Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This is Rod Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
Speaker 1: talking about the nineteen eighty three Hong Kong action horror
Speaker 1: film The Boxers omen directed by Kwai Chi Hung. This
Speaker 1: movie is a lot of things. First of all, it
Speaker 1: is just a lot through one lens. It is an
Speaker 1: action packed martial arts revenge film. Through another. It is
Speaker 1: magical insanity, just an overwhelming storm of rituals and magical
Speaker 1: items being combined, magical recipes, necromancy. You've got creaky bat skeletons,
Speaker 1: needlenosed tarantulas, red devils, skin balloons, crocodile skulls, rotten guts,
Speaker 1: bikini mummies, just all kinds of stuff. Basically more unhinged sorcery, slop, gore,
Speaker 1: and wizard battles than you could imagine being crammed into
Speaker 1: a single film.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's pretty wall to wall, and the connective
Speaker 2: tissue in there is when when the film isn't being
Speaker 2: just absolutely crazy, there's some very well crafted connective tissue
Speaker 2: that I think also adds to the weird feeling you
Speaker 2: get watching this picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I was going to say, I wonder if
Speaker 1: this is what you're alluding to through yet another lens.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of interesting exploration of like Buddhist monastic
Speaker 1: piety and the quest for immortality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't think now. To be clear, you're
Speaker 2: not going to learn much about Buddhism watching this picture.
Speaker 2: But as we'll point out, there's some very nice locations here.
Speaker 2: There's some nice almost docu mintary style scenes of like
Speaker 2: street processions and normal people going about their everyday business
Speaker 2: in Nepal and in Thailand and also in Hong Kong,
Speaker 2: which you know, I can I can kind of like
Speaker 2: provide this real world setting that really works to make
Speaker 2: all the crazy stuff feel like a real injection of
Speaker 2: another world into ours.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Though, I also want to acknowledge what
Speaker 1: this movie is mainly known for, which is just wet madness.
Speaker 1: It has a reputation among the midnight movie crowd for
Speaker 1: being an exercise in extremes. It's kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: you like Hong Kong horror movies, I have got one
Speaker 1: you're not ready for. And maybe you're not ready. I
Speaker 1: would not recommend, as I told I watched this one first,
Speaker 1: and as I told Robin JJ, I would not recommend
Speaker 1: watching this while you're eating, though I think maybe you did. Anyway.
Speaker 2: I ate during part of it, and JJ ended up
Speaker 2: eating doing part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that could be a bad move, depending on how
Speaker 1: strong your stomach is. But I would recommend watching it
Speaker 1: to some extent if you have a tolerance for this
Speaker 1: sort of thing, at least, because it is one of
Speaker 1: the most amazingly stupendously bizarre and remarkable films I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Absolutely it is pure magic. And it's fitting because we
Speaker 2: say that because the film's original title is Mo, which
Speaker 2: just means magic or devil and can certainly mean dark
Speaker 2: magic depending on the context. We get to see both
Speaker 2: light and dark magic here. Mo is also part of
Speaker 2: the word magwai, just to give it a little more
Speaker 2: clarity there.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, did you have a notice like the
Speaker 1: character the Chinese character Mo is the thing that appears
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the film.
Speaker 2: It is, and I think it's really interesting here, and
Speaker 2: maybe Mandarin readers can break down what's happening here a
Speaker 2: little bit. But we Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna put
Speaker 2: up the kanji for mo, but they kind of roll
Speaker 2: it out in three phases, and so initially the character
Speaker 2: that is added is the character that means ghost, and
Speaker 2: then and then the rest of the character is added
Speaker 2: that spells out the pure I mean, the full title magic.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if if if a if a
Speaker 2: Mandarin reader, a native Mandarin reader would interpret that as
Speaker 2: like ghost magic, Like does that affect the the title
Speaker 2: of the movie as you read it or or what,
Speaker 2: because we don't. I guess we sometimes have things like this,
Speaker 2: and like like English language titles for pictures where it
Speaker 2: looks like it's gonna spell one thing and then it
Speaker 2: spells another. But I don't think i'd seen this done
Speaker 2: before in like a Chinese or.
Speaker 3: A Japanese film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that is interesting. But it's also interesting just
Speaker 1: thinking about the title being in one sense magic or
Speaker 1: you know, sorcery, enchantment, whatever this refers to, uh, because
Speaker 1: that is like actually the main theme of the movie.
Speaker 1: And so in English, we've got this title the Boxer's Omen,
Speaker 1: which paired with the opening scene makes it seem like
Speaker 1: this movie is going to be about kickboxing, which is
Speaker 1: a real bait and switch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does seem very concerned with kickboxing for a
Speaker 2: little bit there, but then really goes goes off the off,
Speaker 2: the off the cliff here into realms of magic and
Speaker 2: demons and sorcery and all sorts of gross and mind
Speaker 2: bending things that are pretty far removed from kicks to
Speaker 2: the head.
Speaker 1: Not only that, does it not only moves mainly away
Speaker 1: from the kickboxing plot, it literally like forgets to conclude
Speaker 1: the kickboxing plot. Yeah, there's a kickboxing thread running through.
Speaker 1: It's like a revenge thing, and it never it never finishes.
Speaker 1: We never get the final showdown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were we were joking about this off Mike
Speaker 2: that perhaps Shaw Brothers came to the director Kuwaiti Hung
Speaker 2: and said, hey, we want you to make a kickboxing movie,
Speaker 2: and he's like, got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is about as much about kickboxing as
Speaker 1: like The Shining is about hotel maintenance.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, what if they had called The Shining like
Speaker 2: the Hotel Manager.
Speaker 1: But I like the way in which this movie is
Speaker 1: about magic. You know, It's like there's a healthy balance
Speaker 1: of treating magic as on one hand, of course just
Speaker 1: an object of absolutely insane spectacle and exploitation, but then
Speaker 1: also as an object of what feels like genuine respect.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the magic systems in this film are fascinating. Like,
Speaker 2: this movie takes its magic seriously. We've all seen movies
Speaker 2: where evil wizards like dabble and necromancy, and I was
Speaker 2: thinking about this too. We were a lot of people
Speaker 2: I think played dungeons and dragons and you know, there's
Speaker 2: spell components in there, and your spell, your character is
Speaker 2: supposed to their arms and say certain things. But we
Speaker 2: often just skip over all that and say you cast
Speaker 2: a fireball. And that's the way movies sometimes do as well.
Speaker 2: This movie does not. There's almost a really like a hypnotic,
Speaker 2: ritualistic way that especially the dark magic spells are presented,
Speaker 2: and in general, like the light and dark of these
Speaker 2: different magical schools is just oh man, it's just so
Speaker 2: well executed.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: It's almost more focused on the rituals that evoke the
Speaker 1: magic than on the magic effects themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And and the way that the spells are
Speaker 2: generated to tell you a lot about it about the practitioners.
Speaker 2: So the Buddhist magic is the pure expression of noble virtue,
Speaker 2: while the black magic is the exact opposite. It's just
Speaker 2: pure degeneration, madness, and self destruction. So in the same
Speaker 2: way that the Abbot is on the verge of achieving
Speaker 2: enlightenment and immortality through righteousness and equanimity, the wizards in
Speaker 2: the picture seem to be doing everything they can to
Speaker 2: just kind of like bottom out, as if they're not
Speaker 2: only you know, plunging into the hells, but doing everything
Speaker 2: they can to accelerate their descent so they can like
Speaker 2: blast through the floor and come out the other side
Speaker 2: in a kind of perverse counter enlightenment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, in more than one way. I noticed this.
Speaker 1: The bad wizards in this movie practice magic and do
Speaker 1: their rituals not with the kind of scary solemnity we're
Speaker 1: used to seeing Satanists do their stuff in the movies
Speaker 1: where it's like oh, you know, no, no, in furnace
Speaker 1: and being very serious while they're lowering the dagger like
Speaker 1: in what was it Which Empire of the Dark. It's
Speaker 1: not like that at all. It is a They basically
Speaker 1: have two modes of ritual. They have depraved, chaotic frenzy
Speaker 1: and then they also have impatient annoyance. That I made
Speaker 1: the comparison I was going to talk about this later,
Speaker 1: but there's one part where we see the first main
Speaker 1: evil wizard doing a bunch of rituals when he's like
Speaker 1: trying to get a bat to revive after it has
Speaker 1: been destroyed, and he's talking at the ritual like somebody
Speaker 1: talks at their car when they can't get it to start.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just this familiar impatient annoyance, not somber
Speaker 1: satanism with chanting, and.
Speaker 2: At times there's also a detached defilement to what they're doing.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like they're doing like really gross and
Speaker 2: debased things, but it is it is also just kind
Speaker 2: of like what they do, and you know, it takes
Speaker 2: hours to pull this off, but it's in these are
Speaker 2: necessary steps in order to achieve their sorceress goals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's more in the chaotic frenzy era, because they're
Speaker 1: just frantically kind of I don't know, picking up guts
Speaker 1: and chewing them and cutting things off of animals and
Speaker 1: chewing them and spitting them out and cutting things open,
Speaker 1: and it seems half the time like they're barely paying
Speaker 1: attention to what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, the magic systems that are depicted in the film,
Speaker 2: they seem to have many connections to magical traditions and
Speaker 2: Thailand and East Asia, real or attributed. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: in the case of black magic, as we've discussed before,
Speaker 2: we're certainly not always talking about practices that were ever
Speaker 2: necessarily practiced, even by a thin minority of people. But
Speaker 2: you know, you end up with these tales about these
Speaker 2: the sorts of things. These are the sorts of spells
Speaker 2: that the dark wizards and witches engage in.
Speaker 1: Right, a lot of times, what we might mean by
Speaker 1: calling something authentic culturally authentic evil sorcery does not mean
Speaker 1: it's what people, what like sorcerers of that culture actually did.
Speaker 1: It's what people of that culture actually thought sorcerers.
Speaker 2: Did, Right, And then you have levels of like what
Speaker 2: did outsiders and foreigners think about the things that they
Speaker 2: heard about about magical practices, real or imagined? And then
Speaker 2: in this exercise, how is all that amplified through the
Speaker 2: lens of exploitation cinema, because this is exploitation cinema, to
Speaker 2: be clear.
Speaker 1: That's right. I feel like with this one, maybe we
Speaker 1: should start with the plots at the top, because in
Speaker 1: the plot section we're probably just going to talk a
Speaker 1: lot about these wizard battle scenes and the rituals, so
Speaker 1: the plot is basically takes this form. A Hong Kong
Speaker 1: criminal named Chan Hung is drawn into a quest for
Speaker 1: revenge against a cruel Thai kickboxer who paralyzed Chan Hung's
Speaker 1: brother with an illegal strike during a match, actually after
Speaker 1: a match was over, and then at the same time
Speaker 1: he is drawn by dreams and visions to a Buddhist
Speaker 1: monastery in Thailand, where he discovers that he has a
Speaker 1: spiritual connection to the recently deceased abbot of that temple.
