Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: and this is Joe and we're bringing you an episode
Speaker 1: from the vault today. Uh. This is one that we
Speaker 1: did on the movie Mr Vampire, a great martial arts
Speaker 1: hopping vampire movie of of Hong Kong cinema from what
Speaker 1: is this? I guess this came out in nine five?
Speaker 1: Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. It has kicks, it
Speaker 1: has furniture, it has rice was so much great rice action.
Speaker 1: This is a really fun flick. Yeah. It always has
Speaker 1: a great uh Taoist priest who who who knows all
Speaker 1: the spells to keep the dead from reviving? Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's a lot of fun. So this one originally
Speaker 1: published on July nine, and we hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema rewind. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we are hopping into the world of Daoist sorcery,
Speaker 1: Hong Kong monsters, glutinous rice, martial arts, and and much
Speaker 1: more with our very first Jong She movie. I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to do one of these movies for a while
Speaker 1: because I had never actually seen a Young She film
Speaker 1: and uh and and I was aware of them for
Speaker 1: a while having I guess I've seen like pictures of
Speaker 1: them on the internet. Uh so, so this has been
Speaker 1: in my mind for years, and finally we got to
Speaker 1: see one. Today We're gonna be talking about Mr Vampire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm excited as well because I think I was in
Speaker 1: the same boat as you. I I knew about Jan She.
Speaker 1: I knew they they existed in in Chinese folklore as
Speaker 1: as being this kind of vampire, kind of zombie zombie
Speaker 1: creature with with unique characteristics all their own. But I'd
Speaker 1: never watched a Jiangshi movie. Uh Though, interestingly enough, right
Speaker 1: this was before you brought up the idea of of
Speaker 1: of of doing one. I had picked up the new
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons book Van Ripton's Guide to Raven Loft,
Speaker 1: and it includes a domain in it inspired by Chinese
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore, so it includes stats for Jiangshi monsters.
Speaker 1: It's a in in Dungeons and Dragons. It's a ninth
Speaker 1: level undead entity with the power to drain the energy
Speaker 1: of its victims and a shape shift, so young she
Speaker 1: is both a class of Chinese mythological monster and a
Speaker 1: specific genre of especially nineteen eighties Hong Kong martial arts
Speaker 1: comedy films. That's correct, Yeah, it's and this is one
Speaker 1: of the big films. We started looking around like, well,
Speaker 1: which which youngshi movies should we do? And the signs
Speaker 1: increasingly pointed to Mr Vampire from five because it's it
Speaker 1: was a huge hit. It was responsible for really popularizing
Speaker 1: it in not only within Chinese cinema and creating a
Speaker 1: whole sub genre, but also spreading out and it was
Speaker 1: very popular in Japan and ultimately you know across to
Speaker 1: to Uh to the West as well. So and also
Speaker 1: this is the one we could rent from our local
Speaker 1: video store video drum. Yeah, these movies are not widely
Speaker 1: digitally available, at least that I could find, but at
Speaker 1: least not right now. I feel like they have been recently.
Speaker 1: But um, I have to say, Amazon Prime used to
Speaker 1: be my go to place for a lot of weird movies,
Speaker 1: but I feel like their selection is not as expansive
Speaker 1: as it was just a couple of years ago. So Mr.
Speaker 1: Vampire is really a title that sort of grabs me
Speaker 1: by the fangs or by the fingernails, as it may be.
Speaker 1: To begin with, Uh, there's something a little bit cheeky
Speaker 1: about it. But also I think this is not a
Speaker 1: direct translation of the original title, which I think uh
Speaker 1: in the Cantonese original title was it translates to like
Speaker 1: hold your breath for a moment or something. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that and the reason for that is because that's
Speaker 1: that's one of the plot points. And how do you
Speaker 1: avoid the young she discovering where you are and draining
Speaker 1: the life out of you. Well, just don't breathe and
Speaker 1: then it can't detect your presence. But Mr Vampire, Uh,
Speaker 1: that that also that also kind of works. It's it's
Speaker 1: not the name of a vampire in it, but it's
Speaker 1: referring to our main character, who is a Dallas priest
Speaker 1: whose expertise is the management and sometimes slaying of of
Speaker 1: of vampires, and therefore he's Mr Vampire in the same
Speaker 1: way that someone who comes and fixes your pipes might
Speaker 1: be Mr Plumbing or Mr Plumber. I was thinking of
Speaker 1: it more along the lines of Mr Coffee, Like he
Speaker 1: is a machine that is designed to perfectly execute this function,
Speaker 1: and so in this case, our hero in the film,
Speaker 1: the Taoist priest played by Uh Chining Lamb, is the
Speaker 1: machine that perfectly executes the Jung She cycle. So let's
Speaker 1: talk for just a little bit about the young She
Speaker 1: because some of you may be super familiar with this already.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've read the New Raven Loft book and so
Speaker 1: you know, you're like, I know all the stats, Rob,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go into the details, but I
Speaker 1: will anyway because it's super interesting and I think it
Speaker 1: it enhances our understanding of this film. Even though this
Speaker 1: film is very much a horror comedy, it's not like
Speaker 1: it has I think, you know, really deep things to say,
Speaker 1: but it is. It is a treatment of some of
Speaker 1: of a monster, a monster that emerged out of Chinese history,
Speaker 1: out of Chinese folklore, and out of real anxieties. So
Speaker 1: first of all, jang She literally means the stiff or
Speaker 1: the rigid dead, and uh and and and the reason
Speaker 1: for that will become clear when we start talking about
Speaker 1: how they move, especially, So I'd love to just set
Speaker 1: the scene for you here if I may. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: get it. Imagine yourself out on a road so frustratingly
Speaker 1: close to the walls of the city you've been traveling to,
Speaker 1: and yet night is falling, the mist is rolling in,
Speaker 1: and then up ahead you see several figures in the gloom.
Speaker 1: Who are they? Are they fellow travelers, perhaps headed to
Speaker 1: where you're going, or coming from the opposite direction, maybe
Speaker 1: there 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 bipedal 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 Chain 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 chee from your body. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think the thing about the hopping really the hopping is
Speaker 1: key because it's such a vital part of of the folklore,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time it can seem ridiculous
Speaker 1: because it is so unnatural, and sometimes it's hard for
Speaker 1: us to really like figure out, like where does at
Speaker 1: what point does the unnatural become the ridiculous? At what
Speaker 1: point does the ridiculous then become the uncanny? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I won't deny that it looks funny in
Speaker 1: the movie when they're hopping, and it clearly is supposed
Speaker 1: to look funny in the movie because this isn't like
Speaker 1: a straight horror movie. This is a horror comedy. But
Speaker 1: I can see how the hopping could be quite unnerving
Speaker 1: given the right cultural associations, and if it were I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe if it were filmed from the right
Speaker 1: angle to because like you can get the funny aspects,
Speaker 1: like it's kind of a sack Ray zombie, right, it's
Speaker 1: just the feet can't move independently. It's hopping up and
Speaker 1: down with the arms outstretched. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it symbolizes that this body no longer works as it should.
