Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Land and I'm Joe McCormick. In Today, we are
Speaker 1: hopping into the world of Taoist sorcery, Hong Kong monsters,
Speaker 1: glutinous rice, martial arts, and and much more with our
Speaker 1: very first Young She movie. I've been wanting to do
Speaker 1: one of these movies for a while because I had
Speaker 1: never actually seen a Young She film, and uh and
Speaker 1: and I was aware of them for a while having
Speaker 1: I guess I've seen like pictures of them on the internet.
Speaker 1: Uh so, so this has been in my mind for years,
Speaker 1: and finally we got to see one. Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about Mr Vampire. Yeah. I'm excited as well
Speaker 1: because I think I was in the same boat as you.
Speaker 1: I knew about Young She. I knew they existed in
Speaker 1: in Chinese folklore, as is, being this kind of vampire,
Speaker 1: kind of by zombie creature with with unique characteristics all
Speaker 1: their own. But I never watched a Jangshi movie. Uh though,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, right this was before you brought up the
Speaker 1: idea of of of of doing one. I had picked
Speaker 1: up the new Dungeons and Dragons book Van Ripton's Guide
Speaker 1: to Raven Loft, and it includes a domain in it
Speaker 1: inspired by Chinese mythology and folklore, so it includes stats
Speaker 1: for Jangshi monsters. It's a in in Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: It's a ninth level undead entity with the power to
Speaker 1: drain the energy of its victims and a shape shift.
Speaker 1: So jung shei is both a class of Chinese mythological
Speaker 1: monster and a specific genre of especially nineteen eighties Hong
Speaker 1: Kong martial arts comedy films. That's correct, Yeah, it's and
Speaker 1: this is one of the big films. We started looking
Speaker 1: around like, well, which which jangshi movies should we do,
Speaker 1: and the signs increasingly pointed to Mr Vampire from because
Speaker 1: It's it was a huge hit. It was responsible for
Speaker 1: really popularizing it in not only within Chinese cinema and
Speaker 1: creating a whole sub genre, but also spreading out and
Speaker 1: it was very popular in Japan and ultimately you know
Speaker 1: across to to Uh to the West as well. So
Speaker 1: and and also this is the one we could rent
Speaker 1: from our local video store video Drum. Yeah, these movies
Speaker 1: are not widely digitally available at least that I could find,
Speaker 1: but at least not right now. I feel like they
Speaker 1: have been recently. But um, I have to say Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime used to be my go to place for a
Speaker 1: lot of weird movies, but I feel like their selection
Speaker 1: is not as expansive as it was just a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. So Mr. Vampire is really a title
Speaker 1: that sort of grabs me by the fangs or by
Speaker 1: the fingernails as it may be. To begin with, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's something a little bit cheeky about it. But also
Speaker 1: I think this is not a direct translation of the
Speaker 1: original title, which I think uh in the Cantonese original
Speaker 1: title was it translates to like hold your breath for
Speaker 1: a moment or something. Uh. Yeah, and that and the
Speaker 1: reason for that is because that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: plot points. And how do you avoid the Jungshi discovering
Speaker 1: where you are and draining the life out of you. Well,
Speaker 1: just don't breathe and then it can't detect your presence.
Speaker 1: But Mr Vampire, Uh, that that also that also kind
Speaker 1: of works. It's it's not the name of a vampire
Speaker 1: in it, but it's referring to our main character, who
Speaker 1: is a Dallas priest whose expertise is the management and
Speaker 1: sometimes slaying of of of vampires, and therefore he's Mr
Speaker 1: Vampire in the same way that someone who comes and
Speaker 1: fixes your pipes might be Mr Plumbing or Mr Plumber.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of it more along the lines of
Speaker 1: Mr Coffee, like he is a machine that is designed
Speaker 1: to perfectly execute this function. And so in this case,
Speaker 1: our hero in the film, the Taoist priest played by
Speaker 1: Uh Chining Lamb, is the machine that perfectly executes the
Speaker 1: jung Shei cycle. So let's talk for just a little
Speaker 1: bit about the Young she because some of you may
Speaker 1: be super familiar with this already. Maybe you've read the
Speaker 1: New Raven Loft book and so you know, you're like,
Speaker 1: I know all the stats, Rob, you don't have to
Speaker 1: go into the details, but I will anyway because it's
Speaker 1: super interesting and I think it it enhances our understanding
Speaker 1: of this film. Even though this film is very much
Speaker 1: a horror comedy, it's not like it has I think,
Speaker 1: you know, really deep things to say, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is a treatment of some of of a monster,
Speaker 1: a monster that emerged out of Chinese history, out of
Speaker 1: Chinese folklore and out of real anxieties. So first of all,
Speaker 1: jiang she literally means the stiff or the rigid dead,
Speaker 1: and uh and and and and the reason for that
Speaker 1: will become clear when we start talking about how they move, especially,
Speaker 1: So I'd love to just set the scene for you
Speaker 1: here if I may. Okay, let's get it. Imagine yourself
Speaker 1: out on a road so frustratingly close to the walls
Speaker 1: of the city you've been traveling to, and yet night
Speaker 1: is falling, the mist is rolling in, and then up
Speaker 1: a heads you see several figures in the gloom. Who
Speaker 1: are they? Are they fellow travelers, perhaps headed to where
Speaker 1: you're going, or coming from the opposite direction, maybe there
Speaker 1: are a patrol of guards from the city, And you
Speaker 1: even entertain the possibility that they might be bandits. But
Speaker 1: then they do something quite unnatural. They hop, They hop,
Speaker 1: like creatures whose legs are bound or stiff with rigor mortis,
Speaker 1: perhaps even forgetful of proper bipedo locomotion, and forced to
Speaker 1: lunge themselves forward through physical space like a writhing worm
Speaker 1: stood on end. The creatures hop and they hop again,
Speaker 1: ever closer to you, And as they get closer, you
Speaker 1: see that they are undead horrors dressed in robes from
Speaker 1: the Cheaing dynasty, decayed corpses, burning with unnatural life, and
Speaker 1: as they hop, they reach out towards you with elongated
Speaker 1: finger nails, they gasp with bloody thing tooth jaws, and
Speaker 1: if they catch you, they will drain every last ounce
Speaker 1: of precious chea from your body. Oh I got the shivers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. I think the thing about the hopping, really,
Speaker 1: the hopping is key because it's such a vital part
Speaker 1: of of the folklore, and yet at the same time
Speaker 1: it can seem ridiculous because it is so unnatural, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's hard for us to really like figure out,
Speaker 1: like where does at what point does the unnatural become
Speaker 1: the ridiculous? At what point does the ridiculous then become
Speaker 1: the uncanny? Well, yeah, I mean, I won't deny that
Speaker 1: it looks funny in the movie when they're hopping, and
Speaker 1: it clearly is supposed to look funny in the movie,
Speaker 1: because this isn't like a straight horror movie. This is
Speaker 1: a horror comedy. But I can see how the hopping
Speaker 1: could be quite unnerving given the right cultural associations, And
Speaker 1: if it were, I don't know, maybe if it were
Speaker 1: filmed from the right angle too, because like you can
Speaker 1: get the funny aspects, like it's kind of a sack
Speaker 1: Ray zombie, right, It's just the feet can't move independently.
Speaker 1: It's hopping up and down with the arms outstretched. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it symbolizes that this body no
Speaker 1: longer works as it should. In fact, it is no
Speaker 1: longer really a human body, but something else exactly. So,
Speaker 1: so that's the the Jiangxi. But as as most of
Speaker 1: you know from listening to stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: monsters don't just exist in a vacuum. Monsters always means something.
Speaker 1: And so I was curious, like I know a number
Speaker 1: of you are curious, where does this come from, What
Speaker 1: does it mean? What is the hopping all about? Why
Speaker 1: does the riga mortis seem to be so key to
Speaker 1: this depiction of the undead? And I ran Randy. I
Speaker 1: looked at a few different sources, and then I found
Speaker 1: this paper by historian Juhy Sue. And this is actually
Speaker 1: their Doctor of Philosophy dissertation at Washington University from twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: but it's titled The Afterlife of Corpses, A Social History
Speaker 1: of Unburied Dead bodies in the Ching dynasty sixty four
Speaker 1: through nineteen eleven. Interesting, So, what can you tell us
Speaker 1: about these creatures? Okay? So, while Chinese mythology and folklore
Speaker 1: is filled with various ghosts and monsters, obviously, uh, the
Speaker 1: jang Hi seemed to immerge out of a Ching dynasty
Speaker 1: crisis concerning the burial of the dead. So Sue writes
Speaker 1: that numerous records from the eighteenth and nineteenth century discussed
Speaker 1: the problem of unburied bodies left on the ground without
Speaker 1: proper burial. And the the interesting thing is these were
Speaker 1: not exclusively, say, the victims of war or famine or disaster,
Speaker 1: you know, something where even in the best of situations
Speaker 1: can overwhelm your ability to deal with the dead. They
Speaker 1: were seemingly, for the most part, individuals who simply had
Speaker 1: no permanent grave, and this, Sue writes, was due to
Speaker 1: changing socio economic structure during this time period and the
Speaker 1: resulting imbalance between population and arable land. Interesting. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean the idea here is that a family would
Speaker 1: need a secure claim to the land in order to
Speaker 1: bury a deceased loved one, and if a grave could
Speaker 1: not be obtained, then they were then the body would
Speaker 1: would just be left out or would be uh you know,
Speaker 1: abandoned or lost, um, you know, not necess necessarily like
Speaker 1: immediately discarded, but it might be put somewhere and then
Speaker 1: it would never find its way to a permanent destination.
Speaker 1: This actually plays into the movie. I hadn't thought about this,
Speaker 1: but in the plot of Mr. Vampire. Though again this
Speaker 1: is a comedy movie, part of the incitement of the
Speaker 1: vampire curse in this film seems to be a dispute
Speaker 1: about over the land on which a body is buried.