Speaker 1: The abbot was a powerful and holy Buddhist monk who
Speaker 1: died in the middle of a feud with a clan
Speaker 1: of evil sorcerers. Chan Hung discovers that in order to
Speaker 1: both avenge his worldly brother and protect the immortality of
Speaker 1: his spirit brother through the abbot, and then finally also
Speaker 1: to protect himself because we learn that his fate is
Speaker 1: linked to the fate of the abbot, he must renounce
Speaker 1: his hedonistic life of crime, shave his head, and become
Speaker 1: a monk, and this practice of piety and self discipline
Speaker 1: and self denial will allow him to gain supernatural strength
Speaker 1: to fight his enemies both physical and magical, and then
Speaker 1: from this ensues a massive series of wizard battles and
Speaker 1: escalations of wicked enchantment. Along the way, chan hung faces doubt, weakness, temptation,
Speaker 1: and setbacks, though actually those are kind of limited in scale,
Speaker 1: like we get those concentrated in very specific moments in
Speaker 1: the film. But it ends with a sorcerer showdown in
Speaker 1: a Buddhist temple in Nepal, so stupendous that I think
Speaker 1: many viewers will probably not even notice that the movie forgets,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, to tie up the kickboxing revenge plot.
Speaker 1: As you speculated, Rob, I mean, you almost wonder if
Speaker 1: the Shaw brothers, you know, we're like, we need a
Speaker 1: kickboxing film, and that was just the price of admission
Speaker 1: to get this film financed. But once the wizard re begins,
Speaker 1: like why settle for anything less? Do we really want
Speaker 1: to end this film with a kickboxing conflict? Is the
Speaker 1: final confrontation when we could have a demoness giving birth
Speaker 1: to plastic bags full of eyeballs that turn into putty
Speaker 1: mummies that cut themselves open and cut their own fingers
Speaker 1: off to bleed on each other and turn into eyeball
Speaker 1: dinosaurs exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think anybody's left wondering exactly how the
Speaker 2: kickboxing resolved itself. All right, Well, like we said, this
Speaker 2: one is a film that certainly has a reputation. It's
Speaker 2: been a very popular midnight movie for quite a while.
Speaker 2: So he almost can't provide an elevator pitch for it.
Speaker 2: It is the Boxer's Omen and it casts a long shadow.
Speaker 2: But I would say, you know, one man is about
Speaker 2: to be sucked into a world of black magic, convengeance,
Speaker 2: and then that's really all you need to know. The
Speaker 2: rest is more of a it's more about sensation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's listen to just a little bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 2: Though this is one we're just gonna dip in and
Speaker 2: out of it because the trailer is mostly sound effects.
Speaker 2: But maybe you'll get just a little bit of a
Speaker 2: sonic vibe here. All right. Well, if you would like
Speaker 2: to go and watch The Boxers Omen before proceeding with
Speaker 2: the rest of this episode, it is available. I watched
Speaker 2: it on the Image Entertainment DVD, which I believe came
Speaker 2: out in two thousand and seven, and I rented that
Speaker 2: from Video Drome here in Atlanta. It was also released
Speaker 2: on Blu Ray in the shaw Scope Volume two box set,
Speaker 2: which actually seems like it might be the best presentation
Speaker 2: of the film with extras, but you have to buy
Speaker 2: the entire ten disc set to get your hands on it.
Speaker 2: There's even a commentary track by the late critic Travis
Speaker 2: Crawford on there.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 2: I believe JJ was telling us that you can also
Speaker 2: stream this from Arrow via Arrow's online streaming presence.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, the box set you're talking about
Speaker 1: there is the Volume two Shaw Brothers collection from Errow Video.
Speaker 1: Because there are also some Shout Factory Shaw Brothers box
Speaker 1: sets and I was looking at their Volume two. That's
Speaker 1: not the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, make sure you get the right one. I mean,
Speaker 2: even if you make a mistake, you can end up
Speaker 2: with a whole bunch of Shaw Brothers pictures which, you know.
Speaker 1: Probably a good time.
Speaker 3: It's pretty good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But yes, I believe it's Volume two that has
Speaker 2: the boxer zoning on it.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: people behind this picture and in this picture. All right,
Speaker 2: let's start at the top with Kuochi Hung, the director,
Speaker 2: also the story credit and he did the special effects.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen thirty seven through nineteen ninety nine. Hong
Speaker 2: Kong movie director active from sixty one through nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: So Boxers omen is his penultimate film and his final
Speaker 2: horror movie. He directed just one more film with the
Speaker 2: same screenwriter as this picture, an action comedy titled Misfire,
Speaker 2: before he apparently immigrated or reimmigrated to the United States.
Speaker 2: I was more on that in just a minute here.
Speaker 2: But he apparently ran a pizza restaurant in California for
Speaker 2: the remainder of his life. I have so many questions
Speaker 2: about this pizza restaurant. Yeah, I wasn't able to find
Speaker 2: out much about it. I was even looking up interviews
Speaker 2: with his son, Ming Beaverque, who is an American film producer.
Speaker 2: In fact, he was an associate producer on the Meg movies,
Speaker 2: the recent Giant Shark movies.
Speaker 1: Oh, the Owens was Jason Steithem the.
Speaker 2: Very ones, But he didn't really get into it much.
Speaker 2: But I mentioned reimmigrated because apparently Ming's grandfather attended Cornell
Speaker 2: and he says graduated in nineteen twenty two, worked in
Speaker 2: Detroit in the nineteen thirties, and then went back to China.
Speaker 2: During the Second World War, So I don't know, I
Speaker 2: found that interesting.
Speaker 1: So from what I understand, Quo Chi Hung was not
Speaker 1: originally best known for making like horror or supernatural films, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, this was some of his later work, but
Speaker 1: early on he made a lot of like crime dramas and.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did a lot of different stuff, but he's
Speaker 2: probably best known internationally for this late career period when
Speaker 2: he did a lot of black magic films, mostly in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties, playing off a tradition that was kind
Speaker 2: of popularized in the nineteen seventies by the likes of
Speaker 2: Oily Maniac director Hominghua, who we discussed. We've discussed this
Speaker 2: film previously on Weird House Cinema. This is a film
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy six, but Kuo Chi Hunk takes things
Speaker 2: to just New Dizzeying Heights obviously, so in addition to
Speaker 2: the Boxer Zoemen, these black magic films include nineteen eighties Hex,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties Hex Versus Witchcraft, eighty one's Corps Mania, eighty
Speaker 2: one's Bewitched, to which this film I've seen sometimes described
Speaker 2: as kind of a sequel, eighty two's Curse of Evil
Speaker 2: and eighty two's Hex after Hex. Obviously, these are all
Speaker 2: you know, English titles, and one can generally assume that
Speaker 2: the actual Chinese titles were maybe a little less silly sounding.
Speaker 2: He also directed some horror films in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: seventy three's The Bamboo House of Dolls, seventy four's Ghost Eyes,
Speaker 2: seventy four's The Killers, seventy five's Fearful Interlude, and seventy
Speaker 2: six is Spirit of the Rape. But he also directed
Speaker 2: several action films, including nineteen eighties Killer Constable, generally considered
Speaker 2: his only Wushav film, and he also directed the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four serious crime drama The Tea House and nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six is The Bod Squad, which is a Kung
Speaker 2: fu sex comedy. Nice so a popular and obviously daring
Speaker 2: visual Shaw Brothers director here, But it's easy to focus
Speaker 2: on the crazy visuals in a film like this. But
Speaker 2: he also valued great locations, which is something we see
Speaker 2: in The Boxer z Omen as well as our lead
Speaker 2: character travels to Thailand and Nepal, and often he would
Speaker 2: have subtle nods to the actual lives of common people,
Speaker 2: which we see here as well, again almost giving it
Speaker 2: a kind of documentary vibe in its real world moments,
Speaker 2: and I'm to understand. In his other films he also
Speaker 2: tackled two varying degrees the subject of corruption, police, corruption,
Speaker 2: and so forth. And yeah, but before he died, he
Speaker 2: apparently immigrated to the United States and ran a pizza parlor.
Speaker 2: So again, I wish I could find out more about
Speaker 2: that pizza parlor, but it remains a mystery, all right.
Speaker 2: Moving on to the screenplay. The screenplay is credited to
Speaker 2: Own Setso, who lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: His other writings include Killer Constable, Corps Mania, Bewitched, eighty
Speaker 2: two's Buddha's Palm, and also Curse of Evil. Obviously these
Speaker 2: two worked together quite a lot, but Setso was in
Speaker 2: general just a very prolific writer. On the Hong Kong
Speaker 2: movie database, he has something like two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: nine writing credits. Wow, that's a lot, all right. Getting
Speaker 2: into the cast here again, our main protagonist is Chang
Speaker 2: Hung played by Philip Coe. Philip Co lived nineteen forty
Speaker 2: nine through twenty seventeen. Hong Kong actor, stuntman and director,
Speaker 2: Active from nineteen six seventy through two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: He has an uncredited guard role in nineteen seventy three's
Speaker 2: Enter the Dragon, which this is not surprising. I think
Speaker 2: it's often the case when you look at Shaw Brothers pictures,
Speaker 2: like everybody has some connection to Enter the Dragon. Even
Speaker 2: though Enter the Dragon was not a Shaw Brother's motion picture.
Speaker 2: I believe that was a Golden Harvest picture, but anyway.
Speaker 2: Philip co His other acting credits include eighty four's The
Speaker 2: Eight Diagram Poll Fighter, eighty seven's Eastern Condors, and eighty
Speaker 2: eight Dragons Forever. He was also in eighty three Seating
Speaker 2: of a Ghost, eighty six is Magic Crystal, and eighty
Speaker 2: five's Ninja Terminator starring Richard Harris and we just talked about.
Speaker 2: Played the lead cultist in Empire of the Dark. Philip
Speaker 2: Co worked with such Hong Kong greats as Bruce Lee,
Speaker 2: Jackie Chan, Samo Hung. His directing credits include nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: Killer Romance and ninety two's Hard to Kill, starring a
Speaker 2: young Robin Sho of Mortal Kombat fame.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so.
Speaker 2: He often played villains and was married at one point
Speaker 2: to Japanese actress Yukari Oshima, who appeared in a number
Speaker 2: of Hong Kong and Filipino pictures, including nineteen ninety one's
Speaker 2: Ricky Oh, The Story of Ricky, in which she plays
Speaker 2: one of the Gang of four.
Speaker 1: May come back to that movie someday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the connection from one notoriously bloody picture to another. Okay,
Speaker 2: so Chanhung is helping out the abbot. I think we've
Speaker 2: established that the abbot in question here, the one that
Speaker 2: he is connected to, that they are like reincarnations another
Speaker 2: twins in her previous life. Yeah, we'll find out. This
Speaker 2: abbot is played by Elvis su Kam Kong born nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty one, Hong Kong actor whose other films include eighty
Speaker 2: three's Shaolin and Wu Tang. This is indeed the picture
Speaker 2: that's one of Rizza's favorite films. Nineteen eighty six is
Speaker 2: The Seventh Curse, eighty nine's The Iceman Cometh. I've seen
Speaker 2: that one. I believe that one has a lot of
Speaker 2: sword play in it. Nineteen ninety six is Viva Erotica,
Speaker 2: and twenty thirteen's The Grand Master. Now we have multiple
Speaker 2: dark wizards in this picture, and I had a hard
Speaker 2: time nailing down exactly which character was which, and who
Speaker 2: played each character. I was working off of the Internet
Speaker 2: movie database as well as the Hong Kong movie database,
Speaker 2: but for this movie in particular, we don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: the names of the characters or even a character description
Speaker 2: entailed as well.
Speaker 1: I think most of the characters we never learned their name.
Speaker 1: Movie I never says.
