Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This is Roblam and this is Joe McCormick and who.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and apologize if I am not
Speaker 1: at my best today because I just finished watching today's
Speaker 1: movie and it is like it fired a poison dart
Speaker 1: straight into my prefrontal cortex. This movie is awesome. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorites we've ever watched for this show.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I have a significant impairment in
Speaker 1: my ability to speak. Yes, Thrilling Bloody Sword will have
Speaker 1: that effect on you. You should not drive after viewing
Speaker 1: Thrilling Bloody Sword. You shouldn't attempt any kind of complicated
Speaker 1: paperwork scenario. You should. You just have to let it
Speaker 1: finish doing what it's doing to your brain. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you watch this movie, you should schedule nap time for afterwards. Yes,
Speaker 1: some recovery time is required. After I saw it the
Speaker 1: first time, I was rather proud of myself for thinking, like,
Speaker 1: this is the first time I've watched a movie that
Speaker 1: I would describe as face melting, which is usually um,
Speaker 1: you know, how we might describe certain you know, metal
Speaker 1: tracks and so forth. But then I've started looking around online.
Speaker 1: I saw other people had the exact same reaction and
Speaker 1: described it with the exacts the same terminology, of which
Speaker 1: which means I wasn't as original. But this film is
Speaker 1: having the same impact on so many people. Like there's
Speaker 1: just something about it that just uh just utterly destroys
Speaker 1: and remakes you. It is so unusual and so strong
Speaker 1: and so fast. Well, it's like in a Whoosha movie
Speaker 1: when the heroes first encounter the villain and like they're
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by their by the strength and speed of their
Speaker 1: martial arts, and it's like, how will we ever defeat them? Yeah? Yes,
Speaker 1: that it's this is this is quite a film, one thrilling,
Speaker 1: bloody sword. We've we've covered a handful of Hong Kong
Speaker 1: films on Weirdolt Cinema before, but this is gonna be
Speaker 1: our first taste of Taiwanese cinema, which is closely linked
Speaker 1: to Hong Kong cinema and often features a lot of
Speaker 1: Hong Kong cinema connections, actors and so forth, but it
Speaker 1: has a vibe all its own. Taiwanese cinema. Um I
Speaker 1: I checked out some of the special features on the
Speaker 1: Thrilling Bloody Sword disc, including some material from Justin d
Speaker 1: Clue of Gold Ninja video talking a bit about the
Speaker 1: connection between Hong Kong cinema and Taiwanese cinema and the
Speaker 1: way he describes it is that Hong Kong had already
Speaker 1: really established itself in Taiwanese cinema is kind of trying
Speaker 1: to catch up to a certain extent, and also trying
Speaker 1: to up the anti on things like action sequences in
Speaker 1: various films, also like creative decisions, and I think this
Speaker 1: film would suggest creative weirdness, like what is something different
Speaker 1: we can do that we can try and try and
Speaker 1: create a film that just has not been seen before.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely what this is. I would say that this
Speaker 1: movie is less rooted in pre existing genres like action
Speaker 1: or horror then we would see in in at least
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong movies we've watched so far. This is
Speaker 1: This creates a new genre almost too. I guess the
Speaker 1: closest you could call it is maybe fantasy action, but
Speaker 1: with some elements of science fiction in there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it also seems to draw heavily on from is we'll
Speaker 1: discuss a few different nith and folkloreic cycles. I think
Speaker 1: there are some connections to be made to the fantasy
Speaker 1: films of Russian filmmaker Alexander Rue, especially when it gets
Speaker 1: down to bear transformation. But but yeah, this film stands
Speaker 1: apart and gloriously so. Actually, I think that comparison is
Speaker 1: incredibly apt. This is kind of like if you took
Speaker 1: Morosco or Jack Frost and then added in a bunch
Speaker 1: of martial arts action scenes. Yes, yeah, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: definitely the vibe. So the title thrilling bloody Sword, I
Speaker 1: do have to say, thrilling, yes, sword, Yes, not so
Speaker 1: much bloody. There's not really any blood in this per se.
Speaker 1: Probably the grossest goryous things in it or right at
Speaker 1: the beginning and right at the end at the beginning
Speaker 1: with a lady gives birth to like an alien meat pill,
Speaker 1: and then at the end there's a bunch of disembodied
Speaker 1: gory like flayed arms and legs that are flying around
Speaker 1: attacking somebody. Yeah. The original title here is uh Shinjen
Speaker 1: dong Shan, Who, which I believe translates to something like
Speaker 1: the Divine Sword moves mountains and Rivers. But I've also
Speaker 1: seen this film just referred to as the Thrilling Sword
Speaker 1: or Heavenly Sword. But yeah, I still thrilling Bloody Sword
Speaker 1: is a title that is distinctive, and it's a movie
Speaker 1: that's distinctive, so I think ultimately it works. Now I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: I'm sort of second guessing myself and wondering if I
Speaker 1: over sold it and saying this movie is a genre
Speaker 1: all to itself, because I guess you have a note
Speaker 1: on this, and having read several other people on the
Speaker 1: internet talk about it, I think some people think that
Speaker 1: this fits into the category of WHUSHA films, right, like
Speaker 1: this sort of historical chivalry based martial arts movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and roughly so you could, you could. It
Speaker 1: would not be improper to put it on shelf with
Speaker 1: other who shoo movies. But I think most commentators seem
Speaker 1: to indicate that this this it distinguishes itself a bit
Speaker 1: more like drawing in, for instance, all of these various
Speaker 1: fairy tale and mythic elements from various non Asian cultures,
Speaker 1: Like there is essentially a multi headed dragon at one point,
Speaker 1: and it's a very western looking dragon. Um, that's a
Speaker 1: hydra basically. Yeah, yeah, so there are things like that
Speaker 1: that that contribute to it. I've also I think it
Speaker 1: was the clue that pointed out that also the action
Speaker 1: in this film isn't as fluid as you might expect
Speaker 1: from like pure action elms of the time period. But
Speaker 1: it's still very thrilling action. Uh it's it's still it's
Speaker 1: still amazing to behold. But I can I can sort
Speaker 1: of see what he's getting out there about the about
Speaker 1: the about the martial arts in the film. It's not
Speaker 1: a pure martial arts spectacle. Yeah, well, a lot of
Speaker 1: the martial arts are. Uh, I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of just straightforward fight scenes, but most of the
Speaker 1: fighting in it is in some way sort of uh
Speaker 1: thwarted or complicated by the presence of sorcery, which involves
Speaker 1: a very funny and great special effects. Yes, the special
Speaker 1: effects are. This is a film that is very ambitious
Speaker 1: in its use of special effects at times perhaps too ambitious,
Speaker 1: but like the ambitions, yes, oh it's so good. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's um it's my favorite kind. It's like special effects
Speaker 1: that it's not like they look quote convincing or quote realistic,
Speaker 1: but these special effects are full of soul. They are
Speaker 1: my favorite kind of effects in a movie. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I didn't want to let pass by, though,
Speaker 1: is that i'd say roughly a third of this movie
Speaker 1: is a version of snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yes, yes it is. It's a story full
Speaker 1: of of cursed dwarf generals, evil sorcerers, monster attacks, jin
Speaker 1: heavenly swords, miraculous birth by comment. There's so many elements
Speaker 1: and I'm not even touching on all of the crazy
Speaker 1: things that occur in this film. Now, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: the movie is not as bloody as the title would suggest.
Speaker 1: Did did you let your son watch this one? I
Speaker 1: didn't know, Like I didn't watch it with like a
Speaker 1: parents point of view. But is this movie okay for
Speaker 1: kids or not? It's hard to be hard to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, all parents will have to make that decision
Speaker 1: for themselves. But content wise, I didn't think it was
Speaker 1: that bad. I tried. I showed him a little bit
Speaker 1: of it, and it was the It was one of
Speaker 1: the comedic sequences with the dwarves, and then I skipped
Speaker 1: ahead a bit to show him some of the action.
Speaker 1: And mostly he's really into Miss mostly just commenting on
Speaker 1: special effects at this point, whether he thinks something is
Speaker 1: real or not. Um, and of course he was. He
Speaker 1: was quick to say, well, that doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: real monster, but he did like he did like the
Speaker 1: monsters designs that we encounter. Well, that phase will pass.
Speaker 1: But I think for the most part, this this feels
Speaker 1: like a feature that was aimed at the entire family. Um.
Speaker 1: That's the sense I get from it. This is this
Speaker 1: is a family film, an action fantasy film, cobbling together
Speaker 1: multiple fairytale traditions into just a single face melting fantasy adventure.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was intended to be just
Speaker 1: so uh, And I mean it is just an intense spectacle,
Speaker 1: and I guess that appeals to all ages. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: we should hear some trailer audio. Let's do it all
Speaker 1: right now. A note on availability before we proceed here. Uh,
Speaker 1: this may be one of the harder films to get
Speaker 1: your hands on we've watched. There are some unofficial rips
Speaker 1: out there, and I think a number of these are
Speaker 1: in terrible quality, in part because they may be just
Speaker 1: ripped off of television. But Golden Ninja Video did a
Speaker 1: beautiful restoration of the only known thirty five millimeter footage
Speaker 1: and it's all in this wonderful blu ray. As of
Speaker 1: this recording, I believe they're out of stock and it's
Speaker 1: unsure and when they'll restock. But you can preorder a
Speaker 1: two pack that features Thrilling Bloody Sword plus Revengeful Swords
Speaker 1: Woman Um. Otherwise, if you're Atlanta based, you can rent
Speaker 1: it at Video Drome like we did UM and it
Speaker 1: has actually played at a few cinemas here and there,
Speaker 1: so you might be able to catch it on the
Speaker 1: big screen if you're lucky. I will say again my
Speaker 1: my personal opinion, personal recommendation, this one is worth seeking out.
