Hi, I'm S.A. Bradley and welcome to Hellbent for Horror, a podcast devoted to all things related to horror, where I remind you that you used to love horror movies and you secretly still do. My guest today to talk about the Cat 3 universe is Ryan Smith. Ryan works at the legendary Dreamhaven Books and Comics in downtown Minneapolis, and he is one of the most knowledgeable people on this subject.
He is also one of the most passionate and generous fans I've ever met. Someone who really wants everyone to experience these films. Ryan, thanks so much for talking with me. Hey, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate this.
Now, we've been talking for quite a while on these Cat 3 movies, folks, and I hope you're enjoying it. Same caveat as we had before, which is, you know, we're going to be talking about some crazy stuff in these movies. There's going to be stuff that's a little bit jaw-dropping.
stuff that wasn't okay when it came out it's certainly not okay now but we're really looking at the context of these things these movies were meant to be over the top these movies were meant to be transgressive they were meant to attack a system that
was kind of selling them out we were going to go from british law to chinese law in 1997 and the artists that we talk about are kind of saying all bets are off let's just go crazy in the 90s we ended up going to a lot of foreign films because it wasn't a lot going on in horror so we started getting into some of the uh say gray market stuff and everything and you did not necessarily find a lot of quality in the subtitles sometimes there were no subtitles as you mentioned sometimes they were white
and you couldn't read them whenever somebody was wearing white. Or they were just so poorly translated or lazily translated that they became unintentionally funny. And that welcomes me to our next movie, our final Billy Tan, Brother of Darkness. Another one that's not talked about in the book is the 1994 movie starring Lily Chung, who was just mentally challenged Ming Ming and not mentally challenged in this one. But we have ourselves one of the weirder movies.
made even weirder because of some of the subtitle mishaps. Yeah, this was something that was so common back in the day. It makes me think of the Stephen Hammond book, Sex and Zen and a Bullet in the Head. I don't remember. I think he was the one that sort of said this, but he had this sections in these books that were called fractured subtitles. Yes.
And they were really poorly translated lines of dialogue that ended up being just freaking hilarious. And this movie is, it's a great looking DVD for the time, but. Like you said, the subtitles really lead something to be desired. And, you know, now that we're seeing these new releases of these films, we're seeing these fixed subtitles. I have always kept all the old versions of these movies because...
One of the things we used to love about these movies were the subtitles were just hilarious. Even, you know, previous to the Ebola Syndrome 4K that Vinegar Syndrome did. The previous DVD release of Ebola in the US did have newer subtitles, but it also had... I want to say they called them the original craptacular Hong Kong subtitles because they were funny. Yeah. And, you know, Brother Darkness is just one of those things where, you know, it adds. Yeah, it does. It adds to the camp.
of this movie because this is a movie that it's kind of like an unintentionally campy or maybe intentionally campy kind of send up. of the pot boilers that you'd see on the movie of the week or the Lifetime channel, where it's family drama more than it is anything else. It's like there's a crime that's committed by one of the family members and...
The entire story is told from the courtroom. And we find out why this person is justified in doing what they do. And it's really funny because it's like a courtroom drama about a domestic abuser. And it's like a male version of Mildred. Pierce with Joan Crawford. So Mildred Pierce was like this movie where the daughter ends up killing this terrible stepfather. But Mildred takes the blame. She goes to court because the guy was abused.
And we find out how abusive and terrible he is till at the end. It's like, if you go through that, you're innocent, that kind of story. And that's a brother of darkness is kind of, we have. The Brother of Darkness is the older brother in this family, and he is a trip. You want to talk a little bit about this guy? Yeah, I mean, he's got a very...
distinctive face that if you've seen him in these movies, you'll remember him. He's William Cole Cockoy. And he probably plays maybe the worst brother that I've ever seen in my life. Other people that watch these kinds of movies are going to recognize him from a bunch of these movies. He's really crazy in the Daughter of Darkness 1 and 2 movies. And this guy is so abusive to his family, the mother, the father.
his little brother, another even younger brother who was maybe like 10 years old. He's just awful to these people. It's about the younger brother of William Ko Kokkwe. who finally stands up to him and has to get rid of him, basically, in order to stop this cycle of violence.
Yeah, my God. And this is a crazy cycle of violence, to say the least. This is, once again, as I mentioned, a horror movie universe before. This is definitely a horror movie universe where nothing works. Everybody is evil. All the side characters are... nasty. The brother is terrible, gets away with everything and the parents are long suffering. He'll get into trouble and then he'll go to, is it Macau? Does he go off to Macau? I think he does go to Macau to gamble.
Yeah, he just goes to gamble. So he does all these terrible things that he gets shunned. He goes to gamble. When he runs out of money, he comes back. And then he runs scams. He runs scams with other gang members who will come and beat him up so that the parents will... But they'll only be...
him up so much so the parents are like oh my god you're gonna kill him and give them all the money and he gets a cut out of the money and he's just absolutely terrible and every time he comes home he's like this guy who uh they they have to do everything for me i guess because he's the the oldest right he's the king's back
yep the king is back that's how he answers the door he walks in goes the king is back and he's like angry if it takes too long for them to knock on the door some of the fucking dialogue is amazing only because we don't know what they're actually saying we're just
getting the subtitles and at one point he's like uh goes to his wife who's living there he's been in jail all this time but she's been waiting for him or not waiting for him but he comes home he's gonna have a piece of her so he's like my organ must eat something
is the line it's like oh my god so it's just crazy the way that this movie goes and it feels you know in some ways it's a little bit more tame than the other ones it's like uh it feels like he was trying to maybe be a little bit more respectable, not as grotesque, but it just doesn't work.
He cannot help himself. Yeah, I mean, and that scene that you're talking about, I mean, they're having a family dinner and in the middle of the dinner, he decides he needs to go into the bedroom with his wife while his parents are out there eating. The brother's out there eating. He's got his girlfriend over eating and he goes into the bedroom to loudly have sex with his wife. I mean, like screaming sex in the other room where everybody can hear. It's just insane.
And there was some kind of violence that happened early on in their life. And because of a violent act that the brothers were able to watch, was it the murder of the father? Was that what it was? I'm trying to remember exactly what it was, but there was... Yeah, the mother gets beaten, but he gets hit in the balls. The young boy, the younger brother gets hit in the nuts, and that becomes a major plot point in this movie. Yeah, so he basically... It's impotent. Yeah.