Speaker 1: In fact, it is no longer really a human body,
Speaker 1: but something else exactly so, so that's the the Yangshi.
Speaker 1: But as as most of you know from listening to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, monsters don't just exist in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. Monsters always means something. And so I was curious,
Speaker 1: like I know a number of you are curious, where
Speaker 1: does this come from, what does it mean? What is
Speaker 1: the hopping all about? Why does the riga mortis seem
Speaker 1: to be so key to this depiction of the undead?
Speaker 1: And I read rand Acry. I looked at a few
Speaker 1: different sources, and then I found this paper by historian
Speaker 1: Juhy Sue. And this is actually their Doctor of Philosophy
Speaker 1: dissertation at Washington University from twenty nineteen. But it's titled
Speaker 1: The Afterlife of Corpses, A Social History of Unburied dead
Speaker 1: Bodies in the Ching Dynasty sixty four through nineteen eleven. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So what can you tell us about these creatures? Okay? So,
Speaker 1: while Chinese mythology and folklore is filled with various ghosts
Speaker 1: and monsters, obviously, uh the jiang Xi seemed to emerge
Speaker 1: out of a Ching Dynasty crisis concerning the burial of
Speaker 1: the dead. So Sue writes that numerous records from the
Speaker 1: eighteenth and nineteenth century discussed the problem of unburied bodies
Speaker 1: left on the ground without proper burial. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is these were not exclusively say, the victims of
Speaker 1: war or famine or disaster, you know, something where even
Speaker 1: in the best of situations can overwhelm your ability to
Speaker 1: deal with the dead. They were seemingly, for the most part,
Speaker 1: individuals who simply had no permanent grave, and this, Sue writes,
Speaker 1: was due to changing socio economic structure during this time
Speaker 1: period and the 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 necessarily like immediately discarded,
Speaker 1: but it might be put somewhere and then it would
Speaker 1: never find its way to a permanent destination. This actually
Speaker 1: plays into the movie. I hadn't thought about this, but
Speaker 1: in the plot of Mr. Vampire. Though again this is
Speaker 1: a comedy movie. Part of the incitement of the vampire
Speaker 1: curse in this film seems to be a dispute about
Speaker 1: over the land on which a body is buried. That
Speaker 1: there's like a dispute between this wealthy family. Uh this
Speaker 1: you know, this wealthy family with this businessman patriarch and
Speaker 1: a fortune teller who originally wanted access to some kind
Speaker 1: of burial plot and the businessman bought it off the
Speaker 1: fort fortune teller seemingly with some kind of coercion for
Speaker 1: the for the purchase because it was said to be
Speaker 1: a very lucky place to bury a body that would
Speaker 1: bring great fortune to the further, you know, the future
Speaker 1: generations of the family. But obviously the fortune teller who
Speaker 1: was forced to sell the land didn't like this. And
Speaker 1: so a dispute about land rights and the burial of
Speaker 1: the body seems to be at the root of whatever
Speaker 1: black magic causes the vampire to begin with. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that that plays right into this this historical setting out
Speaker 1: of which it emerges this idea that that that the
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, while the the
Speaker 1: young non region was most impacted by this situation. It
Speaker 1: became an empire wide crisis because it wasn't just about
Speaker 1: the dead and in dealing with the dead, but it
Speaker 1: perceived cultural decline and funeral custom and and even a
Speaker 1: decline in devotion to 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 in it, really 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 framing the wrong guy for the
Speaker 1: murder is not addressing any problems. And so there's this idea, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the the government and the law is not maintaining
Speaker 1: any the necessary order, and that this lack of order
Speaker 1: also applies to our our honor to the dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the character in the movie who wants to
Speaker 1: have his ancestor reburied, which again, this is one of
Speaker 1: the inciting incidents in the film. He seems to be
Speaker 1: making decisions that could be Again I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: the right cultural way to read this, but I think
Speaker 1: it is to be inter pritty 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 Gal 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. Were gonna again that I'm not okay,
Speaker 1: all right? So that is, I believe from the original
Speaker 1: Cantonese trailer. So that is if you if there's any
Speaker 1: language in any dialogue in that trailer that you heard
Speaker 1: that is Cantonese, and um, I I recommend watching the
Speaker 1: film in Cantonese if you can. I listened. I watched
Speaker 1: about half of it dubbed and then switched over to
Speaker 1: Cantonese with subtitles. Yeah, about halfway through, and I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the original language more. I was gonna say the
Speaker 1: same thing. I watched it with the Cantonese audio with subtitles,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the better way to do it,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of the line delivery in Cantonese
Speaker 1: that is quite funny, even even if you don't speak
Speaker 1: can't and he can't understand what they're saying. I would
Speaker 1: single out the main star of the movie, Chining Lamb
Speaker 1: for some of his very funny, stern delivery of particular
Speaker 1: lines in certain scenes, like I really like the scene
Speaker 1: where his his assistant who is turning into a vampire,
Speaker 1: is saying, like, what's going to happen to me? And
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And we'll get back to him. But he is. He
Speaker 1: is indeed great in this It's hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: the film without him, because his character is at once
Speaker 1: stern and serious and heroic and capable, and he had
Speaker 1: at the same time does occasionally look like a buffoon
Speaker 1: as his befitting of a horror comedy. But it's a
Speaker 1: careful line to walk, like how do you make your
Speaker 1: hero buffoonish enough but also a capable action horror star.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that theme. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's start talking about some of the folks involved
Speaker 1: in this film, because it does have a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting people in it. Uh. First of all, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the director, who also was one of the screenwriters,
Speaker 1: Ricky law Low was born in nineteen nine and Mr.
Speaker 1: Vampire is is his big hit. I mean it was
Speaker 1: a huge hit. So he went on to do and
Speaker 1: is still doing plenty of films in this vein h
Speaker 1: including The Romance of the Vampires in nineteen and more
Speaker 1: recently Dallas Prieste, a film starring Sue Ho Chin, one
Speaker 1: of the stars from Mr. Vampire. This this is a trend.
Speaker 1: We'll see a lot. Who is Sue Ho Chen in
Speaker 1: Mr Vampire. He's the handsome assistant. Uh and we'll get
Speaker 1: to him in a second. Yeah, okay, yeah, he's good
Speaker 1: now with the producer on this film is also a
Speaker 1: huge name in Hong Kong cinema, though I'm to understand
Speaker 1: he was largely hands off with Mr. Vampire. But we
Speaker 1: have to point out that Samuel Hung was the producer. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody's heard of Sama Hung. He's one
Speaker 1: of the he's one of the big his names in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong cinema, certainly outside of Hong Kong, well, when
Speaker 1: you get into like just international cinema. He's one of
Speaker 1: those people who you just look at a picture of
Speaker 1: him and you're like, that guy's the boss. He's the boss.