Speaker 1: That there's like a dispute between this wealthy family. Uh
Speaker 1: this you know, this wealthy family with this businessman patriarch
Speaker 1: and a fortune teller who originally wanted access to some
Speaker 1: kind of burial plot, and the businessman bought it off
Speaker 1: the for fortune teller seemingly with some kind of coercion
Speaker 1: for the for the purchase because it was said to
Speaker 1: be a very lucky place to bury a body that
Speaker 1: would bring great fortune to the further, you know, the
Speaker 1: future generations of the family. But obviously the fortune teller
Speaker 1: who was forced to sell the land didn't like this,
Speaker 1: and so a dispute about land to rights and the
Speaker 1: burial of the body seems to be at the root
Speaker 1: of whatever black magic causes the vampire to begin with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that plays right into this this historical setting
Speaker 1: out of which it emerges this idea that that that
Speaker 1: land in which you can properly bury the dead and
Speaker 1: do the dead justice, uh, is in short supply, and
Speaker 1: not everyone has has the access that they once enjoyed
Speaker 1: to it. And while the sue rights that while the
Speaker 1: the young Non region was most impacted by this situation,
Speaker 1: it became an empire wide crisis because it wasn't just
Speaker 1: about the dead and then dealing with the dead, but
Speaker 1: it perceived cultural decline and funeral custom and and even
Speaker 1: a decline in devotion to one's ancestors, which has an
Speaker 1: enormous cultural significance. Well, this is another thing I would
Speaker 1: say in in Mr. Vampire. Again, it's hard to say
Speaker 1: because the movie I would say is ultimately it's it's
Speaker 1: a light comedy, you know, it's light horror, martial arts comedy,
Speaker 1: so it's not getting too serious about anything. But I
Speaker 1: also I kind of detect a strain of critique of
Speaker 1: modernity and it generally and it's set during so it
Speaker 1: was made in the nineteen eighties, but it's set during
Speaker 1: the Republican period of China, so in the first half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and in it there seems to
Speaker 1: be a sort of a critique of of a modern,
Speaker 1: maybe Western influenced way of living. There's a very comedic
Speaker 1: police officer who seems to embody all the negative attributes
Speaker 1: all of the police like he is abusive and stupid,
Speaker 1: and you know, is is framing the wrong guy for
Speaker 1: the murder, is not addressing any problems. And so there's
Speaker 1: this idea, yeah, that the the government and the law
Speaker 1: is not maintaining any the necessary order and that this
Speaker 1: lack of order also applies to our our honor to
Speaker 1: the dead. Yeah. And so the character in the movie
Speaker 1: who wants to have his ancestor reburied, which again this
Speaker 1: one the inciting incidents in the film, he seems to
Speaker 1: be making decisions that could be again I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly the right cultural way to read this, but I
Speaker 1: think it is to be interpreted as he's making decisions
Speaker 1: that are somewhat disrespectful to his own ancestors in hopes
Speaker 1: of making money. Yeah, Okay, well, we're maybe sort of
Speaker 1: getting ahead of ourselves here because we started getting into
Speaker 1: the details. But Rob, what's the basic elevator pitch for
Speaker 1: Mr Vampire before we hit the trailer audio? All right?
Speaker 1: When Sheean dynasty vampires rise up and cause havoc in
Speaker 1: early twentieth century China. Again, this is the Republic of China.
Speaker 1: Only the Dallas priest Master Gao and his two assistants
Speaker 1: can stop the evil. You know, you kind of get
Speaker 1: the sense that Master Gau would have had a better
Speaker 1: chance stopping the evil without his two assistants. Well, it's
Speaker 1: hard to get good help in the vampire busting business. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's hear some audio here going again, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: not hey do all right? So that is, I believe
Speaker 1: from the original Cantonese trailer. So that is if you
Speaker 1: if there's any language in any dialogue in that trailer
Speaker 1: that you heard, that is Cantonese, and um, I I
Speaker 1: recommend watching the film in Cantonese if you can. I listened.
Speaker 1: I watched about half of it dubbed and then switched
Speaker 1: over to Cantonese with subtitles. Yeah about halfway through, and
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the original language more. I was going
Speaker 1: to say the same thing. I watched it with the
Speaker 1: Cantonese audio with subtitles, and I think that's the better
Speaker 1: way to do it, because there's a lot of the
Speaker 1: line delivery in Cantonese that is quite funny, even though
Speaker 1: even if you don't speak cantonies, can't understand what they're saying.
Speaker 1: I would single out the main star of the movie,
Speaker 1: Chining Lamb for some of his very funny, stern delivery
Speaker 1: of particular lines in certain scenes, like I really like
Speaker 1: the scene where his his assistant who is turning into
Speaker 1: a vampire, is saying, like, what's going to happen to me?
Speaker 1: And he says, your blood will stiffen, and then he says, well,
Speaker 1: how what will happen when it stiffens? And he says
Speaker 1: it will get hard, And it's the way he delivers
Speaker 1: his lines in the original language I think is much funnier.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um. And we'll get back to him. But
Speaker 1: he is. He is indeed great in this. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine that the film without him, because his character
Speaker 1: is at once stern and serious and heroic and capable,
Speaker 1: and he had at the same time does occasionally look
Speaker 1: like a buffoon, as is befitting of a horror comedy,
Speaker 1: but it's a careful line to walk, like how do
Speaker 1: you make your hear row buffoonish enough but also a
Speaker 1: capable action horror star. I want to come back to
Speaker 1: that theme. All right, Well, let's let's start talking about
Speaker 1: some of the folks involved in this film, because it
Speaker 1: does have a lot of interesting people in it. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, let's talk about the director, who also
Speaker 1: was one of the screenwriters, Ricky Law. Law was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine and Mr. Vampire is his big hit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a huge hit, so he went
Speaker 1: on to do and is still doing plenty of films
Speaker 1: in this vein, including The Romance of the Vampires in
Speaker 1: nine and more recently Dallas Priest One, a film starring
Speaker 1: Sue Ho Chin, one of the stars from Mr. Vampire.
Speaker 1: This this is a trend. We'll see a lot. Who
Speaker 1: is Sue Ho Chen in Mr Vampire. He's the handsome assistant.
Speaker 1: Uh and we'll get to him in a second. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's good now with the producer on this film is
Speaker 1: also a huge name in Hong Kong cinema, though I'm
Speaker 1: to understand he is largely hands off with Mr. Vampire.
Speaker 1: But we have to point out that Samuel Hung was
Speaker 1: the producer. And I think everybody's heard of Samue Hung.
Speaker 1: He's one of the he's one of the biggest names
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong cinema, certainly outside of Hong Kong, well,
Speaker 1: when you get into like just international cinema. He's one
Speaker 1: of those people who you just look at a picture
Speaker 1: of him and you're like, that guy's the boss. He's
Speaker 1: the boss of something. Yeah. Yeah, legendary rotund Hong Kong actor,
Speaker 1: martial artist, producer and director and um yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: been in done so many things. In fact, he was
Speaker 1: in one of the other key films of this genre,
Speaker 1: this the horror comedy, the Hong Kong horror Comedy, and
Speaker 1: that was an Encounters of the Spooky Kind that occurred,
Speaker 1: uh several years later. It was it was sort of
Speaker 1: the first big horror comedy as I understand it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so I also wanted to see Encounters of the Spooky Kind.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that one either. But is it also
Speaker 1: about Jiung Shi or is it about something else? I
Speaker 1: am not entirely sure, but it one of the same
Speaker 1: writers was involved in it. Um so I know that
Speaker 1: it had as it at least has spooky stuff in it.
Speaker 1: It has encounters of the spooky kind in it, But
Speaker 1: I said, I sadly haven't seen it yet. It's really
Speaker 1: the next one I should see because it's it's a
Speaker 1: huge and very influential. Now, I was reading in a
Speaker 1: book called Spooky Encounter. It's a Guilos Guide to Hong
Speaker 1: Kong Horror by Daniel O'Brien, and in that O'Brien says
Speaker 1: that that Hung wasn't was Samo. Hung was inspired by
Speaker 1: stories that his mother told him when he was a child,
Speaker 1: as well as a particular story from Poush Song Lings
Speaker 1: Tales from a Chinese Studio, which I was excited to
Speaker 1: read because I'm really fond of tales from a Chinese studio.
Speaker 1: I have the I think it's the Penguin Books edition,
Speaker 1: which doesn't include all of Poushong Ling's stories and retellings
Speaker 1: of these various weird tales from China, but it has
Speaker 1: a number of them. Now, you sent me a link
Speaker 1: to a e book version of this that did have
Speaker 1: the story in it, and so I read this story
Speaker 1: the one. The story is called the resurrect or no,
Speaker 1: not the resurrection corps, the resuscitated corpse. Yes, I believe
Speaker 1: you're right, and it's uh, I was, I was improused.
Speaker 1: So the thing about possong links stories is that they
Speaker 1: vary wildly in tone. There are some where basically just
Speaker 1: he's He's like, hey, um, this scholar from such and
Speaker 1: such city told me about this thing that once happened,
Speaker 1: and it was weird, and that's the end. Uh. My
Speaker 1: son and I enjoy reading them together. And occasionally they
Speaker 1: just stopped abruptly like that. It's like a man solid
Speaker 1: fairy in the woods the end, um a man saw
Speaker 1: some fleas do a cool uh trick or circus performance
Speaker 1: on a backpack the end. Other times they're longer. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're just really grotesque and brutal, like a troll choose
Speaker 1: on somebody's skull, and then they never find out what
Speaker 1: it was about. There's a lot of never finding out
Speaker 1: what happened. Something strange happens and no explanation has ever made,
Speaker 1: nothing has ever, you know, really done about it. Other
Speaker 1: Times they're humorous. Sometimes they're a little bit on the
Speaker 1: raunchy side, uh in rare instances. But yeah, this one
Speaker 1: is I think an example of of a story that
Speaker 1: is both terrifying in parts but also ultimately ridiculous and humorous. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: the basic story here is that there are four travelers
Speaker 1: who arrive at is it an inn or a house
Speaker 1: that they're they're on the road, and they get to
Speaker 1: someplace where they really need to stay for the night
Speaker 1: because the night has come on and they can't stay outside,
Speaker 1: and there's no it must be an inn because basically
Speaker 1: there's no room at the end, and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: well can you give us somewhere to stay, you know,
Speaker 1: even if we don't have our own rooms. And so
Speaker 1: the homeowner, the innkeeper, is like, well, okay, you can
Speaker 1: stay in this room with my dead daughter in law's
Speaker 1: corpse that hasn't been buried yet. Very very good, very cool.