He's impotent and it's mentally, it's a problem that he has mentally. And so as things are getting worse, he has this girlfriend. I mean, he does all the things you would expect. He takes Taekwondo and Kung Fu. He's doing all this stuff that he can beat. up the brother, but the parents always stop him from going too far. But when he finally does go too far, that gets us into the court case, right? And in the courtroom, we see these lawyers and one of them is Anthony Wong playing a rather stuffy.
prosecutor. And I don't know, but it's kind of inferred that the prosecution and the defense attorneys are in a relationship together. I don't know if they're husband, wife or whatever, but they're like offering to take each other to dinner and stuff. It's really a weird thing.
But what blows me away in this movie is it makes me want to know a little bit more about the culture because this entire thing... almost like it's a done deal that this guy's terrible he's done all this stuff there's a bunch of documentation uh it seems like it's justifiable and then all of a sudden anthony wong comes over and goes I want the girlfriend on the stand. He puts her on the stand. He goes.
did you have oral sex with the defendant it's like it's like everything almost falls apart because of a blow job because he was impotent and there's a hypogonadism he has some kind of problem called hypogonadism because of the violence that he saw as a kid and getting kicked in the nuts. And the whole thing almost comes apart because he has oral sex with a girl. So what is going on in Hong Kong, man? I'm not sure exactly, but that is the world that Billy Tang creates in these films.
It's absolutely crazy. And even when it is a happy ending, it's not a happy ending. Once again, we have this thing where the story goes, it seems like, oh, well, that's all sewn up. But no, there has to be like a sorrowful moment at the end.
end and this one is is no different i mean nobody dies but it's like there's no happy ending it's a tragic end and i i have to say this was a really strange one out of this group and it made me wonder what billy tan was trying to do because all of his other movies are so over the top and this one is over the top in a way how bad the brother is but it also feels like he's I don't know it almost feels like it's a parody of movie of the week
lifetime movies. Like he's making fun out of respectable cinema. Yeah, I could totally see that. I think that he wasn't so interested in doing this movie. I think he did a few of the... maybe a couple of the rape by an angel ones after this, but I think he was not so much interested in doing these types of films anymore. So that might've played into.
you know what you're talking about with these films uh it's it's one hell of a one hell of a ride billy tang gave us so where could we find that film brother of dark out of print out of print so this is the one this is the the lost one Yep. And, you know, Red to Kill was in the same boat, but now we've got that error 44441 coming up here in the fall. I think the pre-order was just up. So that's coming soon. But Brother Darkness, nobody's announced that yet.
I'm hoping that somebody will pick it up. Yeah, hopefully. I think that there's enough weird, crazy charm. And it is. It's very funny. And I think for as violent as it can be, it's all so over the top. It's like a Douglas Sirk movie where all the drama... is oh, you know, I used to call these
Nervous breakdown movies, like when my mom and my aunt used to get together and complain about how shitty their lives were at times. They'd watch these soap operas, and the soap operas are always like, oh, everything's going to end in a nervous breakdown. This movie feels very much like that. So let's go on to our next movie. Now we're going into past the two titans, you know, Herman Yao and Billy Tang. And we're going to go into some of the works of other directors that are here.
And what we're going to do is we're going to start with Bosco Lamb. And can you give a little bit of a background about Bosco? I think most of the people that would be interested in these kinds of movies would probably know him from, he did Chinese Torture Chamber Story and then Spike Drinking. These are other Category 3 movies.
To me, Underground Banker was my favorite thing that he ever did. Underground Banker from 1994 is our next movie. And I got to tell you, this was the surprise out of the group. This is the one that I was like, oh, and this is... Rick and amazing. I had no idea what to think of it. Like underground banker is like going, is this like the Swiss?
bank accounts or something i had no clue what madness i was about to get into once again we have anthony wong in here and i think this is a movie where because the triad is mentioned that it becomes Cat 3. Was that one of the distinctions? Have you mentioned anything about Triad? I think that would have been one of the reasons it certainly would have got it flagged, that it was Triad. Because, you know, you're not supposed to... You know, if you talk about triad rituals.
triad you know sort of gang signs triad language that that would get you flagged but there's plenty of other stuff in this movie that oh yeah flag for cat three as well but um like i was talking about earlier with Herman Yao saying that Ebola syndrome, the humor was not intentional. I think that in this movie, it certainly had to be intentional and certainly a spoof.
of category three films but equally sick as some of the category three films that we've already talked about oh yeah it it has uh some characters in there from other movies uh but it really is like a real attack on the system of government. It's an attack on housing. It's an attack on subsidied housing. It's an attack on monetary system. There's all this stuff that goes on in this.
movie why don't you give us a little bit of an idea what the plot is well we have anthony wong once again playing another type of character in this movie where his nickname in the movie is marshmallow so I kind of like to refer to him as Marshmallow when I talk about this movie. He's a truck driver, hardworking guy, but he's a pushover. His wife meets an old friend named Canter who...
Basically causes her to fall prey to the underground banker, which is a loan shark essentially. And so now she ends up owing a load of money and has to pay it back. and can't come up with the money so she's forced into prostitution forced into trying to actually get, you know, Marshmello's sister raped to try to recoup the money. So she really goes in a bad way and makes tons of poor choices and doesn't own up to any of it. No. Really, in the film.
And then we've got Dr. Lam. Yeah. Shows up as the recently released from prison, Dr. Lam, who shows up as Anthony Wong's next door neighbor, which is. Just insane. It's a different person playing. Lawrence Ng plays Dr. Lam in this role. And Dr. Lam. you know, likes to play video games with Marshmallow's son. So he kind of becomes, you know, a friend. Yeah. A room full of chainsaws in the other room, which is another thing. He's got like a chainsaw collection.
dr lamb and he's like oh i'm rehabilitated why this is so interesting how this all happens is that Marshmallow and his family are living in a very small, cramped place. They're unhappy. Everything's about to burst. And they just decide to try out for the lottery that's going to take them and allow them to go into a new housing.
development and boom they get it but it's grass is greener on the other side right as soon as they get there they realize oh this might not have been a great place first off they're living next to a serial killer right who's now out because they say he's rehabilitated. But not only that, this is a place where
You know, everybody has some kind of scam going. And you've got like priests, monks who are coming in and trying to scam money off of people by giving them little sermons in the hallways. You've got...