Speaker 1: Of something. Yeah, yeah, legendary rotund Hong Kong actor, martial artist,
Speaker 1: producer and director. And um yeah, he's he's been in
Speaker 1: it's been so many things. In fact, he was in
Speaker 1: one of the other key films of this genre, this
Speaker 1: the horror comedy, the Hong Kong Horror Comedy, and that
Speaker 1: was an Encounters of the Spooky Kind that occurred, uh
Speaker 1: several years later. It was it was sort of the
Speaker 1: 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 Jung Shi or is it about something else? I
Speaker 1: am not entirely sure, but one of the same writers
Speaker 1: was involved in it. Um, so I know that it
Speaker 1: has it at least has spooky stuff in it. It
Speaker 1: has Encounters of the Spooky Kind in it. But I said,
Speaker 1: I sadly haven't seen it yet. It's really the next
Speaker 1: one I should see because it's it's a huge and
Speaker 1: very influential. Now. I was reading in a book called
Speaker 1: Spooky Encounter It's a Guilo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror
Speaker 1: by Daniel O'Brien, and in that O'Brien says that that
Speaker 1: Hung wasn't was. Samohung was inspired by stories that his
Speaker 1: mother told him when he was a child, as well
Speaker 1: as a particular story from Poushsong Ling's Tales from a
Speaker 1: Chinese Studio, which I was excited to read because I'm
Speaker 1: really fond of Tales from a Chinese Studio. I have
Speaker 1: the I think it's the Penguin Books edition, which doesn't
Speaker 1: include all of Poushong Ling's stories and retellings of these
Speaker 1: various weird tales from China, but it has a number
Speaker 1: of them. Now, you sent me a link to a
Speaker 1: e book version of this that did have the story
Speaker 1: in it, and so I read this story, the one.
Speaker 1: The story is called the resurrect Or. No, not the
Speaker 1: Resurrector Corps, the Resuscitated Corps. Yes, I believe you're right,
Speaker 1: and it's uh. I was. I was improuded. So the
Speaker 1: thing about Pooh song links stories is that they 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.
Speaker 1: So the basic story here is that there are four
Speaker 1: travelers who arrive at is it an inn or a
Speaker 1: house that they're they're on the road, and they get
Speaker 1: to someplace where they really need to stay for the
Speaker 1: night because the night has come on, and that they
Speaker 1: can't stay outside and there's no it must be an
Speaker 1: inn because basically there's no room at the end, and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, well can you give us somewhere to stay,
Speaker 1: you know, even if we don't have our own rooms,
Speaker 1: And so the homeowner, the innkeeper, is like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you can stay in this room with my dead daughter
Speaker 1: in law's corpse that hasn't been buried yet, right, very
Speaker 1: very good, very cool. And this is of course getting
Speaker 1: into the idea, you know, like she hasn't been buried
Speaker 1: yet perhaps because they have, they have not found a
Speaker 1: place to bury her, right, and again getting into these
Speaker 1: big concerns about you know, maybe bad magic comes on
Speaker 1: when somebody doesn't receive the right kind of ritual burial
Speaker 1: in a timely manner. So the four travelers go to
Speaker 1: sleep in the room, and then in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, one of them wakes up and realizes that
Speaker 1: the body of the dead daughter in law is getting
Speaker 1: up off of the table where it's resting, and the
Speaker 1: dead daughter in law goes around to each of the
Speaker 1: sleeping travelers and breathes in their faces, and the breathing
Speaker 1: on them there seems to be something very sinister about this,
Speaker 1: But eventually the one traveler who's awake while this is happening,
Speaker 1: gets up and runs out, and the dead daughter in
Speaker 1: law is very mad about him running away, and she
Speaker 1: chases him, chases him all the way to a monastery
Speaker 1: where he bangs on the door and begs to be
Speaker 1: let in, and the priest is like, I don't know
Speaker 1: who you are, you can't come in, And so he's
Speaker 1: running around outside. He hides behind a tree and then
Speaker 1: the the zombie lady attacks him, but gets her arms
Speaker 1: wrapped around the tree. Did I understand that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like basically, like he she reaches to the left and
Speaker 1: he ducks to the other side, and then she reaches
Speaker 1: on that side and he ducks the other side, and
Speaker 1: they're just going back and forth. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: very much a Hong Kong martial arts comedy skit. And
Speaker 1: they do this until they're absolutely exhausted, the both of them,
Speaker 1: even the corpse. Uh. And then I guess the corpse
Speaker 1: gets the bright idea, I'll just reach out and grab
Speaker 1: him on both sides of the tree at the same time.
Speaker 1: But then what happens is her long scary ghost fingernails
Speaker 1: get stuck in the tree, and so she's just stuck
Speaker 1: to the trees, and the next morning the authorities come
Speaker 1: and this resurrected corpse is stuck to the tree with
Speaker 1: her fingernails in the wood. The end. And that's the
Speaker 1: great thing about this stories. I think I think the
Speaker 1: last I may be remembering this wrong, but I think
Speaker 1: the last line is something like the local governor made
Speaker 1: a report of the incident. Yes, they often ill often
Speaker 1: that's the form of these stories. They'll often begin with saying, uh,
Speaker 1: telling you who told you this? Who told him this story?
Speaker 1: You know, to give it, I guess kind of it
Speaker 1: gives it an air of authenticity. Or it ends with
Speaker 1: something like that, saying like where it was recorded, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it? And then everything was fine. So Mr
Speaker 1: Vampire not a direct adaptation of that, but you can
Speaker 1: definitely see some of the connections there, some of the
Speaker 1: you know, the com edy car right, alright. So a
Speaker 1: couple of the screenwriters were just gonna blow through here
Speaker 1: kind of quickly, but they were accomplished screenwriters. There's Chuck
Speaker 1: Hon Sato I believe it is, who wrote on some
Speaker 1: major Hong Kong films featuring stars such as Jackie Chan
Speaker 1: and Jet Lee. Their screenwriter Barry Wong who lived, who
Speaker 1: worked on such films as Fight Back to School starring
Speaker 1: Stephen Chow, and two different John Wu films, Heart Boiled
Speaker 1: and The Killer, both starring Chow Yun Fat, some of
Speaker 1: the most famous of the recent well not that recent anymore,
Speaker 1: but recent decades Hong Kong action movies. Yeah, definitely names
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong cinema that resonate globally. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see the connection to Stephen Chow as well,
Speaker 1: because I would say, in many ways, I think Stephen
Speaker 1: Chow is kind of a modern inheritor of this kind
Speaker 1: of martial arts action comedy thing with with supernatural elements
Speaker 1: like we see in Mr. Vampire. Not so much in
Speaker 1: the horror vein, but still supernatural fighting comedies. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of his working Kung Fu Hustle, I think has some
Speaker 1: some some inspiration points in films like Mr. Vampire would
Speaker 1: seem to me. Now, the story on this film came
Speaker 1: from Ying Wong, who was born in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: And I don't know much about Ying Wong, but he's
Speaker 1: had his hands in a number of really cool looking
Speaker 1: film projects, both as a writer and a director. He
Speaker 1: wrote the novel that served as the basis for nineteen
Speaker 1: eight threes Bastard Swordsman, and his other credits include Return
Speaker 1: of the Demon from seven, which he also directed nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties The Swordsman, and an interesting looking Chinese mummy movie,
Speaker 1: which said just based on based on the cover, it
Speaker 1: looks like it involves like jade armor, like jade burial armor. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that that one also has Ghostbusters in it. Uh,
Speaker 1: not you know, our Ghostbusters, but in general Ghostbusters. Most notably, however,
Speaker 1: Wong co wrote the that other earlier important Hong Kong
Speaker 1: supernatural comedy Encounters of the Spooky Kind uh that starred
Speaker 1: Semo Hung in nineteen eighty. Okay, well that one's still
Speaker 1: in the list for me. But I feel like we
Speaker 1: got to get to our star. We've been sort of
Speaker 1: burying the lead as we sometimes do here because I've
Speaker 1: just been wanting to talk about Chin Ying Lamb. Yes,
Speaker 1: he plays Mr Gao a k A Mr Vampire. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a He's an actor who lived nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: through so, you know, sadly short lived, but boy he
Speaker 1: he acted a lot during that period. Um. He's very
Speaker 1: much the star of this picture. He's our Mono Brow
Speaker 1: Dallas priest who specializes in the handling of Jiangshi and
Speaker 1: other various spirits, and he has a pretty interesting history.