Speaker 1: And this is of course getting into the idea, you know,
Speaker 1: like she hasn't been buried yet perhaps because they have
Speaker 1: they have not found a place to bury her right,
Speaker 1: and again getting into these big concerns about you know,
Speaker 1: maybe bad magic comes on when somebody doesn't receive the
Speaker 1: right kind of ritual burial in a timely manner. So
Speaker 1: the four travelers go to sleep in the room and
Speaker 1: then in the middle of the night, one of them
Speaker 1: wakes up and realizes that the body of the dead
Speaker 1: daughter in law is getting up off of the table
Speaker 1: where it's resting, and the dead daughter in law goes
Speaker 1: around to each of the sleeping travelers and breathes in
Speaker 1: their faces, and the breathing on them there seems to
Speaker 1: be something very sinister about this. But eventually the one
Speaker 1: traveler who's awake while this is happening gets up and
Speaker 1: runs out, and the dead daughter in law is very
Speaker 1: mad about him running away, and she chases him, chases
Speaker 1: him all the way to a monastery where he bangs
Speaker 1: on the door and begs to be let in, and
Speaker 1: the priest is like, I don't know who you are.
Speaker 1: You can't come in, And so he's running around outside.
Speaker 1: He hides behind a tree and then the the zombie
Speaker 1: lady attacks him, but gets her arms wrapped around the tree.
Speaker 1: Did I understand that right? Yeah? Like basically like he
Speaker 1: she reaches to the left and he ducks to the
Speaker 1: other side, and then she reaches on that side, he
Speaker 1: ducks the other side. They're just going back and forth.
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's very much a Hong Kong martial
Speaker 1: arts comedy skit, and they do this until they're absolutely exhausted,
Speaker 1: the both of them, even the corpse. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: I guess the corpse gets the bright idea, I'll just
Speaker 1: reach out and grab him on both sides of the
Speaker 1: tree at the same time. But then what happens is
Speaker 1: her long, scary ghost fingernails get stuck in the tree,
Speaker 1: and so she's just stuck to the trees. And the
Speaker 1: next morning the authorities come and this resurrected corpse is
Speaker 1: stuck to the tree with her fingernails in the wood
Speaker 1: the end. And that's the great thing about the stories.
Speaker 1: I think I think the last I may be remembering
Speaker 1: this wrong, but I think the last line is something
Speaker 1: like the local governor made a report of the incident. Yes,
Speaker 1: they often ill often that's the form of these stories.
Speaker 1: They'll often begin with saying, uh, telling you who told
Speaker 1: you this? Who told him this story? You know to
Speaker 1: give it, I guess kind of it gives it an
Speaker 1: air of authenticity. Or it ends with something like that,
Speaker 1: saying like where it's recorded, and uh, yeah, I love it,
Speaker 1: and then everything was fine. So Mr Vampire not a
Speaker 1: direct adaptation of that, but you can definitely see some
Speaker 1: of the connections there, some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: comedic car right, Alright, So a couple of the screenwriters
Speaker 1: were just gonna blow through here kind of quickly, but
Speaker 1: they were accomplished screenwriters. There's a Chuck Hon Sato I
Speaker 1: believe it is, who wrote on some major Hong Kong
Speaker 1: films featuring stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Lee.
Speaker 1: Their screenwriter Barry Wong Whoo, who worked on such films
Speaker 1: as Fight Back to School starring Stephen Chow, and two
Speaker 1: different John Wu films, Heart Boiled and The Killer, both
Speaker 1: starring Chow Yun Fat, some of the most famous of
Speaker 1: the recent well not that recent anymore, but recent decades
Speaker 1: Hong Kong action movies. Yeah, definitely names in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: cinema that resonate globally. Yeah, But it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: the connection to Stephen Chow as well, because I would say,
Speaker 1: in many ways, I think Stephen Chow is kind of
Speaker 1: a modern inheritor of this kind of martial arts action
Speaker 1: comedy thing with with supernatural elements like we see in Mr. Vampire.
Speaker 1: Not so much in the horror vein, but still supernatural
Speaker 1: fighting comedies. I'm thinking of his working Kung Fu Hustle.
Speaker 1: I think has some some some inspiration points in films
Speaker 1: like Mr. Vampire. It would seem to me. Now the
Speaker 1: story on this film came from Ying Wong, who was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty eight. And I don't know much
Speaker 1: about Yeing Wong, but he's had his hands in a
Speaker 1: number of really cool looking film projects, both as a
Speaker 1: writer and a director. He wrote the novel that served
Speaker 1: as the basis for nineteen eight Threes Bastard Swordsman, and
Speaker 1: his other credits include Return of the Demon from Night Seven,
Speaker 1: which he also directed nineteen nineties The Swordsman, and an
Speaker 1: interesting looking Chinese mummy movie, which said just based on
Speaker 1: based on the cover, it looks like it involves like
Speaker 1: jade armor, like jade burial armor. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: that that one also has Ghostbusters in it, not you
Speaker 1: know our ghostbusters, but roal Ghostbusters. Most notably, however, Wong
Speaker 1: co wrote the that other earlier important Hong Kong supernatural
Speaker 1: comedy Encounters of the Spooky Kind uh that starred Semo
Speaker 1: Hung in eight. Okay, well, that one's still in the
Speaker 1: list for me, But I feel like we got to
Speaker 1: get to our star. We've been sort of burying the
Speaker 1: lead as we sometimes do here because I've just been
Speaker 1: wanting to talk about Chin Ying Lamb. Yes, he plays
Speaker 1: Mr Gau a k A. Mr Vampire. Um, he's a
Speaker 1: He's an actor who lived nineteen fifty two through so,
Speaker 1: you know, sadly short lived, but boy he he acted
Speaker 1: a lot during that period. Um, he's very much the
Speaker 1: star of this picture. He's our Mono brow Dallas priest
Speaker 1: who specializes in the handling of Jiangshi and other various spirits,
Speaker 1: and he has a pretty interesting history. He started out
Speaker 1: in stunt work for the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest studio.
Speaker 1: He was a personal assistant to Bruce Lee and then
Speaker 1: he joined Samo Hunks, the stunt team and the who
Speaker 1: became friends. He'd done various roles prior to Mr. Vampire,
Speaker 1: but this was the role that really made him famous.
Speaker 1: So it should come as no surprise that he played
Speaker 1: a lot of Dallas priests battled supernatural forces during his career.
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to list them all here, but
Speaker 1: they include all sorts of Mr. Vampire inspired films, loose
Speaker 1: Mr Vampire spinoffs, and the Vampire Expert TV show, so
Speaker 1: you might consider him in a way repeatedly typecast and
Speaker 1: a certain type of supernatural horror movie hero role, the
Speaker 1: way like Peter Cushing would have been in the Hammer
Speaker 1: horror movies, you know, repeatedly playing this Van Helsing type character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though like we're not even dealing with direct sequels,
Speaker 1: it's like we want, we want that character in our film,
Speaker 1: even if we call him something else. Who were going
Speaker 1: to get to play him? Of course we're gonna get
Speaker 1: chinging lamb uh. Though though he also did I want
Speaker 1: to point out he did. Look it does look like
Speaker 1: he did some unrelated and serious roles as well, so
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully it balanced out in his career. So
Speaker 1: in this movie, they have made a very interesting costuming
Speaker 1: and makeup decision to give our hero the sort of
Speaker 1: the unflappable, stern, competent master Taoist priest a unibrow as
Speaker 1: you as you said, a mono brow. I guess you
Speaker 1: could use either term, but I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: meaning of the unibrow in this movie. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: his natural facial hair that is that that is something
Speaker 1: they clearly have accented with makeup and in American cinema.
Speaker 1: The unibrow is used exclusively for comedy, right, It's something
Speaker 1: that's supposed to look funny, and this is a comedy movie.
Speaker 1: But I don't think Master Gow's unibrow is supposed to
Speaker 1: be funny. This is a unibrow that signals an eagle
Speaker 1: like seriousness, dignity, knowledge. It reads to me as a
Speaker 1: unibrow of respect. At Yeah, I I was thinking about this,
Speaker 1: and I think you're right. It seems to be sternness.
Speaker 1: I can't really tell how comediic it's supposed to look,
Speaker 1: because it it doesn't look just ridiculous. It does look
Speaker 1: like it's part of the costume. But but in that respect,
Speaker 1: it's not as ridiculous as is some of the the
Speaker 1: hair and makeup effects that you see in you certainly
Speaker 1: earlier Hong Kong cinema, because you know, if you see
Speaker 1: various Shaolin type films, you'll see a lot of obvious
Speaker 1: fake facial hair and you know, long hair, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you can do to sort of differentiate one character
Speaker 1: from another, even if they're played by you know, sort
Speaker 1: of the same troop of of of of stunt people. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the the cultural the valance of a unibrow changes with culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, as we said in American movies, it
Speaker 1: is something that is always taken as funny. But there
Speaker 1: are cultures where a unibrow or mono brow is considered
Speaker 1: a desirable trade. It's can that are very handsome or
Speaker 1: beautiful to have a single brow. Yeah, it's definitely gonna
Speaker 1: gonna range across time and uh in space. I think
Speaker 1: specifically especially in some like Central Asian culture, as a
Speaker 1: uni brow was considered very desirable. Yeah. Now I was
Speaker 1: looking around for any indication on what it might have
Speaker 1: meant uh to Chinese audiences, or if it was a
Speaker 1: statement on something that was common, uh, you know amongst
Speaker 1: say Dallas priest or something. And I couldn't really find
Speaker 1: an answer. I mean, you see bushy eyebrow show up
Speaker 1: in in various Chinese um illustrations and depictions, often attributed
Speaker 1: to gods and immortals. You know, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: wise nature to it. But I just couldn't find anything
Speaker 1: about mono browse other than I did see that our
Speaker 1: our our priest character in this film is sometimes described
Speaker 1: as uh something that is translated as one eyebrow priest. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think how to read that. Does that
Speaker 1: mean more that it's just a particular trait of this
Speaker 1: one character, or that he is of a type like
Speaker 1: the one eyebrowed priest type. I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: it's I wonder if there are other mono browed Dallas
Speaker 1: priests in films that are not depicted as an homage
Speaker 1: to this film, you know, I guess that's an open question.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about another personal grooming thing that
Speaker 1: ties in interestingly with the plot, which is that both
Speaker 1: the monsters in this film and the hero have long fingernails. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh so Chinging Lung has these the very the long sculpted,
Speaker 1: well manicured fingernails, but also the vampires do. And the
Speaker 1: vampires not only have them, they use them to kill,
Speaker 1: sometimes in lieu of using the fangs to kill. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: in our our past episode on fingernails, we we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about about long fingernails of particularly Amanda
Speaker 1: Chinese scholars in the old days, and one of the
Speaker 1: characters that came up was a poet by the name
Speaker 1: of Lee he He He who lived uh I believe a
Speaker 1: seven ninety or seven ninety one through eight sixteen or
Speaker 1: eight seventeen. See, yeah, he was a Tang dynasty poet.