Speaker 1: Like if you hear it's playing at some at some
Speaker 1: cinema nearby, it's worth making the trip. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a film that you can do. You can sit down
Speaker 1: and watch and intently study. But it also is just
Speaker 1: a colorful, beautiful film. Like if you just want something
Speaker 1: interesting to have playing in the background somewhere, I think
Speaker 1: this is your movie. Okay, Rob From What Wizard's Mind
Speaker 1: was Birth to the Months Stir That is Thrilling Bloody Sword.
Speaker 1: This is the work of director writer Sin ye Chang,
Speaker 1: who was born n and His main contribution to martial
Speaker 1: arts cinema was as a writer with screenplay credits on
Speaker 1: a bunch of films, including Black Belt Angels, Three's shaw
Speaker 1: Len Versus Lama. This is the film with the Buddha
Speaker 1: finger in it. For those of you are familiar with
Speaker 1: that or that sample, there's a there's a wonderful track
Speaker 1: from the uh from the from the artist Depth Charge
Speaker 1: that used a lot of samples from this film, and
Speaker 1: that was I think that was actually pre Woutang. But
Speaker 1: I also wrote on three's The Challenge of the Ninja
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six is the eighteen Bronze Men. This is
Speaker 1: where like Shaolin warriors battle these men who are painted
Speaker 1: bronze and sometimes have big bronze heads. I haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but the trailer looks fantastic. Now as a director, he
Speaker 1: only has ten credits did which include V eight Snake
Speaker 1: in the Equal Shadow Too in nineteen seventy nine Kung
Speaker 1: Fu Commandos. None of the other films, however, apparently matched
Speaker 1: the tone and vision of Thrilling Bloody Sword, But as
Speaker 1: as Justin n Clue explains, he had he was apparently
Speaker 1: really admired for his ability to plot out martial arts action.
Speaker 1: So like this this apparently when you get down to
Speaker 1: like screenplay questions regarding many of these martial arts films,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of leeway into like how how much
Speaker 1: are they describing and um, and and apparently this is
Speaker 1: a guy who was very into plotting out you know,
Speaker 1: the action. Uh so he was who was sought after
Speaker 1: for this. I'm gonna say that in its favor. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe I've said this on the show before, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm critical of a lot of action
Speaker 1: scenes in movies because I think there is action choreography
Speaker 1: out there that doesn't quite understand that action has to
Speaker 1: be a drama, right. It needs to have beats, It
Speaker 1: needs to have moments of interchanging power. There need to
Speaker 1: be changes throughout it, Like you've got to keep it interesting.
Speaker 1: It can't just be you know, essentially trading blows back
Speaker 1: and forth in a sort of static, ongoing exchange. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this movie gets that. The action scenes in this
Speaker 1: movie have beats, they have drama, they have changes. It's
Speaker 1: really good stuff. Yeah. And but but like you said,
Speaker 1: it's not a pure martial arts film in that a
Speaker 1: lot of it is the magic, and but the magic
Speaker 1: has that kind of internal, well choreographed fight scene um
Speaker 1: logic to it, where like if a new weapon is
Speaker 1: introduced it means something. If a particular magic spell is
Speaker 1: being invoked, you know, it's it's very much a part
Speaker 1: of the plotting of of what's going on. I will
Speaker 1: also say that, especially for a lot of the earlier
Speaker 1: action scenes in the movie, I respect the restraint of
Speaker 1: how short they are, like that they don't go on
Speaker 1: forever just to eat up screen time. There's one really
Speaker 1: awesome action scene earlier in the movie where a couple
Speaker 1: of sorcerers kill a demon and it just takes a
Speaker 1: few seconds, but it's an awesome scene. Yeah. Now, as
Speaker 1: I continue here through some of the connections here, I
Speaker 1: want to stress that this one was a little harder
Speaker 1: to put together. The connections on the IMDb page for
Speaker 1: this movie does not include character names, and the Hong
Speaker 1: Kong uh Movie Database was it was a little more helpful,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have the character names for a number
Speaker 1: of the actors in it, so some of these I
Speaker 1: had to look at at photographs of the actors on
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong Movie Database and sort of piece it together.
Speaker 1: And I believe I got everything right, but there there's
Speaker 1: also some differences on how how the names are reproduced
Speaker 1: in UM in English on the two websites, so you'll
Speaker 1: just have to bear with me, but I think we
Speaker 1: got it mostly right here. Either way, I admire the attempt.
Speaker 1: So there's a co writer listed on this dates unknown,
Speaker 1: and this is their only credit on on both databases.
Speaker 1: But there's a John Lung Ching or or Chang Singh
Speaker 1: who is credited as being co writer. But let's get
Speaker 1: into the cast here. So we have the princess. Is
Speaker 1: it yr g? It sounded to me like like uh
Speaker 1: so they spelled it in the subtitles why a U
Speaker 1: r G, But it sounded to me more like yao
Speaker 1: gi yao G. Alright, Well, the princess Yaogi, who we
Speaker 1: may I may refer to as the princess played by
Speaker 1: an actor that I don't have dates for either, and
Speaker 1: this is of Fang Fang Fong. She was active from
Speaker 1: through nine eight six and seems to have come back
Speaker 1: for a role in two thousand nineteens the shooting of
Speaker 1: three nineteen. In this film, she's very much in traditional
Speaker 1: princess mode, but she does it well I also noticed
Speaker 1: she was in a nineteen eighty five film titled Ghost Busting,
Speaker 1: which I as seemed to be a supernatural comedy. I
Speaker 1: included the poster for you here, Joe. It looks uh,
Speaker 1: it looks impressive. Why does it have Sherlock Holmes on
Speaker 1: the cover? I believe this is a ghost busting A
Speaker 1: professor character in the film based on what I was
Speaker 1: he's reading about it. He's dressed like Sherlock Holmes. Okay,
Speaker 1: Buston makes me feel good. I want to see this
Speaker 1: all right now. If you have a princess, you have
Speaker 1: to have a prince, and that is the Prince Ya
Speaker 1: June played by Lu Shang Chin, who was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, Taiwanese action star who's in a bunch
Speaker 1: of wusha and fantasy movies. He played the Monkey King
Speaker 1: in nine two is New Pilgrims to the West, and
Speaker 1: also played the Monkey King again in its sequel, Monkey War.
Speaker 1: He also appeared in nineteen nineties The Twelve Animals. Man
Speaker 1: is he dashing in this? Yes? He has all the
Speaker 1: handsome and uh and is very action oriented. A terrific
Speaker 1: prince that you really want in their handling. Your thrilling,
Speaker 1: bloody sword. Uh. Yes, so he's great. I would say, actually,
Speaker 1: the whole cast in this movie is great. I didn't
Speaker 1: notice a single performance I didn't like, But for me,
Speaker 1: the standout performers are the two villains are two sorcerers.
Speaker 1: I loved them. Yes, I think we have a new
Speaker 1: occult power couple here. Uh they are the the the, the, the,
Speaker 1: the evil Sorcerers. Also they were described as exorcists. Uh
Speaker 1: it is Schaker and and uh, let's start with the
Speaker 1: sorcerer here. Shaker played by Chang Ye Born. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes an incredible villain here is Stern has kind of
Speaker 1: a Christopher Lee esque face, big bushy eyebrows, long hair, again,
Speaker 1: very stern, but also wonderful sorcerer robes. He has a
Speaker 1: cool demon staff. He was just consistently one of my
Speaker 1: favorite parts of the film. Uh yeah, just just wonderful performance. Here.
Speaker 1: Active from the mid sixties through the mid nineties and
Speaker 1: a ton of martial arts films as well as some
Speaker 1: TV shows. Born in mainland China, he worked in a
Speaker 1: bunch of Shop Brothers films, and I believe is now.
Speaker 1: I was reading online that he's retired and living somewhere
Speaker 1: in the Vancouver area, but he seemed to have a
Speaker 1: pretty strong Ryan. He appeared in the eighteen Bronzemen alongside
Speaker 1: Carter Wong and seventy six Carter Wong. Uh. Some view
Speaker 1: listeners maybe may remember him from Big Trouble and Little China.
Speaker 1: He plays Thunder Uh, the larger of the three storms.
Speaker 1: Another muscle guy. Yeah, the big muscle guy that explodes. Um.
Speaker 1: Changy was also in the nineteen sixty seven Shop Brothers
Speaker 1: film King Kat, in which he plays the lead, and
Speaker 1: he was a director on nineteen seventy threes Chinese Dragon,
Speaker 1: in which he was also the lead. Changes is just
Speaker 1: great in this he is cool as a cucumber. You
Speaker 1: could imagine a different version of this character that was
Speaker 1: very kind of well, you know, kind of mustache twirling
Speaker 1: and uh and whiny. But no, they make him suave
Speaker 1: and cool and uh. He like when he's making demands
Speaker 1: on the King. I don't I don't ever recall him
Speaker 1: getting visibly upset. It's like he knows he's in command
Speaker 1: because he has the powers of darkness in his hands. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is a good description. And you know he's
Speaker 1: not doing it alone. Again, this is an ocult power couple.