Speaker 2: This is not that sort of movie where you get
Speaker 2: to know each and every dark wizard. I was really
Speaker 2: intrigued as well by a character that pops up pretty
Speaker 2: late in the picture, a sorceress or demoness that is
Speaker 2: summoned or resurrected. And I believe I really had to
Speaker 2: hunt around for this one, but I believe she's played
Speaker 2: by someone named Shao Yen Lynn. But this is a
Speaker 2: case where we don't have no idea like what her
Speaker 2: when she was born, no biographical data about her, and
Speaker 2: I think this was her only credit but still very
Speaker 2: memorable sexy demonis role, as we'll describe later on in
Speaker 2: our plot summary.
Speaker 1: Is this. This is the character who the parental guide
Speaker 1: on IMDb warns us that she is underdressed for entering
Speaker 1: a temple.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, among all the other blasphemous and awful things
Speaker 2: she's involved in.
Speaker 3: She is underdressed. All right.
Speaker 2: Now we are going to get to someone who is
Speaker 2: instantly recognizable though, and I think easily the most internationally
Speaker 2: recognizable actor in this whole picture. It is Bolo Jung
Speaker 2: playing Boobo the tie boxer, getting to the boxing subplot
Speaker 2: that is pushed to the forefront by the English title
Speaker 2: for this picture. Born in nineteen forty six. You've all
Speaker 2: seen this guy before. I think he is also known
Speaker 2: as Chinese Hercules.
Speaker 1: He is a mountain. This guy. This guy is a
Speaker 1: muscle man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he is a beast.
Speaker 2: And he's like he's kicking like he's fast, super muscular,
Speaker 2: kicking with these legs look like tree trunks. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's just intimidating and also has this just natural heel
Speaker 2: charisma just oozing off of him. You can see why
Speaker 2: this guy was so successful.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the kickboxing scene where the movie opens,
Speaker 1: I am, by no means a kickboxing expert. I don't
Speaker 1: really know anything about it, but even my amateur eyes
Speaker 1: were looking at this and I'm like, wait, these two
Speaker 1: guys are in the same weight class. Doesn't look like
Speaker 1: they would be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bola is just intimidating, and if you have ever
Speaker 2: seen nineteen seventy three's Enter the Dragon, Bolo is the
Speaker 2: guy who fights John Saxon's character, and you may have
Speaker 2: had similar thoughts in that matchup. You know, like John Saxon,
Speaker 2: you know you're super cool, but there's no way you
Speaker 2: would have any realistic chance against this month's of a man.
Speaker 1: Well, that would make more sense of wasn't it originally
Speaker 1: in the script that John Sackson's character dies, and then
Speaker 1: they had to change it because he didn't like that.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, Yeah, may be misremembering, but it's been
Speaker 2: a long time since I've seen it, and I don't
Speaker 2: know much about it, you know, behind the scenes stuff,
Speaker 2: But yeah, Bolo was definitely in Entered the Dragon. His
Speaker 2: Hong Kong film credits go back to nineteen seventy and
Speaker 2: include the nineteen seventy three film Chinese Hercules, in which
Speaker 2: he is not the star, but it was clearly promoted
Speaker 2: at least internationally with this title. To capitalize on his
Speaker 2: screen presence, I included a poster here for you, Joe.
Speaker 2: You may have if you're out there listening, you should
Speaker 2: look this up as well. It says Chinese Hercules, the
Speaker 2: first and only muscle mad monster of the martial Arts,
Speaker 2: the superhuman Beast of the East. And then he's there's
Speaker 2: an illustration of him, like, let's see, he's got like
Speaker 2: two guys in headlocks. And then there's a lady biting
Speaker 2: his leg as he with his elbows like busts down
Speaker 2: the pillars of some sort of a temple.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like Samson, it's pushing the pillars out. Is
Speaker 1: the lady biting his leg because she likes him or
Speaker 1: because she doesn't like him?
Speaker 2: I cannot determine, And I'm not sure that actually watching
Speaker 2: the film would answer the question. But yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 2: guy's the real deal. He was a student of Bruce Lees,
Speaker 2: and you know, obviously appeared alongside him and Enter the
Speaker 2: Dragon was in a ton of these Hong Kong action films.
Speaker 2: But then in nineteen eighty eight he scored the main
Speaker 2: antagonist role in a little movie called blood Sport. This
Speaker 2: is where I think most people are familiar with him
Speaker 2: from this, of course, starred Jean Claude Van Dam, Donald Gibb,
Speaker 2: and Forrest Whitaker. And yeah, Bolo is the intimidating kickboxer
Speaker 2: that I believe, if I remember correctly, like brutally murders
Speaker 2: or injures Donald Gibbs's character, and then Jean Claude Vandam
Speaker 2: has to seek revenge against him.
Speaker 1: Looking at this made me think about the possibility that
Speaker 1: some at some point in time people have rented and
Speaker 1: popped in Boxer z Omen because they were a fan
Speaker 1: of Jean Claude Van Dam movies, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: another kickboxing movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's like maybe five minutes of it in
Speaker 2: the picture, and it's impressive. There's some cool kickboxing as
Speaker 2: well as discuss But at any rate, he'd work getting
Speaker 2: back to Bolo here. He'd work with Van Dam again
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one's Double Impact, and then apparently slowly
Speaker 2: retired from acting after a bit there, with his last
Speaker 2: film credit as of this recording in twenty fifteen. Of note,
Speaker 2: he also directed and starred in a film titled Bolo,
Speaker 2: playing the character Bolo. This is nineteen seventy nine. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's autobiographical. I think it all just happens
Speaker 2: to come together that way.
Speaker 1: Well, I believe Bolow is not his birth name, right,
Speaker 1: I think that's like a nickname. Am I wrong about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe so.
Speaker 2: A lot of these Hong Kong actors, as you may
Speaker 2: have noticed listeners, you know, they have like an American
Speaker 2: Eyes Show name on top of their actual Chinese name.
Speaker 2: Both those Other major films include seventy two's Five Fingers
Speaker 2: of Death and the nineteen ninety three action film titled
Speaker 2: TC two thousand, which also features Billy Blanks and Matthias
Speaker 2: Hughes from I Come In Peace. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of muscle in that picture.
Speaker 1: Really, that's the tay Bo guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's see one more actor to mention here,
Speaker 2: because she is specifically specifically called out in the movie databases.
Speaker 2: We have y co Man playing Chan Hung's girl. That's
Speaker 2: his girlfriend. She doesn't really have a name as far
Speaker 2: as we can tell beyond that, uh like the Wizards.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and she is his often naked lady friend
Speaker 2: back in Hong Kong. Her other credits include eighty three's
Speaker 2: Seating of a Ghost, eighty five's Devil Cat, eighty five's
Speaker 2: Ghost Festival, and ninety three's Sexy Flower. All right, getting
Speaker 2: behind the scenes a little bit, there's some interesting names here.
Speaker 2: Horace Ma is credited with either art director or scenery
Speaker 2: depending on which database you're looking at, and he was
Speaker 2: active from eighty three through I believe twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and I think this was his first film. He'd go
Speaker 2: on to win numerous awards for twenty nineteen Shadow and
Speaker 2: also worked on Rizza's twenty twelve passion project The Man
Speaker 2: with the Iron Fists. Now we have two credited composers here.
Speaker 2: There's Chin Jung Shing and then there's also Chin House Sue.
Speaker 2: Let's see. Shing was active from eighty one through ninety four,
Speaker 2: and his credits include The Seventh Curse, Eight Diagram, Poll Fighter,
Speaker 2: and Dragons Forever. His work was also used in Kill Bill.
Speaker 2: Kill Bill of course samples some various scores from different
Speaker 2: Hong Kong action films, and as for Sue, he also
Speaker 2: worked on some of the same films, but also worked
Speaker 2: on Human Lanterns, Seating of Ghost, and Bewitched. In general,
Speaker 2: I'd say the music here is really fun. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of like cool yeah, electronic effects, some of
Speaker 2: which were lifted. There's one particular sound that a number
Speaker 2: of you will remember from nineteen eighties Flash Gordon that's
Speaker 2: sort of like wow sound that is lifted and used
Speaker 2: in this picture. And I've also read that there are
Speaker 2: some sound effects from Alien that are utilized here as well.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I did not catch that, but I can
Speaker 1: believe it. But yeah, there's a lot of fun It's
Speaker 1: a playful musical score, Like there's some wailing guitars at
Speaker 1: some funny parts. All right, you ready to talk about
Speaker 1: the plot.
Speaker 3: Let's get into the plot.
Speaker 1: So we already laid out a brief sketch of the
Speaker 1: plot earlier, but at the beginning of the story, our
Speaker 1: protagonist Chin Hung is a mid level Hong Kong gangster,
Speaker 1: and when the story begins, he seemingly has everything a
Speaker 1: guy like him could want. He's got money, power, a
Speaker 1: beautiful girlfriend, a nice house, luxuries, and it seems like
Speaker 1: respect in the criminal underworld. He's a respected criminal.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, has some cool sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Chen Hung also has a brother. Now about the name
Speaker 1: of the brother, I was like some online synopsies, like
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page for this movie calls his brother Chen Wing.
Speaker 1: Though when I was just rewatching it, I noticed I
Speaker 1: think the only time somebody said his full name in
Speaker 1: the movie, it was a boxing announcer who called him
Speaker 1: chen Why so I'm not sure which is more right there.
Speaker 1: But his brother is also quite successful in his own domain,
Speaker 1: which is kickboxing. And they never talk about this from
Speaker 1: what I recall, but it is implied later in the
Speaker 1: film that Chen Hung himself has previously had a career
Speaker 1: as a kickboxer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he seems competent getting into the ring
Speaker 2: to kickbox himself later in the picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the film opens on a kickboxing match in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong with two fighters for the heavyweight championship, and
Speaker 1: the fighters are Chan Hung's brother Chen Wing or Chen Wy,
Speaker 1: and on the other side of the ring a tie
Speaker 1: boxer named Bubo. That's the guy played by Bolo Young.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again just an obvious physical mismatch here. You
Speaker 2: can tell a murder is about to take place in
Speaker 2: the ring.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they're fighting, and I might be a little
Speaker 1: bit confused about the rules of kickboxing because in this fight,
Speaker 1: the tie boxer kicks Chan Wing in the back of
Speaker 1: the head between rounds while his back is turned. I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, how is that not instant disqualification? I
Speaker 1: think the ref says something like if you keep that up,
Speaker 1: I'm going to disqualify you. It seems like one time
Speaker 1: would be instant, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, as with Buddhism, we should be reluctant
Speaker 2: to learn too much about kickboxing from this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed more like pro wrestling rules than something
Speaker 1: with line a fair competition. But yeah, anyway, through this
Speaker 1: and through so because he's like, you know, kicking him
Speaker 1: in the back of the head while his back's turned,
Speaker 1: and because he's just smugly grinning a lot, we get
Speaker 1: the idea that Boobo the tie boxer is a bad
Speaker 1: sportsman and a bad dude. He's vicious, he doesn't fight fair,
Speaker 1: and he has no sense of honor or shame. Now,
Speaker 1: there is no magic in this scene, which is an
Speaker 1: interesting choice that the movie does not begin with like
Speaker 1: a supernatural prologue or any indication of how weird it's
Speaker 1: going to get. From the opening scene, you could easily
Speaker 1: assume that this is just going to be a hard hitting,
Speaker 1: terrestrial kickboxer movie. And you know, I think it works
Speaker 1: pretty well in that vein Like this is a good
Speaker 1: fight scene with strong choreography and most importantly, I think
Speaker 1: good sound effects. It has that great frequency spanning slap
Speaker 1: with every punch and kick that connects. This is characteristic.