Speaker 1: You remember you have found some source that described him
Speaker 1: as like the bad boy of Tang dynasty poets. He was.
Speaker 1: He was like a very weird poet who wrote strange
Speaker 1: almost This sounds like an anachronistic comment to make, but
Speaker 1: having read a lot of his poems, now I think
Speaker 1: it's sort of accurate. Almost psychedelic poetry. Yeah, like talking
Speaker 1: about what owl's burning with goblin fire in the forest,
Speaker 1: things of that nature. Uh. And I think he did
Speaker 1: have kind of you know, he had kind of a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this bad boy image, this kind of you
Speaker 1: know he was he was interested in kind of dark
Speaker 1: and mysterious and magical things, yes, totally. But he was
Speaker 1: also considered morbid, kind of deathly. Uh. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I'm associating him with connotations of illness and morbidity, and
Speaker 1: yet he had this very distinctive personal style that definitely
Speaker 1: included long fingernails. The crazy thing, though, is this is
Speaker 1: not something we realized previously. But I had just looked
Speaker 1: him up to to make sure I had the right
Speaker 1: individual in mind, and um, I pulled up the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: page on him and just did like a quick search
Speaker 1: for fingernails to make sure that I wasn't misremembering his fingernails.
Speaker 1: But the Wikipedia article not only mentions his nails, it
Speaker 1: mentions his uni brow. What. Yeah, apparently he was known
Speaker 1: for his uni brow according to this Wikipedia entry. So
Speaker 1: so again I've got to ask, is this tap Is
Speaker 1: this just a coincidence? Is this tapping a broader cultural
Speaker 1: meaning in Chinese history of the uni brow? Or maybe
Speaker 1: in some way is the Is the Taoist priest of
Speaker 1: the Mr. Vampire franchise a take on Lee He? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I think it'll have to remain an open question.
Speaker 1: Just to give a taste of that psychedelic nous, I
Speaker 1: just found a place where I transcribed one of his
Speaker 1: poems as translated by a Chinese poetry scholar named David Hinton,
Speaker 1: who has a wonderful collection of translations of classic Chinese
Speaker 1: poetry that I highly recommend. But Hinton's translation of one
Speaker 1: of Lehi's poems called Cheating Spirit Song, I just want
Speaker 1: to read a few lines from that. It goes black
Speaker 1: as your Puma, cat, weeping blood, fox, dyeing a cold death,
Speaker 1: an opalescent dragon, on ancient walls, tail inscribed in gold.
Speaker 1: Then the rain god writing it down into a lake's
Speaker 1: autumn waters, and that ancient hundred year old owl. It's
Speaker 1: a forest demon now, sound of laughter, emerald fire rising
Speaker 1: up out of its nest. It's beautiful. I love it.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, serious recommendation in this if you're looking for
Speaker 1: a good collection of translations of Chinese poetry across the ages,
Speaker 1: David Hinton's book is awesome. All right, let's get back
Speaker 1: to Mr Vampire. We've we've we've discussed Mr Gao, and
Speaker 1: we'll keep coming back to him. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: his two assistants. So first up, Choo Shing, the handsome one,
Speaker 1: is played by That's exactly right, he is the handsome one.
Speaker 1: I was trying to remember what his name is, like
Speaker 1: the English translation was, because in the subtitles they give
Speaker 1: them English translated names, or at least one of them.
Speaker 1: The less handsome assistant is named Dan. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: forget what this one's name was. But yeah, this guy
Speaker 1: is the the less comedic, more competent, more martial arts competent,
Speaker 1: and just generally uh handsome and heroic of the two. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He and and he's good in this he uh is
Speaker 1: another case though, where Mr. Vampire was so successful that
Speaker 1: it was I think perhaps hard or impossible or just
Speaker 1: you know, just not reasonable to to try and do
Speaker 1: anything other than various other vampire films. So Chen went
Speaker 1: on to do various vampire films that follow loosely and
Speaker 1: this one's wake. He did other stuff to be to
Speaker 1: be sure, including some important roles in big Hong Kong
Speaker 1: films like tai Chi Master and Fist of Legend. And
Speaker 1: he also started in the film Rigor Mortis, which I
Speaker 1: have not seen. I think I almost saw it, Like
Speaker 1: I think I rented it and never watched it, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I didn't now because its whole thing
Speaker 1: is that it's supposed to be a style, a homage
Speaker 1: to the old vampire movies, including Mr. Vampire. So I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of that would have been lost
Speaker 1: on me if I just skipped right to the uh
Speaker 1: stylish homage, as opposed to you know, watching at least
Speaker 1: Mr Vampire. Yeah, better do it. In order, we should
Speaker 1: watch all of the Mr. Vampire sequels, then do Encounters
Speaker 1: at the Spooky Kind, then watch Rick Mortis. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I think our eyes might be bigger than our stomach
Speaker 1: on that one. There's so many. Yeah, alright, so that's
Speaker 1: the handsome one. But then there's also Dan. I think
Speaker 1: his actual character's name is man Cho, I think, but
Speaker 1: the the captions and the dubbing refer to him as Dan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's played by Ricky who who lived Leven. And
Speaker 1: this guy is totally our comic relief character. And he's
Speaker 1: he's pretty fabulous. Oh yeah, he's he's an excellent physical
Speaker 1: comedy actor. He's got he's got a very funny haircut
Speaker 1: in the movie. It kind of he's got a kind
Speaker 1: of like one of those sagging bowl cuts that I
Speaker 1: think is clearly supposed to look funny. And he's the
Speaker 1: out of all the jokes. There's a really funny sequence
Speaker 1: towards the end where he is gradually transforming into a vampire,
Speaker 1: and in order to prevent the transformation, he has to
Speaker 1: keep doing all these things like lying on a bed
Speaker 1: of glutinous rice and continually dancing in a in a
Speaker 1: ludicrous fashion. Yes, yes, while also having regular freakouts about
Speaker 1: what's happening to him. Uh yeah, he's he's great, and
Speaker 1: he's our drop. Oh he's this film's drop o, he's
Speaker 1: this film's sort of this film's paraco. To draw back
Speaker 1: to the Santo picture we discussed, well, I was gonna
Speaker 1: generally agree, except I also wonder is this film's paraco
Speaker 1: not Billy Lao as why the incompetent policeman. Ultimately, Mr.
Speaker 1: Vampire is a is a film with comedy many paraos,
Speaker 1: or at least two prominent paricos. You can have two
Speaker 1: characters they're they are performed with a broad physical style
Speaker 1: of comedic acting that defies all language barriers. I hope
Speaker 1: Dan is in all of the Mr. Vampire sequels. He's
Speaker 1: he's He's actually not. He seems to this actor seems
Speaker 1: to have been successful enough and enough of like a
Speaker 1: comedy star, uh that he he reprised it in the
Speaker 1: in the movie Mr. Vampire. But otherwise he doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have drunk from the the Mr. V well as
Speaker 1: much as as some of the other people involved were.
Speaker 1: He he was in several big comedy blockbusters in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong back in the seventies and eighties. Now, the next
Speaker 1: star in the movie we should probably mention is Moon Lee,
Speaker 1: and upon looking at her biography, I was very interested
Speaker 1: because in this movie she plays a very uh. She
Speaker 1: she's a very passive character. You know, she's the daughter
Speaker 1: of the rich businessman who is you know, the beautiful
Speaker 1: daughter who is the object of love by several characters.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that she actually had a career
Speaker 1: mostly doing like stunts and action movies and playing characters
Speaker 1: who would blow your head off with a big gun. Yeah, yeah, Moonley,
Speaker 1: it seems to have largely been an action character while
Speaker 1: and this one she's not. You might be tempted to assume, all,
Speaker 1: I guess she's like the damsel in distress, but she's
Speaker 1: more just the the necessary female for comedic interaction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's not really in distress much. She's mostly like hanging out,
Speaker 1: hanging out while other characters just act ridiculous. So she
Speaker 1: does play some good pranks in the movie though. For example,
Speaker 1: when when Master Gow and Dan go to a go
Speaker 1: to English style tea to a tea house, uh, to
Speaker 1: meet with the rich with her rich father, the businessman Mr.
Speaker 1: M she pranks them by convincing them that they're supposed
Speaker 1: to drink their coffee and their creams separately because they're
Speaker 1: not familiar with the conventions of coffee. Oh, and to
Speaker 1: eat the sugar with the spoons separately. And then when
Speaker 1: their father comes back, that's what they're doing, and they
Speaker 1: look there they are quite ashamed. Yes, but she did
Speaker 1: a number of of Hong Kong action movies from the
Speaker 1: eighties through the nineties. Yeah, a couple of that came
Speaker 1: up for me. And again I'm not familiar with these pictures,
Speaker 1: but Fighting Madam Seven, the Avenging Quarter from Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she was a stunt performer in addition to being an actress.