All the teenage boys, the first moment that we see teenage boys from this housing development, they're trying to scam on the wife. They're trying to get sexual advances from her. All this weird stuff is happening. So once again, we... have that death wish falling down kind of thing, where it feels like it's going to be a setup where he's going to have to have revenge on these people.
But the idea of the bookies, what I thought was brilliant in this movie, even though it's taken way out of control, is the idea of how they talk about interest. And this is where it's almost like a musical. Suddenly it becomes like a musical comedy about how interest compounds if you borrow from the grand... What was his name? Uncle? Was that it? Black Chow? Yeah, Black Chow. Okay, yeah.
So, you know, they have this guy who's going to give her all this money, Black Chow, the bookie, but there's almost a dance. that goes on he goes uh uh we can talk about money once you see the charts and they have this whiteboard and it is just the most insane dots and arrows going everywhere zeros and numbers everywhere and uh canner
It's like he said it so many times. It's almost like a song and dance routine. He kind of slides as he's talking. He's not even looking at the board. He's just kind of moving his hands. And he's almost sing-song saying, you know, if you don't get it by this date, 400%.
If it doesn't happen at this, it's 800%. And no matter what she does, once she takes the money the first time, all bets are off. Her safety is over. Everything's going to happen to that family because there's no way that the... loan shark is going to let her off or ever pay off he wants her to be a prostitute he wants all this stuff to happen and anytime she even gets remotely close he does something to make sure the interest like triples and so they find themselves in this
spot where you know what's going to happen well sooner or later marshmallow is going to get a little hardened up takes a while yeah it takes a long while yeah so eventually the wife you know sort of once marshmallow finally figures out
What's going on? It's already too late. You know, he sells his truck to try to pay for it. It's not enough. So he's just like, well, that's all I got. So he takes the money and then the money gets stolen. So now he's really got nothing. But then the wife and the kid. get locked into the apartment twice. Yes. First time, the threat of a fire. And then the second time, a for real fire where Sheep dies and the kid gets horribly burned.
Yeah. Oh, my God. He's the baby from Eraserhead. That's what he looks like. It's insane. That scene in the hospital with Marshmello, the kid. Oh, my God. And Dr. Lamb, where the kid finally starts crying and says... i just want to play video games and he can't because his fingers are just these stumps it's just stumps and then but even that wasn't enough it wasn't until the kids said i want you to kill them
where Marshmello finally snaps and said, yeah, we need to do this. And then, you know, luckily he's got the assistance of his buddy, Dr. Lamb, to help him try to take care of these. Underground bankers. And it's hilarious how... almost wholesome Dr. Lamb is in this. And that has to be a send-up because Dr. Lamb is one of the more notorious Cat 3 films. He was absolutely like a rod of steel in the first movie. But here he's just kind of...
He's kind of nice until he decides, I think I like take scalpels out of a first aid kit and he's able to like decimate an entire floor of people just running around killing people. I love that you talked about the fires. So it was. really interesting thing that I think probably is very much done in real life, which is all the rooms.
in that apartment every apartment has one of those sliding metal doors that you would usually see in front of like a department store when they close at night it's uh folds up and then you put a chain on there so the thing that seems to happen is that everybody gets warned one time they wake up in the morning and that door is shut on them and it's locked from the outside with a another chain
Somebody puts a chain on there. And then the next time they put paper all over it and then they light it on fire. And then just like a prison movie, right, where you see somebody who's going to get burnt inside of the cell, they just spray some. lighter fluid in there and set fire to the house and it ends up killing uh marshmallow's wife and burning the the sun as you said and it's just a raucous movie i mean the thing that's funny about this is that it's funny
That there's as much grotesque stuff that happens, as much nastiness as there is, it's almost like good natured. There's like a really happy kind of crazy feel to the fight that Dr. Lam is having with the people killing him at the end.
It's really, really strange. And yet, this is a movie that one of the characters yells, asshole, there's no justice in this world. Villains won't die. And that's probably like the theme to this movie. Yeah, and there's some... crazy comedy in this thing too oh my god it was either right before that or right after i think it's right after he says that or anthony wong comes in and he's got this crazed look on his face and he says
Chess you bow, you know, in reference to untold story. So it really has some comedy that was, it had to be intentional, you know, it's just like, and the guy that we were just talking about. William Ho Kakuei, the awful brother from Brother of Darkness, is really, really funny as the underground banker.
Yeah. He's hilarious. It's weird. It's like when I first saw Pink Flamingos, you know, it's one of the most notorious films, supposed to be vile and filthy and everything. But it's also one of the happiest. There's like a seriously weird joy to it. And there is.
this weird, uh, by the time the, the underground bankers getting taken down, there's, there's like this real party atmosphere to the fight. It feels like, as you mentioned early on, that it's kind of a send up of all the cat three tropes. Yeah. And then, but then right at the very end too, you know, we get the, the social commentary thing where they have the shot overlooking all the, like the housing and once again, housing. And once again, we hear the whole narration of the points.
And the system of how it works. And if you need to borrow money from the underground banker, I just, this movie was such a nice surprise to me back in the day where. That was one that I didn't rent it right away. It was one that I ordered it from Tysing because it was category three, but I had no idea what it was. It was just.
I saw it had Anthony Wong in it. It was called The Underground Breaker. I ordered it. And this was one of the nicest surprises I had in trying to find all these kind of movies because I just thought it was such a unique sort of thing. Yeah, it was thoroughly unexpected. It was an unexpected surprise for me. I think part of it was I had no idea what it was going to be at all. And it was somewhat different than the other films that we had watched. There is a weird... highly moral.
thing to these movies. Sometimes I think that they're like how movies were before the Hays Commission came in, like right before they started really cracking down on the nastiness and during the Hays Act. They used to make movies where they were like gangsters, right? So you'd have movies like Scarface, you know, that happens after the Hays Act. And so you have a movie that's known for its time. to be pretty
ruthless and violent. And they got away with all of that as long as in the very last piece of the movie, Paul Muni is sobbing and crying and everything. And he's seen as a fool. As long as there's a comeuppance that the moral right wins, right, then it's okay. And so that's what I felt with some of these movies, that you can get as crazy as you want, but in the end, you're going to get a morality.
tale and this one was don't go to the underground bank or whatever the hell you do so where can we find this one sadly out of print oh you're kidding yeah we have yet to see a good release of this um The one that I sent you was a direct rip off of my Laserdisc. The Laserdisc was the best way to see this. I still have the original VHS tape, but just the...