Speaker 1: I think of a lot of the best Hong Kong
Speaker 1: action movies as they have really great fight sound effects,
Speaker 1: and that core connection sound is like a combination of
Speaker 1: a bass drum kick, a rim shot, and then a
Speaker 1: strip of wet briskets slapping on parchment paper all at
Speaker 1: once happening. Love those percussive fight scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have really solid sound effects throughout this picture,
Speaker 2: whether it's kicks and slaps or dripping in trails and
Speaker 2: demon slime.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the fight is quite brutal. At different times, both
Speaker 1: Bubo and Chen Wing landed just disgusting hits. At one point,
Speaker 1: Boubo has a bunch of floppy pink gore tinsel hanging
Speaker 1: off the side of his head. He gets kicked in
Speaker 1: the head and it's just like wuh, It's like his
Speaker 1: wires are coming out. It looks like so Chanhung's brother
Speaker 1: wins the fight, but after he has declared the winner,
Speaker 1: the tie boxer becomes furious. He runs up, He sucker
Speaker 1: punches him in the back of the head again, and
Speaker 1: then when he falls down, he stomps on his body
Speaker 1: until his neck is broken.
Speaker 3: Brittle brittle.
Speaker 1: Once again you'd think like, okay, that's not just disqualified,
Speaker 1: like you'd be arrested, but instead it just kind of
Speaker 1: like now you're not supposed to do that. Later after
Speaker 1: the fight, we see Chan Hung in his element. He
Speaker 1: swaggers into this cool Hong Kong club that's flooded with
Speaker 1: red light. He's wearing a sleek gray suit with a
Speaker 1: pocket square and a black shirt open about four buttons
Speaker 1: down from the neck. Also sunglasses at night indoors, so
Speaker 1: that he is a cool cat. And so he comes
Speaker 1: into the crimed in and he's addressed as brother Hung.
Speaker 1: Chan Hung is called in for a meeting with the boss,
Speaker 1: Uncle Chi, and the boss tells him that he has
Speaker 1: to go to a one am meeting with the representatives
Speaker 1: of a gang from the mainland. Hung agrees, and he
Speaker 1: makes plans to have back up with weapons waiting outside
Speaker 1: the meeting place in case anything goes wrong. Well something
Speaker 1: does go wrong. In fact, it is a track the meeting.
Speaker 1: It takes place at some kind of construction site, and
Speaker 1: as soon as Chan Hun comes in and sees the
Speaker 1: leader of the Mainlanders, he's obviously like this is not
Speaker 1: gonna be a happy meeting. He takes off his sunglasses.
Speaker 1: There's a guitar whale on the soundtrack, and Hung says,
Speaker 1: you're very cocky. You just arrived and already you're fighting
Speaker 1: for territory. And I do love. By the way, the
Speaker 1: outfit of the mainlander, he's got like this cool hat
Speaker 1: cock to the side, and he's smoking a cigarette and he,
Speaker 1: I don't know, something looks kind of like nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: gangster about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a real vicious air to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the gangster says, you know, it's bold of
Speaker 1: you to come here alone, and Hung says, I've been
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong a long time. I've seen it all.
Speaker 1: But then the mainlander guys like, bet you haven't seen this,
Speaker 1: And then from somewhere up above, he drops a burlap
Speaker 1: sack full of chopped up human body with bloody arms
Speaker 1: poking out of it, and whoops. Inside the sack is
Speaker 1: Uncle Chi Hung's boss. And then the other gang reveals
Speaker 1: that they also killed all of Hung's back up and
Speaker 1: now they're about to kill him as well, so they
Speaker 1: tie him up, hang him upside down by his feet,
Speaker 1: and plunge his head into a bucket of water. So
Speaker 1: it's brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So suddenly we've gone from sports movie to violent
Speaker 2: crime movie, and it seems like that movie's about to
Speaker 2: end here rather quickly.
Speaker 1: But now we're about six minutes into the film, we're
Speaker 1: about to get the first sudden intervention of magic. There
Speaker 1: is a divine interruption of this gangland execution when an
Speaker 1: otherworldly wind and an emanation of white light burst into
Speaker 1: the scene, frightening and confusing the gangsters. And then we
Speaker 1: cut away to see the source of this power. In
Speaker 1: the doorway to the warehouse, there is a bald monk
Speaker 1: naked at the shoulder but wrapped in gold robes, with
Speaker 1: a gold band around his head, from which dangle these
Speaker 1: two large spheres are dish on either side, down below
Speaker 1: his jaw, and then in the dark all around we
Speaker 1: can see jets of white radiant energy squirting off of him.
Speaker 1: He almost literally looks like a lawn sprinkler of holiness.
Speaker 3: He does yes.
Speaker 1: Suddenly Chan Hung is free of his bindings. The ropes
Speaker 1: come undone. He looks around and he can stand up,
Speaker 1: and all of the rival gangsters lie dead on the ground.
Speaker 1: The apparition of the monk says, Chan Hung, you must
Speaker 1: follow me. Chan Hung asks who are you? But he
Speaker 1: doesn't have time to figure it out. Here's police sirens approaching,
Speaker 1: so he has to flee the scene, and then he
Speaker 1: goes back home to spend the night with his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a really steamy sex scene ensues. But it's
Speaker 2: also important because it helps establish that our hero is
Speaker 2: a lover. He is a lusty gentleman, which is going
Speaker 2: to be important later on.
Speaker 1: Yes you will. I think you were supposed to think
Speaker 1: back to the scene immediately when he later promises the
Speaker 1: Buddha vow of sexual abstinence.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So later that night, Chan Hung has another strange vision.
Speaker 1: He has awakened from a dream to see a glowing
Speaker 1: orange symbol floating in the air over his bed. It
Speaker 1: sort of looks like a carrot symbol, or like a
Speaker 1: capital letter A without a crossbar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm not sure if it's intended to be
Speaker 2: read this way, but the symbol sort of looks like
Speaker 2: the character for wren, which means man or person.
Speaker 1: Also, the symbol has its own soundtrack Q It's like
Speaker 1: a hollow rhythm beating on a metal drum. And the
Speaker 1: symbol leads chan Hung into the living room where the
Speaker 1: TV is on. It's blasting static and filling the room
Speaker 1: with blue light, and then the vision of the monk
Speaker 1: in bodily form appears once again. He tells Hung that
Speaker 1: there's something he needs to explain to him, but the
Speaker 1: vision disappears when Hung's girlfriend walks into the room and
Speaker 1: startles him. The next day, Chan Hung visits his brother
Speaker 1: in the hospital. His brother is still in traction, covered
Speaker 1: all over with bandages like a burn victim. I don't
Speaker 1: understand why the bandage is. They're like all the way
Speaker 1: around his head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a cartoon level of bandaging here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The doctor informs them that the brother's kickboxing career
Speaker 1: is over. He's going to be paralyzed for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life, and Chan Hung is shaken and the
Speaker 1: brother whispers that Hung must take revenge for him. He
Speaker 1: wants to see Hung get revenge on the tie boxer,
Speaker 1: so we cut right to it. Next, we're in Thailand
Speaker 1: and we see busy city streets filled with cars. You've
Speaker 1: got rivers, canals with motor boats, beautiful Buddhist temples and
Speaker 1: shrines all around. Chan Hung goes to an event where
Speaker 1: a local promoter is presenting an award to Boobo the
Speaker 1: tie boxer. The gist of the ceremonies kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: they say Boobo showed the Hong Kong champion what boxing
Speaker 1: is all about. And then they say that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong judges were biased against our guy. The
Speaker 1: fight was rigged, so the judgment doesn't really count. So
Speaker 1: we declare our fighter the winner.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a small gather, but it looks like the
Speaker 2: local press was invited, and of course our hero has
Speaker 2: shown up as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the MC presents Bubo with a championship belt,
Speaker 1: but before he can claim it, Chan Hung walks up
Speaker 1: and he smacks it to the ground and he starts
Speaker 1: cussing it at below Young here, and they yell at
Speaker 1: each other for a bit, and then they finally agree
Speaker 1: that in three months the two of them will fight
Speaker 1: a grudge match in Hong Kong.
Speaker 2: And to your point earlier, it really does feel like
Speaker 2: pro wrestling at this point. Here we have our obvious
Speaker 2: heel and our obvious face here teasing the next big matchup,
Speaker 2: the grudge match.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In my English subtitles, by the way, they were
Speaker 1: calling each other Hong Kong Boy and thie.
Speaker 2: Boy, Yes, the same for me. So okay, it seems
Speaker 2: like the vengeance here is off to a great start.
Speaker 2: You know, they have something on the books, so good enough.
Speaker 1: Sure, but it's about to get more complicated because while
Speaker 1: riding in a motor boat down the river canal after
Speaker 1: the confrontation, Chan Hung suddenly sees a familiar shape at
Speaker 1: the peak of a roof of a Buddhist temple. He
Speaker 1: sees that glowing orange shape from his waking dream, so
Speaker 1: it's like, what's this He has to go in and investigate.
Speaker 1: When Chenhun approaches the entrance, a monk in orange robes
Speaker 1: greets him and already knows him by name. He says,
Speaker 1: they've been expecting him. Inside the temple, we're treated to
Speaker 1: visions of altars and shrines blowing with gold and candle light,
Speaker 1: and the dim interior and the monks all sing a
Speaker 1: hypnotic repeating chant. We will hear this chant or something
Speaker 1: like it many times in the film, and it has
Speaker 1: a powerful effect the way it just kind of like
Speaker 1: cycles on itself. I found it deeply hypnotic.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2: And of course these these these temple locations that they're
Speaker 2: using are also just so amazing here. We'll have some
Speaker 2: sets later on, but at least a number of these
Speaker 2: early interiors that we're encountering like these are I believe
Speaker 2: actual Tie Temple interiors.
Speaker 1: Well, the head Monk wastes no time getting into an
Speaker 1: explanation for Chan Hung. He says, a year ago, our
Speaker 1: abbot went to Hong Kong to take care of a
Speaker 1: black magician, my Goosu. Okay, And so then we see
Speaker 1: the sorcerer in question. He is getting out of a
Speaker 1: taxi cab and going into the airport, and he's not
Speaker 1: dressed like a wizard, by the way. He's in fact,
Speaker 1: he to show that he practices black magic. He's dressed
Speaker 1: all in black. He's wearing a black shirt, black shoes,
Speaker 1: black pants, black belt, and has elvis hair. Yes, So
Speaker 1: this guy's walking into the airport, and then suddenly, from
Speaker 1: behind him appears the abbot, dressed in his orange robes,
Speaker 1: illuminating illuminated from behind, so he shimmers with this pious light,
Speaker 1: and his head is also surrounded by a halo. There's
Speaker 1: a circular pattern of rainbow colored prismatic feathers, and the
Speaker 1: abbot calls out to my Goosu, who turns and looks
Speaker 1: at him like, oh no, I've and caught. And then
Speaker 1: the abbot holds up in his hand a tear shaped
Speaker 1: shard of mirror and then throws it at the Wizard.
Speaker 1: It attaches to the Wizard's forehead and immediately starts to
Speaker 1: like sap his black magic and destroy his body. So
Speaker 1: the Magician starts screaming in pain, and then he starts
Speaker 1: clutching at his face, which begins to melt and turns
Speaker 1: into white, goopy paste. Green light floods the scene, and
Speaker 1: then the Wizard starts exploding, not in one big explosion,
Speaker 1: but lots of little explosions, beginning with balloons that inflate
Speaker 1: underneath his sloppy skin, and they're all over his arms
Speaker 1: and his neck and face, kind of like an infestation
Speaker 1: of boils, but they are full on skin balloons which
Speaker 1: each blow up and pop.
