hung gets spooked
Speaker 3: and thinks Steaming Chi is coming to kill him, and
Speaker 3: he's like, I don't want to fight, and he runs.
Speaker 3: He tries to flee until he finally realizes what has happened,
Speaker 3: and they sort of have a laugh over it, and
Speaker 3: Deeming Chi tells him, you are so big but such
Speaker 3: a timid cat, and the Red Army soldier says, hey,
Speaker 3: we just met. I didn't know if you're a good
Speaker 3: guy or a bad guy. This theme will come back also,
Speaker 3: but they they sort of become fast friends, like they
Speaker 3: discover that they grew up in neighboring villages and they
Speaker 3: lament that they've been sucked into these wars where neighbors
Speaker 3: are forced to kill each other for no discernible reason.
Speaker 3: But while they're in the middle of bonding like this.
Speaker 3: Suddenly they're caught in the middle of a battlefield. The
Speaker 3: Green Army and the Orange Army I think, appear over
Speaker 3: the hillsides to fight one another, and they're both trying
Speaker 3: to fight Deeming Chi and Sam Mahan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, more combat. Hilarity ensues and we get even though
Speaker 2: we're gonna have like blistering magical martial arts later on
Speaker 2: in the picture, the martial arts sequences here are still
Speaker 2: just amazing and so fast and well executed, a real
Speaker 2: joy to watch.
Speaker 3: And really funny. Like they're trying to they're trying to
Speaker 3: pretend to fight one another to blend in, but Sam
Speaker 3: w Hung is like, hey, don't fight so hard, take
Speaker 3: it easy.
Speaker 2: And then they played dead for a little bet. But
Speaker 2: then there are other enemy soldiers that are trying to
Speaker 2: do the same thing, and they're like, hey, what you
Speaker 2: guys are playing dead too, And then they all jump
Speaker 2: up and fight each other some more.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Uh, So they end up escaping once again, pursued
Speaker 3: by multiple armies. They get backed up against a cliff
Speaker 3: and they've got this great bond of friendship. Now. Uh,
Speaker 3: Deeming Chi is accidentally pushed off the cliff, but survives
Speaker 3: by clinging devines on the way down, and the Red
Speaker 3: Army soldier is caught as Samahung gets a sword to
Speaker 3: his neck, and we don't know what happens to him next.
Speaker 3: So now on his own once again, deeming Chi, he's
Speaker 3: down on the beach below. He wanders around and stumbles
Speaker 3: into a hidden cave just as a storm is breaking out.
Speaker 3: And the cave has a temple inside. It's got these
Speaker 3: old statues and it seems disused, may be forgotten for
Speaker 3: many many years. And he makes camp inside the temple,
Speaker 3: but he's not alone. There is murmuring coming from these
Speaker 3: giant vessels in the temple, and in the darkness there
Speaker 3: are lids that pop off to reveal some kind of entity.
Speaker 3: I've seen these described on the internet as vampires. I
Speaker 3: don't know what the queue that they are vampires is,
Speaker 3: but they are. They're great. There's some kind of monster
Speaker 3: that's like a flying martial arts ghost Jahua with crystal
Speaker 3: blue eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got a send. I thought of them as
Speaker 2: kind of like shadow ghosts, you know, some sort of
Speaker 2: a shade.
Speaker 3: I mentioned Jahwa because they've got they're wearing these like
Speaker 3: robes with hoods, but their faces are almost kind of
Speaker 3: mummy like they're they're sort of covered in uh in
Speaker 3: strips of fabric like they're wrapped or something. And they yeah,
Speaker 3: they have these glowing crystal blue eyes the hoods on,
Speaker 3: and they fly, fly around and attack with magic. They
Speaker 3: can like send fines out to attack de Minchi and stuff.
Speaker 3: And just when dimon Chi thinks he is done for
Speaker 3: suddenly he has saved. A blazing figure dressed in white
Speaker 3: robes enters the fracas and beats up the ghosts. And
Speaker 3: this new figure seems to have all kinds of powers.
Speaker 3: So he can fly, he can he can act at
Speaker 3: super speed, He has telekinesis. He can order his swords
Speaker 3: to fly out of their scabbards on his back and
Speaker 3: zoom through the air at a target by shouting unsheath.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the point in the film where the
Speaker 2: action escalates, but like one thousandfold, because suddenly we have
Speaker 2: like magical effects on both sides of any given battle.
Speaker 3: So this new figure manages to sort of deactivate all
Speaker 3: of the ghosts or the vampires whatever they are. The
Speaker 3: flying Jawas and deeming Chi chases after the hero who
Speaker 3: saved him, and we learned that this is Master ding Yan,
Speaker 3: a man dressed in white robes. He's wearing the black
Speaker 3: hat I think of a scholar, like he's supposed to
Speaker 3: be dressed as a scholar. He's got the two swords
Speaker 3: on his back, so he's like a wandering master swordsman, scholar.
Speaker 3: And Deeming Chi kneels at the feet of the master
Speaker 3: and says, my savior, please don't go so soon. He explains,
Speaker 3: He's like, surely you must know that the world is
Speaker 3: plagued with war and destruction. With your great martial arts
Speaker 3: and abilities, you can put a stop to all this mayhem.
Speaker 3: So Deeming Chi is like, finally, it's you know, the
Speaker 3: world is all messed up. It doesn't make sense. But
Speaker 3: here's a guy, here's a hero who does good, and
Speaker 3: he has the power to fix it. So you can
Speaker 3: fix it. Will you fix it? He says. Wars and
Speaker 3: unrest are perpetual through the history of man. Quote, but
Speaker 3: the troubles were all caused by men who kill each
Speaker 3: other and have no respect for human lives whatsoever. There's
Speaker 3: nothing we can change. You should go into seclusion in
Speaker 3: the mountains while you can still tell right from wrong.
Speaker 3: So ding Yan firmly refuses as the call. He's like,
Speaker 3: there's nothing we can do to make the world better.