Speaker 1: We have an excellent sorceress and exorcist standing beside him.
Speaker 1: Gear played by Elsa yang Hu Shan born in either
Speaker 1: fifty two or fifty three, depending on which database you're
Speaker 1: looking at. She was active from seventy six through eight six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's great in this as well, just vamping it
Speaker 1: up with high fashion choices and terrific black magic. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she just she she also anytime she's on the screen,
Speaker 1: I'm just completely entertained. The scene where she first showed up,
Speaker 1: I feel like I was already loving the movie, but
Speaker 1: my brain was just like snapped to attention because it
Speaker 1: just immediately like heightens the like the weirdness and drama
Speaker 1: because she shows up in the middle of a of
Speaker 1: a court palace and um, She's like, Hi, I'm here
Speaker 1: to kill your I'm here to solve your demon problem.
Speaker 1: And the King's like, oh great, And one of his
Speaker 1: advisors is like, I don't know if we should trust
Speaker 1: a sorceress to handle the demon problem. What if we
Speaker 1: get a nice, honest swordsman instead, And she just like
Speaker 1: points her hand at the guy and makes his head
Speaker 1: spin around three times. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, Yeah, she
Speaker 1: just immediately owns the room through black magic. Uh so
Speaker 1: the actor here also young who sean. Other notable roles
Speaker 1: include the lead in nineteen eight Three's with the Challenge
Speaker 1: of the Lady Ninja and another notable one that I'm
Speaker 1: guessing hasn't traveled, as well as a lot of this
Speaker 1: action fair that there's drama titled ku May a Woman,
Speaker 1: in which she also starred. She also played Princess iron
Speaker 1: Fan in that two Monkey King movie New Pilgrims to
Speaker 1: the West. As I said earlier, I love the actors
Speaker 1: playing both of the sorcerers that she she is a
Speaker 1: perfect match for for Changi here, and she is just great.
Speaker 1: Her screen presence is off the charts. So many cost
Speaker 1: him changes too, Like you never know when she's going
Speaker 1: to show up in an entirely new ensemble. Like one
Speaker 1: second it's it's it's all crimson and gold, the next
Speaker 1: section she's she's. The next scene, she's going to be
Speaker 1: outfitted like an Egyptian queen. Uh, you never know what
Speaker 1: you're gonna get, but it's gonna be fabulous, all right.
Speaker 1: We mentioned the King. The king who's just completely bowled
Speaker 1: over by these two is played by Chin Han, Hong
Speaker 1: Kong actor who also wrote and directed a couple of features. Um,
Speaker 1: his majesty here is a fun screen presence in this,
Speaker 1: but again he's he's kind of constantly overwhelmed by either
Speaker 1: emotional revelations or black magic. Yeah. I would say he's
Speaker 1: sort of on the receiving end of everything crazy that
Speaker 1: happens in this movie. He's always just there to react like,
Speaker 1: oh no, but he's great in that role. All right.
Speaker 1: We also have a ferry in this. We didn't even
Speaker 1: mention the fairy, the little fairy in the forest, and um,
Speaker 1: this is played by Shia ling Ling essentially is like
Speaker 1: a tinker Bell esque spirit character, and so the characters
Speaker 1: just played to bubbly excess. It's like a like a
Speaker 1: like like very very tinker Bell, just like constant siren
Speaker 1: going off in your head. Um, so, Ly's kind of
Speaker 1: like kind of like Navvy and Ocarina of Time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so. Ling Ling was a Taiwanese actor whose credits
Speaker 1: include Snake in The Equal Shadow Too is The Vampire Dominator,
Speaker 1: which I've read is a non vampire film about ghosts
Speaker 1: on the run from Dallas Exorcist. So that one sounds
Speaker 1: kind of fun. But yeah, born ninety three. I feel
Speaker 1: like her character is almost a little bit intentionally annoying.
Speaker 1: But she she's great with it. Um but but she's
Speaker 1: sort of like part of an ensemble of the the
Speaker 1: well meaning dwellers of the forest who are set opposite
Speaker 1: the evil sorcerers of the Palace. Yes, and she's she's
Speaker 1: very helpful. She's more helpful than many fairy characters in
Speaker 1: in various fantasies. She has so many solutions that shall
Speaker 1: bust out, uh yeah, tremendous. Oh yeah, I mean our
Speaker 1: hero could not succeed without her because when when the
Speaker 1: Prince is doing battle with many enemies, it is only
Speaker 1: through her insights that he is able to succeed, such
Speaker 1: as like she realizes, Oh, you've got to stab this
Speaker 1: uh this robot in the butt. Now, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: there's there are seven dwarves dwarves slash cursed generals in
Speaker 1: this movie, and I don't know what their names are.
Speaker 1: It was very difficult to figure out who is who
Speaker 1: here because they're all just I think on the Hong
Speaker 1: Kong movie database, who just listed as dwarves like dwarf, dwarf,
Speaker 1: dwarf I know that one of them, this is the
Speaker 1: I guess we might describe as FARTI. The dwarf is
Speaker 1: played by Poo Lao who who lived nineteen fifty one
Speaker 1: through five, who was a Taiwanese actor who seems to
Speaker 1: have had a lot of comedic roles um in a
Speaker 1: in a very in a short life and short career,
Speaker 1: and he also directed a comedy in eighty one titled
Speaker 1: The Taxi Driver. But this is I get the the
Speaker 1: the the sense from these this bunch of actors playing
Speaker 1: the dwarfs that they're all comedic actors and these are
Speaker 1: all very over the top, slapsticky performances. This is not
Speaker 1: dry humor, folks. No, now we mentioned the martial arts
Speaker 1: connections here. The martial arts director on this was Chen
Speaker 1: Shing who lived nineteen fifty one through It was a
Speaker 1: member of the Shaw Brothers Venom Mob, who did a
Speaker 1: lot of stunt work and choreography in such films as
Speaker 1: nineteen five Deadly venoms Um, which established the Venom Mob
Speaker 1: as one of the go to crews for martial arts
Speaker 1: action during this time period, though he was not an
Speaker 1: on screen venom in that film. If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: and then who finally the music. The music on this
Speaker 1: movie uh comes to us from Mao shan Huang, who
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen forty has something like three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three composer credits on IMDb Active from nine.
Speaker 1: Credits also include films like Challenge of the Lady Ninja
Speaker 1: and Lantern Festival Adventure. I loved the music in this
Speaker 1: because it was extremely varied. So some of it was
Speaker 1: I don't know what the word for this genre is,
Speaker 1: but something I recognize kind of um, you know, action
Speaker 1: movie music with like drums and bass, but then with
Speaker 1: a synthesizer leads and and had to kind of fantasy
Speaker 1: flare about it. But then there was also just straight
Speaker 1: up funk. Yes, when we're first introduced to the Dwarves,
Speaker 1: we get this funky bass that sounds a heck of
Speaker 1: a lot like David Bowie's track Fame, Like it sounds
Speaker 1: like Fame's gonna start up at any second, but it doesn't.
Speaker 1: There was one part where there was a baseline that
Speaker 1: made me think it was gonna go, Hey, kids, rock
Speaker 1: and rule. There's there's another scene where they're real t
Speaker 1: he vibes to the score. Um, other times, it's just
Speaker 1: glistening psychedelic synth work that really works well with the
Speaker 1: film's sorcery. And then there there's one part part two.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you caught this. It's later in
Speaker 1: the film, but the tune of the score gets dangerously
Speaker 1: close to star spangled banner, like, way closer to star
Speaker 1: spangled banner than you would encounter in an American film. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't, it doesn't completely commit, but it almos it's
Speaker 1: almost star spangled banner. It's a very shocking moment. Wow,
Speaker 1: I did not catch that, But now I want to
Speaker 1: go back and watch it all over again, just to
Speaker 1: just to find that part it had. There's like the
Speaker 1: has has the very sweet music that plays when something
Speaker 1: emotional is happening. There's also a little romantic saxophone thrown
Speaker 1: in there. Um. So, like you said, it's all over
Speaker 1: the place, but it's it's never boring, it's it's always great.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I guess if we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: some things from the plot, I have to say I
Speaker 1: was enthralled with this movie before the action even began,
Speaker 1: because the credits alone are just within seconds doing a
Speaker 1: symphony of violent eccentricity throughout your brain. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: while the credits are rolling, you see a gold sword
Speaker 1: made of pure energy, emitting bolts of lightning through like
Speaker 1: a field of stars. And then you see a bunch
Speaker 1: of things in photo negative, like so photo negative figures
Speaker 1: in battle, including a hero in like a mini tentacled
Speaker 1: head dress with armor befitting a god. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: a hero who's doing battle with a pair of disembodied
Speaker 1: feathery big bird arms. That's what it looks like originally.
