Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is Rob Lamb and I have to tell you. For the rest of the month, we're playing a little ketchup. We're airing some older rewind episodes. Most of these are from the first year of Weird House Cinema, so you know, they might be a little rougher than what you're used to, but maybe we were still figuring out exactly what we were doing with this movie series. It's now several years running. This is going to be an episode that originally aired
one twenty two, twenty twenty one. It seems an impossibly long time ago. Now, this is the nineteen seventy six Shop Brothers horror film The Oily Maniac. It's a little slazy, it's very oily, has a pretty cool monster in it.
Let's have it.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
I'm Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And today we are looking at Weird House Cinema's first Chinese selection nineteen seventy six. Is Yu Guzi or It's just it's known elsewhere at the oily maniac, though I believe a more accurate translation of the original title would be the oil devil. You is oily er greasy and a guzi is devil, often used as a pejorative in Mandarin. But yeah, this is this is our first Chinese film that we're covering here. It is a Shaw Brothers picture, but it is a horror movie, not a kung fu movie,
though there's bound to be a little kung fu in there. Anyway. It's manufactured in a facility that also processes martial arts.
This one was very so how did you come across this one?
I think this one I got. I was turned onto by scrolling through the Amazon Prime Films, you know, which is Amazon Prime, which they're not paying for this promotion, but they are generally my go to for streaming weird and older movies because you know, there's some of these other channels they're just focused on the whatever the new thing is, you know, I want like the old, forgotten stuff, some of the stuff that's like maybe public domain and
has like three different listings within the app. So I ran across this thumbnail for this like crazy looking monster, which we'll describe here in a bit, and with glowing eyes and it was called the Oily Maniac. And I'm like, okay, I'm You've got my attention. I'm in and I flagged it for later.
What an oily maniac it is? This is a great monster. Now, this movie has something I guess we should address right at the top. Let's somebody be tempted to dive in and watch this themselves. I will say this movie has an excellent schlock monster that I'm excited to talk about
in some Shaw Brothers energy, which is very good. But this is one where I personally don't think I can actually recommend anybody watch the movie in full because and this is an experience that's worth talking about on this show because it happens a good bit when you are digging through weird, lesser known movies, especially genre films from
the seventies and eighties. Well, you know that feeling when you get excited to watch a movie because you see it's got some great, odd looking monster or something like that, But then you get a ways into it and you realize, oh no, it's one of those Yeah, and this movie
was kind of like that for me. We're not going to dwell on this aspect of the film in the podcast, but be warned that this film has various kinds of extreme sexual grossness and misogyny of different sorts that make it an unpleasant watch in many parts of the movie.
So this might be one that if you're actually interested in checking it out, I might recommend seeking out a clip compilation of the monster scenes instead of watching the whole thing, because the monster scenes are an absolute delight. I wish the entire rest of the film could match them. It's such a shame when what could have otherwise been a purely delightful, lipid monster romp is ruined by that kind of stuff.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because again, the monster is great. This is a revenge horror film, and so the monster is the vehicle of vengeance. So the monster scenes in the film are wonderful. They're just like you said, These are just the monster wailing on the various villains and also some innocent bystanders in the film. But the things that he's avenging are sometimes sexual assault, which are depicted in
the film. So that's the main stumbling point to really fully enjoying this film and being able to fully recommend it to everyone out there.
But in some ways that it is somewhat thematically appropriate because this movie, i'm to understand, sort of loosely ties into some folklore from Malaysia about a folk monster belief.
Yeah, it certainly does, and we'll get back to that towards the end of the film. But yeah, it's tied into some folklore that is inherently linked to sexual violence. So, you know, on one hand, I guess it's once you have all the cards on the table, it's perhaps unavoidable those elements would be in a film like this.
Yeah, but of course the movie doesn't. It's not like the movie is a serious exploration of those themes or something. It's more in the exploitation vein it. I mean, the really sad part of it is that it like it trivializes that kind of stuff.
Yeah, and you know, I'm playing armshair quarterback a bit here. But I feel like the film would have been great if they had just had him avenging just straight up crimes, like wailing on some bank robbers, wailing on you know, some just stereotypical gangsters and so forth. It really wasn't necessary, but it's there in the film.
Well. I like that he goes after corrupt lawyers. But yeah, so if you had just like been the batman, like a like a lipid soaked back man of corrupt lawyers who were who were helping the rich steal from the poor.
Yeah, so that's basically the elevator pitch here. When corruption and violence run rampant in late nineteen seventies Malaysia, one man sees no alternative but to turn to black magic and become a rampaging, oily monster.
Maybe we should hit that trailer audio.
Let's listen to it, Lisa.
He's been a coup since I wash shine. He said it this way. We're so.