Speaker 3: It's not going to change. Just give up, go try
Speaker 3: to hide and survive. But deeming Chi is not convinced.
Speaker 3: He says to the Master, please do not give up.
Speaker 3: If everyone can give their best, peace will come. And
Speaker 3: by the way, while there's talking here, like wind is
Speaker 3: howling around them, there's lightning striking in the distance, and
Speaker 3: there still seems to be like an aura of evil
Speaker 3: man in the air. It's not like everything is fine now.
Speaker 3: And so Dingyan says, oh, so you're lecturing me now,
Speaker 3: I'm afraid this is just not your time. If you
Speaker 3: do not leave now, you will become one of them,
Speaker 3: referring to the Jahwua things. And now they look like
Speaker 3: they're sort of tangled up in vines now, and they
Speaker 3: look very scarecrow like, just these ghastly bodies wrapped up
Speaker 3: in vines like insects and a spider's web. And the
Speaker 3: Master disappears, but deeming Chi he keeps holding out hope.
Speaker 3: He runs around looking for him and shouting hero and
Speaker 3: he chases out onto this beautifully gloomy landscape with a
Speaker 3: pathway leading into a shallow canyon between masses of what
Speaker 3: looked like jagged volcanic rocks, and everything is covered in
Speaker 3: green moss. The sky is overcast. It sort of reminds
Speaker 3: me of some places in Iceland. It's just like a
Speaker 3: very beautiful location. And we can hear deeming Chi's inner
Speaker 3: monologue in which he says, all legendary heroes come and
Speaker 3: go in mysterior ways. He's testing me. Now, fine, I'll
Speaker 3: wait for him here. So deeming Chi sits on a
Speaker 3: rock and waits, and we see the moon rise behind
Speaker 3: the clouds in the gray sky, but at night, signs
Speaker 3: of evil return. There are red lights flashing through the air,
Speaker 3: sort of like fiery spirits on the breeze, and Deeming
Speaker 3: Chi stumbles into a cavern where the floor is littered
Speaker 3: with human skulls, and he does, indeed here run into
Speaker 3: the wandering hero once again. So Dingyan says he believes
Speaker 3: it is foolish that dieming Chi waited for him. He says,
Speaker 3: if you stay around here, hell is waiting for you.
Speaker 3: And deeming Chi asks if the skulls on the floor
Speaker 3: mean this place was once a battlefield, But Master ding
Speaker 3: Yan says no, all the skulls here bear the sign
Speaker 3: of the Evil Disciples. So he explains that these are
Speaker 3: the bones of virgins sacrificed so that the Evil Disciples
Speaker 3: could develop their magic. And at first deeming Chi expresses
Speaker 3: relief that he himself is a virgin, but Master Dingyan says, no,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter if you are or not. That evil
Speaker 3: Disciples will kill you either way. So dieming Chi says
Speaker 3: at this point, he's like, I want to be your student, Dingyan.
Speaker 3: You know, let me you be my master, teach me
Speaker 3: to have powers like you. And Dingyan tries to refuse this.
Speaker 3: He says he works alone, he doesn't take students, but
Speaker 3: the young scout is very persistent and they argue until
Speaker 3: they are suddenly attacked by blood crows. These are red
Speaker 3: and white sort of fiery birds that fly out fly
Speaker 3: out of the sky and attack them, and deeming Chi
Speaker 3: tries to fight them off with his sword, but they
Speaker 3: melt his sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are like really, I thought of them as
Speaker 2: like kind of laser birds.
Speaker 3: So Dingyan does come back once again. He reappears to
Speaker 3: fight the blood crows, but suddenly, while they're in the
Speaker 3: middle of fighting, these monsters, the blood Crows are shattered
Speaker 3: in mid air by what looks like a flying circular
Speaker 3: saw blade. Huh, well, the circular blade was thrown by
Speaker 3: a new character whom we see standing nearby on a
Speaker 3: rocky promontory framed by a gigantic moon in the background.
Speaker 3: And here we are about to meet a couple of
Speaker 3: other major characters that will be with us for the
Speaker 3: rest of the movie. A powerful Buddhist monk from Kunlun
Speaker 3: named SiO Yu played by Damian Lao and his young
Speaker 3: apprentice Yijin played by Mang Hoi. Their introduction is extremely cool.
Speaker 3: They also possess powers of airborne sorcery and where what
Speaker 3: they're wearing what looked like hats made out of pumpkin hemispheres,
Speaker 3: like if you cut a pumpkin in half, horizontally hollowed
Speaker 3: it out, and put it on your head. I love
Speaker 3: these hats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they got some great fashion going on here,
Speaker 2: and yeah, all sorts of crazy additional magical martial arts
Speaker 2: powers are at into the right.
Speaker 3: So when we first see them flying the saw blade
Speaker 3: frisbees they throw seem to like lock on the tops
Speaker 3: of their pumpkin hats to form a thrust engine that
Speaker 3: works like helicopter blades, except it's like this solid sharp
Speaker 3: edge disc. This connects, by the way, one of the
Speaker 3: many examples of magic that feels like technology in this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but when deeming Chi first sees these guys, he's like,
Speaker 3: he doesn't know that they're friends yet. He's like, oh, no, devils,
Speaker 3: but Dingyan says, no, no, they are the good guys.
Speaker 3: So the two monks they can also Oh man, another
Speaker 3: thing they do I'd forgotten about until I was looking
Speaker 3: at this the second time. They can sort of lock
Speaker 3: onto one another and form a sort of like two
Speaker 3: monk mech thing, and they glide across the ground like
Speaker 3: a vehicle with treads, but it's the monk sort of
Speaker 3: riding the apprentice as he glides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, Rob, maybe.
Speaker 3: You can help me with if you know any more
Speaker 3: about the story that I caught. It seems ding Yan
Speaker 3: and the monk shall you know one another? Somehow? I
Speaker 3: think they say they haven't met in ten years, but
Speaker 3: the monk has been summoned here by someone they both know.