Speaker 1: I think you get a different idea later that they
Speaker 1: might be a little gooey er um. You see a
Speaker 1: flying ghost covered in ropes. You see a rapidly multiplying
Speaker 1: vision of a horned demon with a gaping mouth of
Speaker 1: all these teeth in it, and like a wizard smashing
Speaker 1: what looked like clay pots with a staff. You see
Speaker 1: a giant with a ash club doing you know, a
Speaker 1: very righteous and bashioning of the camera lens, and then
Speaker 1: a human shaped creature zooming around like a flying squirrel,
Speaker 1: all still in photo negative. And then there's one part
Speaker 1: where what it looked like at first to me was
Speaker 1: a metal eyeball nipple shooting lasers into the blade of
Speaker 1: a dagger. Uh. You see a giant pair of teeth
Speaker 1: like those wind up chattered teeth flying through the air,
Speaker 1: chomping at the hero. And then you see the hero
Speaker 1: stabbing a giant in the butt with his sword. And
Speaker 1: the meaning of all of these images will be revealed
Speaker 1: in the film. Fortunately, these these are these are images
Speaker 1: from the movie that we are about to view. It's
Speaker 1: a clip show of the movie to come. And they
Speaker 1: had the good sense to say, what's all the weirdest
Speaker 1: stuff in the movie, let's put that in the credits.
Speaker 1: But it it makes you question why, because it's not
Speaker 1: like they needed to to get the weird out and
Speaker 1: feel like, well, there's gonna be a break. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna be weird for a while. No, it's almost immediately weird.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a scenario where they're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if people are going to stay in the theater,
Speaker 1: they might try and leave. Uh. If the first thing
Speaker 1: we show them is just a comment coming out of
Speaker 1: the cosmos to impregnate a woman, let's address that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the first thing that happens when the plot actually
Speaker 1: begins is you see space and you hear what sounds
Speaker 1: like a heartbeat echoing through the primordial chaos waters. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like an underwater kind of sound. And then we
Speaker 1: see a fiery meteor shooting through space. Then a king
Speaker 1: and a queen in a royal palace, and the king
Speaker 1: is pacing back and forth in his throne room while
Speaker 1: all of his advisers are gathered. He's obviously concerned, and
Speaker 1: the queen is about to give birth. And at this
Speaker 1: point I need to to drive home that this film
Speaker 1: is not dubbed in English. It has subtitles, but the
Speaker 1: subtitles are burnt in, so they're they're just a part
Speaker 1: of the footage, and they're in both Mandarin and English,
Speaker 1: and they're very rough subtitles at the times that are
Speaker 1: kind of confusing and the way they're written. Also, they're
Speaker 1: white and sometimes they're set against white backgrounds, so sometimes
Speaker 1: you just cannot read what the line of dialogue is
Speaker 1: even in rough translation. Yes, these subtitles feel rushed. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's definitely enough to figure out what's going
Speaker 1: on in the movie, but sometimes the actual phrasing is
Speaker 1: quite funny, right, like it's you're on the verge of
Speaker 1: baby delivery queen. That's the line of dialogue or when
Speaker 1: they're talking people. Various people keep talking to the king
Speaker 1: and they address him as his majesty, as as if
Speaker 1: to say, we think we have found your daughter, his Majesty,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of unrelenting like everything else in the movie,
Speaker 1: and it can definitely impact the language center of your
Speaker 1: brain by the end of it. Yes, so the palace
Speaker 1: starts shaking violently. Uh, there's the the approach of the
Speaker 1: burning meteor, and then the meteor suddenly flies into the
Speaker 1: palace and then flies at the queen and is seemingly
Speaker 1: absorbed into her body, and then she immediately projectile gives
Speaker 1: birth to what looks like a giant pill capsule made
Speaker 1: of alien meat. And at this point you might wonder,
Speaker 1: why are we in a Cronenberg film now, like this
Speaker 1: is what what did I sign up for? Luckily, this
Speaker 1: is about as as gross as it gets. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the I don't know why they frontloaded it with that,
Speaker 1: but that's the first thing, is the alien meat pill.
Speaker 1: And then the king comes in and he sees it
Speaker 1: and he's like a gross and he instantly concludes that
Speaker 1: it is a devil, but an advisor says to him,
Speaker 1: this is a quote from the subtitles. No he is
Speaker 1: your son anyway. Uh. And the servants at the palace,
Speaker 1: what they end up doing is that, I guess that
Speaker 1: the King's orders, they take the alien meat pill and
Speaker 1: they put it in a basket and set it in
Speaker 1: a river where it is carried away by the current.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, this is the
Speaker 1: story of Moses and also sort of of Perseus and Danny. Yeah. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: like I say, this film cast a wide net for
Speaker 1: its Folkloreican mythic influences, and very apparent by by what
Speaker 1: happens next. Oh that's right. So it goes on down
Speaker 1: the river and then we get a title says the
Speaker 1: Seven Dwarfs of the Happy Forest, And wow, okay, so
Speaker 1: the Seven Dwarfs here, Uh, just like snow White, the
Speaker 1: Seven Dwarfs live in a forest in a hut with
Speaker 1: a painted backdrop of like mountains and multicolored clouds. And
Speaker 1: oh boy. I know I've probably babbled about this before,
Speaker 1: but this is one of my all time favorite things.
Speaker 1: I love a constructed indoor forest set. Like, uh, you know, overall,
Speaker 1: the movie isn't as great as you'd want it to be.
Speaker 1: But it's one of the best things about legend Ridley
Speaker 1: Scott's legend is the built forest sets in that studio
Speaker 1: or I think of Daego Bar or whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but I just love a built forest. Uh So,
Speaker 1: by the way, please right in with your favorite constructed
Speaker 1: indoor forest sets and movies. I seek them out, so
Speaker 1: send them my way. And yeah, they're creating this um
Speaker 1: the you know, this rural habitat this this little farm
Speaker 1: where all the dwarves live and they since it is
Speaker 1: a farm, there is of course a rooster, an obvious puppet,
Speaker 1: screeching and mandarin. It's fabulous. The rooster is horrifying. It
Speaker 1: just it constantly cuts to it and it's like, I
Speaker 1: guess it's a puppet. For some reason, I was thinking
Speaker 1: of it as a robot. It's like a robot rooster
Speaker 1: that is just screeching and screeching. It barely resembles it.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not even sure now thinking back, is it
Speaker 1: a chicken, Is it a female chicken? Is it a rooster?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's at least a bird, and
Speaker 1: it's a great puppet. It's not it's not like a
Speaker 1: bad puppet, but yeah, it's it's just as logical to
Speaker 1: think of it as a robot versus an animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when we first meet the seven Dwarfs, they are
Speaker 1: marching and counting the numbers one to seven, and then suddenly,
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, the soundtrack changes to funk base and saxophone,
Speaker 1: and we see the robot rooster squawking, and one of
Speaker 1: the dwarfs with a fancy mustachh is dressed sort of
Speaker 1: like Robin Hood, and he's shooting arrows in the sky.
Speaker 1: And then one of them comes back down having skewered
Speaker 1: a fish, and he looks at it and goes strange.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to think, this movie never does
Speaker 1: a thing where it like names all of the seven
Speaker 1: Dwarfs and like introduces them individually. You just kind of
Speaker 1: have to get a sense of them while it's rolling.
Speaker 1: So there's like the goofy Robin Hood, who's the bow
Speaker 1: and arrow guy, but I was also thinking of him
Speaker 1: as handsome dwarf because he's, I don't know, he's got
Speaker 1: a fancy mustache. But then there is the vain one
Speaker 1: who is interested in his hair, and then there's the
Speaker 1: guy who drinks a lot and has a big bald
Speaker 1: spot and spits. And then there is the sleepy one,
Speaker 1: and then there is the one who farts. There's like,
Speaker 1: I guess he's he's farty friend, and like the rooster
Speaker 1: literally has a line like the FARTI dwarf farts, and
Speaker 1: then the rooster says it smells bad. And then I
Speaker 1: think there are a couple of others and I don't
Speaker 1: know what their deal was. One guy has a necklace
Speaker 1: with like bagels or dumplings or something on it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he also has a mohawk. Mohawk, right, has the cool
Speaker 1: hair style and he actually has more lines. He's one
Speaker 1: of the more active fathers of the seven fathers. Here. Um,
Speaker 1: there's also a guy with a tall hat. Um, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember what he did as much. You gotta
Speaker 1: have seven of them. They can't all have starring roles,
Speaker 1: I guess. So the film seems to focus mostly on
Speaker 1: on FARTI um, mohawk and also yeah, Robin hood yeah,
Speaker 1: and baldy also the bald one. Yes. Yeah, Okay, So
Speaker 1: we a couple of them are off in the river
Speaker 1: and they discovered the alien space baby pill in the basket. Uh,
Speaker 1: they like pick it up and they say, hey, we
Speaker 1: picked up a big fleshball that's from the subtitles, and
Speaker 1: they they discuss what to do with it. They they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, how should we deal with this? And they
Speaker 1: said one of them says let's cook it, and another
Speaker 1: says let's pickle it. But they eventually end up like
Speaker 1: stabbing it with a knife, and then it steam pours
Speaker 1: out of it, and then they realize, oh wow, it
Speaker 1: is no longer an alien pill made of meat. Now
Speaker 1: it's just a baby. It's just a regular human baby.
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh wow, now now we're all going
Speaker 1: to be it's now we're all gonna be fathers. And
Speaker 1: they debate what to name it. They briefly consider the
Speaker 1: name Demons, but then they settle on Yaoji, and then
Speaker 1: we get seventeen years later. And by the way, a
Speaker 1: thing that you must keep in mind while we're discussing
Speaker 1: all of this is that everything in this movie happens fast,
Speaker 1: and the cuts are very sudden, and the changes in
Speaker 1: the action are very sudden. This movie does not do
Speaker 1: I mean, occasionally it does, but most of the time
Speaker 1: does not do a lot of like establishing new shots
Speaker 1: and locations is just one thing straight into the next. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so instantly seventeen years go by, and this is
Speaker 1: where we get a monster attack, a fabulous cyclops monster.
