Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick, and oh boy, we got a good one for you today. This was our episode on a Chinese ghost Story. This one was a movie from nineteen eighty seven that has Oh boy, it has romance, it has adventure, it has monsters, screaming skulls, all that good stuff. So yeah, I think we will Well, wait a minute. I didn't say when it aired. This was from June seventeenth, twenty twenty two. That's when it was.
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick.
So last year around this time, we watched the highly influential Chinese supernatural horror comedy Mister Vampire from teen eighty five. So we're returning once more to the genre with another important eighties Hong Kong film, this time with romance thrown in amid all the martial arts, spookiness and comedy. It's nineteen eighty Seven's a Chinese ghost Story.
This was a great movie. I was surprised how much I loved this one, and much like the Lorelized Grasp, this is another monster romance movie, except in this one the romance is perhaps not as tragic and doomed as usual. It basically has a happy ending.
Yeah, yeah, it does. When we were looking for a film to follow up Mister Vampire here, I was looking at this, and we were also looking at Encounters of the Spooky Kind, which is another big film in this area. Ended up moving towards this one after we watched the trailer. There are a number of amazing elements to it, though we may get back to Spooky Encounters in the future.
You know. Much like Mister Vampire, this also has just a rad butt whipping Taoist priest yep. But unlike Mister Vampire, the Taoist priest in this movie has a musical number, and it is a rap about the doo. I'm not kidding.
Yeah, I thought you were talking about another scene and exaggerating a bit when you texted me about this, because you were watching the second half of the movie before I did. And no, it's as close to a full on rap as you could possibly expect in an eighties period piece. Chinese supernatural romance comedy.
And it's the only musical number in the movie. I mean, the movie has songs in it that have like lyrics, but they're not sung by the characters. This is the only song I think in the entire runtime that a character on screen sings.
Aside from one little song that our lead character sort of sings, kind of a whistling in the dark sequence as he's running through the woods and trying to keep himself from being completely terrified by all the wolves and ghosts that are about.
I carry the six Classics in my heart. Yeah, yeah, well, okay, what's the elevator pitch on this one?
The elevator pitch pretty simple. Life is tough when you're an impoverished scholar with impossible dreams, and also when you have a ghost for a girlfriend.
Ooh yeah, it's rough. I like how you picked up on direct lyrics from those songs that the play in the background that's not from the dowrap, that's from there's like a recurring sort of lyrical motif about how you must pursue impossible dreams passionately.
Yeah. Now, one thing we will drive home here is that the version we watched, which was as of This recording streaming on Amazon Prime is in Cantonese with subtitles, and the subtitles were at least good enough, but there were some obvious errors here and there, as well as sort of the traditional thing you might run into with subtitles, where you might question whether this was the most most
elegant translation possible. And also you get into the issue of okay, what is this comedic line actually translating through? Most of the time, it doesn't matter. Most of the comedy in this film shines right through the barrier of language.
Oh yeah, I found it extremely funny. I think the comedy totally works across culturally. But yeah, so what I would say is that the subtitles in this movie seemed wrong in a way that had nothing to do with translation errors. Like there were a lot of errors that look like the kind you get from scanning in a printed document into digital text, where things like lowercase o's and a's being exchanged for one another. So I remember one line and the subtitle said evil will never overcame good. Yeah,
I'm curious what process led to this. Could it be? Could somehow there'd be a scanning of a paper document to create the English subtitles. I don't know.
Yeah, all right, well let's go ahead and hear at least some of the trailer. We probably won't play the entire trailer this time, but it will give you just a taste of the sonic world.
Of this film, all maimung Yong, do.
You go? All right? That? Of course, that can only partially prepare you for the sights and the sequences, because this is this is a really fun film with a tremendous flair for the fantastic. Uh, some great martial arts sequences, some solid slapstick. It has just about everything he could want.
So I've read that this movie actually has sort of a cult following among young people in mainland China, even though it was not released in theaters in mainland China when it first came out.
Yeah, yeah, you sent me a paper about this. I was looking at that, and yeah, it's interesting one. This one's one that definitely pops up in Michael Weldon's books here in the West, the Psychotronic Film Guides, where he was a big fan of it was like, yes, go
out and see this film. So it sounds like it's a film that, yeah, maybe didn't get released the way they might have wanted to release it initially in mainland China, but subsequently the seeds grew in both the East and the West, with people coming to appreciate all the things this film has to offer.
I think there's a lot about it that's more subtle than you might expect. Like, this movie is tonally weird, but in a very nice way. Like It's it walks this strange boundary between being earnest, almost to the point of being sappy, but also being very ironic and sort of making a mockery of authority and tradition at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, it is a nice balance like it There's there's definitely slapstick, and there are definitely some just outrageous comedic performances sprinkled here and there. But it's done in a way where we're yeah, like the parts that are serious and the parts that are romantic, Uh, they're they're allowed room to breathe and feel authentic.
Yeah, this is this is not a movie that is sucking up to the powerful. It's like it's full of bosses, policemen, magistrates, basically anybody in a position of authority in this movie is viciously mocked.
Yeah, so you can see how it would appeal to the young people. And we'll get into some of the examples of the of this in a bit, because yeah, they're they're they're numerous terrible mortal authorities and you know, I guess the the the supernatural authorities are pretty corrupt as well. All Right, let's talk about some of the people involved in this, because it does have some interesting connections and uh, and it is a it is a
pretty big film. Like a lot of the people involved in this were names at the time or certainly went on to become big names in Hong Kong cinema and or international cinema. So first of all, let's start with the director. This is Sutong Qing born nineteen fifty three, also one of the martial arts directors on the film,
Hong Kong action choreographer, actor, film director and producer. Probably best known for this film, but he also directed such movies as nineteen eighty six's Which from Nepal, a supernatural film starring Chao Yon Fat, nineteen ninety three's The Mad Monks starring Stephen Chow, nineteen ninety eights An Empress and The Warriors starring Donnie Yin and twenty elevens The Sorcer
and the White Snake starring Jet Lee. So clearly he's worked with some of the biggest names in Chinese cinema at different points in their career.
Wait, I thought I saw maybe did Suetung Ching also do Hero? The Jet Lee movie.
I think he was an action coordinator on that one. Yeah, because yeah, because there are a number of credits that he has that are pretty impressive that in which he didn't direct them, but he was involved in choreographing the martial arts. Because he's a guy. His father was actually a Shaw Brothers studio director, and so he kind of like came up in the system, I'm to understand. So yeah, he even his just stunt directing credits are pretty pretty interesting.