Speaker 1: Started out in stunt work for the Shaw Brothers and
Speaker 1: Golden Harvest Studio. He was a personal assistant to Bruce Lee,
Speaker 1: and then he joined Semohunk's the Stunt Team and the
Speaker 1: two 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 going to
Speaker 1: get chinging lamb uh. Though though he also did I
Speaker 1: want to point out he did. Look it does look
Speaker 1: like he did some unrelated and serious roles as well,
Speaker 1: so you know, hopefully it balanced out in his career.
Speaker 1: So in this movie, they have made a very interesting
Speaker 1: costuming and makeup decision to give our hero the sort
Speaker 1: of the unflappable, stern competent master Taoist priest a unibrow
Speaker 1: as you as you said, a mono brow. I guess
Speaker 1: you could use either term. But I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the meaning of the unibrow in this movie. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just his natural facial hair that is that that is
Speaker 1: something 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. 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 comedic it's supposed still 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 monta brow is considered
Speaker 1: a desirable trade. It's considered very handsome or beautiful to
Speaker 1: have a single brow. Yeah, it's definitely gonna gonna range
Speaker 1: across time and uh in space, I think specifically, especially
Speaker 1: in some like Central Asian culture as a unit brow
Speaker 1: was considered very desirable. Yeah. Now I was looking around
Speaker 1: for any indication on what it might have meant uh
Speaker 1: to Chinese audiences, or if it was a statement on
Speaker 1: something that was common, uh, you know, amongst say Dallas
Speaker 1: priest or something, and I couldn't really find an answer.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see bushy eyebrow show up in in
Speaker 1: various Chinese um illustrations and depictions, often attributed to gods
Speaker 1: and immortals. You know, there's a there's a wise nature
Speaker 1: to it. But I just couldn't find anything about mono
Speaker 1: brows other than I did see that our our, our
Speaker 1: priest character in this film is sometimes described as uh
Speaker 1: 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 who lived I believe a seven ninety
Speaker 1: or seven ninety one through eight sixteen or eight seventeen. See, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a Tang dynasty poet. You remember, you have
Speaker 1: found some source that described him as like the bad
Speaker 1: boy of Tang dynasty poets. He was. He was like
Speaker 1: a very weird poet who wrote strange almost this sounds
Speaker 1: like an anachronistic comment to make, but having read a
Speaker 1: lot of his poems now I think it's sort of accurate,
Speaker 1: almost psychedelic poetry. Yeah, like talking about what owl's burning
Speaker 1: with goblin fire in the forest, things of that nature. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think he did have kind of you know,
Speaker 1: he had kind of a uh, you know, this bad
Speaker 1: boy image, this kind of uh you know, he was
Speaker 1: he was interested in kind of dark and mysterious and
Speaker 1: magical things, yes, totally. But he was also considered morbid,
Speaker 1: kind of deathly. Uh. For some reason, I'm associating him
Speaker 1: with connotations of illness and morbidity, and yet he had
Speaker 1: this very distinctive personal style that definitely included long fingernails.
Speaker 1: The crazy thing, though, is this is not something we
Speaker 1: realized previously. But I had just looked him up to
Speaker 1: to make sure I had the right individual in mind.
Speaker 1: And um, I pulled up the Wikipedia page on him
Speaker 1: and just did like a quick search for fingernails to
Speaker 1: make sure that I wasn't misremembering his fingernails. But the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia article not only mentions his nails, it mentions his
Speaker 1: uni brow. What. Yeah, apparently he was known for his
Speaker 1: uni brow according to this Wikipedia entry. So so again
Speaker 1: I've got to ask, is this tap is this just
Speaker 1: a coincidence? Is this tapping a broader cultural meaning in
Speaker 1: Chinese history of the uni brow or maybe in some
Speaker 1: way is the Is the Taoist priest of the Mr.
Speaker 1: Vampire franchise a take on lee He? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think it'll have to remain an open question. Just
Speaker 1: to give a taste of that psychedelic nous. I just
Speaker 1: found a place where I transcribed one of his poems
Speaker 1: 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. Alright, well 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, Chao 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 they in the subtitles they
Speaker 1: give them English translated names, or at least one of them.
Speaker 1: The less handsome assistant is named Dan, but I forget
Speaker 1: what this one's name was. But this guy is the uh,
Speaker 1: the less comedic, more competent, more martial arts competent, and
Speaker 1: just generally uh handsome and heroic of the two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he and uh he's good in this he Uh. It's
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 in
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 twenty thirteen film Rigor Mortis,
Speaker 1: which I have not seen. I think I almost saw it,
Speaker 1: Like I think I rented it and never watched it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that I didn't now because its whole
Speaker 1: thing is that it's supposed to be a stylish 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 twenty
Speaker 1: keen uh stylish homage as opposed to you know, watching
Speaker 1: at least Mr Vampire. Yeah, better do it. In order,
Speaker 1: we should watch all of the Mr. Vampire sequels, then
Speaker 1: do Encounters to the Spooky Kind, then watch Reportis. 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: butt 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 the 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 law as why the incompetent policeman. Ultimately, Mr
Speaker 1: Vampire is a is a film with comedy to have
Speaker 1: many paracos, or at least two prominent paraicos. You can
Speaker 1: have two characters that are that are performed with a
Speaker 1: broad physical style of comedic acting that defies all language barriers.