The quality is a huge jump up for the Laserdisc. So unless somebody has a Laserdisc player, you can still maybe find a copy of it? Yeah. I mean, they do turn up on eBay. you might be able to get a copy of the tape. They're essentially the same. I didn't notice any difference between the tape and the LaserDisc as far as like one being a more uncut version. But yep, that's one you would have to search out.
So we get to our next movie, Naked Killer, directed by Clarence Ford. And this is one that is actually talked about in the Hong Kong Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies. This is a book that I've been diving into. into quite a bit because of these films. And I just love how they talk about this one as well. It's directed by Clarence Ford starring Xing Mei Yao, Simon Yam again, and Carrie Eng. And the trouble with a lot of sex and violence flicks is that there's usually not enough of either.
However, that's a dilemma that naked killer remedies with a vengeance as a simple tale of a traumatized cop. Oh my God, this is funny. A traumatized cop with a past meeting, a feisty femme fatale spirals off deliriously into a sizzling roughy.
that's high on ultraviolence, low on plot, with enough stylish sleaze to more than compensate. But what I'll say is that although it's maybe not big on plot, there's a lot of complications in this movie. There are a lot of killers. There are a lot of assassins. There's all sorts of madness going on. So you want to talk a little bit about this cop who has a trauma? Oh, my God. A cop who cannot hold on to his gun without vomiting. Yes.
Simon is so traumatized by the death of his brother. He was there and kind of almost caused the death of his brother. So he cannot deal with it. And he's having a really difficult time. Until he meets Ching Miao, who basically cures him of his impotence. This movie... One of the things I like about this movie is that it features two sets of female killers in it. Yes.
The opening scene with a woman literally tearing a guy apart, I mean, she brutalizes this guy. I mean, she's literally throwing him around like a rag doll. I found it amazing. I actually got to see this in the theater here in the Twin Cities. Oh, wow. Yeah, the same. Like back-to-back weeks, we had Untold Story and Naked Killer back in the 90s here. So we did get to see this in the theater here, which was amazing to see this with a crowd of people.
because i already knew it was coming but um it you know this is one of the most famous category three movies there is um it's way different than the true crime sorts of Category 3 movies that we've been talking about mostly. It definitely has, I would say, maybe the most recognizable image of all of Category 3 is the poster with Ching Miao with the gun. and the miniskirt and the bullets. It's an amazing image and it's a very stylish movie too.
I think of all the movies maybe that we're talking about tonight, this movie is like style aplenty. The camera work and the fight scenes are amazing. And some of the set pieces are just crazy looking. Like the scene where she's like sitting on the green couch with the green fruit, the plate of green fruit behind her. And she's like drinking milk.
all the time in this movie it's just the weirdest thing yeah but the milk thing i believe is supposed to be about uh the the eating of innocence like whenever villains are eating eggs or drinking milk that's usually the reasoning around that so it cracks me up when I see that but yeah this is a beautiful movie super stylish super stunt filled too there's some amazing car stunts in here a lot of fight sequences that are kind of insane and
And, you know, so we have our cop who can't hold a gun. Once he throws up, he finds this woman who makes him happy. He's no longer impotent or anything like that around this. But what do you know? She's an assassin. She's going in and killing a bunch of people. And as she's going in to kill a bunch of people in this building, we meet the second assassin who's going to be the trainer of her.
And then we have a second set of assassins who go after both of them. And there's all sorts of things. There's like knives that are on... like strings that you can pull back and throw into people. There's lipstick with poison in it. I mean, it is like all the James Bond craziness, but with a ton of nudity, some great sex and some amazing violence.
And some secret cannibalism. Oh my God. The secret cannibalism. Yes, indeed. So mentioning about somebody being torn to pieces. So this literally, there's a guy who's torn to pieces and we have. Yet another recurring theme. Not only is it cannibalism, but this one has to do with penis munching and hot dogs and lunchtime. Oh, breakfast. That was their breakfast. Breakfast. That's right. It was breakfast. Yeah. It was like, oh, what's his name? Hugh Siu Hung is the guy who was in that scene.
It is so funny. Oh, my God. It is outrageous, and it's unpredictable, and it's also got that kind of unhinged thing. Like, when I saw it, I could have thought it was... directed by Andy Sedaris, and it could have been a canon film. It just had all of that crazy... Anything can happen and anything can look really stylish if you put enough blue lights on it. But there's also crazy stuff that's in here. Like, I love how the assassins...
are using sex and sexuality as the weapon. So at one point, our teacher, Sister Cindy says, Whether they're men or women, their weakest point is when they reach orgasm. They're truly femme fatales. And they're teaching each other all this weird stuff. I love that it's also a thing that's in these movies a lot where... characters say that
Yeah, I killed the person, but everybody I've ever killed deserved to die. And that's pretty much how every character in this movie says, yeah, I killed a lot of people, but you know, they deserve to die. They were all terrible. It's a hell of a lot of fun. And yet... As fun as this movie is, it has a terrible ending. I still don't like the ending. Yeah. I agree with you completely. I never liked it. I don't see why he had to do that.
Yeah, it's like the end of the old film noir, where it's like, oh, well, the nuclear bomb went off. It's all over. And he's like, what the hell? We were just having a good time. And that's one of the things that's kind of strange. about these movies is that there's I think they're hyper aware of the type of movies that they're making. I don't think that they're clumsily made.
But there's always this thing of like this dagger in the heart that they give you at the end. I was a little confused at Still by, I was rewatching it recently before we did this, as to... You know, some of the times these killers, the sets of killers, they seem to be doing paid jobs, you know, hit jobs. But the other times when they're like killing rapists and things like that, is that like.
a personal side mission it's pro bono so yeah that part of it i was just like yeah go ahead kill those guys but uh that part was just wild to me that there's just like Yeah, we're going to be hit women, but we're also on the side, we're going to wipe out the rapists too. There's a moment in the movie where the two women assassin groups come together and have a fight.