Speaker 1: That's right, So it shows us. I think it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be an inn, like an inn and a tavern,
Speaker 1: and a cyclops monster just attacks it. It's like a
Speaker 1: monster with horns, and it's got one eye and then
Speaker 1: it's got kissy lips. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It has kind
Speaker 1: of a turtle vibe to it. Uh, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a nice effect. I like this cost him a lot.
Speaker 1: It starts rampaging immediately. There's a great scene where there's
Speaker 1: this drunk man kind of uh stumbling through the inn
Speaker 1: and he looks over and there's a paper screen um um,
Speaker 1: and behind it we see the silhouette of the monster,
Speaker 1: and for a second, the silhouette, I guess, kind of
Speaker 1: looks like a woman. And so the drunk man's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go check this out, and he pokes a
Speaker 1: hole through the screen to peek, and then the monster
Speaker 1: like reaches through and grabs him. It's wonderful, just eats him.
Speaker 1: I think I don't know, it's hard to tell what
Speaker 1: the monster is doing with people. I think it's eating people. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we see, Okay, can anyone stop this rampaging eyeclops.
Speaker 1: A couple of tough guys with weapons leap up, one
Speaker 1: as an axe, one as a sword, but no, the
Speaker 1: monster instantly dispatches them. So I guess that just establishes
Speaker 1: that somewhere we I don't think it has told us
Speaker 1: where this is, but somewhere there is an end with
Speaker 1: a monster problem, right, and it's ongoing. Yeah, ongoing. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to the to the forest. Just suddenly, uh,
Speaker 1: we go back and now the alien meat pill has
Speaker 1: become has grown up, and she's become a princess. And
Speaker 1: now that she is is grown up, she lives in
Speaker 1: the forest and she interacts with like magic stuff, like
Speaker 1: a magic altar. Yep, the magic altar becomes important later.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand what was going on with the magic
Speaker 1: altar at first. I think it's described at first that
Speaker 1: the altar keeps the devil away, keeps the devil from
Speaker 1: capturing the dwarves. Uh. And essentially that's it. It's apparent
Speaker 1: it's apparently a ward to keep certain evil forces away
Speaker 1: that have a role in the Dwarfdom of these Seven
Speaker 1: end of the Jewels. Yeah. Yeah, So she is down
Speaker 1: by the river's edge when suddenly she meets a handsome
Speaker 1: prince with sideburns, and I gotta say them when we
Speaker 1: first meet him, the combination of the sideburns and the
Speaker 1: fact that he's wearing like a white suit with these
Speaker 1: wide lapels with inlaid designs made me think Elvis. I
Speaker 1: also found it funny that in a movie so full
Speaker 1: of magic, the princess's first major threat here is she
Speaker 1: She almost falls in the water, and he's here to
Speaker 1: save her. So it's not not like a monster attacks
Speaker 1: in this scene or anything. But he's here, he's handsome.
Speaker 1: She's immediately snooting. Yeah, absolutely instant falling in love. So
Speaker 1: she they introduced themselves. She is Yogi and he is
Speaker 1: your June of the your Chin Kingdom, and uh, I
Speaker 1: think he's he's on his way to the palace of
Speaker 1: the nearby king so that he can pay his respects
Speaker 1: for the king's birthday. And so they walk back to
Speaker 1: the seven Dwarf's hut, and immediately the robot chicken is
Speaker 1: just mad, screeching, unleashed Um and the the the seven
Speaker 1: dads here are initially quite skeptical of the prince when
Speaker 1: they see him, but then Yeahchi explains that well, he's
Speaker 1: royalty and he saved her life, and they soften up
Speaker 1: real quick. They come around to the to the new boyfriend,
Speaker 1: but of course the prince can't stay. He's he's on
Speaker 1: a royal journey. He has to be on his way
Speaker 1: to the palace, and so he leaves, and oh no,
Speaker 1: the princesses, oh, she's pining for him, and the farting
Speaker 1: dad says her daughter is sick with love and it's sad.
Speaker 1: I think we get some of that sweet music playing here.
Speaker 1: So next we cut back to the palace and the king,
Speaker 1: and here we begin a sequence that is just bananas.
Speaker 1: This is what I was talking about at the beginning,
Speaker 1: where the part we're like, I mean, everything so far
Speaker 1: has been great and weird and wonderful, but at this
Speaker 1: part my brain kicked over into like a higher gear.
Speaker 1: So we're in the courtroom of the palace and the
Speaker 1: king announces he's troubled by a demon that has been
Speaker 1: attacking the town. Is there any way they can defeat it?
Speaker 1: I think they're talking about the you know the cyclops
Speaker 1: from earlier, and uh, there there are notes of sort
Speaker 1: of Bayo wolffish stuff here, like, you know, the king's
Speaker 1: hall is under relentless assault. Can no one kill the monster?
Speaker 1: And then enter a powerful warrior from far away. So
Speaker 1: one of the advisors in the court says, his majesty,
Speaker 1: a woman exorcist and named g R in the Wuchian
Speaker 1: kingdom is overpowerful, which that sounds like a problem, but
Speaker 1: I think they're just saying she's very strong. And the
Speaker 1: king says, all right, you know, let's get her to
Speaker 1: come in and deal with the demon. But she's already here.
Speaker 1: Just crazy, witchy laughter fills the hall and the sorceress
Speaker 1: appears in the middle of the throne room and then
Speaker 1: instead of walking up to approach the throne, she repeatedly teleports.
Speaker 1: She makes quite an entrance. Yes, she assures the king
Speaker 1: that she has the power to defeat the demon. And
Speaker 1: here's the part I was talking about where one advisor
Speaker 1: is like, I'm concerned about the safety of civilians. Maybe
Speaker 1: we don't want to trust a sorceress. And then she
Speaker 1: just like twists his head off, like twists his head
Speaker 1: around on his neck and kills him. I guess to
Speaker 1: prove her trustworthiness. I don't know, but she curses him
Speaker 1: to death, and then there's a guard who's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to kill the imperial ministers, and he
Speaker 1: draws his sword, but then she uses her magic to
Speaker 1: make the sword fly from his hand through the air
Speaker 1: and then back through his chest. But I guess she
Speaker 1: turned it into a spectral sword or something, because he
Speaker 1: appears unharmed. He's just very shocked. So she's ultimately just
Speaker 1: proving what she could do if she needed to do it.
Speaker 1: I don't I guess she didn't actually kill anybody here. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I think she did kill the first guy. I think
Speaker 1: she just didn't kill the second guy for some reason.
Speaker 1: That the neck twisting guy. Okay, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, No, I I the impression I got
Speaker 1: was she actually twisted his head off, but she did
Speaker 1: not actually skewer the guy with his own sword at
Speaker 1: any rate. She makes a strong statement, I've got the
Speaker 1: goods I can handle this demon, but by the way,
Speaker 1: I also need to bring in another person on this one.
Speaker 1: That's right. So she says she's going to capture the demon,
Speaker 1: but she has a friend called Shacker who has magical
Speaker 1: powers and he's going to help her, and the King's like,
Speaker 1: oh great, another sorcerer will send for him, but once
Speaker 1: again he's already here. So we get the shock her
Speaker 1: reveal and wow, it's like a wrestling entrance. He has
Speaker 1: his own funky theme music. The lights start flashing, and
Speaker 1: he appears in both live action bodily form, but also
Speaker 1: in animated form and an animated form, he's like blue
Speaker 1: and he looks like a Marvel Comics dark wizard with
Speaker 1: glowing eyes. It's like they're they're flashing to still images
Speaker 1: from a glorious van mural of a wizard. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I every time both times that I watched this and
Speaker 1: I'm watching this film a couple of times I was
Speaker 1: it was just like what, Like who should I know
Speaker 1: that that image? Like what's going on? Uh, it's such
Speaker 1: a strange to me choice, but it absolutely makes an impression. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. It's almost like it was
Speaker 1: intercutting with like a famous painting that we should recognize,
Speaker 1: Like it's with like, you know, the Bosch painting of
Speaker 1: Terror and Madness or something. Yeah, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I love it and again, he makes quite an entrance
Speaker 1: and he's got this wonderful magic staff with that like
Speaker 1: what a demon head on top of it. So you
Speaker 1: instantly can tell this guy knows his exorcisms. She knows
Speaker 1: her exorcisms. This, this is the occult power couple we
Speaker 1: need to invest in as a kingdom. You do not
Speaker 1: need to mess with these two. And the king says,
Speaker 1: so you are powerful exorcists. Hope that you make it
Speaker 1: um so onto business. They go out to beat the monster,
Speaker 1: but also in doing so they do a sick costume change.