Speaker 1: I hope Dan is in all of the Mr. Vampire sequels.
Speaker 1: He's He's He's actually not. He seems to this actor
Speaker 1: seems to have been successful enough and enough of like
Speaker 1: a comedy star, uh that he he rep rised it
Speaker 1: in the in the movie Mr. Vampire. But otherwise he
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have drunk from the the Mr. V
Speaker 1: well as much as as some of the other people
Speaker 1: involved were. He he was in several big comedy blockbusters
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong back in the seventies and eighties. Now,
Speaker 1: the next star in the movie we should probably mention
Speaker 1: is Moon Lee, And upon looking at her biography, I
Speaker 1: was very interested because in this movie she plays a
Speaker 1: very uh she she is a very passive character. You know,
Speaker 1: she's the daughter of the rich businessman who is you know,
Speaker 1: the beautiful daughter who is the object of love by
Speaker 1: several characters. But it turns out that she actually had
Speaker 1: a career mostly doing like stunts and action movies and
Speaker 1: playing characters who would blow your head off with a
Speaker 1: big gun. Yeah. Yeah, Moonley, it seems to have largely
Speaker 1: been an action character, while in this one she's not.
Speaker 1: You might be tempted to assume O. I guess she's
Speaker 1: like the damsel in distress, but she's more just the
Speaker 1: necessary female for comedic interaction. Yeah, she's not really in
Speaker 1: distress much. She's mostly like hanging out, hanging out while
Speaker 1: other characters just act ridiculous. Yeah. So she does play
Speaker 1: some good pranks in the movie though. For example, when
Speaker 1: when master Gow and Dan go to a go to
Speaker 1: English style te to a tea house, uh, to meet
Speaker 1: 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 they're they're quite ashamed. Yes, but she did a
Speaker 1: number of of Hong Kong action movies from the eighties
Speaker 1: through the nineties. Yeah, a couple of that came up
Speaker 1: for me, And again, I'm not familiar with these pictures.
Speaker 1: But Fighting Madam from seven, The Avenging Quarter from Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she was a stunt performer in addition to being
Speaker 1: an actress. It looks like she ended up doing a
Speaker 1: lot of you know your high octane crime thrillers where
Speaker 1: she would play a cop with a big gun who
Speaker 1: hunts down diamond smugglers or something. And in one movie
Speaker 1: I found one movie she was in the had a
Speaker 1: title so good I had to mention it from the
Speaker 1: year 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, in which he played Luke
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 eighties 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 uh,
Speaker 1: basically the world's worst policeman. Yes, this this character? What's
Speaker 1: this character's name again? Why? Why? And hey? Yeah he
Speaker 1: he shows up at first, Yeah he's he's after the
Speaker 1: love interest played by moon Ley 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 found a find a birthdate for him, but
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 I think that's though
Speaker 1: that's a hung production as well, And I think if
Speaker 1: i'm if that's the one I'm thinking of, and maybe
Speaker 1: I think that one might be an ensemble cast that
Speaker 1: somehow involves a mission to Vietnam. Um and then Billy
Speaker 1: Low also shows up in a number of vampire movies,
Speaker 1: 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 pericos 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: su Fon 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. The first Yeah,
Speaker 1: she well, she appears being like brought in in the
Speaker 1: forest in a kind of translucent mist to being being
Speaker 1: born by these guy eyes in strange h in strange makeup,
Speaker 1: and then she flies through the air. I think, I
Speaker 1: think it's clear she's a ghost. Yeah, so she's a
Speaker 1: She's an actor, producer born two, within a number of
Speaker 1: films including Love with the Perfect Stranger from Web Deception
Speaker 1: and plus it looks seems like a fair sprinkling of
Speaker 1: vampire and supernatural films. One thing that's funny about her character.
Speaker 1: So the movie basically has two major supernatural antagonists. One
Speaker 1: is the main vampire and the other is the ghost
Speaker 1: played by Sufing Wong, And these two antagonists kind of
Speaker 1: a running parallel storylines that are in some cases not
Speaker 1: even fully intertwined from what I could tell, except that
Speaker 1: they involved the same characters. But then also there's a
Speaker 1: funny thing about so her When her true form is
Speaker 1: revealed by Master Gao towards the end of the movie,
Speaker 1: she wears some exceptionally not good monster makeup that somehow
Speaker 1: works anyway. It involves a sort of eyeball and a
Speaker 1: stalk that juts out of her half rotten face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is what was interesting about this to me is
Speaker 1: that on one level you look at it and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that that didn't They didn't quite pull that off, did
Speaker 1: they and yet it does kind of work, and it
Speaker 1: it reminds me of the deliberate, uh special effects choices
Speaker 1: in the famous Japanese Haunted House movie house, you know,
Speaker 1: where there was a deliberate choice by the director to
Speaker 1: have effects that were I'm not sure how to describe
Speaker 1: them exactly, because I don't want to say shoddy, but
Speaker 1: almost I think childlike like, like it is if if
Speaker 1: if you had only children creating the effects or envisioning
Speaker 1: the effects. Thinking about the effects in the house, I
Speaker 1: might say, in some cases almost kind of stagy, more
Speaker 1: like the special effects you would see in a good
Speaker 1: stage production rather than in a movie. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a good description. So I thought about that, and
Speaker 1: it made me sort of contemplate the sometimes thin line
Speaker 1: between the imperfect and the and the canny. You know.
Speaker 1: It kind of comes back to the idea of the
Speaker 1: hopping vampire. Like on one level, it's ridiculous, but it's
Speaker 1: also unnatural. It's also uncanny. Yeah, yeah, all right. And finally,
Speaker 1: there there is an actor by the name of way
Speaker 1: Yun who plays the vampire born nineteen fifty. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: mention him because he has a hundred He had a
Speaker 1: hundred nine three acting credits, including The Landlord and Kung
Speaker 1: Fu Hustle from four Oh he's the guy with the
Speaker 1: when it's revealed that he's a kung fu master. Spoiler sorry,
Speaker 1: he's got the floppy rubbery body. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've seen Kung Fu Hustle,
Speaker 1: but but this guy did stunts. In nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: is The Way of the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee and
Speaker 1: Chuck Norris. So he's been in tons of things. Have
Speaker 1: you seen Way of the Dragon? You know that one?
Speaker 1: I think this is one. I probably saw parts of
Speaker 1: it on TBS back in the day, but I don't
Speaker 1: have a clear memory of it. Of so, you know,
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee had this this short but very memorable run
Speaker 1: of films in the early seventies, maybe the late sixties too,
Speaker 1: I think maybe the first one was in seventy or so.