So you have two thousand and two's Hero, and according to IMDb, he was an uncredited stunt coordinator on two thousand and two Spider Man, the Sam Raimi film. I'm not sure if IMDb is one hundred percent accurate on that account.
Though you're right. I just double checked. He did not direct Hero. He did action choreography and also also did action choreography for House of Flying Daggers.
Oh oh yeah, that's a solid one too, so big name this guy. He has at least one American film, though, a film with a notable American presence, and that is two thousand and three's Belly of the be starring Steven Sagal.
It is almost it almost makes me want to scream imagining someone of the talents of Su Tung Ching being wasted on a vehicle for Steven Sagal.
Yeah, you pulled up a clip of this an action sequence from this film, which I mean, as far as action sequence goes, is not bad, but.
It's not great.
It's not good.
But there's the.
Steven Sagall presence is almost too distracting because it's in this film. I think he's playing uh, the basic, the basic Stephen Sagall character where he's he's a CIA agent but he's also a Buddhist master, uh, and he's really great with martial arts also guns. Like that's that's most Steven Sagall roles, if not all of them.
He's ex black ops, I'm retired now.
And then he's job. There's an IMDb trivia piece about that film, Belly of the Beast, which says that that basically they shot everything without Stephen Sagall and then we're just going to bring him in at the very end to do his shots, a lot of close up shots and all that sort of thing, which I guess you could interpret interpret one of two ways, right, either a Steven Sagal has a busy schedule or as expensive you're only going to have him for a short, short amount
of time. I know sometimes it's been said that he doesn't like actually work very long during a given shoot, so you know, they're just being economic about the whole thing, or perhaps there was a certain reputation in place and they thought, well, we need to be prepared to use this little Steven Saghal as necessary. And according to this bit of IMDb trivia, if it is accurate, is like he showed up this last day. Everything else has been shot. They just need to shoot some scenes so that they
can insert Segal in. You know, the rest of the stuff has been done with stunt doubles. But he had ideas about how things needed to be shot that of course would just wreck everything else. So Ching says, okay, that's fine, you can just you can shoot it yourself. We'll leave and look at kind of like a standoff and a studio put enough pressure on him that he was like, Okay, I'll go along it with this, and so the film was actually finished.
That's a that's a heck of a bluff. You deal with somebody who you know is an ego man but is also lazy, and so you're hoping the latter will win out over the former.
But to be clear, I have not seen Belly of the Beast in its entirety, so I don't know if you if you have out there, if any of you were Steven Seagal's connoisseurs, feel free to correct us on the quality of this motion picture.
You know, my feeling is Steven Saghal is you know, you know, you always know what you're getting with that. So really the quality of one of his movies has to do with how Zany is whoever they cast is the main villain, and so like you can really achieve a certain peaks of of of greatness in like under Siege too dark Territory just because because Eric Bogosia and he is going going crazy on the computer.
Mm hmm, yeah. I remember enjoying that one way back in the day when I saw it on the HS or something.
It's still pretty hilarious.
All right, Well, let's get into the writing on this one. This is this because this is pretty interesting. First of all, the screenplay was written by Kai Chi Yun. Dates unknown, or at least I wasn't able to pull him up, but he was seemingly active eighty three through twenty twenty,
so may still be active. A screenwriter who went on to work on nineteen ninety four's The Legend of Drunken Master and nineteen ninety one's Once Upon a Time in China, and also twenty twenties The Enchanting Phantom, which seems to feature, like this film, a scholar who falls in love with a ghost. As we'll discuss like this, there have been multiple adaptations of the source material here.
Oh right, So yeah, I wasn't aware of this when I was first looking at the movie, but you told me. This is based on a story by pousong Ling from the original The Tales from a Chinese studio it is.
Yeah. So, poosong Ling, who we've discussed in the show before both I Think Weird House and Stuff to Blow your Mind, was aching Dynasty writer who lived sixteen forty through seventeen fifteen, and he mostly worked as a tutor during his own lifetime, but along the way he collected and wrote down a number of weird stories that he heard and he picked up, and a lot of these stories that were later published after his death as Strange
Stories or Strange Tales from a Chinese studio in seventeen forty. A lot of them have that air to them where he'll be writing and he'll say, so and so told me this tale. I heard this tale from such and such, so and so swore that this was the truth, and the like.
Every time I've read one of these stories, I find it very exciting because they don't usually conform to the standard narrative structure that you expect from Western fairy tales. Get they're just full of surprises, at least to me. I don't know if you are more familiar with Chinese traditional stories if the structures are more predictable, but at least to me, everyone is just full of surprises.
Yeah, they very tremendously. Some of them are scary, some of them are funny, some of them are both. There are at least a few that are a little bit body. There are some that are essentially like, hey, this weird thing happened. How about that? That's the whole story. They just kind of abruptly end, like there was there's one where it's like there's this old guy that would travel around and he had these mice in his backpack. I think they were mice, and they would come out and
basically do like a flea circus. They would do like a little circus and perform, and then he would carry on his way, and there's no story. It's just a small tale of wonder or an account of something marvelous that was experienced or seen.
Now, from what I gather, the main elements of the pousong Ling story are carried over into the movie, but it's probably worth discussing the differences because from what I understand, the pousong Ling story is not quite as sweet as the movie is.
It's well, there's I guess there's less room for sweetness in it, but it's not unsweet.
Well, I just remember something about the scholars like already married when he meets the ghost woman and he has to wait for his wife to die or something.
Yeah, well but he's very polite about it, so yeah. The original story is sometimes titled The Magic Sword or the Magic Sword in the Magic Bag. That's the title in the Penguin edition of Strange Tales, which is definitely worth picking up picking up and has some nice notes on it, but the basic bones of the movie are present.
In that story. A traveling scholar is too poor to stay in town, so he goes out to an old temple to sleep, and he encounters both a magical swordsman and a ghost who reveals that she haunts the temple due to improper burial is and has been forced to do the bidding of a yaksha demon that's sort of like a corrupt in this case, a corrupt nature spirit, a malevolent nature spirit, though I don't think all yakshas
are necessarily malevolent. The magic sword in question is a miniature sword that gives the swordsman his power, and he also has a bag, the magic bag from the title, which he gives to the scholar, and we later find out that this was the swordsman's head bag, and so yeah, he ends up falling in love with this ghost woman. He digs up her grave, takes her remains home to his own home, buries them there, and as a way of thanking him, she says, well, why don't I be
a servant here? And he's like, yes, that would be great. So she's a servant. Then eventually his wife dies of consumption or it's translated his consumption in the version I read, and at that point he marries her. They have a child. He also gets a concubine and has a child through the concubine. These are the details that are given. But then she also has another child, so you know, it's essentially a happy ending. Especially as far as tales about marrying a spirit or or a fox spirit or a
ghost or something. A lot of times there's a there's a twist at the end that's there to get you. So as far as those sorts of stories go, i'd say it's a happy end.