Speaker 1: They look so cool. Yeah, the sorceress especially, like suddenly
Speaker 1: she's wearing this terrific Egyptian themed out fit with this
Speaker 1: like Egyptian like ancient Egyptian hairstyle. Absolutely wonderful. And then
Speaker 1: how do they kill the demon? It's over very quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like they basically show up. There's the demons rampaging in
Speaker 1: the streets, and uh, the sorcerer uses this kind of
Speaker 1: napalm demon staff strike. He like does a few flourishes,
Speaker 1: throws his demon staff and it just explodes in a
Speaker 1: big fireball when it hits the demon boom. Done one
Speaker 1: and done. It's over, and then they're right back in
Speaker 1: the courtroom. Yeah, and she has another costume change. She's
Speaker 1: wearing all red though she's gonna be back in the
Speaker 1: Egyptian outfit again like the following scene. But she's a
Speaker 1: sorcerers she can do what she wants. So for killing
Speaker 1: the Cyclops demon, the king rewards them with official posts.
Speaker 1: I think he makes the well, actually, I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is fair. I don't notice that he rewards
Speaker 1: the sorceress only the male sorcerer. Uh. He rewards Schaker
Speaker 1: by making him a general. And the King's advisor has concerns.
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't know if we should make these
Speaker 1: for his generals. That would be kind of giving them
Speaker 1: a lot of trust. But the King just dismisses these worries.
Speaker 1: It'll be fine, and they seem great. And then literally
Speaker 1: in the next shot, they're both cackling about what a
Speaker 1: great idea it was to send the one ied demon
Speaker 1: to terrify the people so that then they could gain
Speaker 1: access to the palace by defeating it. Yeah, the advisor
Speaker 1: is the only sensible person in the entire film. Um
Speaker 1: that that basically the king never listens to him, except
Speaker 1: a little bit maybe at the beginning concerning the child,
Speaker 1: but for them. But when it comes to these the
Speaker 1: sorcerer and the sorceress, he's like, no, no, no, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I trust them completely. Didn't you see how powerful they are?
Speaker 1: And now we know they're up to no good? Right, right?
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be fair to the advisor. I think later
Speaker 1: on he does get his advice followed somewhat like after remember,
Speaker 1: after he finds out about who the princess is, and
Speaker 1: he want he tells the king. He's like, hey, I
Speaker 1: think that's your daughter. Actually he's consistent. He has sound
Speaker 1: counsel throughout the entire picture. Sometimes they listen to him,
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't. That's right, But oh man, there is
Speaker 1: such eye popping demon activity in the next scene. So
Speaker 1: they go down in what I was thinking of the
Speaker 1: whole movie as the basement. The sorcerers go to the
Speaker 1: basement where they've got a big statue of a demon
Speaker 1: with two faces, one face on the head and then
Speaker 1: one face in like the belly or the crotch, and
Speaker 1: like they talk about this because at one point the
Speaker 1: sorcerer says to their demon, he's like, you've got too
Speaker 1: many faces or something. Yeah, And then there are these big,
Speaker 1: like paper machee giant human heads that may represent the
Speaker 1: sorcerer and the sorceress that are like clutched in hands.
Speaker 1: There's all this glorious red gel lighting. It is this
Speaker 1: wonderful demon layer. And one thing I particularly loved is
Speaker 1: that the design of this demonic altar it um, it
Speaker 1: has a style like the artistic style here is not
Speaker 1: It's not something you would necessarily I think see in
Speaker 1: like traditional uh Chinese iconography, but it reminded me very
Speaker 1: strongly of of decorations that I saw in Ending, China
Speaker 1: at a haunted house, like a like a tourist attraction,
Speaker 1: you know, at one of the parks there. It was
Speaker 1: the same sort of style of outrageous looking demon head.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if if this kind of uh
Speaker 1: this style of decoration has a name, but you might
Speaker 1: think if it I guess is like sort of like
Speaker 1: Chinese halloween stylings. Um, but it it has. It's it's wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole, this whole demon layer, and we learned the
Speaker 1: demon's name. They serve Ah, do they say we are
Speaker 1: your loyal lackeys for long? Yes, lackeys forever. But Okay,
Speaker 1: what are they going to do down here. Well, they
Speaker 1: do some rituals and they pledge their loyalty to the
Speaker 1: demon ah do, and then they're like, hey, let's create
Speaker 1: a nine headed siren. We need another monster. That's right,
Speaker 1: I mean they've gotten so far with one uh monster,
Speaker 1: con they've got to take it to the next level
Speaker 1: introduce another monster that, of course they will have to
Speaker 1: fight and then reap the benefits of having slain. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't exactly go that way, does it. But we'll
Speaker 1: get there in a second. So, first of all, there
Speaker 1: is a scene where she's dad's try to make her
Speaker 1: happy again, because you know, she's back in the forest.
Speaker 1: She's love sick. She's fallen in love with the prince
Speaker 1: but he's gone off on his own path and and
Speaker 1: now all she can do is sit around in pine
Speaker 1: for him. So she's so sad, and they, you know,
Speaker 1: these are these are kind dads, these these are they're
Speaker 1: good dads, and they want to help her out. So
Speaker 1: they're like, I know, let's try to make her laugh
Speaker 1: by doing animal impressions. Um. So they they spend a
Speaker 1: long time seeing who can like be the funniest, like, uh,
Speaker 1: rooster or ape. Yeah, the scene. This scene maybe goes
Speaker 1: on a little too long, not that that I got
Speaker 1: sick of it, but you can tell the music transition
Speaker 1: to the sweet stuff while the comedic shenanigans were still
Speaker 1: going on. But then they cut over and yeah, she's
Speaker 1: feeling sad, and they realize it's not working. We've got
Speaker 1: to help her in another way, right. I think they're
Speaker 1: starting to get the picture. It's like, look, the only
Speaker 1: solution here is we've got to get her together with
Speaker 1: her prints. That's the only way she's gonna be happy.
Speaker 1: But they know where the prince is. He's at the capital,
Speaker 1: so they'll be able to follow up on that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what are they What are they gonna do to
Speaker 1: kill the nine headed Siren? The King's like, there's more monsters?
Speaker 1: Why why are we getting more monsters? Um? And this
Speaker 1: time they suggest, I know, let's let's not waste our
Speaker 1: best sorcerers on the monster. This time, let's send the
Speaker 1: heroic young swordsman, the prince you're June, who is here
Speaker 1: from a foreign land to celebrate the king's birthday. He
Speaker 1: can kill the demon for us. And there's initially some concern.
Speaker 1: I think they're like, oh, but he's like he's actually royal, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to risk his life. But your June
Speaker 1: comes out and says, no, no, I am skilled in
Speaker 1: self defense. And you can tell the Sorcerer and the
Speaker 1: Sorceress do not like this idea. This is um, this
Speaker 1: is a kink in their plans. Uh. They are supposed
Speaker 1: to be the go toos for dealing with demons, right,
Speaker 1: So the young Prince goes out with uh several other
Speaker 1: soldiers to fight the monster, and then there's this cool
Speaker 1: scene where the the evil sorcerer Schacker is sort of
Speaker 1: puppet control owling the nine headed Siren from the demon
Speaker 1: basement while the Prince is fighting him. Yeah, the sorcery
Speaker 1: in this film is all fabulous because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of um, a lot of hand movements and moodras and
Speaker 1: so forth, with wonderful kind of martial arts sound effects
Speaker 1: to each movement, and then also the creation of magical
Speaker 1: circles in the in the air in front of the
Speaker 1: sorcerer or sorceress that they'll stick their hands through to
Speaker 1: do the various incantations. So the magic is just richly
Speaker 1: visually of fun to watch, and of course the Prince
Speaker 1: wins the sword fight against the monster, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: that the violence against the monster actually translates back to
Speaker 1: the puppet master at actually to Chakur. Like at the
Speaker 1: end of the fight, he's in his demon basement spitting
Speaker 1: up blood. It's intense. So once again things are not
Speaker 1: going according to plan. This this monster was was theirs
Speaker 1: to slay and they couldn't even use this monster then
Speaker 1: to slay this metlesome hero. So then we cut back
Speaker 1: to the forest for a bit and here we get
Speaker 1: the bunny fairy seed. Do you want to describe this, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, she's she's doing what a princess may may
Speaker 1: do oftentimes, just setting there, a bunny comes up to her.
Speaker 1: She's feeling sad, so she picks up the bunny and
Speaker 1: then she puts the bunny back down instead of I
Speaker 1: guess what, killing the bunny. I don't beating it because
Speaker 1: the because the thing is the bunny then transforms into
Speaker 1: the fairy of the forest and did this tiny little
Speaker 1: bubbly woman who then is like, yeah, you save me,
Speaker 1: this is great. Let me make it up to you,
Speaker 1: or maybe not save You didn't save me, but you
Speaker 1: like spared me. I'm not I'm not really sure what
Speaker 1: the trans The details of the transaction are here, but basically,
Speaker 1: she's I am a fairy and now i am fully
Speaker 1: introduced in this film, and I'm here to help you.