Speaker 3: This would be Cheng Mai or Long Brows, to help
Speaker 3: face a great evil. Did you understand that both he
Speaker 3: and ding Yen were summoned here for the same purpose
Speaker 3: by longbrows.
Speaker 2: That was That was the sense I got of it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: they were both summoned here to deal with this problem.
Speaker 2: But you know it's like they're different, they represent different pursuits,
Speaker 2: so they they rub each other the wrong way.
Speaker 3: That's right. So exactly, ding Yan says, hey, we should
Speaker 3: join forces. But z how you scoffs at this? He says,
Speaker 3: monks are merciful and liberate people, yet the Blood Devil
Speaker 3: has become rampant. And the monk says he's been searching
Speaker 3: for disciples of the Blood Devil for three years. They
Speaker 3: finally tracked them here and says, you go your way,
Speaker 3: I'll go mine, and then they both In fact, there
Speaker 3: are many times in this movie where characters say things
Speaker 3: in unison at each other, and this case is one
Speaker 3: of those where the scholar and the monk yelled at
Speaker 3: each other stay out of my affairs. And again this
Speaker 3: touches on this theme of failure to unify or focus
Speaker 3: in the face of a problem, just endless, pointless fractiousness
Speaker 3: and digression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like Sussian at times. You know, it's
Speaker 2: there's this energy of absurdity throughout the entire film.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: I was actually wondering if. I don't know for sure,
Speaker 3: but this felt like something bigger than just these two
Speaker 3: characters in the movie. I was wondering if this might
Speaker 3: be a version of some kind of conflict between cultural
Speaker 3: archetypes as understood in Chinese storytelling. Closest analogy I could
Speaker 3: come up with was like jocks versus nerves words, but
Speaker 3: this would be like the scholar versus the monk. It
Speaker 3: seems like it's not just that these two characters dislike
Speaker 3: one another and bicker, but they sort of have a
Speaker 3: framing of one another as the type of character they are.
Speaker 3: Like the monk I think calls the swordsman bookworm, and
Speaker 3: you know the monk is the impetuous man. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you know anything about that. Rob If like
Speaker 3: scholar versus monk is a thing.
Speaker 2: Well, it might be something particular to the novel that
Speaker 2: I'm not familiar with. But I mean, also, in general,
Speaker 2: I guess you're dealing with essentially a secular versus spiritual
Speaker 2: kind of a rivalry here. And then also, I mean,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of there are different periods in Chinese
Speaker 2: history where you might see the persecution of say, Buddhist monks,
Speaker 2: you might see the persecution of scholars. It just depends
Speaker 2: on what particular time and place you're looking at, So
Speaker 2: it might be just something more general, like, you know,
Speaker 2: one is more secular and one is more spiritual, but
Speaker 2: they both can do magical things.
Speaker 3: Yes, they have kind of similar powers. And despite their bickering,
Speaker 3: all four of them decide to go into the nearby
Speaker 3: temple to investigate the source of the wicked magic that
Speaker 3: lingers on the mountain side. And as they enter, Deeming Cheek,
Speaker 3: it's more chances to marvel at the powers of his
Speaker 3: new I don't know allies, or some uncooperative allies. They
Speaker 3: can not only fly, but they can run on the
Speaker 3: ceiling as if it were the floor. That's cool. And
Speaker 3: they continue bickering once they get into the temple. But
Speaker 3: uh oh, here comes some magic. A few things to mention.
Speaker 3: First of all, I love this temple set. There is
Speaker 3: like a giant statue of a figure. I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is understood to be a specific person. It's
Speaker 3: not a Buddha, it's some kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: Emperor looking sort of figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't really establish who this is, you know,
Speaker 2: it could have been a mythical emperor, it could be
Speaker 2: some of the Chinese immortal of note, but it is
Speaker 2: very impressive.
Speaker 3: And then the Evil Disciples pop out. They say that,
Speaker 3: oh I love them. They come out with these flags,
Speaker 3: kind of like the soldiers all have their flags. This
Speaker 3: is like a new faction almost, but they're not colorful
Speaker 3: like the soldiers. These are in a very cold black
Speaker 3: and white uniform and they have black and white flags,
Speaker 3: and they say the Devil's Protector welcomes you. But then
Speaker 3: they also say who are you? How dare you come here?
Speaker 3: And looking on from the rafters, deemon Chi asks Yijien,
Speaker 3: the apprentice of the monk. He says who are they?
Speaker 3: And Yijen says they're the bad guys. Didn't you know that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And oh yeah, I just I love their style.
Speaker 2: Like these guys are just absolute whosha evil. You know.
Speaker 2: They have some sort of trisha la or trident emblem
Speaker 2: that is on their all their foreheads and on their iconography,
Speaker 2: the same emblem that's carved into the the skulls of
Speaker 2: the dead virgins, and like that, the leader of the
Speaker 2: Devil crew here is just fabulous and he has he
Speaker 2: has like some sort of nightmare lightning effects that he's
Speaker 2: using against his adversaries. H so evil, so glorious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Dingyan explains that they're here to punish the
Speaker 3: Devil and the leader of the Evil Disciples. This is
Speaker 3: the part where he does that like call and response
Speaker 3: chant where he's like, we kill those who punish the Devil,
Speaker 3: and then all of the disciples yell kill kill. He says,
Speaker 3: we kill those who are righteous, kill, we kill those
Speaker 3: who liberate lives, kill, and they do that with a
Speaker 3: few other things. And then d ming Gi wonders who
Speaker 3: do they not kill? And he explains the blood demon
Speaker 3: rep says, those who obey, we spare. But the monk says,
Speaker 3: you know, no sense talking to these guys. They're not
Speaker 3: going to be talked out of being Evil Disciples. A
Speaker 3: fight is inevitable, and who boy is it ever? So
Speaker 3: begin now one of the wildest battle scenes I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: So the battle with the Evil Disciples is absolutely nuts.
Speaker 3: There is monk telekinesis of giant bells hanging in the temple,
Speaker 3: like flinging them with blue waves of force. Projection magic.