Speaker 2: There are a number of subgenres that can be applied
Speaker 2: to the Boxer's omen. We should mention that one of
Speaker 2: them is body harp. There's a lot of body heart
Speaker 2: in this movie. So if that's not your thing, if
Speaker 2: you're not open to it, then I would maybe pass
Speaker 2: on this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Wizard collapses to the floor while he's
Speaker 1: popping all over popping off. He collapses to the floor
Speaker 1: of the airport terminal. He melts some more and screams
Speaker 1: on the floor, and then he pulls himself up over
Speaker 1: the top of a bunch of orange plastic chairs, at
Speaker 1: which point he has morphed into a different form, that
Speaker 1: of a withered old wizard with long white spiderweb hair
Speaker 1: and pale skin and a big black spot on his
Speaker 1: forehead with like long pointy bugle fingernails. I guess this
Speaker 1: means that this is my Goosu's true form, and the
Speaker 1: Elvis Wizard the guy in black was sort of his
Speaker 1: glamour spell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was my interpretation as well.
Speaker 1: The abbot, now sitting cross legged on the airport a
Speaker 1: lobby floor, is preying with hands folded, and this keeps
Speaker 1: exerting magical suffering on the Wizard, and then the Wizard
Speaker 1: collapses on the ground, seemingly dead with dry plaster skin,
Speaker 1: and then out of his mouth something begins to wiggle.
Speaker 1: It is a bat. It is a bat crawling out
Speaker 1: of his mouth, a bat that lived inside the Wizard's mouth,
Speaker 1: And it's so cute and it squeaks and flies away.
Speaker 2: But if you think that's the end of it, it
Speaker 2: is not. One thing you'll quickly learn about this film
Speaker 2: is most pictures would leave it at bat, but not
Speaker 2: the Boxer Zone. It.
Speaker 1: No, no, we're just getting started. The abbot catches the
Speaker 1: bat in his hand. He puts the wiggling bat in
Speaker 1: his pocket and then goes back to his temple in Thailand.
Speaker 1: So like did he get on an airplane with the
Speaker 1: bat squeaking and writhing the whole way?
Speaker 2: And then it was a different, different world back then
Speaker 2: when it came to flying around.
Speaker 1: Back at the temple, in front of a shrine with
Speaker 1: a golden Buddha, he does a ritual to defeat the
Speaker 1: black magic, involving a bunch of candles, a dagger, a bell,
Speaker 1: a pink flowering tree branch. This might be a cherry
Speaker 1: cherry blossom branch. I'm not sure, But here we begin
Speaker 1: to see a symmetry. While the abbot is doing a
Speaker 1: holy ritual in his holy place, we first get a
Speaker 1: glimpse into the realm of the anti holy, some kind
Speaker 1: of devil's temple somewhere else. There is a large room
Speaker 1: filled with shelves containing clay jars, and at one end
Speaker 1: of this big room full of jars, there is a
Speaker 1: giant shrine to the demons and dealers of black magic.
Speaker 1: So we have a roaring bonfire presided over by a
Speaker 1: statue of a huge winged devil with glowing yellow eyes,
Speaker 1: four horns around a bald head, and note that the
Speaker 1: fire seems to be basically emanating from the demon's crotch.
Speaker 1: And then in front of that four giant white statues
Speaker 1: representing hands with curled, clutching fingers, and on each hand
Speaker 1: a statue of some kind of nasty animal scorpions, bats, spiders,
Speaker 1: and I think snakes or maybe caterpillars. All around there
Speaker 1: are various other implements of evils strewn about the room.
Speaker 1: You got skulls, daggers, and a tea kettle. I guess
Speaker 1: for tea.
Speaker 3: Well you gotta have tea either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is glorious looking, some great great use
Speaker 2: of red and green gels. This looks like the most
Speaker 2: amazing Halloween decorations you could imagine, very well done. And
Speaker 2: I could be off on this, but I think maybe
Speaker 2: each nasty animal corresponds to a different wizard. We're going
Speaker 2: to see during the rest of the picture here, but
Speaker 2: at any rate, we're about to touch base with a
Speaker 2: related wizard to the wizard that was just murdered in
Speaker 2: the airport. This is going to be our main wizard
Speaker 2: for the picture, and then later on we'll deal with
Speaker 2: some of his apprentices. Three of his apprentices, so four
Speaker 2: wizards remaining in this movie.
Speaker 1: Right. So back at the temple, we see the abbot
Speaker 1: doing his own kind of magic. He's doing an exorcism
Speaker 1: of the evil magic by hammering a gold dagger into
Speaker 1: the heart of the demon bat that he holds captive.
Speaker 1: And then we see the bat at the evil Shrine
Speaker 1: and green goose starts to pour out of its heart,
Speaker 1: and then the abbot pours holy water over the captive bat,
Speaker 1: and at the evil Shrine, the bat statue dissolves and
Speaker 1: melts away, leaving only a bat skeleton behind. Then it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the moment where something has gotten the
Speaker 1: attention of a higher up. In response, out of somewhere
Speaker 1: in the Evil Shrine, a being awakens. We see it
Speaker 1: first as a figure in black with glowing red eyes,
Speaker 1: then revealed to be a man wearing a monstrous bat
Speaker 1: mask with a big white wig. The figure flies across
Speaker 1: the room, takes off the bat mask, revealing that he
Speaker 1: is a man with a mustache, wearing a black headband,
Speaker 1: red and gold mark on his forehead. And this will
Speaker 1: be our main evil wizard for the film, or at
Speaker 1: least the first half of the film. And he looks
Speaker 1: down at the skeleton a little bit sad and says,
Speaker 1: how dare he kill my bat? So let the counter
Speaker 1: rituals begin? And I want to say it just by
Speaker 1: describing it. It is hard to convey the ludicrous, frenetic
Speaker 1: feeling of the scenes where the bad wizard carries out
Speaker 1: his black magic invocations and recipes. Part of the effect,
Speaker 1: I think is the cinematography. Something feels almost in fast
Speaker 1: forward about it. Part of it is also the actor's performance.
Speaker 1: The actor who plays the evil wizard has this uncontrollable, mischievous,
Speaker 1: satanic spider monkey energy. He's so good. And then part
Speaker 1: of it also is in the content of what he
Speaker 1: is doing, which is so off the wall. So it's
Speaker 1: like open a jar, grab a live rat out of
Speaker 1: the jar, take a bite out of the rat, spit
Speaker 1: blood all over the bat skeleton, and start screaming at it.
Speaker 1: To revive, revive, And this is the part I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier when I was like, it's not the
Speaker 1: kind of somber reverence for Satan that you expect out
Speaker 1: of movies like The Devil's Rain or Empire of the Dark. Instead,
Speaker 1: this is a guy in a hurry yelling at his
Speaker 1: car when he's turning the key and it won't turn over.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a delightful choice, I think. And
Speaker 1: so the Wizard gets his bat skeleton up and walking
Speaker 1: around and he's chasing it, clicking a bone at it
Speaker 1: and trying to get it to move faster. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: at the Abbot's temple, while he's doing that, the bat
Speaker 1: skeleton at the Abbot's temple gets up and starts walking
Speaker 1: around too. It's walking toward the door. So the Wizard
Speaker 1: is remote controlling a distant bat skeleton with his own
Speaker 1: bat skeleton covered in rat blood that he spit on it.
Speaker 2: In both cases, it's moving with kind of a wind
Speaker 2: up toy yes energy to it. And this is a
Speaker 2: I mean, all the scenes in this movie are pretty weird.
Speaker 2: This one is weird early on because I'm like, am
Speaker 2: I rooting for the bat skeleton. The tension we're building here,
Speaker 2: I think I want the bat skeleton to escape. The
Speaker 2: abbot and our dark wizard is like saying things like
Speaker 2: get out of there, Get out of there, there's nothing
Speaker 2: else to see. You got to get out of there,
Speaker 2: and I'm kind of like, yeah, go, bad go.
Speaker 1: He's so annoyed, though. The Wizard is just like, get out.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to say yet He's trying to get it
Speaker 1: to hurry up. Fortunately, I guess from the Abbot's point
Speaker 1: of view, the Abbot catches the bat skeleton in mid escape,
Speaker 1: and then he gets out a giant Looney Tunes size hammer,
Speaker 1: like a huge mallet, and smashes it just.
Speaker 2: Over and over again too, just smash smash, smash, smash, smash.
Speaker 3: And the.
Speaker 1: Wizard does not like this. He says, he broke my
Speaker 1: magic again, damn. So the magic continues. The Wizard starts
Speaker 1: frantically playing a reed pipe instrument like a snake charm.
Speaker 1: He still has blood on his mouth from biting the rat.
Speaker 1: By the way, serpents come out of several clay jars.
Speaker 1: Their tongues are flicking. They slither on the floor. The
Speaker 1: Wizard grabs them and milks the snakes for venom, which
Speaker 1: is kind of green sour apple juice that drains into
Speaker 1: a flask. And then he opens another clay jar and
Speaker 1: pulls a head out, a defleshed skull covered in jelly
Speaker 1: like spam with eyeballs and brain intact.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so gross. It's so gross, but it just
Speaker 2: perfectly executed. It just this is pure Halloween right here.
Speaker 1: He pulls a bunch of worms off the head, breaks
Speaker 1: open the skull, revealing fresh brain like, full fleshy fresh brain,
Speaker 1: pours the snake venom that he just milked into the brain, stirs,
Speaker 1: scrambles it, pours the venom slash brain combo into a
Speaker 1: clay pot and cooks it. Pours out the green juice
Speaker 1: on the resulting green juice on this like white board.
Speaker 1: Then gets out a sack and releases from it three tarantulas,
Speaker 1: which crawl out and drink the juice through straws. And
Speaker 1: the tarantulas, much like the bat, are sort of felt
Speaker 1: textured and look very cute adorable.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah again, very much a wind up toy sort
Speaker 2: of vibe going on here with these little creatures, and.
Speaker 1: The wizard is screaming, grant me infinite power Lord of
Speaker 1: the Dark. And then later we see the wizard sneaking
Speaker 1: into the Abbot's temple assassin's creed style. There's some fence
Speaker 1: climbing in light parkour. He's a very agile wizard and
Speaker 1: he obviously hates it in here, all these buddhas and
Speaker 1: this holy stuff. He's repulsed. But the wizard finds the
Speaker 1: room where the abbot is sleeping. He crawls up the
Speaker 1: wall like a spider. I guess he has sticky hands.
Speaker 1: Then he crawls on the ceiling, then releases his magic tarantulas,
Speaker 1: which descend on threads to the abbot's bed, climb on
Speaker 1: the ap its face, and pierce his eyeballs with magic
Speaker 1: golden needles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, this is all a flashbacks, all providing
Speaker 2: a little backstory here, but it's also just a nice
Speaker 2: snapshot at where the film's going from here. So I
Speaker 2: want to add just a general note here that part
Speaker 2: of the movie's real charm is the way amid glorious
Speaker 2: set design and lighting will go from some really grizzly
Speaker 2: prop use and things that might be entrails from a
Speaker 2: local butcher shop to some really cool looking animated effects,
Speaker 2: and then the use of puppetry and wind up toy
Speaker 2: effects for things like bats, spider skulls and little demons.