Yeah, why don't you take that ribbon off your neck? Kind of twists?
Yeah, exactly. Anyway, it's a fun story. Sometimes you'll, i think on IMDb in some places you'll see it credited as a novel. It's not a novel. It's like a ten minute read.
If that, well, I should I should go read it. I have enjoyed literally every poo song link story I've read.
All right, let's get into the cast a little bit at the top of this playing our impover's scholar with impossible dreams. It's Leslie Chung playing the scholar ling choice son.
So.
Leslie Chung was born nineteen fifty six died in two thousand and three. He was a huge star of music and was apparently a Kanto pop pioneer, so that's like Chinese Hong Kong pop music of the time. I believe. His first album came out in nineteen seventy eight and he started appearing in films that same year. He was especially big in the eighties, noted for is in androgynist style.
After immigrating to Canada in the nineteen nineties, he famously came out as bisexual in Time Magazine a Time Magazine interview, which was quite a move at the time, especially in the within the Chinese film industry. Now, this is a fun fact. He chose the Leslie moniker. You often see this, especially with Hong Kong actors. You know they'll choose the
sort of a Western first name. He chose Leslie as a tribute to the British actor Leslie Howard, who's probably best remembered in general for being the you know, the star of such films as nineteen thirty eight Pygmalion for Appearing and Gone with the Wind. But I imagine you and I probably know him best from the I think, in my opinion, pretty excellent nineteen thirty six film The Petrified Forest.
Oh who was he in that?
He's the he's the lead. Well, he's actually a traveling scholar in that. Oh, okay, Leslie Howard is he's been traveling across he's the British character.
Yeah, I thought I'd like to see the Pacific Ocean perhaps ruey that one.
Yeah, so he's the star opposite Betty Davis.
Okay, as soon as you said that, it makes it. I can hear his voice that. Yeah. But this is also the guy who played like Ashley Wilkes and Gone with the Wind and on all that stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, it kind of kind of classic looking, dry, handsome dude.
Yeah.
Now.
Leslie Cheung sadly took his own life in two thousand and three, and the twenty eleven remake of a Chinese Ghost Story was dedicated to his memory, but he left behind a pretty extensive filmography, including Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time and Nomad, a lot of you know,
serious dramas, so this one. I'm not an expert on his filmography, but I get the feeling like this is kind of more of a standout in that it's an action comedy, because it seems like most of the films he's really well known for are serious dramas, including two key Chinese LGBTQ films of the era, Farewell, My Concubine
and nineteen ninety seven's Happy Together. His co star in that film was Tony Lung, another huge name in Chinese cinema who many of you may know from in The Mood for Love, Internal Affairs, The Grand Master, and most recently Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, in which he played the title character's father, which is a really great role in that movie, in my opinion, great Marvel movie, perhaps my favorite Marvel movie that's come out.
Well. I think Leslie Chung is excellent in this movie, and I can see that he wouldn't have normally been in action or horror related movies because he's he is the hero of this film, but he's not an action hero, like, he doesn't do a lot of physical fighting. He really only has a few moments of physical heroism. Mostly he's a hero by being a sort of meek nerd who finds courage by falling in love.
Yeah exactly. So, yeah, you're not going to see him do huge action sequences. We have other characters to do those scenes. Yes, all right, well, let's let's mention his romantic interest. Our lady ghost is this is the character Susinne, played by Joey Wang born nineteen sixty seven.
She's great too. I'd say the whole main cast, the three main characters of this movie, all three are fantastic.
Yeah, And I think one of the great things about Joey Wang in this is that you might expect a character like this, who again is a ghost woman in a Chinese period piece. Essentially, you could expect this to be be very one note, very passive in many ways, and we do see some other examples of female ghosts that very much match that template. But in this she's
delightful and funny. You know, she's being ghostly and haunting and sort of distant as needed, but throughout it she's also just you can see the charisma shining through.
Oh yeah, and the scenes where she's supposed to be scary, she is pretty creepy.
Yeah. So she was active in film from nineteen eighty three through two thousand and four, probably best known for this film, but she was also in two of its sequels. Maybe these were the only two sequels. There's Chinese Ghost Story two three, She was in God of Gamblers, which I'll mention again in a minute, and also various supernatural films, including The Beheaded one thousand and nineteen ninety two's The Painted Skin, which is also based on a story recorded by pouson Le.
So you mentioned the Chinese Ghost Story has two sequels. At least do you know anything about these or they.
Supposed to know that some of the same characters come back, if not all the same characters like it yea. So beyond that, I'm not sure, but I think the at least the first sequel is also streaming on Prime, if not the third one as well, same director, I believe as well. Yeah, all right, now it's time to discuss our swordsmen. Swordsman Yen played by Wu Ma who lived nineteen forty two through twenty fourteen.
This is our irreverent, wisecracking, tough Taoist priest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's amazing. The actor here Ma. He appeared in Writing Wrongs, the Dead and the Deadly Iron Monkey two Once Upon a Time in China. He was also in at least the first sequel, Chinese Ghost Story two and This is Fun. He was the rice seller in Mister Vampire. Do you remember this role.
Yes, there's a scene in Mister Vampire where to repel the evil spirits they have to use glutinous rice, and apparently other types of rice will not do, so they're going to get the sticky rice, and the rice seller corruptly is trying to mix in some plain rice with the sticky rice to pull one over on the kid they send to buy the stuff. And I think this has disastrous consequences.
This is fun because it reminds me of a line that Swordsman Yen has later on in the film, where he's getting very emotional about the fact that in the spirit world everything's black and white, you know exactly what side they stand on, but in the human realm, everything's complex, everything's potentially corrupted. So even though when you're dealing with the spirit world you know exactly what sort of rice you need, you know you know which side of of
ordering chaos. Everyone stands on, but the human realm who knows the rice cellar might give you what you're paying for, or he might be cheating you.
This is a great point and something I wanted to come back to. I would say this seems to be a major theme of the movie, like the part where so Swordsman Yen gives this speech about how he was he once a magistrate. They said he was like a.
Judge or a magistrate, was a judge or something.
Yeah, yeah, and so he was a judge, but he said he became sick of that job because you know, there was all this ambiguity and people were always lying and you could never know what's true. So instead he gave that up to go like kill ghosts, because there you always know what's right and wrong. You never have
to wonder if you did the right thing. Now, I don't know if that's something that you can really live by, because of course, you know, we do have to make judgments all the time in situations where the facts are ambiguous. But it's interesting that this is expressed and sort of related to a couple of other things that come up in the movie, like the questions about you know, what is scarier mortals or ghosts. This comes up a few times.