Speaker 1: But most of them a 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
Speaker 1: is running a restaurant there that is being menaced by
Speaker 1: the mafia, and then he comes in to defend it
Speaker 1: from these these mafia thugs, and so they end up
Speaker 1: recruiting their own fighters, such as Chuck Norris. So they
Speaker 1: bring in Chuck Norris to defeat Bruce Lee. But Norris
Speaker 1: doesn't stand a chance. But anyway, that movie is actually
Speaker 1: quite silly as well, because, like I remember, there's a
Speaker 1: major subplot in it about Bruce Lee eating too much
Speaker 1: soup and then having to go pee a lot. All right,
Speaker 1: he doesn't influence his style though, right, it's not like
Speaker 1: Drunken Master. Yeah, Pep Master. No, it's it's not Pep Master. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe I haven't seen that one at all, main mainly,
Speaker 1: I guess. But 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's
Speaker 1: known for the beer in the mustache. Um Normally at
Speaker 1: this point I mentioned the music, Well, the music is
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, and they're they're only five
Speaker 1: films credited to Melody Bank on on IMDb. Maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but the theme music was composed by Alistair Monteth Hodge
Speaker 1: and California born Anders Nelson. So if that means anything
Speaker 1: to you, there you go. Now, I guess here getting
Speaker 1: to the part where we would usually go into a
Speaker 1: full plot breakdown, but I was thinking, we're talking about
Speaker 1: this today, just to mix it up a bit, I
Speaker 1: thought maybe rather than going scene by scene in order,
Speaker 1: I would just sort of lay down the basic plot
Speaker 1: situation and then we could mention a few things throughout
Speaker 1: the run time that we thought were interesting. But before
Speaker 1: I get into that, I did want to mention the
Speaker 1: opening scene in detail, because because the opening scene is fabulous.
Speaker 1: It really is one of the most memorable things about
Speaker 1: the movie, and it really sets the tone for the movie.
Speaker 1: Uh So, after the credits finish, and the credits, by
Speaker 1: the way, are great, just because they have a wonderful
Speaker 1: green ooze color to them, but too once we finally
Speaker 1: open on the action to someone not familiar with the
Speaker 1: conventions of Jong Shei movies, as I was not really
Speaker 1: once I started watching this. It's a very w t
Speaker 1: F kind of opening because we have this guy going
Speaker 1: around who we find out is one of the assistance
Speaker 1: of the Taoist priest. But he's going around with a
Speaker 1: bunch of incense in this room that is just covered
Speaker 1: in magical amulets and and trinkets and pieces of paper
Speaker 1: with writing on them, things that seem like they have
Speaker 1: magical significance in one way or another. And he is
Speaker 1: tending to coffins in this room. At first, I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what these objects were, but they're these It's just
Speaker 1: these rows of horizontal wooden cylinders. You do find out
Speaker 1: that their coffins. Yeah, and I was not really I
Speaker 1: don't know that I've really seen I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've seen these before, but these are depictions of basically
Speaker 1: the traditional Chinese style of of casket, which looks rather
Speaker 1: different from the Western style. It's my understanding. You still
Speaker 1: see both used in China, So if you look up
Speaker 1: like you do a Google image search for Chinese coffins
Speaker 1: Chinese caskets. You'll likely see some pictures that include both styles,
Speaker 1: where you'll see Western variations, and then also these these
Speaker 1: more or ornate looking traditional coffins that are sometimes described
Speaker 1: as having humps. Yeah, the humps, or I was actually
Speaker 1: thinking about it like pedals, Like if you look at
Speaker 1: the end on they look kind of like a flower
Speaker 1: with four petals. Yeah. Yeah, they're quite beautiful. Though of
Speaker 1: course I can't help but look at a picture of it.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh, yeah, well that one has a
Speaker 1: Western vampire in it, and this one has uh Jiangshi
Speaker 1: in it. Um so am I thinking of That may
Speaker 1: also be compounded by the by the fact that I
Speaker 1: know that there two or more films in which a
Speaker 1: Western vampire and an Eastern vampire meet in Chinese cinema.
Speaker 1: That's worth looking up. Yeah, but I also like that Mr.
Speaker 1: Vampire does not make you wait to see vampires. It's
Speaker 1: not like you've got to get into the you know,
Speaker 1: have to have all the magic unleashed. It's their right
Speaker 1: from the opening. So while the assistant is going around
Speaker 1: doing all this stuff, we see Dan messing around with them.
Speaker 1: Since uh he he also uncovers he like peels back
Speaker 1: a curtain to reveal a boot camp style lineup of
Speaker 1: swaying unconscious fiends of some kind. Again, if you don't
Speaker 1: know the conventions of the genre, you're like, you know,
Speaker 1: W T F, 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, red is considered a lucky or
Speaker 1: holy color, right, yes. And in addition to that, there
Speaker 1: are obviously all these amulets and everything everywhere, And and
Speaker 1: Dan is going around with a bunch of sticks of
Speaker 1: burning incense and he's he's saying to the corpses in
Speaker 1: the in the coffins, He's like, here's your dinner. Time
Speaker 1: for dinner, and 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. Yeah, So it's an
Speaker 1: interesting place to to start, especially again if you have
Speaker 1: known nothing about the genre, where you have not just
Speaker 1: a supernatural element, but this kind of magical containment, ongoing
Speaker 1: magical containment and management of supernatural entities. Right. They regard
Speaker 1: these particular vampires that are lined up here not really
Speaker 1: with utter terror, but more is like something that you know,
Speaker 1: you more like something that you would work with on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, so you're not mortified by it, but
Speaker 1: also you really as it could be dangerous if you
Speaker 1: screw up when you're dealing with it. It's like like
Speaker 1: handling dangerous chemicals or something, right, And so he's going
Speaker 1: around cramming the incense and the coffins, and then there's
Speaker 1: there's a really funny part where one of the coffins,
Speaker 1: like a skull, pops out of it and bites him
Speaker 1: on the hand. Um, so I enjoyed the skull bite.
Speaker 1: 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 body in a in a makeup I guess like
Speaker 1: pranking him, and he 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 jeanshi that
Speaker 1: look better, that look more undead. But this this prank,
Speaker 1: you know, prank's, prank's and 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 clutziness,
Speaker 1: they end up unleashing all of the jiang chi like
Speaker 1: they knocked 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 unibrow when he
Speaker 1: first comes in, and I was thinking, like, that's not
Speaker 1: a funny unibrow, that's a unibrow. I respect. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: serious and he he knows what he's doing, Like when
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: Mr Gau does to fight the the vampires is like
Speaker 1: doing spells and rituals and stuff like that, but other things.
Speaker 1: But 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 there's at least a little of that in this.