Speaker 1: It looks like she ended up doing a lot of
Speaker 1: you know your your high octane crime thrillers where she
Speaker 1: would play a cop with a big gun who hunts
Speaker 1: down diamond smugglers or something. And in one movie, I
Speaker 1: found one movie she was in that had a title
Speaker 1: so good I had to mention it from the year
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety in which she co starred with Robin Show.
Speaker 1: American audiences might know Robin Show best from movies in
Speaker 1: the nineties like Mortal Kombat and which he played Lu
Speaker 1: Kang or Beverly Hills Ninja. But you know, he's a
Speaker 1: long time the actor who did a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of Chinese action movies and stuff. But the movie
Speaker 1: they were in together in nineteen nine is called Fatal Termination.
Speaker 1: Moonley is also in Mr. Vampire two from nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: which makes me think again, the sequels might be worth
Speaker 1: a look. I kind of feel like, maybe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: watch all of these sequels if I can get my
Speaker 1: hands on them. I'm not sure, but it might be
Speaker 1: worth it. But also I read that so I mentioned
Speaker 1: that she was also a stunt performer. I think at
Speaker 1: some point it was either in the late eighties or
Speaker 1: early nineties. I read that she was seriously injured performing
Speaker 1: a stunt for some action movie she was in, Like
Speaker 1: she was supposed to jump out of a window and
Speaker 1: then there was an explosion that was supposed to happen
Speaker 1: in the room she was jumping out of, but the
Speaker 1: pyrotechnics went off early and she was pretty badly burned.
Speaker 1: But she she survived and she's apparently doing fine. All right.
Speaker 1: We mentioned this next actor briefly, but Billy Law plays
Speaker 1: basically the world's worst policeman. Yes, this this character. What's
Speaker 1: this character's name again? Why? Why? And he? Yeah? He
Speaker 1: he shows up at first, Yeah, he's he's after the
Speaker 1: love interest played by moon Lee. Um. But then from
Speaker 1: there he just he gets involved in the the investigation
Speaker 1: of vampire related murders and just botches everything, botches everything
Speaker 1: he touches. Uh. So I couldn't it wasn't able to
Speaker 1: find a find a find a birthdate for him by
Speaker 1: He seems to be still active as of twenty At
Speaker 1: least of as nineteen, he did a lot of comedic
Speaker 1: action roles, including Eastern Condors from seven. I think that's
Speaker 1: a that's a hung production as well, And I think
Speaker 1: if I'm if that's the one I'm thinking of, and
Speaker 1: maybe can I think that one might be an ensemble
Speaker 1: cast that somehow involves a mission to Vietnam. Um. And
Speaker 1: then Billy Low also shows up in a number of
Speaker 1: vampire movies, including rid Or Mortis. Another tick in that column. Yeh,
Speaker 1: Billy Low is way over the top in this movie.
Speaker 1: But he's also he's good. He's very funny. Like I said,
Speaker 1: this is a movie of many paricos and uh and
Speaker 1: you know what, they played pretty well together in this.
Speaker 1: He plays a character with almost every negative characteristic you
Speaker 1: could imagine. He's just this like dumb incompetent creep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's great. Alright. The next actor of note um Uh
Speaker 1: Sue Fung Wong plays Jade, who we we spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: but we find out she's a ghost. I guess it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear early on she's a ghost that she you
Speaker 1: know from the first Yeah, she well, she appears being
Speaker 1: like brought in in the forest in a kind of
Speaker 1: translucent mist, to being being borne by these guys in
Speaker 1: strange in strange makeup, and then she flies through the air.
Speaker 1: I think, I think it's clear she's a ghost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she's a She's an actor producer born sixty two,
Speaker 1: within a number of films including Love with the Perfect
Speaker 1: Stranger from five, Web of Deception, and plus it looks
Speaker 1: seems like a fair sprinkling of vampire and supernatural films.
Speaker 1: One thing that's funny about her character, So the movie
Speaker 1: basically has two major supernatural antagonists. One is the main
Speaker 1: vampire and the other is the ghost played by Sufing Wong,
Speaker 1: And these two antagonists kind of a running parallel storylines
Speaker 1: that are in some cases not even fully intertwined from
Speaker 1: what I could tell, except that they involved the same characters.
Speaker 1: But then also there's a funny thing about so her
Speaker 1: when her true form is revealed by Master Gau towards
Speaker 1: the end of the movie. She wears some exceptionally not
Speaker 1: good monster makeup that somehow works anyway. It involves a
Speaker 1: sort of eyeball and a stalk that juts out of
Speaker 1: her half rotten face. Yeah, this is what was interesting
Speaker 1: about this to me is that on one level, you
Speaker 1: look at it and you're like, oh, well, that that
Speaker 1: didn't They didn't quite pull that off, did they. And
Speaker 1: yet it does kind of work, and it it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the deliberate, uh special effects choices in the
Speaker 1: famous Japanese Haunted House movie house, you know, where there
Speaker 1: was a deliberate choice by the director to have effects
Speaker 1: that were I'm not sure how to describe them exactly,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to say shoddy, but almost I
Speaker 1: think childlike like like it is if if if you
Speaker 1: had only children creating the effects or envisioning the effects.
Speaker 1: Thinking about the effects in house, I might say, in
Speaker 1: some cases almost kind of stagy, more like the special
Speaker 1: effects you would see in a good stage production rather
Speaker 1: than in a movie. Yeah, that's a that's a good description.
Speaker 1: So I thought about that, and and it made me
Speaker 1: sort of contemplate the sometimes thin line between the imperfect
Speaker 1: and the and the uncanny. You know, it kind of
Speaker 1: comes back to the idea of the hopping vampire, Like,
Speaker 1: on one level, it's ridiculous, but it's also unnatural. It's
Speaker 1: also uncanny. Yeah, yeah, all right, And finally there there
Speaker 1: is an actor by the name of Way Yun who
Speaker 1: plays the vampire. Born nineteen fifty. I'm gonna mention him
Speaker 1: because he has a hundred He had a hundred nine
Speaker 1: three acting credits, including The Landlord and Kung Fu Hustle
Speaker 1: from four Oh. He's the guy with the when it's
Speaker 1: revealed that he's a kung Fu master. Spoiler sorry, he's
Speaker 1: got the floppy rubbery body. Yeah, I think so. It's
Speaker 1: been a while since I've seen Kung Fu Hustle, but
Speaker 1: but this guy did stunts. In nineteen seventy two is
Speaker 1: The Way of the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris.
Speaker 1: So he's been in tons of things. Have you seen
Speaker 1: Way of the Dragon? You know that one? I think
Speaker 1: this is one. I probably saw parts of it on
Speaker 1: TBS back in the day, but I don't have a
Speaker 1: clear memory of it. Of so, you know, brew Lee
Speaker 1: had this this short but very memorable run of films
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, maybe the late sixties too. I
Speaker 1: think maybe the first one was in seventy or so.
Speaker 1: But most of them are great martial arts action movies,
Speaker 1: but they're very serious. Way of the Dragon is definitely
Speaker 1: the most comedy oriented of them. It's the one where
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee travels to Rome. It actually takes place in
Speaker 1: Italy because he's got a relative who I think he's
Speaker 1: running a restaurant there that is being menaced by the mafia,
Speaker 1: and then he comes in to defend it from these
Speaker 1: these mafia thugs, and so they end up recruiting their
Speaker 1: own fighters, such as Chuck Norris. So they bring in
Speaker 1: Chuck Norris to defeat Bruce Lee, but Norris doesn't stand
Speaker 1: a chance. But anyway, that movie is actually quite silly
Speaker 1: as well, because, like I remember, there's a major subplot
Speaker 1: in it about Bruce Lee eating too much soup and
Speaker 1: then having to go pee a lot. All right, he
Speaker 1: doesn't influence his style though, right, it's not like run Master. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pp Master. No, it's it's not pp Master. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I haven't seen that one at all. Main Mainly
Speaker 1: I guess that my the main Bruce Lee. Movie I've
Speaker 1: seen is of course Entered the Dragon, which is is
Speaker 1: pretty serious. One last thing about Way of the Dragon.
Speaker 1: Chuck Norris playing this villainous fighter and it has no
Speaker 1: facial hair and it's disturbing. Oh yeah, yeah, because he
Speaker 1: has known for the beer in the mustache um. Normally,
Speaker 1: at this point I mentioned the music. Well, the music
Speaker 1: is fine in this is not like the music is offensive.
Speaker 1: But the score is credited to one Melody Bank, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure is not someone's name. I'm thinking it's just
Speaker 1: like a storehouse of music. I don't know, melody like
Speaker 1: it is a database or yeah, and they're they're only
Speaker 1: five films credited to Melody Bank on on IMDb. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, but the theme music was composed by Alistair
Speaker 1: Monteth Hodge and California born Anders Nelson. So if that
Speaker 1: means anything to you, there you go. Now, I guess
Speaker 1: here we're getting to the part where we would usually
Speaker 1: go into a full plot breakdown. But I was thinking
Speaker 1: for talking about this today, just to mix it up
Speaker 1: a bit, I thought maybe rather than going scene by
Speaker 1: scene in order, I would just sort of lay down
Speaker 1: the basic plot situation and then we could mention a
Speaker 1: few things throughout the run time that we thought were interesting,
Speaker 1: But before I get into that, I did want to
Speaker 1: mention the opening scene in detail, because because the opening
Speaker 1: scene is fabulous. It really is one of the most
Speaker 1: memorable things about the movie, and it really sets the
Speaker 1: tone for the movie. So after the credits finish, and
Speaker 1: the credits, by the way, are great just because they
Speaker 1: have a wonderful green ooze color to them. But two,
Speaker 1: once we finally open on the action to someone not
Speaker 1: familiar with the conventions of Jong Shei movies, as I
Speaker 1: was not really once I started watching this, it's a
Speaker 1: very w t F kind of opening because we have
Speaker 1: this guy going around who we find out is one
Speaker 1: of the assistance of the Taoist priest. But he's going
Speaker 1: around with a bunch of incense in this room that
Speaker 1: is just covered in magical amulets and trinkets and pieces
Speaker 1: of paper with writing on them, things that seem like
Speaker 1: they have magical significance in one way or another, and
Speaker 1: he is tending to coffins in this room. At first,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what these objects were, but they're these
Speaker 1: It's just these rows of horizontal wooden cylinders you do
Speaker 1: find out that their coffins. Yeah, and I was not
Speaker 1: really I don't know that I've really seen I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've seen these before, but these are depictions
Speaker 1: of basically the traditional Chinese style of of casket, which
Speaker 1: looks rather different from the Western style. I think it's
Speaker 1: my understanding. You still see both used in China. So
Speaker 1: if you look up, I can do a Google image
Speaker 1: search for Chinese coffins Chinese caskets, you'll likely see some
Speaker 1: pictures that include both styles. When you'll see Western variations.