Speaker 3: There's a lot more walking on the ceiling, barfing jets
Speaker 3: of flame. There are some parts of this fight that
Speaker 3: have themes of pinball with the demons, like bouncing repeatedly
Speaker 3: as if against bumpers and a pinball machine. They use
Speaker 3: the flying circular saws some more. They also use the
Speaker 3: flying circular saws as a vehicle, like as a surfboard
Speaker 3: for deemon Chi to ride on. There's lightning coming out
Speaker 3: of everything. There's one part where the monk wields a
Speaker 3: giant flaming pillar as a club, and this is like
Speaker 3: a you know, not like club size. It's a pillar
Speaker 3: that would be way too big for a person to
Speaker 3: actually hold. There's fire versus water magic. There's demon lightning
Speaker 3: backpacks blasting against a flying sin and sword that ding
Speaker 3: Yan sends out. It's just everything, it's it's it's nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we're not even what We're not even halfway
Speaker 2: through the film at this point, like when we're already
Speaker 2: just having fight sequences just so blistering that they would
Speaker 2: be the climax of many another film, right.
Speaker 3: So at the end, it seems our heroes must retreat.
Speaker 3: They're sort of driven out of the temple, deeming Chi
Speaker 3: is apologizing for it. I think he's I don't fully
Speaker 3: recall exactly what the issue was, but it seems like
Speaker 3: it's sort of his fault that they have to escape
Speaker 3: the temple like he was in danger. And afterwards the
Speaker 3: bickering starts up once again. The Ding Yan and see
Speaker 3: how You. They're arguing about whose fault it was, and
Speaker 3: see how You says seeing you is never a blessing.
Speaker 3: Maybe we never meet again. And they say that they
Speaker 3: sort of hate each other. They're going to go separate ways.
Speaker 3: And despite the fact that the masters here hate each other,
Speaker 3: the two young pupils seem to bond a bit, like
Speaker 3: Yi Jen says to deeming Chi, take care soldier boys,
Speaker 3: see around. You know he seems nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean in a way, they're like two
Speaker 2: siblings with bickering parents here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they go their separate ways, and then also
Speaker 3: Master ding tries to leave deeming Chi behind once again,
Speaker 3: so he's alone on this cursed mountain, and deeming Chi's
Speaker 3: wandering around calling out to his master in the wind, saying,
Speaker 3: what's the use of having all this power if you
Speaker 3: won't use it to protect people? You're a coward no
Speaker 3: wonder Evil is rampant, and Dee says that he sort
Speaker 3: of resolves. He says he'll fight the evil on his
Speaker 3: own if he has to. Then suddenly all three of
Speaker 3: the flying Warriors return to the side of Deeming Chi
Speaker 3: at once. At first, he seems kind of happy, like, oh,
Speaker 3: did they come back? A We're gonna work together to
Speaker 3: fight evil now, But it seems they were maybe driven
Speaker 3: back because he and the rocks started erupting with river
Speaker 3: of blood, and then the blood Geysers all begin to
Speaker 3: intertwine and weave into a giant bodily form. So that's
Speaker 3: probably not good. And I love the design of the
Speaker 3: monster that we see birthed here, because you might expect
Speaker 3: it's going to be a giant towering, you know, blood
Speaker 3: fountain type of monster, but instead, all of the stuff
Speaker 3: that the blood Geysers spit out sort of comes together
Speaker 3: to form fabric. It becomes a loose sail or sheet
Speaker 3: floating on the wind, and then the sheet coalesces around
Speaker 3: an invisible form, kind of like a ghost covered in
Speaker 3: you know, classic ghost costume, a body covered in a
Speaker 3: sheet but bathed in red light, and it is so
Speaker 3: cursed and looks so wrong, and I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not what I was expecting either, but
Speaker 2: it's tremendous. I mean, on one level, this is another
Speaker 2: effect that it does make me think about the fact
Speaker 2: that we're watching these movies in higher quality than perhaps
Speaker 2: was intended. There are some moments earlier in the film
Speaker 2: where we you know, we see the wires a little
Speaker 2: bit more than I'm assuming you would have been able
Speaker 2: to see on the screen, so I feel like we
Speaker 2: also have to keep that kind of thing in mind.
Speaker 2: But it's just that this creature just looks bonkers.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It is like it's blood, but it of course is
Speaker 2: clearly fabric, but it's blood made fabric. It just it
Speaker 2: exists in its own reality.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love this monster. Also, it commandeers
Speaker 3: all of their weapons, so it's like biting master ding
Speaker 3: sword and the monkst circular blades. It's got those in
Speaker 3: its hands, and then those things catch on fire and melt,
Speaker 3: and there's more sorcery fighting. Like our allies try to
Speaker 3: use magic weapons against the ghost, but it sort of
Speaker 3: like absorbs the weapons and takes control of them. They
Speaker 3: are clearly outmatched, and they make a tactical retreat, and
Speaker 3: somehow in this fight, the monk seems to have been injured,
Speaker 3: not just physically but magically. An enchanted illness now grips
Speaker 3: him and ding Yan this is the where he does
Speaker 3: the I transfer energy into you scene. This happens several
Speaker 3: times in the movie where he has to save somebody
Speaker 3: who's been sort of grazed by evil magic by transferring
Speaker 3: energy into them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is the less extreme version, right,
Speaker 2: this is the non Kronenberg this sequence in which he
Speaker 2: transfers energy.
Speaker 3: But the monk doesn't want energy transferred into him, so
Speaker 3: he's like. The monk is like, okay, I've got the
Speaker 3: illness now, and he tries to like bash his own
Speaker 3: head into rocks. I guess to destroy himself to stop
Speaker 3: the evil from taking hold. But ding Yen is like, no,
Speaker 3: I will save you, and he's like gripping him and
Speaker 3: he's sending magic into his body. And then Yijen is
Speaker 3: being given contradictory orders, just like deeming Chi was by
Speaker 3: his commanders early on, Like ding Yen is saying like
Speaker 3: go away, you know, stand guard while I save him,
Speaker 3: and the monk is saying like stop him right now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so that's happening. So the young pupils are
Speaker 3: sent out to guard the mountain pass while ding Yan
Speaker 3: saves the monk's life. Deeming Chi here is somehow he
Speaker 3: ends up on his own and he is confronted by
Speaker 3: the blood demon once again. He tries to stand up
Speaker 3: to it for a moment, but then he gets afrayed.