I think there's some kind of thread running through the movie about how I don't know, maybe the most treachery or danger is not always in the place you would expect it to be.
Yeah. Absolutely, Now Wuma, I should also note he has he has numerous other roles. I think he has something like two hundred and ninety four acting credits on IMDb, so I'm probably missing something else that stands out. But he also has forty three direction directorial credits, including the
Chinese Ghostbuster and My Cousin the Ghost. So I guess it goes for any film scene that once you've been a part of a successful genre film, that genre or subgenre kind of becomes a part of you, at least professionally speaking.
You know. You know those stories about certain big Hollywood celebrities who have their own like script doctors or agents who go through any script, you know, to like make sure that it's more it has lines that are sort of tailored to their personality. Yeah, I imagine that wu Ma has got to have a situation like that where like anytime he takes a role, they got to work a rap about the dow in there because once you've
done that, you can't go back. It's like, that's got to be what people are looking for every time exactly.
Now, those are the three main actors in the film, but there's some other performances of note I'm gonna mention them a little more briefly, but we have Why Lamb playing swordsman. How dates unknown, but this guy, I believe it's still active. This is a brash swordsman that's encountered early in the picture. Fun role. This guy's been in a lot of stuff over the years, including nineteen eighty three's The Boxer's Omen. This is a Shaw Brothers picture that's often held up as a prime example of a
psychotronic film. It has a lot of really you know, kind of psychedelic imagery in it. So he's fun in this stern character while we lasts. He's on the original Chinese poster, so I guess he's worth mentioning here, though he doesn't really factor into the plot all that much.
Yeah, he dies I think like fifteen minutes into the movie, but he's very cool looking, so yeah, yeah, you gotta put him on the poster.
We also have Sue mng Lao born nineteen thirty one, who plays the Tree Demon, one of our main antagonists. He was also in a bunch of films, including other Chinese ghost story movies I think this in the same character role, as well as a couple of big Jackie Chan movies. He was in the Legend of Drunken Master and The Medallion. Then this last acting credit I'm going to mention is just it's a small, outrageously over the
top role. A crooked magistrate, a crooked judge. It doesn't have a name, but just so over the top, played by this actor Jing Wong born nineteen fifty five. It's worth calling out because Jingwong himself is a huge name in Hong Kong cinema, with over one hundred producing and directing credits across multiple genres, including the gambling genre, which
I've read is one of his specialties. So he's responsible for that film God of Gamblers that I mentioned earlier, and he was apparently especially a big deal, big moneymaker in the nineteen nineties.
He is funny in this, but it's not dry humor. He is like over there, he's like Jim carrying it up, you know, full body, just like wet Wet acting, and basically every line in his scene is him demanding a bribe from someone.
Yeah, it's one of these roles where, yeah, it's just how over the top and how corrupt could we have a portrayal of a local magistrate and let's just have him say all the quiet, quiet things out loud, just blatantly talking about being lazy and wishing that we could just get a bribe and finish this early. It's fun, but it is. It's it's the hammiest part of the film.
It's like, should I have you beaten and then demand a bribe? Or should I demand a bribe and then have you beaten?
Exactly? All right? And finally, the music on this one, it's credited to Romeo Diaz and James Wong. James Wong lived forty through two thousand and four, and he's a particular note here because not only did he score a bunch of films, he also was a cantopop lyricist and songwriter, and he acted in a bunch of films, including Iron Monkey.
The music in this I actually quite enjoyed. I would have to say there are may be a few cheesy parts here and there, but it has kind of this blending of a little bit of synth but also traditional music to invoke a dramatic, historical Chinese cinema feel.
Yeah. I don't know what the term for this is. This might be technically like a subgenre of cantopop, but it's Yeah, it's a type of Chinese popular music that has kind of like a lyrical ballad quality, very broad themes about love and dreams and stuff, and then like a flute in the background.
Yeah. If there any cantopop fans out there, feel free to write in. We'd love to hear your thoughts on these names that we've referenced regarding kantapop. Please, all right, Well, shall we get into the plot of this one a bit?
All right? Well, so this movie begins with our hero a good natured young scholar and debt collector. And I'm a little curious about the historical notes, like is it common for a young scholar to also be a debt collector? Or is that a strange pairing? I wasn't sure, but this is master ling choice on and I would I think I already said this, but I would describe Ling as in many ways kind of your classic film nerd
hero He is initially timid. He's meek, frail, unlucky, but he's also kind hearted, and through falling in love, he discovers an inner courage that he never knew he possessed before, and that's sort of the arc of his heroism. But he acquires friends along the way who will sort of complement his abilities when they face the big demons at the end.
Young scholars like this are pretty much doomed to be seduced by ghosts or fox spirits and tales like this, and I guess, I guess that trope kind of transcends Chinese tales in general. You know, you're probably having lonely scholars in various cultures writing fictional tales about lonely scholars being seduced by, you know, invisible lovers and so forth.
So anyway, at the outside of the story, Master Ling is roaming through the countryside. He's on a journey. He seems to be headed for a particular town on a mission to collect debts for his boss. I've also seen him described in some sources as a tax collector, though the movie makes it seem more like he's supposed to be working from a ledger of private debts. Maybe there's some overlap of these things within the historical setting. I'm not sure.
Yeah, Like there's that one scene where I guess we'll probably describing a bit here where something happens to the tax ledger and the individual he's visiting. He's like, Oh, I don't owe you anything now, then get out of here. And granted this is a broad comedy, but one wonders if that is the response you would have towards towards the state debt versus private debt at this time.
Right, So, anyway, we watch young master Ling. He's sort of traveling around the forests and the byways, and the movie's weird sense of humor immediately comes through, even in this opening montage, because there's a part where we see Lings sit down to eat lunch, I think, and when he tries to bite into something. Is this a piece
of bread? It's some kind of food. It might be a roll or something bun I'm guessing, yeah, And he bites into it and it's too hard for his teeth to pierce, like he almost cracks a tooth on it. And then he bashes the bread against a rock and the rock cracks in half, and then he kicks the bread and frustration and it punches a hole in his shoe. He is toe poking out.
All of this stuff here. It has this kind of almost silent era like Buster Keaton or Yes where Charlie Chaplin kind of vibe to it.
Totally yeah, like like modern times or the kid Yeah Oh. In the whole time, there is this this sentimental song playing about how you must pursue beautiful, impossible dreams.