Speaker 2: And on one level, yeah, there's kind of a wide
Speaker 2: drift here in the quality of the effects. That's one
Speaker 2: way of looking at it. But there's also kind of
Speaker 2: a house esque other worldliness to it that can almost
Speaker 2: be hard to explain, like just a real madness to
Speaker 2: the whole affair that the wind up toy effects kind
Speaker 2: of punctuy you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like the variability of the effects textures almost
Speaker 1: emphasize the unpredictability of the story and the things that
Speaker 1: are happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just like you know, he goes to all
Speaker 2: these grotesque extremes, committing multiple atrocities to create some sort
Speaker 2: of magic potion that then this like obvious wind up
Speaker 2: toy creature drinks, and then we move on to the
Speaker 2: next level of the spell slash vengeance plan that's in effect.
Speaker 2: But again, I think the other way to interpret all
Speaker 2: this is that dark wizards are as crazy as they
Speaker 2: are vile, Like you just have to be completely shamelessly
Speaker 2: unhinged in order to practice these dark hearts. But don't
Speaker 2: fret they're going to be more spells, and they're going
Speaker 2: to be more spell components.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other thing I wanted to say about the
Speaker 1: Dark Wizard is it almost feels I mean, they're productive,
Speaker 1: They're on this constant improvisational grind. These guys feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, get up at six and get to the
Speaker 1: dark magic immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, those atrocities aren't gonna commit themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, finally we're sort of getting caught up. So back
Speaker 1: in the present, the monk finishes explaining this backstory to Chanhung.
Speaker 1: He explains that the abbot, again whose name was ching Jo,
Speaker 1: was about to achieve immortality.
Speaker 2: Or as a different translation might put it, maybe like
Speaker 2: enlightenment or liberation.
Speaker 1: But because of the poison injected into his eyes by
Speaker 1: the cursed spiders, he can no longer attain that goal
Speaker 1: unless somebody breaks the magic spell, and the abbot prophesied
Speaker 1: that three months earlier, a man named Chanhung would come
Speaker 1: to the temple and he would be the one who
Speaker 1: could break the curse. Chanhung does not believe it, but
Speaker 1: there will be proof. The abbot's body was placed inside
Speaker 1: a giant urn upon his death, and if there is
Speaker 1: any decomposition of the abbot's body, they will know that
Speaker 1: it was nonsense. But if the body is perfectly preserved,
Speaker 1: then they'll know it was all true. So they go
Speaker 1: to check out the urn. Some monks shatter it with
Speaker 1: big mallets, and the abbot is not rotten at all.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, chen Hung is now implicated. He's got to help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fabulous scene. I love the shattering of the greater
Speaker 2: urn and inside yet the uncorrupted corpse of the Abbot,
Speaker 2: playing on very real traditions in both the East and
Speaker 2: the West of holy men whose bodies do not fully decompose,
Speaker 2: you know, also getting into traditions of self mummification.
Speaker 1: Also, right after this, the monks lock chen Hung inside
Speaker 1: the room with the Abbot's body. Is trying to get out,
Speaker 1: but they lock him in there, and the body starts
Speaker 1: talking to him. It says, you must be curious as
Speaker 1: to why I've summoned you here. It's because we were
Speaker 1: twins in our past lives. That's why your fate is
Speaker 1: similar to mine in this life. So whatever happens to
Speaker 1: me will happen to you. Uh oh. So because of
Speaker 1: the golden needles in his eyes, if there were normal people,
Speaker 1: the Abbot's body would already have decomposed, and Chanhung would
Speaker 1: already be dead because the same thing would happen to
Speaker 1: him that happens to the abbot, But the body is
Speaker 1: not decomposed and Chanhung is still alive, and the abbot
Speaker 1: explains this is because of his practice of Buddhism. He says,
Speaker 1: I almost achieved immortality, but because I was hit with
Speaker 1: the poison spell, I couldn't succeed. But by the time
Speaker 1: my body decomposes, it will be your time of death.
Speaker 1: You can't avoid it. So that's the setup. These two
Speaker 1: are magically linked as twins from a past life. The
Speaker 1: abbot can no longer fight this battle because he is dead,
Speaker 1: and only Chanhung can save them both. If Chanhun can
Speaker 1: defeat the evil magic, his life will be saved and
Speaker 1: the Abbot will be able to achieve immortality. Otherwise it's
Speaker 1: curtains for them both.
Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah, and don't really worry about the kickboxing revenge anymore.
Speaker 2: It's less important at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Chenhung doesn't want to hear this, of course. He
Speaker 1: cusses out the monk and he leaves that night. In
Speaker 1: the hotel room, he has some eel vomiting issues. He
Speaker 1: vomits up a live eel in the sink. Doesn't like that.
Speaker 2: Ye great sequence would be the most memorable scene in
Speaker 2: many other movies. Here it can become a little lost
Speaker 2: in the shuffle.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So next day he's like, Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that again. So he goes back to
Speaker 1: the temple and he says, I will help you fight.
Speaker 1: But then the next shoe drops. In order to have
Speaker 1: the magical abilities he's going to need in order to
Speaker 1: fight this battle, he has to become a monk, and
Speaker 1: that means shaving his head, giving up his life of crime,
Speaker 1: giving up sin and earthly pleasures. Oh no, but he
Speaker 1: does it, and we see a ceremony where he is
Speaker 1: led into the temple complex riding on the back of
Speaker 1: an elephant with dancers marching all around. He makes an
Speaker 1: offering and he bows before the Buddha and he begins
Speaker 1: his practice. And this part of the movie is kind
Speaker 1: of like a long Buddhist monk magic warrior training montage.
Speaker 1: He goes through the rituals, he humble himself and even
Speaker 1: receives a new name that the monks at the temple
Speaker 1: call him, Kaidi Baluo. The training has several different things.
Speaker 1: One is enduring leeches in a river. He has to
Speaker 1: like get in a river where he gets covered in
Speaker 1: leeches and the is you know, his master is like
Speaker 1: you stay there. This is played for laughs, by the way, Yes, hilarious.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a scene which was so strange,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if this is based on anything real
Speaker 1: where he gets inside of a giant clay pot that
Speaker 1: starts to glow. The pot is covered with sacred writing,
Speaker 1: and then chan Hung is on the inside and his
Speaker 1: hands are wrapped in ropes and the ropes go out
Speaker 1: of the pot and are held by monks all around
Speaker 1: him who are chanting. And then he is absorbed in
Speaker 1: a scripture tornado where the sacred writing on the pot
Speaker 1: spins all around him and like becomes a funnel, and
Speaker 1: then the lines of scripture flow down his arms and
Speaker 1: into his blood.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's pretty great animate use of animation here,
Speaker 2: and I really think it's a it's a great element
Speaker 2: of the film here that yeah, with the black magic
Speaker 2: is consistently like gross and over the top and just
Speaker 2: completely mind rending, but also the good guy magic is
Speaker 2: also so visually impressive here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, and and there is a strong I mean,
Speaker 1: even esthetically, the two different schools of magic really emphasize
Speaker 1: themes of like order versus chaos, Like the sorcerers are
Speaker 1: doing chaos magic. And there is something that feels very
Speaker 1: traditional and ordered and structured about the magic practiced by
Speaker 1: the monks here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's centered around language, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's.
Speaker 3: It's so orderly.
Speaker 2: I think this is a great point.
Speaker 1: Another thing that comes is the vows, So this is
Speaker 1: an important plot point. In order to maintain purity, he
Speaker 1: must keep his vows as a monk, so he swears
Speaker 1: to follow the Buddha and do a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: He has to abstain from prohibited activities such as gambling, murder, sex,
Speaker 1: and drinking alcohol.
Speaker 2: But he's up for it. He's like, let's do it, okay.
Speaker 1: And then the head monk after that says, so you've succeeded.
Speaker 1: You are now ready to defeat evil. It feels like
Speaker 1: it comes on so fast. Yeah, but they're wasting no
Speaker 1: time at all. We cut straight to an amazing wizard battle.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to narrate this one with as much
Speaker 1: detail as the last one. Well, the last one in
Speaker 1: a battle, I guess, but the last ritual scene. But
Speaker 1: I do want to mention at least some of the
Speaker 1: incredible sites and developments throughout. First of all, do you
Speaker 1: know Rob where this takes place. Is it in another
Speaker 1: plane of existence? It feels like it's kind of in
Speaker 1: the middle of a void world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a place becomes less important here, doesn't it, because
Speaker 2: it's just like two magical forces doing battle with each other.
Speaker 2: It could be like, basically the way it's presented here
Speaker 2: visually is one practitioner seated on one end and the
Speaker 2: other practitioners seated on the other, and magical effects are
Speaker 2: kind of going to war between the two of them.
Speaker 2: So you could certainly interpret this as happening like within
Speaker 2: like the astral plane, or within the mental realm that
Speaker 2: exists between their shared minds, or yeah, did they go
Speaker 2: to some sort of like neutral zone where it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: we have to go to the battle chamber where the
Speaker 2: wizards do get out. I guess I lean more towards
Speaker 2: the idea that it's in some sort of a zone
Speaker 2: in their head, But I don't know. You go each
Speaker 2: direction here.
Speaker 1: So it begins when the evil Wizard flies in Through
Speaker 1: the Night in his batmsk costume, and then he says,
Speaker 1: show me what you got, yes, And then by the way,
Speaker 1: the Evil Wizard has Ultimate Warrior face paint on. It's
Speaker 1: awesome and like purple satin suit. He's surrounded by an
Speaker 1: army of crocodile skulls which are animated by chicken blood.
Speaker 2: He throws, kick and clack and crawl around and eventually
Speaker 2: chased a chase after a chicken carcass.
Speaker 1: Oh and warning two people. In this scene, there is
Speaker 1: what appears to me to be probably an unsimulated beheading
Speaker 1: of a chicken. I'm not positive about that, but it
Speaker 1: looks to me like it's real. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: you get that with some of these older movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are most of the animal violence in this picture.
Speaker 2: It does appear to be quite simulated.
Speaker 1: All of the other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if this chicken and maybe another chicken scene
Speaker 2: are a little questionable, well, to be clear, the other
Speaker 2: chicken is definitely dead. Yeah, but also very gross. So yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a gross movie, just to drive that home
Speaker 2: once more.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you've got blooming, blooming red eyes out of
Speaker 1: these crocodile skulls, you've got bats in the eye holes.
Speaker 1: And then the wizard is saying, get up, attack the monk,
Speaker 1: and then the monks of the bats fly at him,
Speaker 1: but he kind of surrounds himself with a magical force
Speaker 1: field that becomes a glowing hot glue trap for bats.
Speaker 1: They get stuck to it and then it incinerates them.
Speaker 1: And then we get the evil rice. The wizard starts
Speaker 1: throwing out handfuls of rice over the crocodile heads and saying,
Speaker 1: dark Lord, grant ultimate power to this rice. And then
Speaker 1: chan Hung is attacked by a sworn, a swarm of
Speaker 1: animated crocodile skulls which are chomping like wind up teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he dispatches these by like throwing little Buddhist
Speaker 2: ambulance into all their mouths.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, basically like each wizard is a general commanding
Speaker 2: these different magical effects against each other.
Speaker 1: That's right. So the bad Wizard he starts eating rotten
Speaker 1: guts and vomiting them and eating them and saying, I'm
Speaker 1: full of power now. And then there's pink vomit from
Speaker 1: a giant pot that's bubbling and becoming a green martian
Speaker 1: head with this giant cranium and pointy ears and this
Speaker 1: like rises up out of the pot. Where does this
Speaker 1: green Martian come from?
Speaker 2: Words cannot describe how bizarre this point and an already
Speaker 2: just completely crazy sequence is Like, this is such an
Speaker 2: ultimate WTF moment in this film. Just my jaw literally
Speaker 2: drops at this point in the movie. And then it
Speaker 2: just keeps happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it becomes scanners because the monk uses
Speaker 1: his scanner's powers to make the green Martian head explode.