Speaker 3: He runs away in terror, and then he this is
Speaker 3: so weird. He starts throwing rocks at the monster, but
Speaker 3: somehow one of these rocks as he throws it, transforms
Speaker 3: into a human body, and it's the body of a
Speaker 3: wizard dressed in white robes. And the wizard temporarily drives
Speaker 3: off the monster. And then Deeming Chi is like, what's
Speaker 3: going on? And he goes up to a hole in
Speaker 3: a rock on the cliff face of the mountain, and
Speaker 3: then white hairs shoot out of the hole and graft
Speaker 3: onto his eyebrows and become part of his eyebrows, and
Speaker 3: he's like, what's going on? And then the rock that
Speaker 3: has these like white hair strands coming out of it says,
Speaker 3: I'm Chang Mee, the founder of the a May School,
Speaker 3: and some like d somehow pulls him out of the rock.
Speaker 3: This is cheg me long brows, our sagacious old wizard
Speaker 3: played by sam O Hung. He's in a white robe
Speaker 3: with a hood. He's got a long mustache and beard,
Speaker 3: long gray white eyebrows, and the eyebrows are like prehensile,
Speaker 3: They're like tentacles. They can grab hold of things, and
Speaker 3: they're they're grafting on to Deeming Chi's face. And meanwhile,
Speaker 3: this is happening. D is like, are you a good guy?
Speaker 3: And he says, of course, bad guys don't wear white
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 2: I love it. The theme just carries on through the
Speaker 2: whole film.
Speaker 3: So what is going on with his beard being stuck
Speaker 3: on Deeming Chi. I don't know.
Speaker 2: In general, though, I think, you know, like the basic
Speaker 2: idea is that he's old and wise, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of like the idea of like some of these mythical
Speaker 2: Chinese immortals that we've discussed in the show before, where
Speaker 2: some of the attributes of old age become transformative and
Speaker 2: like take on the nature of superpower. So like, yeah,
Speaker 2: old guys their eyebrows grow out, become bushy and long,
Speaker 2: and so for a powerful wizard like this, of course
Speaker 2: that is an advantage. Of course, that is in itself
Speaker 2: a power that he's able to exploit to fight evil.
Speaker 3: So the blood demon appears again in the form of
Speaker 3: Saou the monk, and then says, the so called righteous
Speaker 3: people are vulnerable to my attack. I have wounded this monk.
Speaker 3: The venom will reach his heart in ten days, then
Speaker 3: I will possess him. You can't defeat the devil. And
Speaker 3: he looks very evil with like you know, pink light
Speaker 3: behind him, But long browse is crafty. He intervenes, and
Speaker 3: he launches his eyebrow tentacles out at the demon and
Speaker 3: ensnares the demon. And we see it like the demon's
Speaker 3: trying to fly away, and it's in the form of
Speaker 3: this like glowing orange coal up in the sky, but
Speaker 3: the eyebrows have it. The eyebrows grab it and pull
Speaker 3: it down. And then the glowing red coal of the demon,
Speaker 3: which the wizard says is its soul a symbols a
Speaker 3: body made of virgin skulls around itself, becoming a kind
Speaker 3: of skull asteroid floating in the air, tethered by Chegmei's eyebrows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is easily point in the picture where
Speaker 2: you might wonder if you just lost your mind entirely,
Speaker 2: but no, you're like, we're only ten minutes. Unto the film,
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 3: We're like thirty minutes. But so eventually the Blood Demon
Speaker 3: comes down, takes root as this formation that looks kind
Speaker 3: of like a vertical reef made of skulls, with a
Speaker 3: little windows that show it glowing pink inside, and then
Speaker 3: eventually hundreds of horns come and stick out of the
Speaker 3: little windows, and Chang May manages to subdue this form
Speaker 3: of the Blood Demon with a common of his eyebrows
Speaker 3: and a magical sky mirror, but the Wizard says that
Speaker 3: even the sky mirror cannot destroy it. And here, this
Speaker 3: far into the movie, I think we finally sort of
Speaker 3: get our main quest of the story assigned. Yes, so
Speaker 3: Longbrowse says that he will be able to contain the
Speaker 3: demon for exactly forty nine days, but after that, when
Speaker 3: the Big Dipper begins to shift, the sky mirror will
Speaker 3: lose its power, and at that point it will be
Speaker 3: up to Deeming Chi to take over, and d says me.
Speaker 3: The Wizard says, the young inherit the earth, but Cheng
Speaker 3: Me says, hey, don't worry, there are magical weapons you
Speaker 3: can use to accomplish this. There are two sacred swords
Speaker 3: of a May. One is purple and one is green.
Speaker 3: E Chi took them eighteen years ago, took them to
Speaker 3: practice in solitude on a mountaintop. They can destroy the
Speaker 3: Blood Devil once and for all. Lee has them up
Speaker 3: on Blade Peak. D You've got to go there and
Speaker 3: get the swords at once, and Cheng Mei finally says,
Speaker 3: if this aggression is complete, the Blood Devil will be unstoppable.
Speaker 2: Bam, we have our core quest here. What are we
Speaker 2: trying to do? We got to get the two swords
Speaker 2: so we can defeat this blood dimon threat that is
Speaker 2: held temporarily and checked by a wizard's eyebrows.