All right. So, as you might have guessed from that trailer audio, this is a film that is entirely in Mandarin, and I do not believe a dubbed version exists. Maybe it does, but I could I didn't run across it. A lot of those Shaw Brothers films were dubbed into English and released internationally, but I didn't across this one is certainly the copy that you'll find streaming everywhere and
on DVD and Blu ray. It seems to be in Mandarin with subtitles, which is an interesting proposition for some of the films we watch here because a lot of the films that we watch for a weird house, you you can sort of think about other things, you can sort of multitask. But I don't know. When I'm watching a film with subtitles, I do have to focus more on it because I need to read as well as watch.
So that's one of the reasons, you know, I didn't even think about doing any kind of like prime watch party for this one, because everybody needs to be reading the text on the screen, not texting other people.
Now, I would say the biggest thing as far as connections go here is that this is a Shaw Brothers film, and the Shaw Brothers studio, of course, is very historically important.
Yeah, I have to say, I love it when when you watch a Shaw Brothers film and you're hit with that logo. They have a tremendous logo. It's like this glittering rainbow mirror backdrop and there's the SB on the shield with.
The it's kind of like a dimpled frosted glass. I don't know exactly what you call that, and then yeah, the various different colors behind it. It really is a gorgeous title card.
Yeah, it's what I get excited about a nice title card and this one definitely does it for me.
So yeah.
Shaw Brothers Studio Film. This studio operated in one name or another from nineteen twenty five through twenty eleven. It was one of It was the largest film production company in Hong Kong, making it a significant giving it a significant impact not only on Chinese cinema, but international cinema
as well. The Shaws were Chinese film entrepreneurs. Three of the four Shaw brothers, Runji, run Me and Rundi, founded a film distribution company in nineteen twenty five, operating out of Shanghai and Singapore, and then run Me and their youngest brother, run Run Shaw operated the Singapore Base, which would then become the Shaw Organization, before taking over the Hong Kong based sister company Shaw and Sons Limited, and then in nineteen fifty eight a new company, Shaw Brothers
was born. Now run Me lived at nineteen one through nineteen eighty five and run Run Shaw lived nineteen oh seven through twenty fourteen.
And the Shaw Brothers Studio put out different kinds of films. I would say the ones that I'm most familiar with tend to be like crime thrillers and kung fu movies, but there are different kinds they did as well, right.
Yeah, And this is a prime example because this is not a martial arts film, though there's a little bit of kicking in there. It's not a crime film, though there's certainly crime in there. This is primarily a horror film. And even specifically we'll get into the ins and outs of this later. It is a black magic horror film that's sort.
Of like a type of movie. It's like a genre in Hong Kong cinema.
Yeah, yeah, apparently so so run run Shaw has the sole production credit on The Oily Maniac, one of three hundred and sixty four production credits listed on IMDb, including such notable films as The thirty sixth Chamber of Shaolin from seventy eight, which is heavily sampled in the first Wu Tang Clan album, which I imagine a lot of you are familiar with. And he shares co executive producer credits on on a little nineteen eighty two film that some of you may have heard of called Blade Runner.
I believe that was part of a last minute funding shift that required them to reach out to other investors, and so Shaw kicked in seven point five million and took international distribution rights for Blade Runner.
Oh, I bet that panned out nicely.
Yeah, one would think one would think, Actually.
I don't know. I have a question. So Blade Runner is a critical hit, was it? Was it a commercial success or did it bomb?
I don't know. That's a great question. It's one of those films that that I was just assumed that it was, you know, critical and commercial success, but certainly it was more of a critical and cold hit in the way that I interact with it. I don't think I've ever looked up the numbers on Blade Runner. What do you have that out in front of you.
No, Now, I got to take a step even further back even know if it was a critical success upon initial release, did that change over time? Let's see here, Well, the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads misunderstood when it first hit theaters. The influence of Italy Scott's mysterious neo noir Blade Runner has deepened with time. That sounds to me like like they're trying to summarize that exact dynamic of people not really getting it at first.
So who knows run run Shaw might have bought into a lemon there, at least initially. Well, let's talk about the director of this film. Meanhaho, who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and nine, directed fifty seven films, mostly in the sixties and seventies, including the movie The
Flying Guillotine from seventy five. Now that's not to be confused with Master of the Flying Guillotine, which came out in seventy six, so Hoe directed the film that seemed to it, if at least, kicked off a lot of the bizarre weapons popularity, though I'm not sure his film originated the use of the weapon on screen e because I think there's also a nineteen seventy three non Shop Brothers film that featured that flying guillotine weapon, that sort
of strange basket hat contraption on a chain that a martial arts character will throw. It'll go over the individual's head, slice the head off, and then you can retrieve it.
I've actually never seen the original Flying Guillotine movie. I've only seen Master.
Of Yeah, I watched one of them. No, I think I watched both of them, So I think I've seen The Flying Guillotine, but I don't remember. I get the too confused, like one of them is like the origin story of the Flying Guillotine and the other ones like an international street fighter like tournament.