So clearly he's just having problems with this mundane aspirations like can I have shoes without holes in them? Can I have an umbrella that's not already shredded? That sort of thing.
Yeah, is collecting debts in rural townships his impossible dream. I don't think so. But ling he gets lost because he doesn't he reads a sign thats like the town is three miles south, But then he's like which way is south? And his compass needle is just spinning wildly all over the place, and he gets caught in a storm and he tries to open his umbrella and it's riven with holes. So he's just having a bad, bad day and eventually takes shelter under an abandoned pavilion, and
let's see this point. Suddenly, oh, this is a swordsman runs up. You hear somebody saying don't run away, And I think this is the first instance of a theme repeated for comedy throughout the movie, which is people shouting don't run or don't go yeah, which is later, well, we can save the Keystone cops thing until we get to the town, but yeah, it'll be a common thing that the police respond to once we get into town.
And so there's a swordsman chasing down a bunch of thieves and he chases them to right in front of the little hut where master Ling is hanging out and he and then master Ling just stands there. So he catches them, he beats them up, and then the last thief there says to the swordsman, please, sir, forgive us. I'll return your money to you. And Ling is just standing there, frozen in fear, watching the swordsman execute the thieves who stole from him.
Yeah. Their head's top toppling through the air.
It's one yeah, yeah, heads are rolling. And then when the swordsman slashes the very last guy, it squirts blood directly into Ling's mouth.
Yeah, he's like, oh, he's just yeah, just horrified.
So he's standing there terrified, and then there's a moment where the swordsman seems to take pity on Ling. He tosses him a bun. It's a soft bun this time, and he kind of makes this face that I took a screen grab of for you to see, Rob because the swordsman's face here is really good. It's it's almost like it could be the new Robert Redford nodding meme.
Yeah, yeah, I can see it. Yeah, I mean, this guy's this guy has made a fabulous and violent introduction. He looks really cool. I have to say. He's dressed all in black with some gold and a little bit of red, so yeah, he looks fierce. And now he's just sitting down casually having a bun, and he's like, hey, yeah, you're all right here, I have a bun too.
He has a profound jaw, it's.
Possibly because he has part of a bun in his mouth in this shot.
But as soon as the swordsman walks away, Ling spits out his bun all over the place and he scrambles and fearing get stuck in the mud. As he's strengfly. But next we come to Ling's arrival in town, and there are a number of things to discuss here, because he'll return to town several times. And there are these running jokes. I think one is sort of the Keystone Cops. So there are police or soldiers in town. Who are they are trying to catch criminals? I think because there
are bounties for criminals. But what this turns into is anytime they hear somebody say like don't go or don't run or don't leave, they immediately start chasing and just grabbing people because they say anytime someone says don't go, that's because they're saying it to a thief who has stolen something.
Yeah, And then here they come running in. They're like who said that? Who said that? Good? And they're chasing after them.
And so one of the things that happens is these these incompetent policemen like grab poor poor Ling and they like shove them up against a wall. And then they're looking at all of these drawings of criminals unwanted posters and they're like, ah, he's not any of them. Get rid of him. But as they shove him up against a wall, they press him against the front of a stall of I'm not sure what this profession would be,
like an undertaker or a funeral arts master. Anyway, somehow ling gets pressed against a wall covered in joss paper or money for the Dead, some kind of funerary printed material.
Yeah, paper talisman, ceiling spells, that sort of thing. These, of course, were also featured in or very similar talismans were featured in Nature Vampire as being something that you could use to sort of deactivate a vampire, to deactivate a djung shei.
Right, Yeah, you'd put the kind of like yellow receipt on their forehead and they would power down.
But yeah, he's been pressed up against them, so initially he has them stuck to his back, and later on, once they've been peeled away, they've still stained the the text onto the back of his shirt.
So his back now has warding magic power that he's completely unaware of. Yeah, but like you mentioned earlier, when he goes to collect his debts, he oh, so he shows up at like a tavern and he's talking to the tavern owner and he's like, hey, you know, it's time to pay up, And the tavern owner says, why a different debt collector every time, and Ling is like, ah, the last one was murdered. And then the By the way, this movie is just it takes place in a world
where everybody is constantly getting murdered. Like basically half the characters that are encountered or mentioned at some point are murdered. Yeah, it's a it's a lawless land. But so the tavern owner then says to Ling, he says, well, since you're going to be murdered anyway, why don't you do me a favor and not collect the debt? And Ling's like,
don't make jokes. But then when he opens up his account books, they're ruined because they got soaked I think in the rain or maybe when he got stuck in mud somehow. They're all wet, and now the records are destroyed. And when the tavern owner discovers this, he is overjoyed. He's like, as there's no record in the accounts, that means I don't owe any money, which Ling has no comeback to this. He's just like, oh man, yeah, that's I've got nothing.
That's how Fight Club ended, right, I didn't.
Think about that. That's good. So the poor scholar he gets thrown out in the street. He can't do his debt collection. He has no money and not a friend in this world, so what's he going to do? Well, he starts asking around, is there anywhere I can sleep for free tonight? And one of the locals tells him, Yeah, there's only one place around here where you can have
free shelter, and that is the lan Yuk Temple. And as soon as that word is uttered, as soon as that name is uttered, all the locals are like, huh, and they all turn and lean in the you know they're they're telling him, you like, yeah, go through the woods with the killer wolves until you see a creepy looking temple and that'll be where you should sleep.
So at this point in the film, and I have to say, it's very well paced, like there's not really a dull moment in the entire film, but at this point, you know you're after the races, because oh, he's gonna have to travel through haunted woods, get to inevitably haunted Temple and it's just gonna be fireworks from there on out.
So he goes through the haunted woods, he gets menaced by wolves with yellow eyes, and then when he arrives at the temple, he happens to stumble into the middle of a brutal fight between two master swordsmen. Now is one of them the guy who got the blood in Ling's mouth earlier.
Yes, one of them is the strong jawed, bun eating swordsman from earlier. The other one is a new character who will turn out to be our Dallas superstar Swordsman slash Sorcerer Swordsman Yin.
Right Swordsman Yin Chikha, who is again also a former lawman. But this is an awesome fight scene. It's like dark and foggy and windy, and they're like flying around and flipping in and out of buildings and onto balconies, and at one point and like it seems pretty evenly matched. But then at one point the swordsman we saw earlier sort of loses track of where the new guy is, and then the new guy like explodes out of a wall at him and seems to get the better of him.