Speaker 3: That's right in the sky Mer in the sky Marr, Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: So I think this is the point where maybe it's
Speaker 3: better to zoom out and discuss the rest of the
Speaker 3: plot in broader strokes, because again, it would take it
Speaker 3: would be impossible to try to keep up this level
Speaker 3: of detail. So one major diversion that happens after this
Speaker 3: sort of quest has been assigned, And I guess the
Speaker 3: first thing that happens after this is the journey to
Speaker 3: the Heavenly Fortress to cure the curse of the blood devil,
Speaker 3: which actually happens multiple times. Yeah, but you recalled that
Speaker 3: the monk is cursed like his skin turned silver, and
Speaker 3: if the venom reaches his heart in ten days, he
Speaker 3: will die. First thing he tries to do, the monk
Speaker 3: tries to do his transfer control of his brotherhood to
Speaker 3: his apprentice Yesen, and then kill himself by ramming his
Speaker 3: head into a rock, but his allies prevent him from
Speaker 3: doing this, so eventually he is taken to the Heavenly
Speaker 3: Fortress to be cured by the magical countess there. Oh
Speaker 3: before we get that, should we talk about the fish
Speaker 3: scene with Yugen. Oh yeah, super goofy but also genuinely funny.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because the monks here are vegetarians, and there
Speaker 2: are several jokes made at their expense about this, especially
Speaker 2: with their younger monk. Here. It is were we're to
Speaker 2: learn that, yes, he was a vegetarian, but he desperately
Speaker 2: wants to eat fish meat, as anyone who looks at
Speaker 2: a live fish will do.
Speaker 3: Apparently he really wants fish deeming Gee catches a fish,
Speaker 3: grills it, he's eating it, and and Yjen is looking
Speaker 3: at it, and he's like, want to bite and I
Speaker 3: think he's in the middle of maybe he's about to
Speaker 3: eat some when they get attacked by a by a
Speaker 3: figure that looks like Ding Yan, but it's not him.
Speaker 3: It's like the Blood Devil in disguise. The Blood Devil
Speaker 3: keeps attacking them while they're on the road in disguise,
Speaker 3: taking on the form of others. Here it's Master Ding.
Speaker 3: After that it attacks them in the form of this
Speaker 3: intimidating witch dressed all in red and her head comes
Speaker 3: off and they're They're like, what's going on there? So
Speaker 3: eventually they they fight off the Blood Devil in this attack.
Speaker 3: But then Master Ding comes up to Yzen and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, why is your robe smoking? And it's because
Speaker 3: he has the grilled fish hidden in there and he
Speaker 3: has clearly eaten much of its flesh. Yeah, but he
Speaker 3: tries to say, I was going to set it free
Speaker 3: and be merciful, but it's like a fully fully eaten
Speaker 3: dead fish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like cartoon level of like the fish bones and
Speaker 2: the fish hit. It's great.
Speaker 3: Later there are scenes at the Heavenly Fortress. I want
Speaker 3: to say, all of the sets in this movie are awesome.
Speaker 3: But these are particularly gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this, this whole this main that the Heavenly
Speaker 2: Fortress is just amazing to behold, Like the statues that are,
Speaker 2: you know, important set pieces in some of the fights
Speaker 2: that ensue tremendous. Has these three elephants that end up
Speaker 2: being moved around a lot.
Speaker 3: It's great in like a romantic fight scene between ding
Speaker 3: Yen and the Countess. They're like riding these elephants around
Speaker 3: like bumper cars.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the romantic fight scene is a key trope I
Speaker 2: think in a lot of these Hong Kong action films.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Heavenly Fortress is controlled by a mystical countess
Speaker 3: who is protected by a large retinue of female bodyguards.
Speaker 3: And the servants here at the castle tell our heroes
Speaker 3: that they cannot help the monk. Only the Countess can
Speaker 3: heal him, but she cannot be disturbed in her seclusion.
Speaker 3: She will only come out to heal heal the monk
Speaker 3: if it is her destiny or if it is his destiny.
Speaker 3: I guess it would be both of their destinies. And
Speaker 3: there's some kind of thing I didn't fully understand where
Speaker 3: there's like a sacred flame in a brazier and if
Speaker 3: the like the flame, if it continues burning. This has
Speaker 3: something to do with the timing of when the countess
Speaker 3: will come out, and Dingyan tries to keep the thing burning.
Speaker 3: It's like an ice flame. Dingyen says, even if it
Speaker 3: SAPs my energy, I will keep it burning. But the
Speaker 3: head of the servant says, everything is governed by destiny
Speaker 3: until the doors behind which the Countess is hiding open,
Speaker 3: and then we get some more magical tentacles. Instead of
Speaker 3: eyebrow tentacles, this time it's scarf tentacles. Like, so the
Speaker 3: countess has a scarf that flies out, and they like
Speaker 3: ensnares people with magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's a lot of flying scarfs in this sequence.
Speaker 3: The countess is extremely cool. So Yizhen and deeming Chi
Speaker 3: are first at first terrified because they see her and
Speaker 3: they're like, hey, that's the witch that attacked us at
Speaker 3: the river. But of course we know it was not her,
Speaker 3: it was the blood devil stealing her form. But still
Speaker 3: the young guys they don't know any better. They're like,
Speaker 3: she's a witch and a fight breaks out.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: There a bunch of weird stuff happens here. At one
Speaker 3: point the Countess gives ding Yen bubble wrap hands.
Speaker 2: It does kind of look like bubble in this scene.
Speaker 3: I think it's ice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the ice effect looks the practical ice effect
Speaker 2: does look a lot better in some of the subsequent scenes,
Speaker 2: but maybe it was a tiny bit lacking at least
Speaker 2: in this film quality.
Speaker 3: At this point, I'm not complaining. I love the bubble
Speaker 3: rap hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but I just want to stress it looks
Speaker 2: less far less like bubble wrap in subsequent scenes.
Speaker 3: Right, because she also ends up freezing. Uh, I think
Speaker 3: Ey's in and uh like sort of ice skating across
Speaker 3: the room on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of ice magic that goes on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also in the fight, this is the part where
Speaker 3: deeming Chi gets magically wounded, and here ding Yen must
Speaker 3: once again transfer energy into him to save his life.