Speaker 1: The Wizard then pokes himself in the neck with needles
Speaker 1: and then severs his own head and his severed head
Speaker 1: flies away from his body with arteries dangling out of
Speaker 1: the ragged neck, and then attacks the monk by strangling
Speaker 1: him with the arteries. And then the monk fights back
Speaker 1: and makes the Wizard's head melt with the power of
Speaker 1: a red son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then this is the finish to the match.
Speaker 2: This Wizard is now for real dead.
Speaker 1: That's right, that part is over. So Chan Hung is
Speaker 1: like after the battle, he's talking to the head monk
Speaker 1: who tells him Evil is defeated. The abbot can achieve
Speaker 1: immortality and you can go back to Hong Kong. So again,
Speaker 1: it's pretty It's like, wow, that was sudden. But as
Speaker 1: soon as he gets home to Hong Kong Chan Hung,
Speaker 1: he like comes in through the door, he sees his
Speaker 1: girlfriend in the shower, and he has overcome with lust.
Speaker 1: And at this point I think he was wondering, wait,
Speaker 1: do I still have to keep all those vows I
Speaker 1: made to the Buddha? Unclear? Don't know if I'm still
Speaker 1: bound by that.
Speaker 3: I think yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it's my understanding, especially in Thai Buddhism, like
Speaker 2: you know, you can enter the priesthood and become a
Speaker 2: monk for a certain period of time, such as like
Speaker 2: before you become married and so forth, or perhaps later
Speaker 2: on if you're changing something up in your life, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. So we can't really apply some of
Speaker 2: the same thinking that we would apply to say, Western
Speaker 2: Christian monastic traditions. So my understanding here is it's kind
Speaker 2: of like he's in the clear. Rights he did the Yeah,
Speaker 2: he fought evil, he defeated evil. They told him he
Speaker 2: could go home. He is totally in the clear here
Speaker 2: to get naked with his already naked girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so lust wins out. He gets in the shower
Speaker 1: with her, and also there's some funny dialogue in the scene,
Speaker 1: but she's basically like, did you cheat on me a
Speaker 1: lot in Thailand? And he says, I was a monk
Speaker 1: for three months, and as she goes, it's about time.
Speaker 2: In the end, right, they live happily over half?
Speaker 1: Oh you would think so. No, they live happily for
Speaker 1: a bit, but then there is more wickedness to come.
Speaker 1: So we get a funeral for a bad wizard. I
Speaker 1: think this is supposed to be the evil Wizard's body
Speaker 1: burning on a big funeral pyre head. Yeah, who's burning it?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Oh? We see three more wizards of the Black Magic
Speaker 1: School looking on. Are they are they supposed to be
Speaker 1: colleagues or apprentices of the main wizard, maybe like underlings.
Speaker 2: Or they could have even been in in these but hey,
Speaker 2: once a holy monk takes out one of your own, like,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's a uniting principle. They are clearly hell
Speaker 2: bent now on seeking vengeance against those who took out
Speaker 2: this dark wizard.
Speaker 1: And then they're gonna ratchet up the craziness. So these
Speaker 1: three they go to a spooky house in the woods
Speaker 1: with owls hooting outside, and then from under the house
Speaker 1: they retrieve a mummy, you know, from the mummy storage cellar.
Speaker 1: It's a wet mummy, by the way, wrapped in vines.
Speaker 2: It's like a bog mummy, swamp mummy, nasty swamp corpse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Can do you describe what happens
Speaker 1: from here?
Speaker 3: Like? All right?
Speaker 2: So yeah, they they really get to cooking basically, so
Speaker 2: they don't do a lot of describing, so we just
Speaker 2: have to sort of follow along. But what they're going
Speaker 2: to try and do apparently is either create a body
Speaker 2: for an evil spirit to inhabit, or they're gonna resurrect
Speaker 2: an old or powerful sorceress. And so what they're gonna
Speaker 2: need would for this, which whichever route we're taking here,
Speaker 2: is they have to get that dead body from the swamp,
Speaker 2: and then they need to steal or acquire a crocodile,
Speaker 2: and then they are going to get that crocodile corpse.
Speaker 2: They're going to put the dead human body inside the
Speaker 2: crocodile corpse, sew it up, and then all.
Speaker 1: Men crocodile Wellington, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then all manner of depravities have to be
Speaker 2: committed in order to complete the spell. Like I mean,
Speaker 2: there are a flayed human heads just hanging around watching on. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: I guess the body is kind of like cooking inside
Speaker 2: of the dead crocodile while the three wizards conduct foul
Speaker 2: rituals and prepare quote unquote food for the soon to
Speaker 2: be revived body of the demon Sorceress.
Speaker 1: Which involves a lot of chewing up and eating disgusting,
Speaker 1: gross stuff and then either spitting or vomiting it out,
Speaker 1: and then maybe another one of them eating it and chewing.
Speaker 2: It up again, Yeah, in the same shot. So you
Speaker 2: can't suspec disbelief on that. So it's like, yeah, they're
Speaker 2: chewing up pieces of chicken entrails, Durian fruit, I'm assuming
Speaker 2: like rotten durian fruit, because Durian fruit in and of
Speaker 2: itself is perfectly tasty, if not a little fragrant. But
Speaker 2: so for these guys, normal Durian fruit clearly is not
Speaker 2: going to work. This is probably something that's rotted a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just madness, gross, madness. Amazing. And then we
Speaker 1: see the effects of their evil work in two different
Speaker 1: intercut scenes. First of all, we've got the monks at
Speaker 1: the abbey or at the temple. They are preparing the
Speaker 1: Abbot's body for immortality. They're like covering it with gold
Speaker 1: and chanting all around it. I meanwhile, Chan Hung is
Speaker 1: remember the kickboxing grudge match. Oh, yeah, happening. Now it's happening.
Speaker 1: He's fighting the tie boxer for revenge. So while these
Speaker 1: things are happening, the demones awakes and they give her
Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger fingers by the way, and she wakes up
Speaker 1: and they guide her over to I guess it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a statue of the abbot, and she pokes
Speaker 1: the eyes of the statue with her claws and then,
Speaker 1: oh no, that inflicts simultaneous curses. First of all, the
Speaker 1: gold falls from the Abbot's corpse and seems to signal, oh,
Speaker 1: he's not incorruptible anymore. He's going to decompose. And then
Speaker 1: in the middle of his kickboxing match, Chan Hung loses
Speaker 1: his sight and not only loses his sight, but acquires
Speaker 1: maggot vision.
Speaker 2: This is so glorious because yes, suddenly he goes blind
Speaker 2: during the match. You know, he's having the blind punch
Speaker 2: and kick while Bolo pummels him, and you might wonder
Speaker 2: that it's viewer, Well what does he see? And yeah,
Speaker 2: we get the POV shot of it, and it's just maggots.
Speaker 2: It's like a visor shape on the screen and it's
Speaker 2: just maggots rolling around there. And then later on he's
Speaker 2: going to get a backstage like mirror vision where he
Speaker 2: sees maggots just falling out of his eye sockets. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of gross worms in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So chan Hung is beaten badly.
Speaker 2: But he pulls out the victory though.
Speaker 1: Oh he does, he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he somehow kicks Bolo over the top rope. Bolo
Speaker 2: goes through a table.
Speaker 1: And okay, okay, and then our.
Speaker 2: Hero runs backstage with his maggot eyes and then we
Speaker 2: you know, he looks in the mirror and he sees
Speaker 2: maggots falling out.
Speaker 1: I totally missed that he actually beat Bolo.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess maybe maybe that is the conclusion
Speaker 2: of Vengeance is Acquired here.
Speaker 1: I could be Okay, Now I feel bad. I feel
Speaker 1: like I was totally wrong about the fact that it
Speaker 1: doesn't tie up the kickboxing thing because I was under
Speaker 1: the misimpression that he lost in this match because of
Speaker 1: what happened to his eyes.
Speaker 2: Well, he doesn't get to savor the victory, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I was paying attention. I thought,
Speaker 1: I guess his victory is short enough that I looked
Speaker 1: away and looked back, and yeah.
Speaker 2: It's It's easy to lose sight of the mundane plot
Speaker 2: at this point because the crazy magic plot is just
Speaker 2: growing in size.
Speaker 1: Anyway, he goes back to the temple to find out
Speaker 1: what went wrong, and the monk there is like, you
Speaker 1: didn't break any of your vows, did you.
Speaker 3: He's like, no, no, of course not. Oh.
Speaker 1: He doesn't admit to it immediately, but they will eventually
Speaker 1: figure it out with the help of a supernatural fire
Speaker 1: based lie detector test. But anyway, first the monks they
Speaker 1: think he has still been faithful, and the head monk says,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'll arrange another duel for you. But first
Speaker 1: they're going to do a power up scene.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, They're going to need some sort
Speaker 2: of extra power, and so they go out to search
Speaker 2: for the thousand year old Ganoderma. So again, it's easy
Speaker 2: to get caught up in all the hideous rituals of
Speaker 2: the dark Wizards, and so caught up in it that
Speaker 2: we can forget the sublime wonder and weirdness of the
Speaker 2: Buddhist magic scenes. So that's exactly what we have here
Speaker 2: with the quest for the thousand year old ganoderma that
Speaker 2: is presumably racie mushroom. It is in the genus Ganoderma,
Speaker 2: So the Rachi mushroom, if you're not familiar with it,
Speaker 2: it holds an important place in traditional Chinese medicine, various
Speaker 2: other Asian folk medicine traditions, and also in general in
Speaker 2: the world of like alternative medicine and supplements and so forth.
Speaker 2: A few years back, my wife and I prepared a
Speaker 2: tea from some racie mushrooms that we foraged. Oh nice,
Speaker 2: how was that very bitter?
Speaker 3: Very better?
Speaker 2: But it enhanced my chi, ease my spirit, and you know,
Speaker 2: probably promoted longevity. So these are some of the ideas
Speaker 2: that are held concerning the rachi and you know, it's
Speaker 2: still consumed all over the world. Paul Stainments is a
Speaker 2: big fan of the Racie mushroom. But anyway, this is
Speaker 2: our magical take on it. You know, this is a
Speaker 2: thousand year old mushroom they're seeking out, so our hero
Speaker 2: in the current habit, they find this ancient mushroom in
Speaker 2: a chasm of a great Buddha's eye in an underground temple.
Speaker 2: And I have to say, this is just a fantastic set,
Speaker 2: and this is not a real temple location, but just
Speaker 2: an incredible set. It has this like magic flaming tree
Speaker 2: growing out of the eye socket as well, and so
Speaker 2: they kind of like rope down to it, and then
Speaker 2: they draw the magic out of the mushroom by applying
Speaker 2: honey to it. And this allows the magic goo to
Speaker 2: then clear goo to drip down from the mushroom into
Speaker 2: this little amulet container. That way, our hero can use
Speaker 2: it later on when he's fighting evil.
Speaker 1: By apply by doing self surgery on himself.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, he's gonna have to terminate or his arm
Speaker 2: in a really gross scene. So even the good magic
Speaker 2: practitioners here do get into a little bit of body
Speaker 2: are for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also by the way, before the duel can be arranged,
Speaker 1: the monks figure out the chan Hung broke his vows.
Speaker 1: So that's really bad.
Speaker 3: That's yeah.