Speaker 1: And I have to admit I'm not I'm not well
Speaker 1: versed enough in Hong Kong action to know you have
Speaker 1: if what I'm watching in Mr Vampire he is truly
Speaker 1: great comedy martial arts, or if it's just like really
Speaker 1: good or even just decent, but it certainly feels awesome
Speaker 1: when I'm watching it on screen like these are these
Speaker 1: are well thought out action sequences that really zing. 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 an another
Speaker 1: Taoist priest with him, this guy wearing glasses who is
Speaker 1: at the beginning and the end of the film, and
Speaker 1: this guy uh together they like I think, what they
Speaker 1: do is they bite their fingers and make them bleed,
Speaker 1: and then they use the blood on their fingertips to
Speaker 1: touch the foreheads of the vampires to essentially pause them,
Speaker 1: like freeze them in place. And I think, again, this
Speaker 1: is because of either it's something about the blood or
Speaker 1: it could have to do with putting the red color
Speaker 1: on their foreheads. But but it's funny because they will
Speaker 1: they will have to like pause them and unpause them. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the other priest at one point, one of
Speaker 1: the vampires is choking him, and he puts the mark
Speaker 1: on the vampire's forehead and it freezes the vampire. But
Speaker 1: now it's frozen choking him and he has to wipe
Speaker 1: it off and unfreeze him so that he'll get his
Speaker 1: hands off 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, where 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 spell us back on their faces. So
Speaker 1: they're not hopping of their own accord. They're sort of
Speaker 1: hopping 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 Gao 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 Mr 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 chain 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 eating,
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. I believe, so, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of a ghost targeting somebody in that
Speaker 1: way before, but but that seems to be what happens.
Speaker 1: He like looks at her tombstone and he hears a voice,
Speaker 1: and after that she's just creeping on him. There's this
Speaker 1: great scene where he's writing by the cemetery I think,
Speaker 1: or he's riding through the woods on a Is he
Speaker 1: on a horse, No, he's not. He's not a bicycle,
Speaker 1: and she she like ghost flies across the forest. It's
Speaker 1: a one one of several wonderful wire based martial arts
Speaker 1: effects where she flies through the forest and she she
Speaker 1: lands gingerly right on the back of his bicycle, like
Speaker 1: all right, I'm with you now, let's go. But then
Speaker 1: he does he rides underneath a low hanging tree branch
Speaker 1: and he ducks and then the branch hits her and
Speaker 1: knocks her off the bicycle um which which of course
Speaker 1: reminded me of John Carpenter's Big Trouble and a Little China,
Speaker 1: where we have the low pon the the ghost of
Speaker 1: the spirit entity who passes through a vehicle. But then
Speaker 1: as also, you know, we can see that he can
Speaker 1: pass through things, but he can also be hit by
Speaker 1: a truck, very similar in this film, where this ghost
Speaker 1: has all these ghostly powers, but she can also just
Speaker 1: run smack into a tree limb. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: think for a minute about some of the conventions of
Speaker 1: of these vampire movies, because so in Western vampire movies,
Speaker 1: you've got the tropes that always appear. You've got the
Speaker 1: things that can be used to defeat the vampire, like
Speaker 1: you know, steaks, crosses, garlic, uh, vampire doesn't show up
Speaker 1: in a mirror, all those kinds of things. And this
Speaker 1: universe seems to have similar types of tropes, like there
Speaker 1: are things that are used for ritual magical effect against
Speaker 1: vampires or things that seemed to be true of the vampires.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to try to think about what some
Speaker 1: of them were. One that I found very interesting was
Speaker 1: the power of glutinous rice. Uh. This movie uses Master
Speaker 1: Gal repeatedly uses sticky rice to ward off vampires or
Speaker 1: to counteract the effects of a person turning into a
Speaker 1: vampire when Dan gets fammed. Yeah, I love this part
Speaker 1: of the film one hand. It makes perfect sense. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of what we talked about with
Speaker 1: the use of beans in some cultures as a weighty
Speaker 1: Zooki beans or or other beans in other cultures used
Speaker 1: as in a way to fight back against the supernatural
Speaker 1: or having some link to the supernatural. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: love the idea that that the sticky rice could be
Speaker 1: utilized in such a fashion. But this film goes even
Speaker 1: further by by asking the question, well, what happens when
Speaker 1: an outbreak of of vampires in your town or city causes,
Speaker 1: um uh, a huge demand for sticky rice. How does
Speaker 1: the local rice shop owners respond? And in this film
Speaker 1: they respond a goodly by cutting of sticky rice with
Speaker 1: other varieties of rice. That was one of my favorite
Speaker 1: parts of the movie. Yeah, so there's a commodities demand problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: You need all the sticky rice to fight vampires, and
Speaker 1: it turns out regular rice is no good, does not
Speaker 1: help you at all. It's got to be sticky rice.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, there's a scene where a character is
Speaker 1: sent to the rice shop to get a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of sticky rice to to fight off the vampire, and
Speaker 1: an unethical rice shop owner tells his dimwitted son, why
Speaker 1: don't you mix thirty caddies of of regular rice with
Speaker 1: the twenty of sticky rice. They'll never know the difference,
Speaker 1: and so, and I think the dimwitted sun gets it wrong,
Speaker 1: but still does dilute it. Yeah, and of course that
Speaker 1: just causes the whole outbreak to get even worse. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely love to use the sticky rice. We already
Speaker 1: mentioned the spells, but Master Gal uses a number of
Speaker 1: different like holy relics and artifacts to battle. I think
Speaker 1: my favorite one that he uses against the vampires is
Speaker 1: the Glowing Dagger. The dagger the is made out of
Speaker 1: 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 do see some of the similar ideas like holy elements,
Speaker 1: elements involving reflections and light um, celestial energy, you know,
Speaker 1: solar energy and the more western varieties, but the idea
Speaker 1: that lunar energy could be utilized as well. I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But there here's one thing. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: picked up on this seeming contradiction, maybe I just don't understand.
Speaker 1: But um, so, one thing is it's implied that the
Speaker 1: vampires are blind and that they can only detect you
Speaker 1: by hearing you, right, And that was the reason that
Speaker 1: you could hold your breath to hide from the vampire,
Speaker 1: because if you're not breathing, the vampire can't find you.
Speaker 1: Or is it that they smell your breath? Because remember
Speaker 1: this the scene where Dan buys himself a few moments
Speaker 1: of time to escape, which he you know, doesn't use.
Speaker 1: He just like gloats I think for a second, but
Speaker 1: he sticks some things in the young cheese knows in
Speaker 1: its nostrils can't detect him. Maybe it is the smell.
Speaker 1: So for it's either hearing or smell or some combination
Speaker 1: thereof the vampire can't find you if you're not breathing,
Speaker 1: so characters repeatedly hold their breath for a moment. As
Speaker 1: the original title says, while the vampires like looking right
Speaker 1: in their face, whatever the effect, it's supposed to not
Speaker 1: be able to see them. But also I've read that
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be a convention of these stories that
Speaker 1: the vampires are afraid of their own reflections in a mirror,
Speaker 1: and I wondered how that works if they can't actually
Speaker 1: see So I'm not sure about that. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: something that's not consistent in the lore, or maybe I
Speaker 1: don't quite understand well. Also, the master vampire, and this
Speaker 1: seems to be less limited when he comes back after
Speaker 1: his first initial defeat Um, because when he comes back,
Speaker 1: he looks a bit different. He seems to be looking
Speaker 1: around with eyes more, and he doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: as Um is based in scent, so which raises additional
Speaker 1: questions about exact really how how these these these beings work.