And there's something else that's happening. And at a point, I had no idea who was doing what. And I didn't care. I was just like, I don't even know who's on whose side at this point. But this is just freaking hilarious. And I, and it was just so well executed as in just the madness and craziness of the fights that it was well worth the time to watch anyway. Yeah. And you know, this is one of the movies that.
Wang Jing created, even though that Clarence Falk guy is listed as the director. It's like Wang Jing came up with the idea and wrote it. Basically, he was dating Ching Miao at that time and put her in there because he wanted to catapult her into stardom, which she did very well.
after this movie, actually. But even though Clarence Falk is listed as a director, I always considered it more of a Wong Jing movie. And he's involved as a producer or a writer on... multiple category three films in addition to all the other films that he's done now naked killer where can we find a copy the only i think the one that i had was a uk
blu-ray and unfortunately the label escapes me right now but i'm not sure if it's in print right at this time but you should be able to track down a blu-ray of it if not you could probably still track down some of the prior dvd releases of it so this would be one
I would love to see this in a 4K. I think this would just be really cool. But the UK Blu-ray is pretty nice and it's got some good extras on there too. Really good interviews with Simon and Wang Jing and a few of the other people involved. the movie oh i also i almost forgot some of the dialogue and this is great as well i'll just leave the audience uh with this last line which is by the by the uh the police officer who's our lead he goes
After I shot and killed my brother, I became impotent. The day after I saw Kitty, I got my first stiffy. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. So speaking about first stiffies or stiffies at all, we got to go to our next movie. And this is talking about being raucous.
Hey, we got to burn some jaw sticks right now because we're going to be talking about this one right here, which was recommended by Penthouse Magazine. And I love that they have that in their credits. Like this movie was recommended by Penthouse Magazine. It's Sex and Zen. directed by Michael Mack, starring Lawrence Ng, who we saw as Dr. Lam in The Underground Banker, and Amy Yip, Ken Chang, wonderful Ken Chang again, and several others. And...
This is the first time that, I mean, I don't know what the budgets are on most of these, but I believe that most of them were modest budgets. But this was kind of a softcore porn film, and it was $12 million. $12 million budget on this thing. Yeah. And he blew through the original budget really quickly from, from the interview that I heard with him. So yeah. And it looks really nice. It's really slick.
slickly produced movie but uh based on the carnal playing matt a uh it was a 1600s erotic novel the you putuan is that what it's called
Yeah, I think so. So it's the best of the top three banned books. It's a depiction of carnal desires. And this is, once again, the Essential Guide to Hong Kong sums it up rather well. If your pleasure in Hong Kong... movies lies in their continual power to amaze and flabbergast you to the point where you cling to your seat unsure of whether you're crazy or whether it's just the movie then it all costs seek out sex and zen essentially it's little more than a sex comedy, a kind of carry-on Ken.
throw heaps more explicit, hence the Cat 3 status. It's a mad camp romp following the amorous antics of a medieval scholar who sets out to disprove the worth of the Zen philosophy of sexual abstinence. So this is an anti-abstinence movie.
That just goes out of its mind. Yeah. And this guy, you know, he's a real horn dog. Yes. You know, he gets married, but then he goes off to kind of like, I don't even know what you would call that. Sow his oats or... or something like that but you know it's basically revealed that he's got a A tiny penis. Yes. So he cannot live up to what he wants to actually do. So he sets out to become a better lover. Yeah. Strong like horse. Yes.
And yeah, it's a crazy movie. So the first 20 minutes or so are beautiful and funny. And it feels like, you know, it could have been like maybe a Shaw Brothers film where, you know, it's just beautiful looks at the ancient times. times of the dynasties and with a lot of sex and the sex is funny there's like uh all these different like he's going up and down a ladder, like he's laying out with the woman underneath the ladder and he's taking his feet.
And he's going from one rung to the other. And I'm like, that is the most tiring way I could ever see to have sex with somebody. You've got to do leg lifts every time. There's cute stuff. And then it gets... more explicit as it goes but about 20 minutes in the proverbial wheels fall off on any kind of calm and niceness of the movie. He decides, yeah, what ends up happening is he's upset about the small penis that he has, and he threatens that he's going to cut it off.
has a consort that's following him around this little guy and the guy runs over to say don't cut your dick off and he stabs the guy in the dick by mistake and so that guy has a bleed in his penis and they have to take him to get some help and uh So he goes and he finds an apothecary, essentially, a guy who's a physician in a village who can do transplants.
First, he sees that this guy's been stabbed in the dick and he goes, well, I can fix that. No problem. You can take care of that. Now, what's your problem? He tells him what's going on. He goes, well, we do have this procedure, like a dirty joke. You know, like, well, we have this procedure. We could see about.
taking off that offending little thing and putting something else on it. And so it's like one of the most outrageous things that you'll see what they end up doing, but it involves a horse. It could have involved the dog, but they had better taste. They went with a horse. And previously, while they're wandering around, he comes across this thief guy, this famous thief. And the thief offers to help him, but...
finds out that he's got such a small prick and he's like, there's no way I'm going to help you unless you got a horse stick basically. Right. And so back the wrong horse. Yeah. So. The scene is amazing, the transplant scene. I was stunned that they went there. Like, of all the things that are in that sex book, right, the Eupatuan. Of all the things you could talk about, you decide, if we're going to film this, we really should put in the horse dick thing.
They have stuff in here that is really ribald. Yeah, you're going to see a penis. You're going to see a horse penis. You're going to see a guy trying to put a horse penis in his mouth. You're going to see a penis flying in the air and landing in a guy's mouth. there's going to be a little guillotine being used. He's like, okay, we're going to... A cigar cutter. Yeah, yeah, it's essentially a cigar cutter for the penis. So to set up the madness of this situation...
And it's such great comedy. It is wonderful comedy. It's a setup. And it's Ken Cheng, right? Yeah. Who is the physician here. And he's like, okay, we got to get the horse drunk. We got to anesthetize you. We're going to give you a couple of these things, and we're going to make sure you can't move. So you put them essentially in a barrel. And where the bung of the barrel is, where you usually put the faucet, he has to stick his prick out there.
And then he's got his head sticking out of the top and they just have the lid goes around his neck. So he can't do anything to stop this thing from happening. And he's told, oh, we got to make sure that this happens before three jaw sticks go down.