Yes, that's Master of the Flying Guillotine. It's a street fighter tournament. It's the hero of the movie is the one armed boxer and the Master of the Flying Guillotine is the villain, and he I don't remember exactly what the plot is, but he's trying to, I don't know, do something bad with the tournament, and our hero has to fend off not only the Master of the Flying Guillotine himself, but various fighters from other countries around the world.
Well, now, the screenwriter on this one is mildly interesting as well. It's this guy who wrote it as Ssiland, but his name was Lamb Chua and he's This is one of only two screenwriting credits for this guy. But he went on to be a producer and produced some Jackie Chan films, such as nineteen ninety seven's Mister Nice Guy, in nineteen eighty six's Armor of God, and in nineteen ninety one he was one of the producers on legendary martial arts gore picture Ricky Oh. The Story of Ricky Ah.
Now that's another movie that sort of combines elements of different genres in the same way this movie does. In the same way that this is horror but also a little bit martial arts and a little bit like I don't know, seventies exploitation sleeves, Ricky Oh, is it's like, got the gore of a horror movie, but it's a martial arts movie.
Yeah. It is the bloodiest, gooriest martial arts movie you could ask for, with amazing gore effects that are also at least when I watched. It's been a while since I've watched it, but I found it just so over the top that it wasn't It doesn't make you cringe or you know, it doesn't affect you in the way that violence in some films do because it's just so ridiculously bloody and squishy. It's like it's really itchy and scratchy level of violence.
Yes, yeah, that's a very good comparison. Yeah, ricky Oh, it's itchy and scratchy live action.
Yeah. All right, let's talk about our lead in the Oily Maniac. That is Danny Lee playing Shun Yawn, And yeah he was. He's a Hong Kong actor film producer, screenwriter, director who apparently made it kind of a career playing you know, like police officer type characters. I think that was like a common role for him.
He's in The Killer. I don't think if he's in other John wu movies, but he's definitely in The Killer.
Yeah, Okay, Yeah, he has twelve directing credits. Yeah. And in this he plays shin on our hero anti hero who becomes the titular Oily Maniac. And he does a pretty solid job here with kind of there's kind of a Doctor Jekyl sort of intensity to him. You know, he's he's a tormented character. First, he's tormented by the fact that he is his handicapped. What he suffered from illness earlier in life that the character did. Is it supposed to be polio?
Yeah, he uses crutches, and I think it's implied that it's from a childhood polio infection.
Okay, So he has a lot of emotions about this, and then as a number of hardships occur in his life, which we'll get into, becomes even more tormented by all of this. And then of course he learns the secret of the Oily Maniac, which brings In this Doctor Jekyl and mister hide quality to everything, which essentially leads him on a disastrous road to doom.
I really like the guy who plays Uncle Ba, who sort of sets the motion of the film in action. He's the person who introduces black magic into the film.
Yeah, this guy really jumped out at me as well. This character is played by Finn Ku and he yeah, he's an interest. Guy was born in nineteen thirty and he's apparently still out there acting. He had a film come out in twenty twenty. He's known for such movies as Tiger Killer, Deathkick, The Five Deadly Venoms and he seems to have played a lot of commanders, heavies, and
wizards in his career. And yeah, I thought he had a nice haunting scene in this film is he as a condemned prisoner relates the secrets of the oil to Shinyong.
But the rest of the cast is full of people who were also just longtime players in Hong Kong cinema, including some other actors that went on to have successful directing careers, such as Corey Yun, who plays a very bit part in this as a road worker who's scared away by the Monsters, but jun Co directed The Transporter for Western audiences as well as two thousand and six is doa Dead or Alive the video game movie. But
he also did some really big Chinese films. In fact, luck would have it, we had a listener named William write in on the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module on Facebook and say, quote, I have a good suggestion for a Hiroki Sonata film. I think it's the best martial arts film of its time and there isn't a close second, honestly, incredibly underrated and unknown for how good it is. It is streaming on multiple resources now.
And he's talking about Ninja in the Dragon's Den, which is a nineteen eighty two film directed by Corey Yun.
I've never seen it.
No, I mean either, but it sounds interesting. But yeah, so even in just the backgrounds in the bit players in this you have some people who went on to have quite a career.
Okay, well, should we get into an overview of at least some of what happens in the film, Yes, okay, Well, the first thing we see in this movie is there's an opening text, and it's in translation the subtitles in the version I saw said, The text reads, this story is a rewrite of a nan Yang tall tale. It bears the moral that justice does prevail. I'm not sure
if it bears that moral. But then it says the film is extensively shot in Malaysia, and our story begins in a coconut oil garden, and then all the while, in the background, while this text is on the screen, there is boiling slime and tortured screaming.
Yeah. So, I didn't know what to make of this text at first, because I thought, well, maybe they're just doing a Texas chainsaw massacre or Fargo type thing where they're just trying to add at fristy to it. But it turns out this is basically true, and interestingly enough, it does remind me of the stories in Pusong Ling strange Stories from a Chinese studio, because a lot of those stories open up with just like a kind of a disclaimer like this, saying this is a true story
that such and such person told me. So possible connection there to the tradition of stuff telling strange stories in Chinese culture.