Oh but right when he does this, they're both standing there holding their swords out, and then right between them is Master laying like his head is between their two sword tips and the new swordsman. Swordsman Yen says brother Ha, how you've been fighting me for seven years and lost
for seven years. And then we learn in their exchange that Swordsman Yen has been living for six months at the lan Yuk Temple, and they taunt each other, but Swordsman Yen tells brother Ha how that by being overly concerned with worldly titles, with fame and glory as a swordsman, he actually let his skills go to seed, and that is why he has always Beaten. He's too concerned with being scene is the best rather than actually being the best, and he's too hot tempered. So they both got their
swords pointed at each other. Master Ling's throat is right between them, and then master Ling is like, hey, why not be nice to each other. I think it really says that, and then he says, you have to know that the universe is infinite and true love lasts forever. So he's got a good heart. And eventually I think the other swordsman gets so annoyed that he just leaves and Ling is accidentally he's like standing on the swordsman's cloak as he's leaving, and it rips part of it off.
He tries to hand it to him and the swordsman just yells at Ling. He says, go love it so that guy brother how split swordsman Yen warns Master Ling not to stay at the temple that he but he warns him in in a bunch of kind of rebald ways, like he says, you know, if a tiger appears, you'll probably want to hide in my trousers. At one point, Ling's like, why do you keep yelling at me? And he says it's because I have bad breath and I want you to go away.
Yeah, that's a great, great line too.
But Ling doesn't listen. He has nowhere else to go, and so he picks a room in the temple to put down his things. Now this goes into a sequence that is I guess it's followed up on it multiple points, but this is master laying in the bark zombies, and I loved this whole thing. Rob, Do you want to describe what's going on here?
Yeah? So we start getting these shots of what seems to be the attic of the temple or part of the temple complex here, and it has these desiccated corpses up there, you know, perhaps past victims. Because I believe that the film opens up even with a sequence where somebody is attacked whilst being loved up on grounds that look like this temple, and so eventually we see these
remains start to move around. And so yeah, they are partial rendered with stop motion effects that definitely have a nineties tool video vibe to them, you know, like it's it's not quite you know, Harry Housing level, but it still looks really cool and I loved every bit of it. Later on, they're also played, they're created via puppetry and also costumes, and at times legitimately creepy, but it's a great there's a great The great thing about this sequence
is that Ling is completely unaware of them. They start off in the attic, they end up falling through into the basement at times. At at one point Ling falls partially falls through the basement and his his his rear end is down there and they're like trying to grab his butt and they tear off part of his clothing. And then he winds up in the basement later on
and they're creeping up on him. You think they're gonna get him, but then he opens some shutters and that the sunlight just melts them away, and he never knows they were there at all.
It's fine, Yeah, it's It's very much the Baby Herman cartoon. At the beginning of Roger Rabbit. He's just bumbling about and constantly in peril but just evading them by accident.
Yeah, so it surely fun. And then and again the bark zombies look incredible. I thought they were a lot of.
Fun, excellent bark zombies. But meanwhile, while he's doing all that, we learn about something that's going on at this temple, the plot of the Seductive Ghost Ladies. So the forest around this temple is swarming with these beautiful ghost ladies who one of our main characters will be one of them that seduce men and then suck out their life
force and turn them into these screaming husks. And this happens to the other swordsman, the brother ha how he's like made a campfire and then a beautiful woman like shows up and she's like, oh hey, and they start kissing, but she unfortunately sucks out his life force and leaves him a shriveled, dry, dry corpse. When I watched this part with Rachel, she said that she dietamacious earthed him.
Yeah. In the original story by bousong Ling. The ghost Woman will do one of two things. Either she will come up to you and ask if you want to make love, and then when you do so, she will eventually poke a hole into your heel, I believe, with some sort of a spike so that your essence can be drained out of the hole. Or if you say no, thank you to the love making, she'll offer you what seems to be like a golden coin, and if you accept that, then you'll be overcome by the magic as well.
So like one of the two vices will get you.
It's a great time to chee lust and greed in favor of gluttony. Oh but we do see some like magical implements of this kind in the scene, because like in the scene where the ghost woman is seducing the swordsman, we see that she has a sort of a magical ankle bracelet on that it seems to have charmsing off of it. And then also when swordsman Hahowe is lying there shriveled, he is discovered by Swordsmanien who's like, oh,
look what they did you. But then he like wakes up as a corpse and starts attacking him, and Swordsman Yen is like, ah, even in death, you attack me again, and so he has to pull out a holy needle and plunge the needle into the corpse's eye and that like shuts him down. These needles frequently are used against unholy spirits.
Yeah, I love Swordsmanien's arsenal here because of course he has his sword, his magic sword, but yeah, he has these needles that it can also be thrown as projectiles, and I understand basically throwing implements like this are used in different martial arts, but not as effectively clearly as
Swordsman Yen is using them here. He also has several magical spells that he uses he's able to He does this wonderful bit later on where he like cuts into his palm, does some sort of a symbol there, and then is able to like shoot out essentially like magic missiles and fireballs and the like, but in a way that is super cool, especially within the confines of a martial arts sequence.
He also has a Sanskrit phrase that he says that's the opening line of a of a book, like a holy Sanskrit book. Though it's interesting because there's a scene later in the movie where he's finally he's sort of teaming up with the scholar and he's like, if you need to save yourself, you know, say a line from this book, and the scholars like, but I can't read Sanskrit, and he says, we'll just open your heart to the Buddha and the Buddha will tell you what to say.
Yeah, yeah, just just be relaxed and you'll be able to do it. And also ring this ball. Like he basically ends up the whole plot ends up being like, I need to get this this big bad that's responsible for all this. I need to get these ghosts. You're going to be de bait.
But that's later on, so before we get there, we have to actually get the love story, which is so master ling. Being afraid out in the forest, eventually encounters the ghost woman nip Chu Sin, and Su Sin is a vampiric ghost, so she's she's not just like holy innocent. She is draining people's energy. She's seducing, you know, hapless dudes in the forest. They end up turned into a
bark zombie. It's no good, and it seems like she's going to do the same thing to Ling when they first meet, but Ling ultimately just turns out to be too nice a guy. Did you read it that way? Also that yeah, yeah, he's like so sweet to her that she can't really do it.
Yeah. It's kind of a fun twist from the original because in the original story, she basically is like, hey, do you want to make love? And he's like, no, I would, I would never, And she's like, well, do you want this gold coin? He's like, I'm not taking that kind of money from, you know, someone hanging out in a you know, temple ruins, and she's like okay. But in this one it's less. I mean, part of it is that he's you know, he's moral, and it's good moral fiber. But the other part, yeah, is that
he's just a sweet guy. And as she is not, you know, herself completely a creature of evil, like she herself is ensourcelled by another force that will discuss here, Like the part of her like recognizes that, and so we do have room for like this legitimate, believable love story to to blossom here.