You've got to do it. And there can't be any rain. I hate rain. And it's got to happen in the middle of the night, not in the morning, because that brings bad energy. So there's all these things that are setups for slapstick comedy. And boy, do we get slapstick comedy. Of course it rains.
Of course, the horse doesn't get drunk enough. Of course, the physician gets knocked out and the jaw sticks are burning down. The guy's prick's not going to be useful for anything. And they're going to have to put the horse thing in, but they can't. get the horse thing. And so they throw anesthesia.
The only thing that they've got, they throw anesthesia on the surgeon so his hands don't work anymore. So he's like slapping at the barrel and stuff. I'm on the floor. I'm like going, I can't believe that they're doing all of this shit in this movie. It's really something else. That whole scene is amazing. And it is not the only giant wang that's in this movie. Earlier in the movie.
we see this ridiculous sex scene between Elvis Choi and his wife where he sells silk. And it's very cleverly done where you see... a silhouette of him behind the silk and it, you know, basically... he's hung like a horse as well but for real you know that was the scene that made this guy want this sort of giant penis but um that scene where they are trying to do the transplant and nothing is going right. But then eventually it happens. The first time I saw that and when that horse cock...
got cut off and it flew up into the air and it landed into that assistant's mouth. I mean, we were literally fell off the couch. We were laughing so hard at it. It's adult behavior or adult viewing. But really, like, childish. The humor is just fucking wonderfully childish in its own way. But the movie's also, he gets involved once he has this horse cock, he's...
We're going to have wonderful adventures and we get to see some really crazy stuff. I'm not quite sure why, but it seems like at least at this point, the Hong Kong movies really start diving into S&M. Like, I don't think there was a lot of BDSM. I don't know. I mean, obviously, I wasn't back in that time. But there's a lot of...
Now, he gets his comeuppance for being a coxman. They really put him through his stuff. He meets a few people who have decided he's done enough. And so there's S&M practitioners. There's some kind of weird... Pickling devices. There's like these paddles that have tongues on them. I don't even understand some of the things that were in this movie. But it's hilarious. And you really have to watch the movie to find out all the crazy stuff that goes on in here.
Yeah, I always have felt this was the finest of the category three, like sex comedies. Just, I had to include it. I mean, we had to have some sort of humor in here since the other movies that we talked about were so... Seriously dark. Such a downbeat. So at the end, these last few we're talking about are sort of amusing sorts of things.
Yeah. And this was great. I mean, I found it a lot of fun. It certainly looks absolutely beautiful. Once again, Ken Chang makes me laugh. I love his diversity. You know, when you first see him in these movies, he's just playing.
fatty and literally his character's name fatty you don't know what's going to happen but once he does run and kill uh he has all these little opportunities it seems and this is a fun character uh he's so good at the the uh slapstick comedy that goes on in here and I mean this is a movie that has some issues in it I mean it's a sex comedy sure but I mean there's like one of the things is insanely homoerotic there's a lot of stuff in here that you're like oh man this is for everybody isn't it
And there's also stuff like buying wives is commonplace in it. Sure, it's talking about the... the ancient times of the dynasties. But at the same point, still, it's a plot point that's a little icky. And there's a thing about bisexuality that's made into a big deal as opposed to just being on by. But other than that, I mean, this is a really fun movie that I think most people could really enjoy. If you're good with sex comedies that go really raunchy and, you know.
Horse cock. I mean, that's the thing. If you're going to talk about this movie, you can't. What are you going to do? You're going to have a spoiler about that. You've got you sell this movie with horse cock. That's it. Out of your mind. So where can we find sex and Zen? I believe that is also out of print right now. Oh, no. I can't believe it because that's such a big production. Wasn't that like a huge hit? It was. It was a pretty big hit.
And I think we will see one of these sooner than later. That was a, I believe, I can try to remember if I gave you the DVD or a Blu-ray of it, but it looks really nice. the one yeah it's one of those things where you're just going to have to go and look for an out of print copy of it right now yeah i mean i'm grateful that i've got it because it is really good and they they talk to the director
And they talk about all the things that he was trying to do and also how he blew through that budget. And I mean, there's a lot of real artistry in that movie. And it's great because... Who says that lowbrow has to look bad? You know, who says that only highbrow gets to have the touch? So this is a big budgeted movie that looks beautiful. The choreography is great. The acting is great. I mean, the people who are in it look fantastic.
They're not afraid to go in some crazy spots. I mean, there's a scene that was really hot involving a paintbrush and rice paper on the floor and a woman. writing with a different instrument than her hand. Yeah, and that's in the novel too. Yeah. They knew what they were talking about back then. That was a jaw dropper. And there's several jaw droppers that are in there that are stunning and beautiful and just a lot of fun. And a good flute scene, too.
Yes. We'll leave that as a spoiler. We'll just say, watch for the flutes. I forgot about that. Oh my God. That was when I was wondering, I was going, is this soft core? I don't remember. You told me originally you were just like, I don't know, you weren't very excited to watch this one, right? Yeah, I was like, you know, this is going to be okay, I guess. And I watched and I was like, holy cow. Obviously, Ryan knows his stuff. Oh, it's so funny. Yeah.
It's great, and it's funny, and it's beautiful, and it's one of a kind. I mean, there are plenty of sex comedies, but like you said, that may be the best one, at least out of the Hong Kong world. That's one hell of a move. So we're on our way to the last one, the dozen movies that we've been talking about. We're at the last one. And this one really...
Excited me. This was a lot of fun. I mean, there's a lot of curse movies and stuff like that, but having one on the map here made this horror fan really happy. And this is really good. I love the idea. And it's the kind of thing that usually excites me about watching movies that are from cultures that I don't necessarily know very well, which is that we get into legend and lore and weirdness. And so this is the eternal evil of Asia. Now, is that a...
name or what. This is from 1995, directed by Man Kei Chen. Is that who it is? Yeah, that's it. Okay. And Lily Chung is in this, Ben Aing, Kwok Peng Chan, Ellis Sui. Choy, Elvis Choy. Thank you. Elvis Choy. Yeah, Elvis Choy and Ellen Chan. And we've got a movie that just goes right into the dark world of curses. So I love how this movie starts. I'm just going to talk about the narration. It starts with this narration. Many people still believe in hex and enchantment.