Speaker 1: But but they it seems to come back more powerful.
Speaker 1: So generally in Daoist rituals is the moon considered a
Speaker 1: holy thing that can ward off evil. Because I remember
Speaker 1: there's also a part where Um when the ghost first
Speaker 1: appears to try to uh, to seduce the handsome young
Speaker 1: hero in the forest. Uh. There's a song that is
Speaker 1: being sung on the soundtrack and the translation on the
Speaker 1: subtitles of the song there was a line that said,
Speaker 1: who would want a ghostly bride to worship the moon
Speaker 1: with her? I didn't know quite what to make of that,
Speaker 1: but well, I mean, the moon has a has been
Speaker 1: important roles in Chinese mythology, you know, and is the
Speaker 1: you know, 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 a lot of a lot of cool
Speaker 1: magical ideas about the moon. Is is not only like
Speaker 1: an entity but a place in in Chinese mythology, Whereas
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the response that there's as much
Speaker 1: about that with the sun, you know, when you think
Speaker 1: about prominent solar Chinese myths, I mean, obviously the one
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is the shooting of the surplus
Speaker 1: suns out of the sky by the Great Archer. But
Speaker 1: in that it's like that 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: gotta wrap up in a minute here. But one more
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to do before we did was the
Speaker 1: excellent jail scene. I love Yes. So one point in
Speaker 1: the movie, Master Gao is framed for the murder of
Speaker 1: a character. I think it's for the murder of 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, way, 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, but I
Speaker 1: tried to look that up and I couldn't find anything
Speaker 1: about it, so maybe I was not using the right
Speaker 1: search terms. But then finally Master Gau reveals it looks
Speaker 1: like these holes were actually made by long fingernails, right,
Speaker 1: so the the vampire like sticks long fingernails in the
Speaker 1: victim's neck, and then why the policeman's like, hey, Master Gau,
Speaker 1: you have long fingernails. You're under arrest, and then he
Speaker 1: takes 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 bars, 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: Seeing that that, that whole part was one of the
Speaker 1: best parts of the movie, I agree. But before we go,
Speaker 1: should we should we discuss the gorilla scene? What was
Speaker 1: that supposed to be a gorilla? Okay? So I think
Speaker 1: it was? Okay, Okay, we're setting the scene here. At
Speaker 1: one point, the police, I guess, being led by by
Speaker 1: 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. Yes, 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 gorilla up
Speaker 1: like 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 jag 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 guerrilla
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 chief's wacky adventures.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the movie Ape? I think it's
Speaker 1: just called Ape. It's a bad rip off of King Kong.
Speaker 1: It's just a giant ape movie. But the main thing
Speaker 1: I remember about it it's been a long time since
Speaker 1: I saw it. The main thing I remember is there's
Speaker 1: a scene where a guy in a guerrilla costume just
Speaker 1: gives the middle finger to the camera for a solid
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds. Oh, I've I have seen that sequence. I
Speaker 1: believe there was. Yeah, there was a there was an
Speaker 1: old film title that came from Hollywood that Dan Ackroyd
Speaker 1: and John Candy and a number of folks did, and
Speaker 1: it had a lot of clips from old films, um
Speaker 1: and they had a whole section on guerrilla movies that
Speaker 1: was that was pretty fabulous. And I remember that ape.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember that ape. Okay, I think maybe we
Speaker 1: got a call it there from Mr Vampire. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: hopefully we've we've we we've raised everyone's interest level regarding
Speaker 1: Mr Vampire. I I it's definitely worth seeking out. I
Speaker 1: I look, I didn't look around much for this. I
Speaker 1: think there's some some rips of it out there, but
Speaker 1: I can't speak to the quality. There have been various
Speaker 1: DVD and Blu Ray releases over the years. The DVD
Speaker 1: version is the one that we watched, and we rented
Speaker 1: it from Atlanta's own Video Drome, the last video rental
Speaker 1: store here in Atlanta. But I think you can buy
Speaker 1: copies of it. I think it's commercially available. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I have seen it on streaming services before, just I
Speaker 1: don't think currently. But this stuff changes, so who knows
Speaker 1: it may become Perhaps there's and and it's also possible
Speaker 1: that there's maybe a Hong Kong cinema centric service that
Speaker 1: I'm just not privy to that would be the ideal
Speaker 1: place to go for your Mr. Vampire and Mr Vampire
Speaker 1: related titles. If you do end up watching it, be
Speaker 1: warned in advanced about content. Uh. Just where reading about
Speaker 1: a bit. Uh. There's one thing that came to my mind,
Speaker 1: which is that there are a couple of scenes in
Speaker 1: the movie where it appears that real animals are killed
Speaker 1: on screen, Like there's a chicken and a and a snake.
Speaker 1: I think there's a dead snake for something. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think I read that they the snake that they used
Speaker 1: was then made into a soup, which I guess is
Speaker 1: partially comforting. But yeah, so be aware. But then again,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good idea if you're if you're
Speaker 1: looking at some of these older movies, UM would be
Speaker 1: in general. Yeah, IMDb. IMDb has been pretty good for
Speaker 1: me recently on selections where they have the parental um
Speaker 1: guidance section, which I used to just not care about,
Speaker 1: but especially as a as a parent, now I care
Speaker 1: about it. But also in terms of selecting things for
Speaker 1: weird ol cinema, it's a great way, on at least
Speaker 1: more well known films to just try to just check
Speaker 1: in and see what has been flagged. And sometimes it's
Speaker 1: it's hilariously fun where someone will be like, well, it
Speaker 1: is implied that a human and his naked in this film.
Speaker 1: It is not shown, but it is heavily implied, so beware. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I love the uh some of the warnings that
Speaker 1: are just a bit over the top like that. But
Speaker 1: then you can also, you know, find out if there
Speaker 1: are you know, examples of potential animal cruelty or depicted
Speaker 1: animal cruelty that you just might not want to watch,
Speaker 1: even if it, uh, you know, even if no animals
Speaker 1: are harmed. Sometimes you don't want to see the fictional
Speaker 1: version of something either. So I've had good luck with
Speaker 1: the IMDb parental Guidance section. A good idea, used as needed,
Speaker 1: used as needed. All Right, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: close the coffin on this one and uh and give
Speaker 1: it a proper burial. But who knows, maybe in the
Speaker 1: future we will be back with more Jangshi action. I
Speaker 1: have to admit there is there's at least one title
Speaker 1: that has been on my list uh since the beginning
Speaker 1: of world Weird How Cinema. We may come back to
Speaker 1: Weird How Cinema, of course, is are a Friday episode
Speaker 1: that we put out in the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. We're normally a science and culture podcast.
Speaker 1: In our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we
Speaker 1: do a little bit of listener mail on Monday's. We
Speaker 1: do 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 podcasts. 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 interested. 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
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