I think one of though it is funny. One of the things that first indicates to her how kind he is is that he says to her, He's like, wow, you don't look so good. Do you need to go to a doctor? I think, referring to the fact that she's pale because she is dead.
It's like, you're really pale, and he's talking about our skin being cold and all this.
Yeah, we need to get you some medical attention.
Yeah. The script, it really feels punched up, like they really they really got in a lot of a lot of comedic jabs here and sequences like this.
But of course, at first, I think when when Susan likes Master Ling, you know, she understands it as like a love that cannot be right. She's not like, oh, stay here and be with me forever. She's like, oh, you know this is bad for him.
Yeah, And so a lot of it ends up being a situation where she's like, look, you don't need to be here when when my master shows up, when the others come, you need to get out of here. You need to leave these grounds. You're a good dude. You don't need to be here. But she doesn't seem to think that she has any kind of a future with him.
Now we should be clear though, that when Ling first meets her, he has no idea she's a ghost. He doesn't understand.
He's not picking up on the clues.
Yes, this is something he has to be convinced of. I think Swordsman Yen tells him. He's like, no, no, no, everybody at this temple is a ghost except me. They're all just ghosts.
Yeah. Yeah, Because there's a scene where one of the other ghosts gets cut in half by by master Yin and he's like, you killed that woman, right, I mean, that's the long and short of it. And he's like, no, no, that was a ghost. I didn't kill anybody.
So eventually he learns the whole plot and we do too. So so what is the whole magical hierarchy here? What's the org chart for the ghosts and demons at this temple?
So basically we have this malicious nature spirit, this tree demon, or this Yaksha demon as it's described in the original story.
Is this the figure they're calling the old Dame?
Yes? Yeah, which is this? You know? This this kind of royally dressed individual who shows up and they kind of speak simultaneously with like a like a gravelly masculine voice, but also a feminine voice, the kind of one superimposed over the other. And and this character is ordering around both by both Susanne, the our ghost love interest, but also some other female ghosts that are being used as
agents of seduction by this demon. So the demons the one harvesting life energies and life forces, but he's using these ghosts to do it, or at least to lure them in, to get them in a in a position to where the tree demon can creep up on them in vine or tongue form, as we later find out is the case, and sap their life force.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of creepy tree demon morphology later on, especially when the all tongue emerges. But yeah, so we learn a lot of this in a in a great sort of comedy scene where Master Ling is
visiting Susin. Win like, the boss shows up and he has to hide underneath the water in a wash basin while while the while the demon is there and while the other ghosts are there, and they're all like talking about how that Susin has been pledged in marriage to this horrible monster, the Monster of Black Mountain, and I guess their marriage is coming up soon. It's like a week away or something, And so she's just trying to get him out there so that they don't catchling in
there and kill him. And there's a bunch of a bunch of this has played for comedy, yeah.
And also for the romantic angle. It's like, oh, we're both hiding in the same place at the same time, and we're almost kissing that sort of thing.
Well, she does kiss him, so at one point she like hides him by leaning into the wash basin and then kisses him under the water, and he's like, wow, geez.
Yeah, that's a key scene that is that we revisit later on with like a musical motif.
Yeah.
So she is falling hard for this this lonely scholar mortal, and he is falling hard for this female ghost even though he doesn't know she's a ghost at this point.
Right, But he eventually discovers basically what's going on, like they are a bunch of different things. Well, he doesn't discover it at this point, I think, but I remember there's one point where I think he like does some kind of like harm to her by like accidentally showing her his back, which is where all of the warning magic was printed.
Yeah, yeah, which he recoils from you know, because these are holy scriptures and she cannot look upon them.
But there's also a conflict because he's been kind of friendly ish with Swordsman Yen and swords Minyen is there. He's like, no, no, no, ghosts are to be beheaded and destroyed,
and this lady is no good. But then Ling also becomes convinced that Swordsman Yen is a murderer, so so he you know, he's he's getting bounced back and forth between between alliances, and at one point he ends up taking before a magistrate in this really funny scene where where he's I think he's trying to be like, yeah, he's a murderer, you've got to stop him, and the magistrate is just totally uninterested.
Yeah, there's a great vet where he calls in the guards and they're like like, what's he talking about, Like, no, no, we already we already captured the guy on the warning poster. We already caught that guy. And then they're like, but of course we do catch the wrong guy like most of the times. Yeah, so they're like, all right, let's
hear it out. But then there's a lot of discussion about, yeah, should we beat him first, or accept a bribe first, and then eventually it's like when they find out the ghosts are involved in it, they're like, oh, well, that's good. We don't have to weigh in on this. We can just leave early because we were tired of even pretending to work oh before.
So okay, So we're barreling towards the end, but before we get to like some of the final confrontations, we need to take a moment to discuss the dow rap.
Oh my goodness, it's so good. Yeah. I almost want to include a sample from it here, because whatever you're imagining can't quite equal what you get.
There's one part where the subtitle, at least of what he's rapping is I spit, I spit, I spit, I spit.
Yes, Oh, it's so good. Yeah, And he's the whole time, he's going through these different martial art true teams too, so it's like he's really getting you know, REVD up for battle. Oh it's it's you have to see it to believe it. And of course we could play part of the audio, but you wouldn't have the subtitles, so you wouldn't get the full experience, and you wouldn't get to see him moving around, so it has to be seen.
Okay, but eventually, so we're skipping lightly about over much that happens in the middle of the film, but eventually it's going to progress toward a big showdown with the demons because we learned the backstory of Susin. What is going on with her? Why has she been why has she been trapped in this cycle of seducing men in the forest or at the temple so that their life
force can be sucked out? And basically what we discover is that Susin was murdered many years ago while traveling once when she was mortal, and her father gave her a temporary burial under an old tree in the forest, but then he was murdered before he could move her bones to holier ground. So now nobody else knows she's there, so she's stuck there and her spirit is trapped in servitude to the demon that lives within the tree. I think this is the Old Dame, and now the Old
Dame is her boss. The Old Dame makes her seduce men so that she can kill them steal their energy, and Sussin has been pledged to marry against her will, the old monster of Black Mountain, and the only way she can escape from being a ghost and finally be reincarnated again is if someone digs up her ashes and her bones and takes them to her village to be
reburied there. And it's interesting how this is a recurring theme in a lot of the Chinese horror comedy martial arts movies we've watched, because proper and improper burial was also a major theme of Mister Vampire.