Speaker 3: But in this version, he's like inflating deeming Chi like
Speaker 3: a balloon with magic, so he makes like parts of
Speaker 3: his body puff up and poke out of his skin.
Speaker 3: They've got like a prost you know, They've got his
Speaker 3: head coming out of a prosthetic body to make this happen,
Speaker 3: and like parts of his shoulders puff up like balloons.
Speaker 3: There's one part where his head puffs up and the
Speaker 3: effects are great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is where he gets a little
Speaker 2: bit body herd. Not in the way that it actually
Speaker 2: feels horrific, but it is that level of like fleshy
Speaker 2: surrealism that brings to mind, actually brings to mind to
Speaker 2: drawing to connect it to one of the films we
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, but altered states. It's like that kind of
Speaker 2: a feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it.
Speaker 2: Also seems like a sequence that may have inspired some
Speaker 2: of the effects in Big Trouble Little China, concerning the
Speaker 2: one of the three storms, Thunder, whose main superpower is
Speaker 2: that he when he gets mad, he inflates himself like
Speaker 2: a balloon.
Speaker 3: That's right, I thought of exactly. That's in comparison. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I wondered if this inspired that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And again, like in Carpenter's film, they go in
Speaker 2: an entirely different direction with it, but you know, you
Speaker 2: can still see the connection between these these two effects.
Speaker 2: What if we did something like this but instead did
Speaker 2: it this way.
Speaker 3: But by transferring some of his power into deming Chi,
Speaker 3: he makes deming Chi increasingly formidable, Like he gives him
Speaker 3: sort of like some magic juice. So deming Chee's stock
Speaker 3: as a great sorcery warrior is rising. And after this,
Speaker 3: there's a moment where the partially possessed monk tries to
Speaker 3: attack Dingy in then the Countess like flies out of
Speaker 3: her room again. She shoots sub zero magic at him,
Speaker 3: freezes him into an ice block, and then ice skates
Speaker 3: on him across the room.
Speaker 2: Now, when he's attacking, is this the sequence where there
Speaker 2: keep like pinpoints of light keep springing up across his body.
Speaker 3: I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Like he's almost as if he's being shot by a
Speaker 2: magical machine gun off screen. This is a recurring effect
Speaker 2: in this film that I'm not entirely sure how they
Speaker 2: did it, but it looks amazing, and like a lot
Speaker 2: of the magical effects in this film, it also just
Speaker 2: feels like you are witnessing something that is indeed connected
Speaker 2: to some sort of very rich and complex magical reality
Speaker 2: that you can only barely understand. Like it's the right
Speaker 2: kind of confusion to have when engaging in some sort
Speaker 2: of a magical realm, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So eventually the Countess does take the monk into the
Speaker 3: chamber to heal him, and she sort of like pumps
Speaker 3: magic into him and telekinetically is moving these Buddhist statues
Speaker 3: around in the room that seems to be part of
Speaker 3: the healing process, and the Countess eventually cures the monk,
Speaker 3: but in doing so suffers magical injury and collapses into
Speaker 3: Dingyan's arms, and they sort of have a moment. She
Speaker 3: wakes up and sort of slaps him, but it's also
Speaker 3: clear that they are destined to be in love. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: there's other stuff going on where the two young heroes
Speaker 3: are like trying to get into the chamber, and there's
Speaker 3: a bunch of goofy jokes about like their ants keep
Speaker 3: falling down in front of the female warriors, and then yeah,
Speaker 3: and then they try to like escape from the female
Speaker 3: warriors by going through a hole in the hallway that
Speaker 3: goes out to a magical underwater world, but Yijen can't swim,
Speaker 3: so they have to come back, and then they end
Speaker 3: up being sort of like caught and disciplined by the
Speaker 3: Countess's bodyguards, including the main bodyguard here I think Moo Song,
Speaker 3: who is played by Moon Lee, who they use like
Speaker 3: flying swords to cut off all of Yijen and deeming
Speaker 3: cheese clothes, and then they're like standing there naked being
Speaker 3: mocked by the bodyguards, and she's like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: tell your masters on you, and they're like, Yijen at
Speaker 3: least does not want the master to know about his
Speaker 3: shameful conduct. So I don't know, there's all that kind
Speaker 3: of silliness going on, but Moosong will eventually sort of
Speaker 3: join our heroes and become one of the one of
Speaker 3: the main heroes.
Speaker 2: I want to throw in at Moonlee was also in
Speaker 2: Mister Van Empire. A lot of connective tissue between these
Speaker 2: two films, it turns out.
Speaker 3: And later after this there's that that like romantic fight
Speaker 3: scene with Dingyan and the Countess where they're like riding
Speaker 3: the elephants around the elephant statues around in the room.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I so I'm running out of steam to
Speaker 3: recap your no.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, that's that's how you feel with this film,
Speaker 2: Like it's like you watch the most amazing now not
Speaker 2: all even necessarily like a fight scene, concertainly like the
Speaker 2: romantic fight sequence. You have the choreography element to it,
Speaker 2: and then you have like the various levels of you know,
Speaker 2: of wire stunts that are involved and bits of the
Speaker 2: set moving around it. Yeah, it's just like you you
Speaker 2: make it through that sequence and it's just overwhelming, and
Speaker 2: then it gets even more overwhelming in the next sequence.
Speaker 2: Like the movie still successfully builds up towards its finale,
Speaker 2: and by the time you get to the finale, it
Speaker 2: is just otherworldly, and it's just it's it's a take.
Speaker 3: In so so a couple of very broad strokes about
Speaker 3: things that will happen later. We know eventually our heroes
Speaker 3: will make the progress towards towards the Blade of Heaven Peak.