Speaker 1: That's right. So I think the fairy is saying, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you didn't kill and eat me as a bunny. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so anyway she gets she says, hey, I'll grant you
Speaker 1: a wish. And what is the princess wish for? She
Speaker 1: tells her she can win for a gym or a pearl,
Speaker 1: but the princess says, no, all I want is to
Speaker 1: be with my prince. And so together her, her dad's
Speaker 1: in the forest, and the little Fairy, they conspire to
Speaker 1: help Yogi win the heart of the prince. But let's see,
Speaker 1: the fairy magically gives her a gown that would, let
Speaker 1: you know, it's like Cinderella like. She can wear this
Speaker 1: to the palace. And then the seven Dwarfs come up
Speaker 1: with a plan to sneak her into the palace because
Speaker 1: one of them knows the guards at the palace, and
Speaker 1: they can sneak her in pretending to be a maid
Speaker 1: so she can meet the prince again. Now you might
Speaker 1: wonder why did the dwarves have all these connections it
Speaker 1: They kind of begin to trickle the information here and
Speaker 1: about the dwarves, but we eventually learned that they are
Speaker 1: dwarves because they were cursed. They were seven generals. So
Speaker 1: they even though they're in hiding and they're using a
Speaker 1: magical altar to keep evildoers from finding out where they are,
Speaker 1: they still have connections to uh, military individuals at the
Speaker 1: palace and so forth. So I guess he was once
Speaker 1: like the fartie general. I guess. Alright, So the princess
Speaker 1: in filth rates the palace pretending to be a maid.
Speaker 1: She meets the prince again, and things are going sort
Speaker 1: of well in that regard, but then the sorceress g
Speaker 1: r Is jealous. She goes to the demon statue in
Speaker 1: the basement and she's like, I thought you said I
Speaker 1: am the most charming girl, and the demon statue was like, uh, well, well,
Speaker 1: well sorry, you were not the most I guess this
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a kind of a mirror mirror
Speaker 1: on the wall. Who's the fairest. Well this this leads
Speaker 1: to a sort of cascade of political machinations in the palace,
Speaker 1: but they all end up with the prince being transformed
Speaker 1: into a bear, yes, transformed into a bear and caliported
Speaker 1: into the forest by the Sorcerer. And oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: this bear transformation, I absolutely love it. I think I'm
Speaker 1: becoming a big fan of bad bear costumes and films. Um.
Speaker 1: I recently watched the three film Adam and e Versus
Speaker 1: the Cannibals that I briefly mentioned in our Fruit of
Speaker 1: Paradise episode that has a tremendously bad bear costume in it.
Speaker 1: I watched that just the other week. This film's bear
Speaker 1: is much better than than the one in Adam and
Speaker 1: e Versus the Cannibals. It's still kind of reminds me
Speaker 1: of the mutated bear in the Prophecy, but also is
Speaker 1: very much this um kind of I don't know, sloth bear,
Speaker 1: sun bear. He's not very threatening, he's kind of cuddly. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fun bear costume, but also it's
Speaker 1: clearly a bear costume. Yeah. Yeah. And of course strong
Speaker 1: connections here to Alexander rose Russian fantasy film Jack Frost,
Speaker 1: because in that we also have a prince who has
Speaker 1: turned into a bear where his voice sounds like Zoidberg. Right.
Speaker 1: But in this one, like the bear is almost immediately
Speaker 1: marching up to the farm house there of the seven dwarves,
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, oh, I don't know what that's all about. Look,
Speaker 1: there's a bear coming this way. We should be afraid.
Speaker 1: But the Fairy she can tell. She can tell in
Speaker 1: this kind of hilarious sequence where she sees that the
Speaker 1: bear is not like a dancing bear, it's actually the
Speaker 1: dancing Prince, and she's like, no, no, it's the prince.
Speaker 1: We've got to help it. Yeah, that's what so she
Speaker 1: so yeah, they reveal the backstory that the seven dwarfs
Speaker 1: are originally generals, and then she and the fairy and
Speaker 1: the generals are like, we know what to do. We
Speaker 1: have to boil the bear in a magic potion and
Speaker 1: a cauldron with the lid on for seven days. Yes,
Speaker 1: he has to suffer in there for like seven days,
Speaker 1: and he can't come out, you can't take the lid
Speaker 1: off of it. But at the end he will be cured. Now, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there's another scene with the sorcerer and the Sorceress and
Speaker 1: they're they're like, you know again, they're plotting, and they're
Speaker 1: realizing we've got to do something about these um these
Speaker 1: generals or the prince, the prince us and so forth,
Speaker 1: and there's some talk of like, oh, we need to
Speaker 1: find where they are and they're they're like no, no,
Speaker 1: they have an exorcist alter, so we can't pinpoint their position.
Speaker 1: We should send someone to destroy the altar, and pretty
Speaker 1: much the next scene is the princess accidentally knocking over
Speaker 1: the altar and thus incapacitating it. It was like, it's
Speaker 1: a weird set up there, Like I thought they were
Speaker 1: going to send some sort of lackey uh to you know,
Speaker 1: to some sort of a spy or a magical animal.
Speaker 1: But no, it just this problem solved itself, no additional
Speaker 1: lackey required, right, And as soon as it happens, they
Speaker 1: appear and they abduct the princess. Oh and then they
Speaker 1: magically blow the top off of the cauldron too. So
Speaker 1: now it's revealed that the prince is going to be
Speaker 1: paralyzed because he didn't complete his bear bath. Oh but
Speaker 1: wait he's not for some reason, right, Don't they do
Speaker 1: something to help him the princess, I mean not the princess.
Speaker 1: The fairy then says, oh, don't worry about it, I
Speaker 1: have a solution, and she has some sort of a
Speaker 1: potion that she gives him and he's fine. See, she's
Speaker 1: just she solves problems. That's what a good fairy does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's on top of it. But but but uh so
Speaker 1: they so the sorcerers have kidnapped to the princess because
Speaker 1: I think they're gonna use her in their plan for
Speaker 1: usurpation of the throne. Because what do they want? Ultimately,
Speaker 1: they want power, right, they want to be in charge.
Speaker 1: So they take her to the demon basement and they
Speaker 1: do a ritual and this scene will make you lose
Speaker 1: your mind. Yes, there's dancing fire. The scynth just gets
Speaker 1: really intense, flashing eyes, flying heads as they ask their
Speaker 1: demon lord to quote dead in her soul. The goal
Speaker 1: of this is to hypnotize her to say that she
Speaker 1: will marry shack her the sorcerer. Um. So they take
Speaker 1: her up to meet her father again, and by this
Speaker 1: point the king has been convinced by his adviser that ah, yes,
Speaker 1: this princess was the baby we put in the basket
Speaker 1: and sent down the river. This is your daughter. So
Speaker 1: the King's like, oh wow, it's wonderful to see you again. Daughter,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy you're here. But the first thing, she's like, look,
Speaker 1: I gotta marry the evil sorcerer. And the King's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if that's what you want. But again it's only because
Speaker 1: she's hypnotized. Uh. And here kind of begins a journey
Speaker 1: of Adventures section of the movie because the Prince now
Speaker 1: he's back at the in the forest. He becomes aware
Speaker 1: of this via Bunny Fairy reconnaissance, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got to stop this from happening. So I've got
Speaker 1: to make a journey to recruit several kinds of magical
Speaker 1: help in order to save the princess. But the Bubbly
Speaker 1: Fairy realizes he's not ready for this right now. He
Speaker 1: needs he needs you. He like any hero in a story.
Speaker 1: He needs special weapons, he needs special armor, and I've
Speaker 1: got to send him on a side quest to get
Speaker 1: those things. Okay, So I I've I think I forget
Speaker 1: some of the quests. He goes on, what are these
Speaker 1: quests that happened in rapid succession? Well, he has to
Speaker 1: he has to swim right some sort of subterranean cave
Speaker 1: in order to get the armor and the sword from
Speaker 1: a skeleton he doesn't fight the skeleton or fight any
Speaker 1: kind of Ardian It's just I guess, difficult to get there.
Speaker 1: And then the skeleton talks to him. He is like, hey,
Speaker 1: here you go. Take this is great armor, great sword.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad somebody can use this. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think what it's the thunder sword and the magic armor.
Speaker 1: And I think what the skeleton says is every trinkle
Speaker 1: in my collection has magic power. I think that might
Speaker 1: be a typo, yes, but the ideas that like every
Speaker 1: detail of it, every cuff link, every every jewel uh
Speaker 1: in the armor has some sort of a magical power.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you don't know about it till later, Like later
Speaker 1: on you'll hear more narration from the skeleton that will
Speaker 1: inform our hero of how he can better utilize this
Speaker 1: fabulous armor. That's right, And then he travels more. He
Speaker 1: travels like into this strange desert with these spires of
Speaker 1: rock that the ferry purchase on and they talk, and
Speaker 1: at one point he goes into a cave and ends
Speaker 1: up battling what I thought, we're bat demons. But then
Speaker 1: also some of them look like frogman like they literally
Speaker 1: have a diverse flippers on their hands, and feet. Um,
Speaker 1: so they were doing what they could with the costuming here,
Speaker 1: but I still think it looks it's it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Um And I was like, what are these supposed to be?
Speaker 1: But according to the captions they were, they're not bats.
Speaker 1: They were a bird and frogs Yeah, three frog sirens.
Speaker 1: This is the second time that that siren is used
Speaker 1: in the subtitles to note some sort of a monster.
Speaker 1: So I feel like there's probably some sort of interesting
Speaker 1: connection about like how monster becomes the word siren or
Speaker 1: what word in Mandarin eventually becomes siren in this context.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some sort of bird monster, some sort of
Speaker 1: frog monsters. The bird monster looks better than the frog monsters.