Speaker 1: And then also these these more or ornate look king
Speaker 1: traditional coffins that are sometimes described as having humps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the humps or I was actually thinking about it like petals,
Speaker 1: Like if you look at them end on, they look
Speaker 1: kind of like a flower with four petals. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're quite beautiful. Though of course I can't help but
Speaker 1: look at a picture of it. I'm just like, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that one has a Western vampire in it. This one
Speaker 1: has a jangshi in it. Um so am I thinking
Speaker 1: of That may also be compounded by the by the
Speaker 1: fact that I know that there two or more films
Speaker 1: in which a Western vampire and an Eastern Vampire meet
Speaker 1: in Chinese cinema. That's worth looking up. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: also like that Mr. Vampire does not make you wait
Speaker 1: to see vampires. It's not like you've got to get
Speaker 1: into the you know, have to have all the magic unleashed.
Speaker 1: It's their right from the opening. So while the assistant
Speaker 1: is going around doing all this stuff, we see Dan
Speaker 1: messing around with the sense uh he He also uncovers
Speaker 1: he like peels back a curtain to reveal a boot
Speaker 1: camp style lineup of swaying, uncon anxious fiends of some kind. Again,
Speaker 1: if you don't know the conventions of the genre, you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, wtf what is this? And there again, they're
Speaker 1: dressed in this Ching Dynasty era clothing with these hats on,
Speaker 1: and there are yellow strips of paper covered in red
Speaker 1: writing pinned to their hats so that they hang down
Speaker 1: over their faces. Yeah, and these are essentially spells that
Speaker 1: are binding them and keeping them from running them up. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: this movie is to suggest, and I guess this is
Speaker 1: somewhat historically accurate, that a lot of Taoist magic rituals
Speaker 1: involved like writing a spell on a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and then doing something with that paper, like eating it
Speaker 1: or putting it on something. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I
Speaker 1: guess it comes down to the magical use of language. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also I noted that the spells tend to be
Speaker 1: in I think every case I can think of in
Speaker 1: the movie, written in some kind of red color, red ink,
Speaker 1: or in some cases in blood. And that made me
Speaker 1: think that I do believe it's the case that in
Speaker 1: broadly in Chinese culture read is can that are a
Speaker 1: lucky or holy color? Right? Yes? And in addition to that,
Speaker 1: there are obviously all these amulets and everything everywhere, And
Speaker 1: and Dan is going around with a bunch of sticks
Speaker 1: of burning incense, and he's he's saying to the corpses
Speaker 1: in the in the coffins, He's like, here's your dinner,
Speaker 1: time for time, time for supper, and stuffing the incense
Speaker 1: into the coffins. Oh, and he also makes clear that
Speaker 1: there's a candle burning in front of all the young
Speaker 1: chie lined up with the spells over their faces, and
Speaker 1: he can't let the candle go out because if the
Speaker 1: candle goes out, they will get loose. And he makes
Speaker 1: clear he's like, I can't handle all of you, so
Speaker 1: I've got to keep you. I don't know what in
Speaker 1: a trance or whatever it is. Yes, it's an interesting
Speaker 1: place to start, especially again if you have known nothing
Speaker 1: about the genre, where you have not just a supernatural element,
Speaker 1: but this kind of magical containment, ongoing magical containment and
Speaker 1: management of supernatural entities. Right. They regard these particular vampires
Speaker 1: that are lined up here not really with utter terror,
Speaker 1: but more is like something that you know, you more
Speaker 1: like something that you would work with on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: so you're not mortified by it, but also you realize
Speaker 1: it could be dangerous if you screw up when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with it. It's like like handling dangerous chemicals or something. Right,
Speaker 1: And so he's going around craming the incense and the coffins,
Speaker 1: and then there's there's a really funny part where one
Speaker 1: of the coffins, like a skull pops out of it
Speaker 1: and bites him on the hand. Um, so I enjoyed
Speaker 1: the skull bite. But then there's a good vampire fake out. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the Dan gets attacked by what you think is one
Speaker 1: of the vampires. It hops at him and menaces him
Speaker 1: with fangs. But then oh no, it's like a cat scare.
Speaker 1: It turns out that it's not really him. It's his
Speaker 1: handsome buddy in a in a makeup I guess like
Speaker 1: pranking him, and it comes dangerously close to the film
Speaker 1: mistake of making your fake monster look a little bit
Speaker 1: too good. Um well, he really does look exactly like
Speaker 1: the real ones. So I I was a little confused
Speaker 1: when that happened. But it's not too long. Much longer
Speaker 1: that you have to wait until you see some more vampires,
Speaker 1: and some of them isn't more of the jang xi
Speaker 1: that look better, that look more undead. But this, this prank,
Speaker 1: you know, prank's pranks in horror movie is just a
Speaker 1: bad idea because it of course leads to I don't
Speaker 1: remember exactly how they do this, but through some clutzinus,
Speaker 1: they end up unleashing all of the jiang chi, like
Speaker 1: they knock the I think they knocked the candle over,
Speaker 1: and then the strips of writing come off of their
Speaker 1: foreheads and then they start hopping around attacking them. So
Speaker 1: of course the bumbling students need help from their master.
Speaker 1: And these two students that the master they work for
Speaker 1: is played by Chinging Lamb. This is the this is
Speaker 1: master Gao the hero of the film, and from the
Speaker 1: moment you see him, you know he means business. This
Speaker 1: is the moment when I noticed the uni brow when
Speaker 1: he first comes in, and I was thinking, like, that's
Speaker 1: not a funny unibrow, that's a unibrow I respect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's serious and he he knows what he's doing, like
Speaker 1: when he starts fixing the problem, he gets fixed. He's fast,
Speaker 1: he's deliberate, he's got the moves. Yeah, speaking of moves.
Speaker 1: So it turns in this movie has an interesting combination
Speaker 1: of magic and martial arts. So a lot of what MMR.
Speaker 1: Gau does to fight the vampires is like doing spells
Speaker 1: and rituals and stuff like that, but other things. But
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, it's also just like fighting.
Speaker 1: It's you know, kicks and punches and standard comedy martial arts.
Speaker 1: Maybe not quite as virtuosic as you'd see in like
Speaker 1: one of the comedy action movies of Jackie Chan, but
Speaker 1: a similar kind of vibe that you know, funny fighting. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it did remind me of some of the Jackie Chan
Speaker 1: films I've seen, where they'll be really great and inventive
Speaker 1: use of some sort of a set piece like a chair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. There's at least a little of the of
Speaker 1: that in this. And I have to admit I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not well versed enough in Hong Kong action to
Speaker 1: know you have if what I'm watching in Mr. Vampire
Speaker 1: he is truly great comedy martial arts or if it's
Speaker 1: just like really good or even just decent, but it
Speaker 1: certainly feels awesome when I'm watching it on screen, like
Speaker 1: these are these are well thought out action sequences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same here, I agree. And so there are a lot
Speaker 1: of funny things to it, Like one of them is
Speaker 1: that actually when Master Gal comes in, there's another Taoist
Speaker 1: priest with him, this guy wearing glasses who is at
Speaker 1: the beginning and the end of the film, and this
Speaker 1: guy together they like I think, what they do is
Speaker 1: they bite their fingers and make them bleed, and then
Speaker 1: they use the blood on their fingertips to touch the
Speaker 1: foreheads of the vampires to essentially pause them, like freeze
Speaker 1: them in place. And I think, again, this is because
Speaker 1: of either it's something about the blood or it could
Speaker 1: have to do with putting the red color on their foreheads.
Speaker 1: But but it's funny because they will they will have
Speaker 1: to like pause them and unpause them. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the other priest, at one point, one of the vampires
Speaker 1: is choking him, and he puts the mark on the
Speaker 1: vampire's forehead and it freezes the vampire. But now it's
Speaker 1: frozen choking him, and he has to wipe it off
Speaker 1: and unfreeze him so that he'll get his hands off
Speaker 1: of him and then he can freeze him again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's there's a level of attention shown to
Speaker 1: the to the the action in a film like this.
Speaker 1: It did not even just to say action, but like
Speaker 1: the physical movements, like every physical movement in one of
Speaker 1: these scenes is is so elegantly choreographed. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: wonderful to watch, right. But eventually they fix all the
Speaker 1: malfunctioning vampires. They fix them with martial arts and magic,
Speaker 1: and then they send them off with this other priests.
Speaker 1: The guy wearing glasses. Uh. And I was wondering at
Speaker 1: the beginning, what did this guy like buy a bunch
Speaker 1: of jung shi from from Master Gal? But I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think actually he's another priest, and I
Speaker 1: think what's happening is he is taking them off somewhere
Speaker 1: to be to be given a proper burial so that
Speaker 1: they are no longer vampires. Yeah, that was That was
Speaker 1: what I got from it too, which which again it
Speaker 1: ties in with what we discussed earlier about the origin
Speaker 1: of this monster in general, that it it emerges from
Speaker 1: anxiety and concern over the improper burial or the lack
Speaker 1: of burial for individuals. And so it makes sense that
Speaker 1: our Dallas priests here are are they're part of the solution.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get these folks buried, putting the uh,
Speaker 1: the unruly dead to rest. Yeah. And then and when
Speaker 1: he leads them away, like they're hopping, they've got the
Speaker 1: they've got the spells back on their faces, so they're
Speaker 1: not hopping of their own accord. They're sort of hopping
Speaker 1: as directed. They're being obedient now. But other than that,
Speaker 1: just to give an idea of the main plot situation.