Speaker 3: They'll go up there, they will attain the swords, they
Speaker 3: will meet the guy who's chained to the Big Ball
Speaker 3: who we talked about earlier. There's going to be a
Speaker 3: conflict with the Blood Demon. There's going to be a
Speaker 3: lot of our young heroes sort of like ascending and
Speaker 3: taking over the mantle from the older their older counterparts,
Speaker 3: and you sort of have you know, the older counterparts
Speaker 3: sort of exist on three levels. There's like ding Yan
Speaker 3: and Deeming Chi, there's the Monk and his apprentice, and
Speaker 3: there's the Countess and Moussong, and so the younger ones
Speaker 3: will sort of ascend and take over responsibilities, and there's
Speaker 3: going to be a lot of like flying through the
Speaker 3: astral plane to battle the demon in the end, and
Speaker 3: again just visually amazing fight sequences towards the end. Oh god,
Speaker 3: what details do you want to zoom in on?
Speaker 2: Rob Oh? I want to zoom in on the fact
Speaker 2: that we finally get the two swords to battle the
Speaker 2: Big Bad with like ten minutes remaining. This is one
Speaker 2: of those movies where I'm like, really, you got we
Speaker 2: got ten minutes to pull this off. These swords better
Speaker 2: be amazing. Fortunately, the swords are amazing do incredible things,
Speaker 2: Like there's this whole bit about how to wield the swords.
Speaker 2: They have to be of one mind. Like it gets
Speaker 2: very trippy and weird, not only in visual presentation but
Speaker 2: also in just like the information that you're having to absorb,
Speaker 2: and I, you know, at this point in the film,
Speaker 2: I also realized I should have probably just done the
Speaker 2: English dub on this so that I'm not reading everything
Speaker 2: at the same time. As as Karan pointed out in
Speaker 2: his extra on the Shout disc, it's like, anyway you
Speaker 2: watch this movie, you're watching it dubbed. You either watching
Speaker 2: it dubbed into Mandarin, watching it dubbed into Cantonese, or
Speaker 2: you're watching it dubbed into English, you know, so you
Speaker 2: can you could get into an argument over what's the
Speaker 2: most I vocal track. But I don't know. By the
Speaker 2: end of it, I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I need to read anything. There's just so much going
Speaker 2: on on the screen. I should just be absorbing it
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: I agree, this is the next time I watch it,
Speaker 3: I'm going to watch it with the English dub. I
Speaker 3: watched it with subtitles, and I kind of regret it.
Speaker 3: I just want to be able to look at what's happening,
Speaker 3: and I'll listen for the dialogue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it's incredible flying swords, Swords that multiply,
Speaker 2: swords that have to be wielded by individuals whose mind
Speaker 2: has been forged together via psycho spiritual magical powers. Absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3: They have to go back to the Countess and get
Speaker 3: cured again because ding Yen also gets cursed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so that happens twice. Oh and then we Samuel Hong
Speaker 3: Kong comes back as the Red Soldier at the end
Speaker 3: because they like come back down to Earth and there's
Speaker 3: a battle going on, and it's like, oh, there's my
Speaker 3: old friend sam O Hung. Yeah, and they reconcile.
Speaker 2: Oh and Samo Hung is fighting another warrior. I believe
Speaker 2: the warrior is in blue. And this is our director.
Speaker 2: This is Hawk in a nice little director's cameo, locked
Speaker 2: in mortal combat with Samo Yo Semo Hunk. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's it's tremendous, but also a complete what is happening
Speaker 2: kind of ending. It just suddenly stops, almost as if
Speaker 2: there's just no more energy for this film to continue
Speaker 2: happening in front of our eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, is this the conclusion or is it
Speaker 3: just like this is as much as you could do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it was a lot.
Speaker 2: And in the end, is evil defeated? Is? I guess
Speaker 2: evils defeated? But the world seems to still be possessed
Speaker 2: by battle and strife. So I guess we kind of
Speaker 2: knew from the outset that we weren't going to be
Speaker 2: able to cure the world of that. But the blood
Speaker 2: Demon is defeated, so at least we have that going
Speaker 2: for Yes.
Speaker 3: Order of priorities, blood Demon is the worst thing, and
Speaker 3: then you stop the strife after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just glad they found time to defeat it again,
Speaker 2: not until the last ten minutes of the picture did
Speaker 2: they actually have everything together enough to go after the
Speaker 2: big bat. Not criticism, that's just how it ended up
Speaker 2: being structured.
Speaker 3: Okay, there is much more to say about this movie,
Speaker 3: but I cannot do it. I cannot say more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Zoo Warriors. Yeah, this is one that I think
Speaker 2: invites multiple viewings to fully digest everything that's happening, and
Speaker 2: men also invites just multiple conversations. You can have a
Speaker 2: whole conversation about any given sequence in this picture. It's
Speaker 2: almost too much. It's almost too much movie to talk
Speaker 2: about in a weird house. I feel like if we
Speaker 2: come back to Hawk's filmography, maybe we should do We're
Speaker 2: Going to Eat You. I feel like that might be okay,
Speaker 2: you know, venture into the horror comedy, zombie comedy kind
Speaker 2: of area here.
Speaker 3: I am gamed to do any movies by this man.
Speaker 2: All Right, we'll go ahead and close it out here,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from you out there, if
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on Zoo Warriors, if you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on other films by the director, other films featuring some
Speaker 2: of the actors we've talked about here, Because I know
Speaker 2: some of you out there are probably more experienced with
Speaker 2: Wisha and Hong Kong cinema than we are, and if
Speaker 2: that's the case, you know right in share your expertise
Speaker 2: and your love with us. We would love to hear
Speaker 2: from you. As usual, will remind you that Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: movie here on Weird House Cinema. And if you want
Speaker 2: to see a complete list of all the movies we've
Speaker 2: covered so far and sometimes a peek ahead at what's
Speaker 2: coming up next, you can go over to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 2: That's l E T T E r blxd dot com,
Speaker 2: which is a great website for chronicling the films that
Speaker 2: you've watched or want to watch, doing little mini reviews
Speaker 2: about them and so forth. Fun site, and we have
Speaker 2: an account there it's weird House. You'll find a list
Speaker 2: of all the movies we've done and it's a pretty
Speaker 2: fun interface to play around with.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as 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.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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