Well, like several moments in this movie, there is some hilariously sudden cutting to happy music, so you get the opening text and the screaming and the boiling oil, and then ah in the background, and then immediately cut to how the best I could describe it as like it's mid century cruising music. It's the soundtrack to a scene of driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in an early sixties film.
Yeah, we go from this monstrous boiling scene, which I guess is kind of like saying, hey, we better show in the monster early. It's gonna be seventeen minutes before they see anything else like this, and then we cut to what those early stages of the film. It looks like a nineteen seventies tourist tourist video, you know, promotional video for Malaysia. You're just like, oh, this place looks great.
Yeah, So we go to this coconut farm and actually, one of the most interesting things I thought of the movie was right at the very beginning, when it shows coconut farm workers making the use of tree climbing monkeys to help them with the harvest of coconuts.
Yeah, that was cool.
Is that a real thing? I assume it is.
Yeah, Yeah, and I know I've read about it before.
Yeah, I had no idea. Well, that was interesting to me. But so the conflict starts almost immediately we meet some characters. We meet Shin Yon played by Danny Lee, who, yeah, he's this thoughtful, sensitive young lawyer. And then we meet Chung Yue and we meet Len Young Ba and again Ba is Danny Lee's uncle who works here at the Coconut oil garden. And immediately there's this tense legal dispute.
I think the family that owns the coconut oil garden is in debt to some bad dudes, and the bad dudes have come to collect and a fight breaks out when they say they can't pay the debt they owe.
Yeah, and this is one of the when the fights break out in this movie, you definitely see the Hong Kong action cinema come out. Like every male character in this film has like at least a sixteen dexterity because when they pop into action, Yeah, it's pretty intense.
Yeah. So Uncle Back gets dragged into the fight and he kills one of the goons from the bad guys in self defense, and then we see him getting captured by the police. For some reason, he does not seem to be able to deploy a self defense explanation to this crime. It seems like they were sort of trying to explain that in the movie, but I think it went over my head, something about how like Danny Lee couldn't be a witness at the trial for some reason.
Yeah, I missed that as well. It just seems like it's on one second he's being arrested and the next it's like he's on death row.
Yeah, it's just immediately he's about to be executed. And so Shinyuan is visiting Uncle Bah in prison and it's like their last meeting before the uncle's going to go off to get executed. And how to describe this scene. There is a scene involving a magical back tattoo where Uncle Bos says, you know, before I go, I have to explain something to you. And he says, your father was a shaman, a sort of exorcist. He got an incurable disease, and so he gave me the spell before
he passed away. He copied it down for me, hurry up, write it down. But the place where he copied it down was apparently a tattoo on his brother's back, and so we have a back tracing scene.
Yes, I don't know why I put tattooed it like, couldn't have a lot of questions come up regarding that as a way to pass it on, because then how do you read it. You gotta have a mirror, you gotta have two mirrors or a friend to trace it for you.
Maybe it's literally to make it more difficult to use, because we know that this magic is dangerous. With great power comes great responsibility. Here because Uncle Bob tells Danny Lee, he says, please remember one thing. This can only be used to help the less fortunate. You can't use it with a wrong intent, or you'll die. You'll die in a very very bad way. Of course, with the caveat that this is all in the English subtitles, something maybe getting lost there.
Yeah, I can't help but wonder if that the actual lines and Mandarin or relate more to like a shameful death or you know, dishonor or something, because because that's that's ultimately the direction things go in. And yeah, I love this setup. This is a great setup for the black magic to come and it you know, ultimately it deserves a better movie.
Yes, So, so Danny Lee takes this information back home. He's copied out the spell from from his uncle's back and he goes home. He gets frustrated. I think he feels like he is he is sort of a he's got unrequited love for you a And he gets frustrated in his house and then just gets out a pickaxe, digs a hole in the floor in the middle of his house, takes his shirt off, starts chanting, give me peace and power, and then crude oil or some kind of gray sudsy dishwater type liquid, it bubbles up from
the ground. This is one of many sequences in the film that just have like gray sudsy oil coming up out of something and it covers him, and then we get the transformation for the first monster sequence.
Yeah, yeah, now I have to drive home. He digs that hole and then he climbs into the hole. Yeah, and then it fills up with the oily mess. And I think this is very fitting because on one hand, you have like the earthly origins of oil. It's like he's communing with spirits of the ground. And then also he is about to embark on the profession of revenge, you know, and so he's kind of digging his own grave here to begin, which is a fitting symbol for what he's about to try and achieve.
Right, so we get a monster transformation. It is not quite American werewolf in London level. He's just sort of suddenly this monster and how to describe the creature. It is basically human shaped but very bulky, like a person in a firefighter's suit. And the exterior texture of his body is kind of it's so it's oily and it's wrinkly, and it's wet and it's it looks like a sort of a black garbage bag covered in slime and water.