Speaker 1: So after this, Master GW is hired by a wealthy
Speaker 1: businessman named Mr Yam to help with a strategic reburial
Speaker 1: of Mr. Yam's dead father. And the story is that
Speaker 1: a perhaps ski vie or perhaps revenge oriented fortune teller
Speaker 1: has prophesied that if Yam that if Master Yam digs
Speaker 1: up his father's corpse and buries it in a different place,
Speaker 1: this will lead to great fortune. And I think this
Speaker 1: great fortune is to be interpreted as money because he
Speaker 1: mentions that his business is not doing so well lately.
Speaker 1: And then it's also worth noting that Mr Yam has
Speaker 1: a beautiful daughter named Ting. This is Moonlely, and then
Speaker 1: a nephew named Why who is this guy? We mentioned?
Speaker 1: This odious and just magnificently incompetent police commander who is
Speaker 1: also romantically obsessed with his cousin Ting. Yeah, he's fabulous.
Speaker 1: So Master Gao serves as a kind of ritual magic
Speaker 1: consultant for the reburial process of Yam's father, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: once the body is disinterred, Gal notices the telltale signs
Speaker 1: of vampiresm that his body is fat and fresh when
Speaker 1: it should have been decomposed. So it ends up being
Speaker 1: transported to GAO's magical workshop and sealed shut and its
Speaker 1: coffin for protection. And I guess for him to ultimately
Speaker 1: figure out what to do with it, maybe find a
Speaker 1: place to bury it. But of course, you know, in
Speaker 1: a movie like this, no coffin can stay sealed, so
Speaker 1: the vampire is unleashed, setting off a chain of vampiric
Speaker 1: infections and transformations. Mr Yam gets at first, his father
Speaker 1: comes to him and vamps him. Then he goes on
Speaker 1: a rampage, and uh and and so forth, and there's
Speaker 1: this scene of you know how vampire movie goes after
Speaker 1: this that the structure is very similar to the vampire movies.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, like there's gonna be cascading effects leading,
Speaker 1: you know, emanating out from this master vampire, but eventually
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to deal with that master vampire exactly. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I mentioned there's also this simultaneous plot where the handsome
Speaker 1: young hero, one of the two assistants, is targeted by
Speaker 1: a malicious ghost who I think attaches to him after
Speaker 1: he looks at her tombstone. Yes, yeah, I've never heard
Speaker 1: of a ghost targeting somebody in that way before, but
Speaker 1: but that seems to be what happens. He like looks
Speaker 1: at her tombstone and he hears a voice, and after
Speaker 1: that she's just creeping on him. There's this great scene
Speaker 1: where he's writing by the cemetery, I think, where he's
Speaker 1: riding through the woods on a Is he on a horse, No,
Speaker 1: he's not a bicycle. He's on a bicycle, and she
Speaker 1: she like ghost flies across the forest. It's a one
Speaker 1: one of several wonderful wire based martial arts effects where
Speaker 1: she flies through the forest and she she lands gingerly
Speaker 1: right on the back of his bicycle, like all right,
Speaker 1: I'm with you, now, let's go. But then he does.
Speaker 1: He rides underneath a low hanging tree branch and he ducks,
Speaker 1: and then the branch hits her and knocks her off
Speaker 1: the bicycle. Um which which of course reminded me of
Speaker 1: John Carpenter's Big Trouble and a Little China, where we
Speaker 1: have the low pon the the ghost of the spirit
Speaker 1: entity who passes through a vehicle. But then as also,
Speaker 1: you know, we can see that he can pass through things,
Speaker 1: but he can also be hit by a truck, very
Speaker 1: similar in this film, where this ghost has all these
Speaker 1: ghostly powers, but she can also just run smack into
Speaker 1: a tree limb. So I wanted to think for a
Speaker 1: minute about some of the conventions of of these vampire movies,
Speaker 1: because so in Western vampire movies you've got the tropes
Speaker 1: that always appear you've got the things that can be
Speaker 1: used to defeat the vampire, like you know, steaks, crosses, garlic,
Speaker 1: h vampire doesn't show up in a mirror, all those
Speaker 1: kinds of things. And this universe seems to have uh
Speaker 1: similar types of tropes, Like there are things that are
Speaker 1: used for ritual magical effect against vampires or things that
Speaker 1: seem to be true of the vampires, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to try to think about what some of them were.
Speaker 1: One that I found very interesting was the power of
Speaker 1: glutinous rice. Yuh, this movie uses Master Gal repeatedly uses
Speaker 1: sticky rice to ward off vampires or to counteract the
Speaker 1: effects of a person turning into a vampire when Dan
Speaker 1: gets vammed. Yeah, I love this part of the film.
Speaker 1: The one hand, it makes perfect sense. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of what we talked about with the use
Speaker 1: of beans and some cultures as a zooki beans or
Speaker 1: or other beans and other cultures used as in a
Speaker 1: way to fight back against the supernatural or having some
Speaker 1: link to the supernatural. So yeah, I love the idea
Speaker 1: that that the sticky rice could be utilized in such
Speaker 1: a fashion. But this film goes even further by by
Speaker 1: asking the question, Well, what happens when an outbreak of
Speaker 1: of vampires in your town or city causes, um uh,
Speaker 1: a huge demand for sticky rice. How does the local
Speaker 1: rice shop owners respond? And in this film, they respond
Speaker 1: crookedly by cutting of sticky rice with other varieties of rice.
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite parts of the movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a commodities demand problem. Uh you need all
Speaker 1: the sticky rice to fight vampires, and it turns out
Speaker 1: regular rice is no good, does not help you at all.
Speaker 1: It's got to be sticky rice. And so yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a scene where a character is sent to the rice
Speaker 1: shop to get a whole bunch of sticky rice to
Speaker 1: to fight off the vampire. And an unethical rice shop
Speaker 1: owner tells his dim witted son, why don't you mix
Speaker 1: thirty caddies of of regular rice with the twenty of
Speaker 1: sticky rice. They'll never know the difference. And so and
Speaker 1: I think the dimwitted sun gets it wrong, but still
Speaker 1: does dilute it. Yeah, and of course that is causes
Speaker 1: the whole outbreak to get even worse. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely love the use of the sticky rice. We
Speaker 1: already mentioned the spells, but Master Gal uses a number
Speaker 1: of different like holy relics and artifacts to battle. I
Speaker 1: think my favorite one that he uses against the vampires
Speaker 1: is the glowing dagger, the dagger that is made out
Speaker 1: of Chinese coins and infused by the power of the moon. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a part focuses the power of the moon on
Speaker 1: it and it makes it glow. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to deal with that is, but I thought that
Speaker 1: was cool. Yeah. So I mean we I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: we we do see some of the similar ideas like
Speaker 1: holy elements, elements involving reflections and light um, celestial energy,
Speaker 1: you know, solar energy and the more western varieties, but
Speaker 1: the idea that lunar and energy could be utilized as well.
Speaker 1: I like that. Yeah. But there here's one thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you picked up on this seeming contradiction,
Speaker 1: maybe I just don't understand. But um, so, one thing
Speaker 1: is it's implied that the vampires are blind and that
Speaker 1: they can only detect you by hearing you, right, And
Speaker 1: that was the reason that you could hold your breath
Speaker 1: to hide from the vampire, because if you're not breathe ing,
Speaker 1: the vampire can't find you. Or is it that they
Speaker 1: smell your breath, because remember there's a scene where Dan
Speaker 1: buys himself a few moments of time to escape, which
Speaker 1: he you know, doesn't use. He just like gloats, I
Speaker 1: think for a second, but he sticks some things in
Speaker 1: the young cheese nos in its nostrils can't detect him.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is the smell, so for it's either hearing
Speaker 1: or smell or some combination thereof the vampire can't find
Speaker 1: you if you're not breathing, so characters repeatedly hold their
Speaker 1: breath for a moment. As the original title says, while
Speaker 1: the vampires like looking right in their face, whatever the effect,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to not be able to see them. But
Speaker 1: also I've read that it's supposed to be a convention
Speaker 1: of these stories that the vampires are afraid of their
Speaker 1: own reflections in a mirror, and I wondered how that
Speaker 1: works if they can't actually see So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about that. Maybe it's just something that's not consistent in
Speaker 1: the lore, or maybe I don't quite understand well. Also,
Speaker 1: the Master Vampire, and this seems to be less limited
Speaker 1: when he comes back after his first initial defeat um
Speaker 1: because when he comes back, he looks a bit different.
Speaker 1: He seems to be looking around with eyes more. He
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be as Um is based in scent,
Speaker 1: so which raises additional questions about exactly how how these
Speaker 1: these these beings work, but they seems to come back
Speaker 1: more powerful. So generally in Daoist rituals, is the moon
Speaker 1: considered a holy thing that can ward off evil because
Speaker 1: I remember there's also a part where Um when the
Speaker 1: ghost first appears to try to uh, to seduce the
Speaker 1: handsome young hero in the forest. Uh. There's a song
Speaker 1: that is being sung on the soundtrack and the translation
Speaker 1: on the subtitles of the song there is a line
Speaker 1: that said, who would want a ghostly bride to worship
Speaker 1: the moon with her? I didn't know quite what to
Speaker 1: make of that, but well, I mean, the moon has
Speaker 1: a has been important roles in Chinese mythology, you know,
Speaker 1: and is in the place of the elixir of the immortals.
Speaker 1: That is a you know, a place where the goddess resides.