There are so many stories about it, including the hex from China and the enchantments of Asia. Enchantments of Asia is said to be an evil branch of Hinduism. Mixed with the hex of China, it becomes something that can't be explained by science or spiritual. studies. If you're enchanted, it's going to hurt a lot. And I thought that that was such a great way to say it. And this is one that, you know...
This is creepy shit because, you know, this is where I think there was in if it was for the untold story or not. But it was an essay, a video essay called The Sweetest Taboo, An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills in Film. And it's called The Kids Aren't All Right by Erica Schultz. And it talks about the suggestion that there's viciousness in the Cat 3 films. especially the killing of children that got nastier the closer Hong Kong got to the handover to China.
And she says that this whole thing is that the child is kind of like what Hong Kong is like. And so this is a movie that you can tell the difference between whether it's a Western film. or if it's a movie from Hong Kong, because the enchantment is keeping children's souls. The wizard steals the kid's corpse.
locks up the child's soul and sets the spirit off like it's an attack dog. It goes after people, which is such a fucking cool idea. But when you're talking about dead kids, that makes people really nervous. Yeah, I would say so. I want to follow up on that. Erica Schultz, she has a book out now by the same name.
It is taboo. So I highly recommend it. It's a really amusing book about child kills, which sounds crazy to say, right? It really is. I really liked the book. I just got it recently. So highly recommend. And there is a lot of Chinese films in the book, too. I'll bet.
So the setup of this story is that a group of friends went on a trip to Thailand. They got all fucked up. They did all this stuff. Now, this is something you don't get to say every day. Accidentally, they rape and kill a sorcerer's sister. How do you accidentally rape? Yeah, right. But anyway, upon arriving back...
home from Hong Kong or to Hong Kong, they find themselves cursed by the sorcerer. And the curses are freaking amazing. So like the opening sequence, you want to talk about the opening death? Well, at least for the, I like the opening of the movie. And this is a setup for so many of these black magic movies. And a lot of the other black magic movies aren't comedies like this one where these friends get caught. in the middle of a wizard fight in this rural area in...
Southeast Asia somewhere where they went. And that's just, and they get, and he's like, well, you can come in here, but you can't leave because I'm about to have the fight with this other wizard and you might die. And there is one of the most amazing transformation scenes at the beginning of this movie that is so goddamn funny where Elvis Troy insults the wizard.
And the wizard's like, well, you know, however you insult me, that's going to happen to you. And he literally turns into a penis head. Yep. He calls him a dickhead. Oh my God. It's one of the funniest things I've seen in these movies. The cast is really good in this movie. We've got, you mentioned Elvis Choi and Ben Ang. You got Lily Chung again, Lo Meng. who we talked about earlier, Bobby Yip, who played one of the mentally challenged people in...
Red to Kill. He got sneezed on by Anthony Wong in Ebola Syndrome. And I have always really liked this movie a lot. The black magic stuff in this movie is great. but the sex stuff in this movie is also really over the top. Yeah. There's a couple of movies like this. And I'll mention her again because she mentioned this in the Ebola syndrome and I'm glad she did. was Sam Deegan also mentioned Wizard's Curse, which is a great Hong Kong black magic movie.
that has high amounts of sex in it. And this is a very similar sort of movie. The stuff that's in here, I mean, it's... In the beginning of the movie, there's no way you could have told me that this was going to be a comedy, because in the beginning, we have one of the cursed people at his house. He just comes back from the funeral of his parents. His parents have died. And he's back in the house.
And all of a sudden, his parents and his family's there. His daughter and his wife are there. And all of a sudden, trying to break into the house are his dead parents. And somehow they're in the house and they're dangerous. They're attacking him and they're also saying some weird shit. But suddenly he's like, I've got to defend myself. He starts cutting at them and killing them. And of course, it's a spell. It's a trick from the wizard. And he's just murdered his wife and kid.
And he thought he was murdering the dead parents. And so I was so amazed by that. I was like, oh, shit, that's dark. And it really caught me by surprise. And then, of course, he dies. We have this thing in this movie that's a recurring bit that's kind of like the curse in American Werewolf in London where anybody who's killed starts showing up saying, why don't you just die? In this, the people who have died in the curse come to mock the people who have yet to die.
And so there's this whole thing of trying to find a way where you're going to get this curse lifted. And there's some really cool stuff as well about what I loved about this was the kind of matter of fact way that they did some of the curse stuff. There's, of course, the big battle, which we'll talk about a little bit, the wizard battle. But there's also this stuff where the ghost's children, the attack dogs, are invisible.
And one of the characters, who is a witch from off the mainland, comes in to see one of the main characters as a hairstylist. She's going to get her hair done by her. And she hears somebody giggling. And she looks around and she just kind of makes this look on her face like she knows what's going on. And she goes to sit down in the chair at the station for her hair appointment. And she grabs...
her lighter and she grabs the hairspray. She turns around and shoots it across the room and something invisible screams and smashes through the glass window. And I was like, that's so cool. What a great idea. So there's this whole thing. of the magic that's in the world. And I love that kind of thing.
And it gets really gross. But some of the fights are really cool. Like you were talking about the wizard fight where you have these two wizards, or three wizards actually, going at each other. And I've never seen fucking become a magic act. which is kind of what happens here. Two of the wizards, a man and a woman wizard, decide that they're super powerful if they copulate while they're fighting.
And it's a sight. And I love this because it's some of the stuff that you think of when you first think of Hong Kong cinema. You know, kung fu stuff where it's wire work. So people are flying through the air and all that stuff. There's some crazy, gory curses. One guy goes cannibal. He's asked to eat his own arm, and he does. And that's really grotesque. There's one guy that gets enchanted into a placenta. He's put in a placenta, and it's slowly gestating him.
back into being just a little bit of protein. It's a crazy movie. Yeah, these are really interesting sorts of comedies where a lot of, I don't ever remember watching. Black magic movies that had this sort of comedy element in them. I thought that was a whole new sort of aspect. Even Wizard's Curse doesn't have the humor that this one... So that's, I kind of wanted to include that one just because of that factor that I found this sort of a unique sort of black magic film, but also it's funny.