Yeah, but but well done for the most part. I mean, it depends how it's shot. Like some sometimes it looks better than other times in the film. But for the most part, it's an impressive monster suit with a lot of bizarre details.
Well, I think we should be clear impressive in the schlock sense and that it's fun to look at. It's not. I would not say this is an especially beautifully designed suit. But yes, for as for like schlock monster, it's up there.
Yeah, there's an element, there's kind of a sense of swamp thing to it. Yeah, there's a there's kind of a sense of just like oily mess gollum to it. But yeah, if this think it came and running at me, I'd be terrified.
So it's got glowing fossilized amber for eyes. They don't say that that's what it looks like. This this kind of yellow, glassy or plasticky material that lights behind it. You kind of get the feeling that if you leaned in close and looked in the eyes, you might see a mosquito, like in mister Hammond's cane. And then it's got a toothy red mouth that is permanently cocked up to one side as if smirking.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then the weirdest feature. I don't think they ever explained this in the movie, or if they did, I missed it.
There.
It has an exposed red beating heart that pokes out from the rest of the oily exterior. It looks like a sort of red heart that's beating but trapped behind plastic.
Yeah, it looks It looks really cool, and it it looks like such a bull's eye that you assume that it's going to somehow factor into the plot or into the way that the monster eventually dies.
Right, but it does stay through the heart or something.
Yeah, but it does, And it just looks cool.
What would be what would be the best way? So I really feel like they could have played with better ways to defeat the oil Monster in this movie, like using soap or something.
Yeah, yeah, they could have. They could have been a little more chemically aware, I guess h As it turns out, they just stick with fire. Yeah, petroleum consuming microbes. That would be like a modern version. I guess that would be good.
But so everything else on this exterior, yes, just these oily you know, black garbage bag mud tentacles. And he screams with rage. The monster often screams with rage.
Yeah, there's some sort of like reverb added to the rage scream too that makes it feel like nice and otherworldly, because again, he's not a he's not a product of mad science. He's a product of black magic.
Right, And so from here on out the film is mostly greasy violence. The the oil Monster hunts and pummels and kills people. I think we're to understand that most the people he kills are like bad dudes who deserve it. But then the sort of like the bad sexual politics come through. Like one of the people he attacks is a woman who is portrayed as like a scheming woman who falsely accuses men of sexual assault.
Right, And then there's another scene where he wreaks vengeance on a crooked plastic surgeon. But then there's a patient in the room when he goes on his rampage and he just like throws her up against the wall too. Yeah, So it's like he's very indiscriminate in his vengeance and rage here. Sometimes the first thing he'll do when he comes into a room full of people to exact vengeance is just smash all the glass items.
Yes, yeah, yeah, which is a.
Solid monster costume move. I feel like that from the Blood Waters of Doctor ze or Za did much the same thing, and it was a very similar costume in some ways bulky probably very difficult to see out of.
Yeah, And we should mention that one of my favorite I would say, actually my single favorite thing about this movie is when the oil Monster is chasing after someone, because we get an animated oil slick that slithers along the floor while the Jaws music plays, just straight up the Jaws music.
Yeah, he melts down into a gleaming puddle that's obviously animated and then zooms after I mean zooms like you be able to chase a speeding automobile.
Yeah, and then the grease So other general characteristics of the of the lipid monster attacks. The Greaseman sometimes runs flailing his arms in a helicopter pattern, which doesn't make him look as menacing as I think it's supposed to.
Well I was menaced, but yeah, it is kind of cartoonish. He's also a really good jumper, Let's not forget that.
Well. He has a special kind of superpower, which is reverse footage leaping abilities. So sometimes even as a dummy, there are great scenes where he jumps up, you know, three stories at once and looks oddly kind of like flaccid and inanimate. And I think it's just because they're like dropping a stuffed suit and then reversing the footage.
Yeah, very good now, but a lot of his particular moves during it, and he has the helicopter spin. Generally, he's doing what I think of is just sort of pro wrestling clubren on folks, Like he's just wailing on him with his arms. Sometimes he looks like he's even doing like a double axe handle thing. He's stomping. He'll stop people in the ribs. He'll apply an oily choke, but with one notable exception. Those are his keys, his key moves that he pulls out in his fights.
Yeah, and so there is. The plot of the movie includes that there's like this furor generated about the Oily Maniac attacks, Like there is a scene where he's supposedly going around punishing evildoers. There's one scene where he kills a rapist, and then it cuts to newspaper headlines and it says Tin Kin Young was killed by the Oily Maniac. That's the translation we get of the newspaper head line, and then another one says the oil Maniac slays Tin Kinyong.
And again I'm wondering if something is lost in translation, because that would imply that the reader already knows who the culprit in, who the culprit is by name, and would know who or what the oil Maniac is.
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, on one hand, I can imagine that the Oily Maniac it might be eluded, like his name being in the headlines might be alluding to the fact that, okay, this is an established bit of folklore. And also there's kind of a cryptid aspect to this as well in real life that occasionally you'll see headline. Think in twenty twelve, it even made headlines internationally when there was a little edge sighting of an oil man somewhere in Malaysia or Singapore, I can't remember which.