Speaker 2: They're like, you lie to the Buddha. Some serious business
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: They take it seriously and they're like, no, there's nothing
Speaker 1: you can do now, You're you're just yeah, too bad.
Speaker 1: But chan Hung doesn't accept it, so he goes to
Speaker 1: the abbot, to the abbot's body, and he's like, is
Speaker 1: there anything that can be done? At first he doesn't
Speaker 1: get an answer, and then he's like, I'll trash your
Speaker 1: temple and he starts like smashing everything up, and finally
Speaker 1: the abbots like stop throwing a tantrum, and he tells
Speaker 1: him there is one way that can be saved.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: It's the only way is by if chan Hung retrieves
Speaker 1: a sacred Buddhist relic from a temple in Nepal. These
Speaker 1: would be the abbot's ashes from one of his past
Speaker 1: lives when he was a lama there. So let's go
Speaker 1: to Nepal. Chan Hung travels by plane lands he gets
Speaker 1: his bearings in Nepal and eventually he finds this temple
Speaker 1: where the ashes are stored, but they apparently only show
Speaker 1: up during a special magic time of day. I think
Speaker 1: maybe it's a dawn.
Speaker 2: It's going to shine through into this underground temple and
Speaker 2: it's going to illuminate the ashes. We learned this because
Speaker 2: he goes on a tour, a tour of the of
Speaker 2: the temple, and there's a tour guide that's informing him
Speaker 2: as well as like there's a Western tourist lady there
Speaker 2: as well, and we get the full rundown on this place.
Speaker 1: So he does the self surgery, He puts the amulet
Speaker 1: inside his body, and he goes in during the off
Speaker 1: hours to collect the ashes. But he is not alone there.
Speaker 1: First of all, he deals with some magic, some magical
Speaker 1: security measures where there is like a statue at this
Speaker 1: big Buddhist shrine that starts yelling intruder alert, intruder alert, which.
Speaker 2: Is so good, yes, yes, And then like the statue,
Speaker 2: a multi arm statue comes alive, so we have like
Speaker 2: a Nepalese Buddhist automaton here that is going to do
Speaker 2: battle with him, but he makes pretty short work of these.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how much of that is that, you know,
Speaker 2: he's just far above them at this point, or maybe
Speaker 2: they didn't like the way the effects came together, or
Speaker 2: we just we were running along on time here and
Speaker 2: we just needed to get to the final conflict, right.
Speaker 1: And then the evil Wizard's demonus appears. I don't know, Rob,
Speaker 1: do you want to describe this? I don't even know
Speaker 1: how to begin.
Speaker 2: I mean, skimpy outfit, high heels like a crazy golden crown.
Speaker 2: She has a long appears to have elongated arms at
Speaker 2: first glance, and I guess does, but her arms terminate
Speaker 2: in skeletal claw hands that are either extensions of her
Speaker 2: arms or being used as weapons. Anyway, A very glamorous, sexy,
Speaker 2: hellish entrance here for our final boss, equal parts alluring
Speaker 2: and revolting, all at once, and of course illuminated in
Speaker 2: all sorts of cool, green and red gels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I can't describe everything that happens in this conflict,
Speaker 1: but among other things, she shoots detachable alligator armor hands
Speaker 1: at our hero, and they grab Chan Hung's chest and
Speaker 1: grip his pectoral muscles and cut them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Later on they're gonna crawl around on the ground and
Speaker 2: then hold him in place.
Speaker 1: Yes, she creates a giant crocodile that crawls on the
Speaker 1: floor and attacks him. Yes, he escapes the giant crocodile,
Speaker 1: but then she grabs his head with her legs and
Speaker 1: then he is like pinned down on the ground by
Speaker 1: the hands, and then, oh god, I forget what happens after. Oh,
Speaker 1: she puts the caterpillars on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she kind of she gives him like a
Speaker 2: thigh squeeze and like kind of shimmys around, and then
Speaker 2: she stands over him and she continues to shimmy and
Speaker 2: kind of do a little sexy dance, but then makes
Speaker 2: caterpillars rain down on him. Yeah, and they crawl over
Speaker 2: his body and then they begin to crawl into his
Speaker 2: nostrils and into his ears. Yes, so we get a
Speaker 2: little wrath of Khan energy in this picture as well.
Speaker 1: But then there is a kind of intervention right from
Speaker 1: the shrine itself because the light comes in and it uh,
Speaker 1: it awakens the spirit of the Lama. Did you understand
Speaker 1: it that way as well?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: And then the Lama kind of like rides down on
Speaker 2: like a tramas like a laser palanquin and and interferes
Speaker 2: like saves him from the demoness. And then the demons
Speaker 2: battles the Lama uh, and they have this kind of
Speaker 2: like super magical energy stand off. He wins and he
Speaker 2: because she tries to like wrap him up in her
Speaker 2: hair and then he just like pulls her hair and
Speaker 2: her skin off, and that causes her to then flail skinless, uh, defleshed,
Speaker 2: and fall back onto the floor where she begins to
Speaker 2: writhe in agony. But oh, she looks like over yet.
Speaker 1: No, no, but there she looks like just one sniff
Speaker 1: of that fog and your inside out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she does look like she looks like she's inside
Speaker 2: out a little bit like slim good body too, full body,
Speaker 2: slim good body, just writhing on the floor. And she
Speaker 2: begins to leak purple slime everywhere, like the purple slime
Speaker 2: falling out of her body.
Speaker 1: And then gives birth to three plastic bags full of eyeballs,
Speaker 1: which walk around on the floor and then expand and
Speaker 1: turned into turn into putty mummies that are going and
Speaker 1: then they turn into the three wizards. That's where they were, okay,
Speaker 1: But then then they produce knives and stab themselves. One
Speaker 1: of them cuts open his belly. The other two cut
Speaker 1: off their own fingers and bleed on the guy's belly,
Speaker 1: and then that turns his body into little eyeball brontosauruses
Speaker 1: that attack on the floor.
Speaker 2: Yes, little pink demons that look kind of like bronosauruses.
Speaker 2: I've also seen them described as poodle demons. And they
Speaker 2: began to they begin to begin to crawl toward the Lama,
Speaker 2: and I mean, at this point, we're just in such
Speaker 2: crazy town it's almost senseless to try and make any
Speaker 2: sense out of it. This is just like crazy wizard nonsense.
Speaker 2: But my interpretation is that in this fact, this is
Speaker 2: in this final transformation on the part of the Dark Wizards,
Speaker 2: it's like a last ditch effort to assume a very
Speaker 2: particular specialized range spell casting demon form, three of them,
Speaker 2: one for each of them, that might allow them to
Speaker 2: take out their enemy. So they begin blasting their eyeball
Speaker 2: bolts at the Llama, and I don't know, maybe they've
Speaker 2: got a chance, maybe they don't. But that's not how
Speaker 2: it goes down, because the Lama then causes the statues
Speaker 2: in the temple to fling their vadras, these little you know,
Speaker 2: Buddhist thunderbolts artifacts at the Pink demons, which then cause
Speaker 2: the Pink demons to explode, killing them.
Speaker 1: And that is our final victory over evil here.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, the Pink demons very much wind
Speaker 2: up toys, getting into that wind up toy energy that
Speaker 2: we keep experiencing throughout the picture.
Speaker 1: I don't want to because I have to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in this in any way. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to overseell the cultural authenticity of the
Speaker 1: magic depicted here, but I am struck by how much
Speaker 1: more specifically Buddhist in flavor the magic and the magical
Speaker 1: conflict in this movie is when compared to the magic
Speaker 1: you'd see in a lot of other movies. That is, often,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a lot of the specific real world
Speaker 1: religious imagery or connections feels de emphasized in favor of
Speaker 1: a kind of generic appeal.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what you mean. This is something we
Speaker 2: enjoyed to a lesser extent in the Indian horror movie
Speaker 2: Perana Mandir, in which you know, they're using very like
Speaker 2: Hindu iconography to overcome spirits of evil. So it is
Speaker 2: it is nice to get supernatural horror outside of the
Speaker 2: traditional Western Christian motifs that.
Speaker 1: Has some cultural specifics actually in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like it, Like with these Vadra artifacts serving
Speaker 2: as holy hand grenades to blow up the pink demons. Yes,
Speaker 2: but with this I believe, and the movie seems to believe,
Speaker 2: the evil Wizards are now completely defeated. Wizard number one,
Speaker 2: Dead Wizard number two, Dead Wizards three, four and five
Speaker 2: Dead demon s sorceress from beyond the Grave also return
Speaker 2: to being full dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the abbot can at least attain immortality, in
Speaker 1: which case, I don't know, maybe he could help again
Speaker 1: if more wizards appear.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see the eyes open on the Abbot's body,
Speaker 2: and then the eyes of our hero are also cured
Speaker 2: and he's able to We actually get a nice little
Speaker 2: scene there at the end where the monks are coming
Speaker 2: in to pray in front of the abbot's body and
Speaker 2: he gets up and he walks out the door.
Speaker 1: Actually before that we see him, there's like happy music playing, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we finally did it. As our hero is pulling needles
Speaker 1: out of his eyes.
Speaker 2: Very long needles, like oh yeah, supernatural needles being you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think he's necessarily pulling them, He's coming like
Speaker 2: magically excreting them straight through his eyelids.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So just a little last bit of holy body are.
Speaker 1: Made me think of those tear drinking moths we talked
Speaker 1: about last week for their the poking their proboscess into
Speaker 1: the eyeball. Okay, well that is the boxer z Omen.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yes, sights and sounds well beyond anything you've tested.
Speaker 2: Highly recommend this one for anyone out there, though, if
Speaker 2: you've listened to it all the way here, I think
Speaker 2: at this point either you are pretty clear this is
Speaker 2: not a film you want to see, or this is
Speaker 2: a film you absolutely have to see, or I think
Speaker 2: in many cases you have seen the film, you love it,
Speaker 2: and you just wanted to hear our thoughts on all
Speaker 2: of the just sheer insanity that occurs in this.
Speaker 1: Movie overflowing with ritual madness. I wonder if I would
Speaker 1: like recommendations from listeners for movies that show not just
Speaker 1: the use of magic, you know, like people casting spells
Speaker 1: and power emanating from them, that show not just the
Speaker 1: magical effects, but spend as much attention on the process
Speaker 1: of acquiring magic power, or of like the recipes for
Speaker 1: spells as this movie does.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be hard pressed to think of one. I mean,
Speaker 2: I more readily think of examples of the opposite, where
Speaker 2: wizards and witches just do things and you don't really
Speaker 2: know much about the preparation that goes into them. There's
Speaker 2: probably too much of that, whereas I mean, really this
Speaker 2: gets down to the sort of the Shakespearean roots, right
Speaker 2: where you know everything that's going in the Witch's cauldron.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right. Actually, Yeah, Boxer's Omen in the tradition
Speaker 1: of Macbeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could also think of this as a as
Speaker 2: a black magic procedural, very obsessed with all the steps
Speaker 2: that go into casting your dark, dank magics. So indeed,
Speaker 2: if you have suggestions for other examples of this or
Speaker 2: counterexamples right in, we would.
Speaker 3: Love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: We're going to close out this episode. Yeah, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on the boxers Omen, other films by this filmmaker, or
Speaker 2: just other great recommendations from Hong Kong cinema in general.
Speaker 3: Right in.
Speaker 2: A reminder that Stuffed to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. If you are on letterbox dot com, find us.
Speaker 2: We are Weird House on letterbox and we have a
Speaker 2: nice list there of all the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years, and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming
Speaker 2: up next. Again, you can always find Weird House Cinema
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Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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