It does have dark stuff in it, but it is lighter than the other material that we covered for the most part today. Yeah, it's a good way to end, right? It's a good way to bring people home. Let them have something that feels a little bit more refreshing. It's still transgressive. There's some stuff in there that you're like going, well, you're not going to see that in a Hollywood film.
It's also got that wonderful bit of tradition of black magic films where it's just absolutely crazy. It's not as crazy as what's the one with the scorpions? Woman was a curse of all the scorpions. Oh, red spells, spells red. Yeah, Red Spell Spells Red, which is an amazing title in and of itself. You know, that has some insane stuff in it, like really incoherently insane stuff. This one's not that crazy, but it's got...
So much going for it, plus weird humor. I mean, yeah, as you mentioned, you're going to have this movie where a guy is eating his own arm. The guy's killing his family in a hallucination. And then all of a sudden, the guy's head turns into a giant dick. And it looks exactly like a dick, right? And he's stuck like that. If the wizard dies...
While the spell is still on him, he's going to have a dickhead for the rest of his life. And when he gets scared, he pees. That's right. On top of it. It's just like... I forgot about that. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean... I didn't mention it earlier because the movies that we're covering here are basically like 88 through 95. So, you know, kind of just covering like 88 through the handover in 97. But Herman Yao.
did a great Category 3 movie called Gong Tao and Oriental Black Magic after that. You know, that one certainly deserves to be mentioned as a really good Black Magic movie, you know, after the fact, too. Well, this is magnificent. And I've got to tell you, this has been one hell of an extensive piece for folks who are interested in Cat 3. This is just scratching the surface. How many, and I know a lot of movies have gone back and been recategorized as Cat 3.
that came out much earlier. But in the essential rush of Cat 3 films from 88 to 97, how many do you think there were? Do you know? Oh, my God. I'm not sure. It's a really confusing sort of thing that there's not a really definitive answer for. Let's just say 1988, you know, we had like Man Behind the Sun. devil curse, devil sorcery, her vengeance, school on fire, brief encounter. There's not like a definitive list that you can go look up and say, oh, wow.
These are all the Category 3 movies. Even some of the major Hong Kong sites like Hong Kong Movie Database, Hong Kong Cinemagic, they have different information on them. as to the ratings of those movies so we don't have a definitive list but you know bruce holichek did this really great essay for the hong kong horrors box set from vinegar syndrome And he said during the peak periods of...
Hong Kong and these Category 3 movies that up to 40% of the movies that were coming out at that time were Category 3 movies. So it's a significant number. And there's a lot of crap ones. There's a lot of garbage. We had to dig through a lot of crap to find the gems of the genre. Have you ever thought about putting out a book about the knowledge that you've got? That would be cool. I mean, I would like to I certainly have information.
But as far as writing, I don't know if I could write a lick. I could provide information probably and somebody else would probably have to write it. As transcribed by me. But yeah, I mean, just like, for example, like a movie like Her Vengeance, which I think is a tremendous movie. That's like that one. If you go to Hong Kong Cinemagic.
it's got a Category 2B rating. If you go to Hong Kong Movie Database, it's Category 3. The video releases have different ratings on them too. Some are longer, but don't have all the violent scenes in them. It's a really confusing question that there's just not a perfect answer for.
Well, thank you so much for giving us so much of your time on this, man. And I know that we've just scratched the surface on this. And I know we probably will have people kind of interested. Now, you're a very old school kind of guy. have social media or anything like that but if people were trying to get in touch with you how could they possibly get in touch with you to find out a little bit more well i suppose they could i work at dreamhaven books
Tuesday through Saturday, they can call Dreamhaven Books and I'll be there. That would probably be the best way. I mean, I don't know if I want to give out my email address. Right. That's understandable. But I guess that would be a way to do it because there's so much more. Really, just these 12 films, it's like you did.
we did scratch the surface there's a lot of the heavy hitters here but there's so much more so much more and who knows we'll just may just have to have you back here a couple times to be able to talk and go a little bit deeper dig just a little bit deeper into all this
But I want to thank you so much for giving me so much of your time. And thanks so much for coming on the show, my friend. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. All right. And for those that are listening out there, if you can, try and find some of these movies. What I will say is one of the great...
guides or places, resources for information that you get to is The New Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies by Rick Baker and Ken Miller. And I believe that that gets sold at your place as well. And are there any other books that... maybe someone should try to pick up? Yeah, there's actually quite a few. That book is good, but I mean, the horror section in there that has all those category three sections.
you know films in there they it's got a really good selection but it's not all encompassing there's there's a lot more um i would recommend um the asian trash cinema books one and two by thomas weiss here He also collected those two books into another book called Asian Cult Cinema. Now, you're not always going to agree with the reviews in those books, but just the sheer amount of titles that are in the books are really good.
I would recommend the Spooky Encounter. That's like the Guilo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror Cinema. There's just a handful of books that are like horror specific. to these things. And that's usually where you're going to read about the category three films. I would definitely recommend Pete Toombs, Mondo Macabro, the book. It's got dedicated sections to Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, all those types of things.
If you can track it down, that Julian Savion French book on category three films is a big, thick, full color, hardcover coffee table book. If you can get a hold of that, it's an amazing thing. There's others too. Sex and Zen and a bullet in the head by Stefan Hammond is a really good primer for somebody who's just new to Hong Kong. Like the book starts out with like, I think he calls it like.
10 that burn or something and it's just like 10 that it's just like watch these and it's all different genres watch these they'll just knock your socks out that He did a couple of different books and those are both really good primers for people getting into this stuff. And like I said, there's other books too, but those are some of the ones that I've gone back to year after year.
This Essential Guide to Hong Kong Cinema, that was a really difficult book to find back in the day. I have the original one. This new one is in color. You know, they've omitted a few things. from the old one and added some new ones into it, but it's a really good guide. One of the better books on the subject. Well, thanks for all those suggestions as well, Ryan. And thanks again for being on the show. Thanks, man.
All right. And to everyone who's out there, thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the show, the shows, that is. And until we speak again, stay hell-bent, everybody. And thanks for listening to the show. Hellbent for Horror was written and broadcast by me, S.A. Bradley, and produced by me and Lisa Gorski. You can find more on our website, hellbentforhorror.com, and I'm also on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash hellbentforhorror, and my Twitter handle is hellbenthorror.
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