Okay, So this could be tying into the actual folklore basis of the premise of this film.
Right, but certainly for most Western viewers if you're watching this, that's going to be lost on you.
There is so But anyway, so the police are investigating the oil maniac attacks. There's one part I really liked where a detective is like, I deduce that the culprit covers himself in oil to get away faster.
That's a great line.
I don't know if he's thought that through. I don't know how well that would work.
Now, speaking of covering and oil, though, one of the cool things is that when Danny Lee initially transforms into the oil monster, or if you want to calm something like hip or I would say you could refer to him as the crude dude. When he makes this initial transformation,
there's the whole ritual in the pit. But later apparently all he has to do is just get some oil on him in order to transform Like there's a scene at a roadside construction site where there's just an open barrel of like seemingly boiling oil and he just goes up and starts putting it on himself and then jumps in.
Yeah, there's another one where he just walks up to a gas takes out the diesel pump, sprays it all over himself, and transforms. And the stuff that comes out of the diesel pump is it's I guess supposed to be crude oil. It's like this dark liquid, but again it's kind of gray and sudsy, like like old dishwater, and I just don't think that's what diesel fuel looks like. So one scene in this movie that is not a monster attack scene and is also not revolting but it's
just fun is the Curry disappointment scene. Can you explain this?
Okay, so there are this is not really a movie for great female characters, but no, he essentially has two potential love interests. One is the you know, the the the poor woman who's it was her father right or that that died right, that was executed. No, trying to remember what her relationship is to any other character.
I think she works with Danny and she just works with him stuff.
She no, no, no, there's the law. There's basically there's work love interest, and then there's the other love interest. There's UA and yeah, so there's u A and then there's work lady. Okay, okay, so's he's totally smitten with u A, but he's he keeps getting help from this lady at work. He comes over to her apartment and of course he's just sort of saying, oh, everything's the worst, you know, I'm having all these problems. And she's like, what do you do You like curry? And he's like, oh,
I love curry, but I only love her curry. Anything else just disgust me. And then we sort of pan out and she's like, but I made curry. And there's like this full table set with this luscious looking curry dish and.
The passion in this scene the remorse after he disappoints her about the curry that plays remorse music. It's like the remorse theme from The Oily Maniac.
Yeah, so the curry disappointment scene is great. I recommend it. Another interesting scene that occurs that doesn't involve monsters or anything is this. I was impressed by the speed with which the police tap all the office phones, and I couldn't help but wonder, Okay, is this just movie logic or is this an actual, like accurate representation of phone tapping by law enforcement in Malaysia or Hong Kong at the time, I'm not sure.
Yeah, I wonder. Well, anyway, it all builds up to a final confrontation between the Oily Maniac and the many forces of evil and corruption in this movie, which are a loosely affiliated group of I don't know, criminals and gangsters.
Yeah. So it's a massive battle with like all the oily special effects they can muster, and it's pretty fabulous.
Yeah. Again, if you're if you're tempted to see part of this movie, it might be and you just want to check out one scene, it might be best to just skip skip to the end and watch this ending battle scene.
Though I will say there is an excellent kill in the film before that, where the evil lawyer and his mistress are you know, have sped away and they've gone to like a makeout place and they're like gonna make out in the car, and then the oily Maniac attacks and it's a great scene where he starts dripping down
all the windows. You know, it's very blob asque, and then suddenly he's in the back seat and then he grabs the lawyer's head and crushes it like a coconut, And we don't see much of it, which actually kind of helps make it work more. But yeah, there is a head burst scene, and that's probably the most violent, physically violent thing we see the monster do to anybody.
Yeah, Otherwise it's mostly just beat downs's traditional beatdowns, martial arts film style style beatdowns. Though the Oil Monster does have tricks other than just like kicking and punching that we've already said. He's got the reverse footage jump, but he also has a trick he reveals, i think only in that final battle, which is that he can spray
oil out of his mouth. And this is kind of like the James Bond car trick where it shoots out the oil slicks so the other cars behind skid all over the place, but in this case, he just vomits oil all over the faces of his attackers.
Yeah. Also an R two D two trick by the way.
Oh I forgot about that. Yeah, but he's got but he's got powers that make him very too difficult to defeat. So the enemies hack him with machetes and stuff or swords and like they can lop his arm off, but then it just regenerates because he's got the oil magic right.
And there are a couple of times where they shoot him full of bullets and then he'll melt down into a puddle and then he'll like regenerate back up to full strength. They're really proud of that effect because he's they rolled out about twice.
Yeah, But in the end, the Oily Maniac is defeated by who would a thunk it fire?
Yeah, because he goes too far, Like he has the police and he's about to crush their heads in a double headlock sort of situation, and she's like, no, you have to stop, you have to leave them alone. He won't do it, so he gets torched.