Speaker 1: I feel like they were they were running out of
Speaker 1: funds or time or both to create these frog creatures.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. The lighting is weird. The physical
Speaker 1: performance of the frog sirens is is humorous, so it
Speaker 1: it works. You were entertained by it. One off their
Speaker 1: heads gets cut off and it's like it's like going
Speaker 1: on my head and trying to grab it. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Huh oh. And then while all this is going on,
Speaker 1: the people back home are in peril because the sorcerers
Speaker 1: imprisoned the king and the princess and their allies in
Speaker 1: a magic circle and they're like, you must renounce your
Speaker 1: throne and turn it over to me. And there he's
Speaker 1: slowly like burning his advisors alive until he relents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the situation has has gotten rather intense at the capitol.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile they've also sent out warriors to battle
Speaker 1: the prince for immortals. Okay, so maybe you caught more
Speaker 1: of the context here. This is the battle where um,
Speaker 1: where the prince and then some of his allies end
Speaker 1: up fighting these these like statues or these automata. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this might be something that's kind of connected or
Speaker 1: inspired by the eighteen Bronze Men film that I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier from seventies six, because when they first encountered them
Speaker 1: that they're clearly at her standing still, you know, brandishing
Speaker 1: their weapons, but they're kind of moving a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they touch them, they hit them with their weapons, and
Speaker 1: they just grew weapons. They seem useless against them, and
Speaker 1: then they start battling and this is a this is
Speaker 1: a fun uh fun group of villains here. For for
Speaker 1: our hero, he also has like a few lackeys with him.
Speaker 1: At this point warriors from the capitol who came to
Speaker 1: get him and be like, hey, you should come. There's
Speaker 1: a whole situation going on. Yeah, that's right. So among
Speaker 1: these warriors, there's a big ogre with the club, there's
Speaker 1: a guy with a mace that has a rotating drill bit,
Speaker 1: there's a teleporting fighter with a spear and a shield,
Speaker 1: and then I think I lost track of who the
Speaker 1: fourth guy was. But for this this fight, the Prince
Speaker 1: gets his thundersword charged up and he's trying to fight him,
Speaker 1: and he's a very skilled warrior, but he just like
Speaker 1: he can't beat him until the little Fairy of the
Speaker 1: Forest uses her magic vision to see their weak points
Speaker 1: and he's and she's like, oh, I see, you have
Speaker 1: to hit this one in the armpit. You have to
Speaker 1: hit this one in the mouth. And then the last
Speaker 1: one is one who has to be hit in the anus.
Speaker 1: Even though the subtitles say his quote hip, but that
Speaker 1: is not what has shown. No, Nope, he clearly he
Speaker 1: has to stab this one up the butt with the
Speaker 1: Heavenly sword. And the scene in which this happens is
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing because he does this fabulous martial arts Hong
Speaker 1: Kong wire back flip thing, then slides underneath the monster
Speaker 1: and then upward thrust with the sword and then picks
Speaker 1: him up off the ground with the sword and then
Speaker 1: the warrior explodes in a burst of brilliant fire. It's great.
Speaker 1: And so after this there's another part where he has
Speaker 1: to go into a temple and fight another magical guardian
Speaker 1: of some kind. It's like hard to describe what it is.
Speaker 1: It's like a flay. It's flayed body parts that don't
Speaker 1: have the whole body with them, and they're flying around
Speaker 1: attacking him. So like like bloody skinless legs and like
Speaker 1: arms and teeth. Yeah, the the limbs they look they
Speaker 1: look like, you know, gore, like fake gore, but they
Speaker 1: also kind of look like fur. So I kept thinking
Speaker 1: of them as the limbs of the meat muppet. They're
Speaker 1: moving around, they're flying around, they're also being sneaky around him.
Speaker 1: And this whole sequence where he's battling this guardian that
Speaker 1: is all these pieces that then eventually comes together. Um,
Speaker 1: it made me think of like the works of Clark
Speaker 1: Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, where you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that when you mess with ancient sorcery
Speaker 1: and ancient magic, you just have no idea what sort
Speaker 1: of madness you're messing with. And this sequence just felt
Speaker 1: just authentically just so weird, like this is some weird
Speaker 1: magic that our heroes encountering here, and oh, we should
Speaker 1: say why he's here. I believe the fairy has said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, if you want to defeat the evil sorcerer
Speaker 1: and sorceress, you're gonna need some help. You need to
Speaker 1: get this magic box. They imprisoned somebody, they betrayed some
Speaker 1: magical being. The magical being is in the box. Go
Speaker 1: here at the box, bring that with you to the
Speaker 1: capitol when you go to defeat them. Okay, So he does.
Speaker 1: He defeats this monster, he gets the box, he opens
Speaker 1: it up, and then a guy comes out who is
Speaker 1: kind of scary in his own right, and he's got
Speaker 1: uh these two big like bald camel humps in the
Speaker 1: middle of his head. Yeah, yeah, strong fengi vibes to
Speaker 1: the head. Though to be clear, the farrengies wouldn't be
Speaker 1: introduced told like eighty seven. I think, so no way
Speaker 1: that was a connection. It reminded me a bit of
Speaker 1: various illustrations of the divine farmer Shinnong, who has you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like an ox like appearance to his otherwise
Speaker 1: humanoid body. So he's like some often like little horns
Speaker 1: poking through the top of his skull. So I kind
Speaker 1: of got a vibe of of that character from this being.
Speaker 1: But also clearly this is some sort of a gin
Speaker 1: because it's you know, very much some sort of a
Speaker 1: genie you trapped inside of a container. And now the
Speaker 1: being has been freed and he's going to do a
Speaker 1: solid for the individual who freed him, right, so they
Speaker 1: together go back to the palace. Magically, there's like almost
Speaker 1: a chase scene then where the genie like grabs the
Speaker 1: guy pulls him into the box and then flies to
Speaker 1: the palace with the fairy struggling to keep up. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and then she's like wait, wait, I can't keep up,
Speaker 1: and so the the gin hand comes out of the
Speaker 1: box as it's flying through the air on obvious wires,
Speaker 1: grabs her and it pulls her into the box as well. Again.
Speaker 1: Just so the the the effects in this were just audacious,
Speaker 1: like they're very ambitious in what they want to do
Speaker 1: accomplish here. Now, of course, There is a big final
Speaker 1: battle involving the Prince doing his his sword fighting, and
Speaker 1: then also involving this this wizard genie being who has
Speaker 1: been freed from the box fighting his fighting the the
Speaker 1: wizards who betrayed him, and it's uh. I don't want
Speaker 1: to describe it in too much detail. It's just a
Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful showdown. It does involve the uh, the guy
Speaker 1: freed from the box pointing at things with his middle finger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he starts using all sorts of crazy gin magic. Our
Speaker 1: sorcerer and Sorceress who are now cornered. They have at
Speaker 1: least one major costume change that occurs, and they're doing
Speaker 1: a kind of tandem fighting. We get an awesome wizard
Speaker 1: sword that's busted out by the Sorcerer, and the sorceress
Speaker 1: also has like a fancy black magic dagger that she uses.
Speaker 1: Just an epic battle proceeds uh to play out here
Speaker 1: in the uh the Hall of the King. I think
Speaker 1: I can say no more about thrilling Bloody Sword except
Speaker 1: that it was absolutely wonderful, one of my favorites we've done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it should. You absolutely have to see it. It's just
Speaker 1: a complete visual spectacle. And also the music is great
Speaker 1: as well. Uh so see it, listen to it, learn
Speaker 1: from it, be changed by it, be melted and remade,
Speaker 1: and its likeness become an eternal lackey if the demon
Speaker 1: I do. Yes. Oh man, there there's so many great
Speaker 1: but like there's some wonderful, big caring moments between the
Speaker 1: sorcerer and the sorceress and do Like the sorceress has
Speaker 1: the bit of course where she's like, I thought you
Speaker 1: said I was the most charming, and then there is
Speaker 1: this whole bit where a dudes like, hey, Sorcerer, I
Speaker 1: thought I told you to kill the prince and the princess,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I have my own plan. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do what I want here, and then they get into
Speaker 1: a big argument and it kind of comes to blows
Speaker 1: um with the with various like demon icons sent out
Speaker 1: against the sorcerer and he's having to battle him off
Speaker 1: with his staff until finally the demon is the one
Speaker 1: that's like, WHOA, well, we shouldn't be bickering. You know,
Speaker 1: you need to get out there and fight that prince.
Speaker 1: We're on the same side here, thrilling bloody sword all right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, strong recommendation on this one. Uh, you have
Speaker 1: find a way to see it and see it. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go and close the book on this one.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to hear from anyone out there who
Speaker 1: has thoughts on Thrilling Bloody Sword, if you've seen it recently,
Speaker 1: or I'd love to hear from anyone who saw it
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen eighties. Uh, definitely right in about
Speaker 1: that if if you have details. But yeah, if you
Speaker 1: want to listen to other episodes of at House Cinema,
Speaker 1: it happens every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science podcast, but on
Speaker 1: Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and we just
Speaker 1: focus on a strange film. I will blog about these
Speaker 1: movies over at SMUTA music dot com and if you
Speaker 1: are a letterboxed user, that's l E T T E
Speaker 1: R B o x D dot com. Uh, you'll find
Speaker 1: us there. Our user name is weird House. We have
Speaker 1: a fabulous list of all the movies we've covered thus far,
Speaker 1: and we'll also generally sprinkle in the next one or
Speaker 1: two movies we're going to cover, so you can sort
Speaker 1: of get get a drop on what we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss in case you want to watch something ahead of publication.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.