Yeah. Yeah, the idea and really tied up with the idea of the Chinese vampire, the Chuang. She is the idea that this person was not properly buried, their spirit is not at rest, and the only way to really defeat them is to make sure they are moved to a place of proper rest. And that's the case here as well. But of course she can't just dig up her bones and get away with it, because there's a demon.
Involved here, oh man.
And and so you get a in the movie version, here, you get a big throw down between the demon and our heroes, and the I was totally surprised by the form I was expecting. You know, it's a tree demon, right, So it's going to be some sort of a ant like creature. But no, the true form, or at least one of the true forms, is revealed as being this just this endless tongue, this all tongue as you described it.
Yeah, I was thinking about the doors that ride the tongue. The tongue is long seven miles. It's it's just like this gigantic tongue that wraps all the way around the temple and can like wrap around people. So it's like a giant, you know, octopus arm basically, and and it has like multiple tongues within the tongue.
Yeah, And it's it's kind of like it has a beginning because it does shoot out of the human form of the of the Dame's mouth at one point, but then in another scene, the dame just becomes the tongue. So it's it's almost like there is no beginning to the tongue. It is just this endless tongue that's just lashing about throughout this entire action sequence.
And there's like a tongue versus mouth mechanic because the tongue will try to grab people and then go into their mouths and so like swordsman Gin is yelling at at Ling. He's like, be careful, don't let her tongue into your mouth. So they're they're trying to fight it off and the and Yen eventually ends up like chopping off pieces of the tongue to prevent them from from getting in people's mouths.
Yeah, there's there are a number of sequences in which people get wrapped up in tongue or later on, wrapped up in tentacles and uh, and then usually Swordsman Yen has to jump in with his sword and slash through those tentacles and splash goo all over the place.
Oh, there's so much gou later on, well there's so much goo in general. But uh, there's there's goo, there's slime. And then we get to see Swordsman Yen's arsenal again, so he uses his holy needles. In fact, Ling has to come through in the pin because Yen gets grabbed up and Ling has to get the needle and come save him, and at one point he accidentally stabs him in the butt.
Right in the butt. Yeah, and then Yen has to has to pull the needle out of his own butt and then use it to stab the demon.
It's great yeah, but they do eventually defeat the Old Dame.
Yeah, we see some sort of a final form. It's just this monstrous amalgam of light, tentacles and planned and I don't know, alligator and human face. You know, it's a real monstrosity. But they are able to defeat it.
Unfortunately, Sussin is dragged away into the underworld. Yeah, and so in the very last act, the coda, the final confrontation, it's not our world anymore, buddy, you got to go into the underworld to save the princess.
That's right. And it's I really like the way they created this underworld sequence because it's it's a lot what you might expect in a dark realm. There's there's mist and smoke. They're like hands grasping out of nowhere. There are disembodied heads, there are mountains of skulls, and of course we encounter the dark individual who's Susan is betrothed to.
Right, this is the Monster of Black Mountain, And oh man, how this guy's really cool. How would you describe him?
Just kind of like imagine a gloomy dark lord in armor, and that's basically what you've got here.
I could say, maybe a point of reference for the young folks these days. Elden Ring Boss. He's got elden Ring Boss vibes.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like kind of like kind of like the outline of a of an armored individual, right, but then they're they're increasingly more monstrous elements the deeper you dig into that.
Right. One of the big things, in fact, one of my favorite images or effects in the entire movie was when like his cloak is peeled open and his entire form is made of faces.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a pile of disembodied heads their faces in there.
Yeah, and they're all screaming yeah yeah. Really good arms their arms coming out of the walls. Like, the Underworld sequence is just great, and there are great heroic moments for our characters. There's a there's a wonderful part where like Susin is flying through the air with a sword in her hand and yeah, yeah, it's it's it's really cool.
And we get a nice climax where like tentacles are lashing out. The dark Lord ear has wrapped everyone up. The tentacles are holding our hero up and they're starting to rip his clothes apart and will probably soon start ripping his flesh apart. But then we remember what does he have underneath his his his cloak, underneath his robes, he has that Holy Sutra, which immediately it's mere presence starts, you know, incinerating the villain here.
It's red hot. It's so good. And oh there's a detail I forgot that I really liked though, that when Swordsman Yen and master Ling first arrive in the underworld, they're sort of a to walk amongst the dead without being disturbed at first, because Swordsman Yan says, when ghosts are in the mortal world, they're invisible to us, but when mortals are in the ghost world, we're invisible to them.
Yeah.
Oh, but in the end we do get a happy ending. They are able to all make it out of the underworld, and they do, and they are able to relocate the mortal remains of Su Sin, and so it's it's pretty much a happy ending, and it makes you think, like, are there more adventures to come?
Well, they say, they basically say, like, let's go on adventures now, Yeah, and clearly they do. There are two more films in the series at least, so yeah, I'm interested to eventually check out the next one, and there's again I have to drive on. There's so many sequences we didn't even mention here that are so well executed. There's not really a dull moment in the film. It's a very well paced so it's it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.
Totally agree that this one's really a highlight Chinese ghost story. It's beautiful, it's truly weird. It's up there with the best.
And again, this is a big picture. This was a This has been a very successful film. It's generated a cult following around the world. It's been remade, as I mentioned earlier, but also the story about the Magic Sword, of the Magic Sword and the Magic Bag. This was adapted at least a couple of other times, nineteen sixty nine's The Magic Sword and nineteen sixties The Enchanting Shadow, which I've read was also kind of an inspiration for
this film. So there are probably some other movies out there that you'll find that have some of the basic elements, you know, traveling scholar, spinning the night in a temple, falling in love with a ghost. It's a winning formula. Now since this is a major motion picture, Yeah, It's been out in various formats over the years, so you want to watch it on VHS, you can find a copy somewhere. DVD, it's out there. There are blu rays, I can't really speak for the various regions and so forth.
Lasers.
Probably probably on a laser disc, go for it. But we watched it streaming on Prime and as of this recording, it is streaming on Prime in the States, and it may be streaming some other places as well.
Two tongues up.
Yeah, this one was a lot of fun. We'd love to hear from anyone out there who is also a fan of this film, or if you have experiences with this film, or if there are any other films in the same genre that you think we should be aware of or should cover in the future, let us know. We'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your
Mind podcast feed. We are primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a strange film. Let's see. If you want to follow everything that we're doing here. Let's see over at some immutomusic dot com. I do blog posts about each film and if there's additional information, additional media and bed that there. We also have a letterboxed page. If you just look up a Weird House on there,
you'll find us. You can follow there, and we just have all the movies listed that we've covered, so if you just want to like a single visual layout of the films we've covered on Weird House Cinema, you will find them there.
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