Yep, and then we see his like body on the ground burning up and it sort of it burns like old newspaper. And then once again there is a really sudden and funny music transition where the Oily Maniac is blown away like burned newspaper, and then soft happy music just kicks right in.
Yeah, I do like the old school monster movie ending of the monster is dead, the end. There's no there's no at all. Yeah, I do want to get back to the Malaysian roots here, the folkloric roots, because indeed, there is a creature in Malaysian folklore known as the Orang Mignac or oily man and according to the University of Southern California Digital Folklore Archives, yeah, the oily man is a creature of Malaysian folklore with appearances in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia,
and Singapore. And the main constant in the folk tradition is that we have an oily humanoid that assaults women at night, especially virgins, and the origins vary quite a bit. Sometimes it's said to be just a dark creature of the spirit world. Other times he's a human, a quote spurned lover that has powers due to his solicitation of either a bomo, a Malaysian witch doctor, or a contract with a creature from the spiritual world.
So this makes it seem like maybe a lot of the creepy sexual associations of the oily maniac or not just in the movie, but they're also in the folk tales that the movie is based on.
Yes, it would seem to be the case. Like it is a it is a like a folkl ort creature, sometimes again a cryptid even it's this dark, oily creature that creeps around in the night and attacks women, hard to see in the dark, slippery if you grab him. Also in some versions, apparently he likes to steal things, but I didn't find a lot of details on that. The other interesting thing is that this was not the
first oily maniac film or oil man film. There was a series of these that were produced in sing Poor in the fifties and sixties, such as Curse of the Oily Man in fifty six and The Oily Man in fifty eight. So it was already an established movie monster before the Shaw Brothers came around and gave it not just an oily naked human appearance, but this awesome swamp thing asks treatment and apparently, yeah, there are still supernatural
sightings of the Orong Mignac in contemporary Malaysia. I've ran across a twenty twelve I nine article about it, and there was even a live science article by Benjamin Radford about it, who made a special made special mention of cryptid enthusiasts getting in on the oily man legend and saying, well, we think it might be a sasquatch of some sort.
Oh yeah, the old hidden primate theory.
Yeah, but yeah, I don't think there's any reality to that. My opinion on the possible presence of oily primates.
I would agree. And I think it's also interesting that you see this with some other types of cryptid legends, a connect between certain types of alleged cryptid sightings and taboo fixations, people who are having kind of scary thoughts at the boundaries of sex and violence.
Yeah. Now I want to get into this film's place in Hong Kong cinema for a few minutes as well, because yeah, I mean it's important to note, yeah, this is a again, a black magic film, a Hong Kong black magic film, and granted, black magic has long been part of Chinese myths and legends, but then we see this film as part of a shift in how it's
treated cinematically. Apparently, according to James Mudge of Easternkicks dot Com, in an article titled black Magic and Sleezy Spells, the Shaw Brothers Horror Films, the horror output of the Shops Shaw Brothers between the late fifties and the mid eighties was hugely influential on Hong Kong horror cinema, and it wouldn't be till Samo Hung's Spooky Encounters films of the
nineteen eighties that the style took a different turn. But even then, Mudge Rights Shaw inspired sleazy sorcery and grotesque black magic played a major role in the nineteen nineties boom in what are referred to as category three rated
genre cinema. Category three is like the was the extreme exploitation rating, So again this was part of a movement of films that had a real impact of the oily maniac In particular, Mudge Rights quote the film is a wacky affair, dripping with sleeves and jarring shifts of tone, and though it makes little sense in both some hilariously cheap special effects, it has become a firm favorite of
trash cinema fans. And then I also found an article by this was by Danny chen wing Kit from twenty nineteen published in Hong Kong Studies titled Spectralizing Southeast Asia Hong Kong Cinema of Black Magic, and in this wing Kit makes an interesting point about Oily Maniac's place in
the history of Hong Kong black magic films. Films such as this and seventy five's Black Magic and seventy six is Black Magic Part Two, they dealt with black magic beyond the limits of Hong Kong and modern urban living quote a haunted community kept at bay from Hong Kong. But later films they write across the boundary, bringing the
black magic into the city. And in this wing Kin Rights we see an example of cultural bias and prejudice towards Southeast Asian cultures, and this becomes even more key during the eighties as Hong Kong searches for its place in the world. Quote in Hong Kong's Black Magic Cinema, a spectralized Southeast Asia is one of the most sought after imaginaries of otherness for the city to compensate for its national ambiguity.
Okay, So maybe the idea is that in some of these early sleazy Sorcery films, it was imagining non Chinese Southeast Asia as a place kind of like, I don't know, like the you know, the rural texas of the Texas, Chainsaw mass exactly like this dangerous, this dangerous other place where there are savage forces afoot. But then over time there is a shift in cinema where those forces are are sort of moved inward and migrated back into the home base.
Yeah, sort of the Jason takes Hong Kong movement, it takes Manhattan.
Yeah.