Speaker 1: It is a place where the where the rabbit lives.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: cool magical ideas about the moon. Is is not only
Speaker 1: like an entity but a place in in in Chinese mythology,
Speaker 1: whereas I'm not sure that the response that there's as
Speaker 1: much about that with the sun. You know, when you
Speaker 1: think about prominent solar Chinese myths, I mean, obviously the
Speaker 1: one that comes to mind is the shooting of the
Speaker 1: surplus suns out of the sky by the Great Archer,
Speaker 1: But in that it's like that, it's more like the
Speaker 1: sun is an entity or multiple entities that must be
Speaker 1: dealt with. I'm sure I'm missing something that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Chinese mythology is a broad tent, and uh
Speaker 1: likely there's some exceptions to this that I just don't
Speaker 1: have in my head at the moment. I guess we
Speaker 1: got to wrap up in a minute here. But one
Speaker 1: more thing I wanted to do before we did was
Speaker 1: the excellent jail scene. I love Yes. So one point
Speaker 1: in the movie, Master Gao is framed for the murder
Speaker 1: of a character. I think it's for the murder of
Speaker 1: Mr Yam, the wealthy businessman who hired him, and it
Speaker 1: goes like this. He shows up when the body is found,
Speaker 1: and why the incompetent policeman is saying, well, he has
Speaker 1: holes in his neck, so those must have been caused
Speaker 1: by a gun, and then everybody's like, wait, that doesn't
Speaker 1: really make sense, and he's like, oh, yeah, that's right, um,
Speaker 1: because the neck is really torn up. And then he's like,
Speaker 1: well it maybe it was caused by someone who is
Speaker 1: a martial arts expert, who was an expert in the
Speaker 1: ninefold darts. I don't know what that means. I tried
Speaker 1: to look that up and I couldn't find anything about it,
Speaker 1: so maybe I was not using the right search terms.
Speaker 1: But then finally Master Gau reveals it looks like these
Speaker 1: holes were actually made by long fingernails, right, so the
Speaker 1: the vampire like sticks long fingernails in the victim's neck
Speaker 1: and then why the Policeman's like, hey, Master Gau, you
Speaker 1: have long fingernails. You're under arrest, and then he takes
Speaker 1: him back to the jail to torture him for information.
Speaker 1: But while he's in his jail cell overnight and repeatedly
Speaker 1: getting his head stuck between the bar, the handsome two
Speaker 1: of his assistants shows up to rescue him, but then
Speaker 1: the vampire also comes to life, and then why is
Speaker 1: running around causing problems as well. There's a great fight
Speaker 1: scene that that that whole part was one of the
Speaker 1: best parts of the movie. I agree. But before we
Speaker 1: go should we should we discuss the gorilla scene. What
Speaker 1: was that supposed to be a gorilla? Okay, so I
Speaker 1: think it was Okay, Okay, we're setting the scene here.
Speaker 1: At one point, the police, I guess, being led by
Speaker 1: by why the world's worst policemen are out in the countryside.
Speaker 1: They've left the city and they're like on a on
Speaker 1: a grassy hill and they find a cave opening, and
Speaker 1: the police go out into the cave opening, I think
Speaker 1: with their guns drawn, uh, maybe believing that the vampire
Speaker 1: is in the cave. That That's one thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: in this movie. The police are fully on board with
Speaker 1: the supernatural villain and they're they're ready to go fight
Speaker 1: the vampire with guns. Say what you will about them.
Speaker 1: Once it's clear that it's supernatural, they're like, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on board. We'll do what we need to do.
Speaker 1: We'll go we'll help go find this thing before it
Speaker 1: gets dark and it becomes more powerful. But when they
Speaker 1: go into the cave chased out by a guerrilla yeah,
Speaker 1: chase a guy in a guerrilla suit. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I haven't really researched it or anything and see what
Speaker 1: what critics have said about it over the years by
Speaker 1: but based on just a couple of brief mentions, I
Speaker 1: think this was just included as a gag. It's it's
Speaker 1: just like a sight gag of like, what if then
Speaker 1: a guerrilla chased them out of the cave, wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be funny? Um? Though it it does seem at least
Speaker 1: to my you know, um, you know my eyes. And
Speaker 1: again I'm not familiar with all, you know, everything that
Speaker 1: would have been considered like normal within comedy at the time,
Speaker 1: Like what what makes a normal action comedy in mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties Hong Kong cinema? Uh Like, so maybe this
Speaker 1: isn't that far out of line to have a sudden
Speaker 1: guerrilla jagg show up, but it felt out of line.
Speaker 1: It felt like like where did that come from? I
Speaker 1: almost feel like I'm part of one of those those
Speaker 1: guerrilla costume experiments where they're they're checking to see if
Speaker 1: you're paying attention to the scene. Well deployed random gorilla
Speaker 1: is a is a good trick. Yeah, So that scene
Speaker 1: is just really that's that's a really crazy sequence that
Speaker 1: that doesn't have huge bearing on the plot. I guess
Speaker 1: that's the other thing. It doesn't really connect to any
Speaker 1: other sequence, so you can sort of compartmentalize it is
Speaker 1: just one of the one of the police chiefs um
Speaker 1: wacky adventures. Have you ever seen the movie Ape? I
Speaker 1: think it's just called Ape. It's a bad rip off
Speaker 1: of King Kong. It's just a giant ape movie. But
Speaker 1: the main thing I remember about it, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since I saw it. The main thing I
Speaker 1: remember is there's a scene where a guy in a
Speaker 1: guerrilla costume just gives the middle finger to the camera
Speaker 1: for a solid fifteen seconds. Oh, I've I have seen
Speaker 1: that sequence. I believe there was you know, there was
Speaker 1: a there was an old film title that came from
Speaker 1: Hollywood that Dan Ackroyd and John Candy and a number
Speaker 1: of folks did, and it had a lot of clips
Speaker 1: from old films um and they had a whole section
Speaker 1: on guerilla movies that was that was pretty fabulous. And
Speaker 1: I remember that APE. I definitely remember that Ape. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think maybe we gotta call it there from Mr Vampire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but hopefully we've we've we we've raised everyone's interest level
Speaker 1: regarding Mr. Vampire. I it's definitely worth seeking out. I look,
Speaker 1: I didn't look around much for this. I think there's
Speaker 1: some some rips of it out there, but I can't
Speaker 1: speak to the quality. There have been various DVD and
Speaker 1: Blu Ray releases over the years. The DVD version is
Speaker 1: the one that we watched, and we rented it from
Speaker 1: Atlanta's own Video Drome, the last video rental store here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. But I think you can buy copies of it.
Speaker 1: I think it's commercially available. Uh. And I have seen
Speaker 1: it on streaming services before, just I don't think currently.
Speaker 1: But this stuff changes, so who knows it may become.
Speaker 1: Perhaps there's and and it's also possible that there's maybe
Speaker 1: a Hong Kong cinema centric service that I'm just not
Speaker 1: privy to that would be the ideal placed you go
Speaker 1: for your Mr. Vampire and Mr Vampire related titles. If
Speaker 1: you do end up watching it, be warned in advanced
Speaker 1: about content. Uh, it's just worth reading about a bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's one thing that came to my mind, which is
Speaker 1: that there are a couple of scenes in the movie
Speaker 1: where it appears that real animals are killed on screen,
Speaker 1: like there's a chicken and a and a snake, I
Speaker 1: think a dead snake for something. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: read that they the snake that they used was then
Speaker 1: made into a soup, which I guess is partially comforting.
Speaker 1: But yes, so be aware. But then again I think
Speaker 1: it's a good idea if you're if you're looking at
Speaker 1: some of these older movies, UM would be aware. In general, Yeah, IMDb.
Speaker 1: IMDb has been pretty good for me recently on selections
Speaker 1: where they have the parental um guidance section, which I
Speaker 1: used to just not care about, but especially as a
Speaker 1: as a parent, now I care about it. But also
Speaker 1: in terms of selecting things for weird house cinema. It's
Speaker 1: a great way on at least more well known films
Speaker 1: to just trying to just check in and see what
Speaker 1: has been flagged. And sometimes it's it's hilariously fun where
Speaker 1: someone will be like, well, it is implied that a
Speaker 1: human is naked in this film. It is not shown,
Speaker 1: but it is heavily implied, so beware. Uh. So I
Speaker 1: love the uh some of the warnings that are just
Speaker 1: a bet over the top like that, But then you
Speaker 1: can also if you know, find out if there are
Speaker 1: you know, examples of potential animal cruelty or depicted animal
Speaker 1: cruelty that you just might not want to watch, even
Speaker 1: if it uh, you know, even if no animals are harmed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you don't want to see the fictional version of
Speaker 1: something either. So I've had good luck with the IMDb
Speaker 1: Parental Guidance section. A good idea, used as needed, used
Speaker 1: as needed. All Right, We're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: the coffin on this one and uh and give it
Speaker 1: a proper burial. But who knows, maybe in the future
Speaker 1: we will be back with more Jangshi action. I have
Speaker 1: to admit there is there's at least one title that
Speaker 1: has been on my list uh since the beginning of
Speaker 1: World Weird How Cinema. We may come back to Weird
Speaker 1: How Cinema, of course, is are a Friday episode that
Speaker 1: we put out in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed. We're normally a science and culture podcast, and
Speaker 1: our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do
Speaker 1: a little bit of listener mail on Monday's. We do
Speaker 1: the Artifact on Wednesdays, which is a short form episode,
Speaker 1: But then Friday is Weird Our Cinema and You can
Speaker 1: find all of this wherever you get your podcast. Just
Speaker 1: look for the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: If you want to get to it quickly, you can
Speaker 1: go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That
Speaker 1: will sends you over to the I Heart Radio um
Speaker 1: page for our show, and there's actually a store button
Speaker 1: on there. You can go there if you want, and
Speaker 1: you can buy some stuff to Blow your Mind merch
Speaker 1: and you can actually buy some weird how cinema merch. Now,
Speaker 1: as of this recording, the only thing available is a
Speaker 1: button no sorry, a sticker or a magnet. But I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that we get a shirt in there soon. We
Speaker 1: just have to get some other sort of file for
Speaker 1: that to work properly, so um uh at anyway, check
Speaker 1: that out if you're interests huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.