So anyway, I thought that was interesting. It's you know, looking at how this film is sort of like what role it plays in the history of Hong Kong horror films, and also what it may reveal, according to this one author anyway, about about Hong Kong and its culture and it's and how it viewed you know, the other parts of the world as well.
Now, one thing that's certainly worth mentioning here is the monster science parallel between the oily maniac and plenty of creatures in the real world which do sometimes cover themselves with different types of fluids, oils, lipids, slimes of various kinds in order to actually improve their survival odds.
Yeah. And of these creatures, and there are many, the best example is probably always going to be the hagfish of class mixinny and the order Mixiniformis. And these are if you haven't seen these, you should look them up because they're they're bizarre. They're they're weird creatures. And you read the writings the Scientific journal writings of people who study them, and they totally agree. They're like, these creatures
are weird. We still don't understand everything about that. They are strange because they are eel like, they are jawless, their marine fish that can produce vast quantities of slime when threatened, and then they can tie themselves in a traveling knot which they use to sort of slip free of their own slime, to sort of wring their own limbless bodies free of the slimy ooz that they've secreted.
I think we should stop for a moment, though, and appreciate just how much slime a hagfish can produce. When I've read about this in the past, it was mind boggling and I just had to look it up again. There's a great article by Ed Young in The Atlantic about hagfish, and I want to read a quote here.
He says, quote, Typically, a hagfish will release less than a teaspoon of gunk from the hundred or so slime glands that line its flanks, and in less than half a second that little amount will expand by ten thousand times, enough to fill a sizeable bucket. Reach in, and every move of your hand will drag the water with it. Wow and the knee, quotes a researcher named Douglas Fudge of Chapman University, who says it doesn't feel like much at first, as if a spider has built a web underwater,
But then ed writ's quote. But try to lift your hand out, and it's as if the bucket's contents are now attached to you.
Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, and yeah, that bucket's worth of content that's often going to potentially going to be the mouth of the creek the sea creature that tried to eat it. So the idea is they just clog up the creature that tried to consume them, and then they
move away and then they're free. There are some hagfish that may use their slime offensively while hunting, apparently, but most hagfish thrive on the bottom of the ocean, feasting on rotten carcasses, and the slime is for when they are agitated by something.
Now there's another parallel actually between the hagfish and the Oily Maniac and then they've got a weird heart, right.
That's right. Hagfish are also notable for their quote unquote zombie hearts, which can keep beating for thirty six hours without any oxygen, allowing them to thrive in deep oxygen deprived environments. So yeah, I can't help but wonder if that is a zombie heart we see beating in the Oily Maniac's chest.
Very nice? Okay, well, I guess that does it for the Oily Maniac again. I will say I can't really recommend watching the whole movie. It is a kind of it is a kind of disturbing and morally bad affair. But you should definitely check out those monster scenes, the monster fights or it's it's the best lipid mankung fu you will ever see.
Yeah, I'd love to again. I'd love to see this monster get a better treatment and a less sleazy film. I want. I want the film to be greasy but not sleazy.
Right, Yeah, I just want some good, clean greaseman fun.
Yeah, exactly, just have him wailing on bad guys the whole time. I have to say, in looking around on Google scholar for any like academic mention of him. I did run across a I think it was like a bachelor's degree thesis in game design where someone was making the argument. They were like, we need stealth games that
feature the Oily Maniac. And I didn't read the whole thing, so I don't know how how pervasive that argument is this treatment, but they were like like, yeah, he's like a naturally skealthy he can you know, he can melt underdoors and all. So I don't know, maybe if that that potential game designer like feel strongly about it enough will eventually see an Oily Maniac stealth video game.
That is a heck of a concept. Tap X to reverse footage.
Yeah all right, So where can you see this if you dare? Again, we've given you the the disclaimers that are necessary, I think, But if you want to watch the Oily Maniac or just skip to the key scenes we mentioned, you can stream this baby on Amazon Prime. You can buy it or rent it digitally other places as well. It's in Mandarin with English subtitles. DVDs and Blu rays are also available, though I can't make any
promises about region and so forth. I also want to point out that when this film came out in Uzbekistan. According to IMDb, the video CD title was Zombie twelve The Insane Oily Free, which we've encountered Zombie with other films, generally with Italian films right where it's just anything that can remotely be tied into into the Zombie franchise, into
Don of the Dead, and so this sequel. Yeah, so it sounds like this was even more the case in Uzbekistan where someone's like, oh, we got another movie, as I've got a monster in it, Zombie twelve.
Only way to see it is in the original loosebec.
All right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close close the drum on this one, but obviously we'd love to hear from anybody who has thoughts on this film or its place in Hong Kong cinematic history, et cetera. 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 feeds, so you can find it by looking up the Stuff to Blow your
Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. We do ask the U rate, review and subscribe it's a great way to support the show. And also I have a personal website. It's some Muda music dot com Somemuda music like in Dune, and I just do some blog posts about these movies as we put them out, so if you're interested you can find that there.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com.
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