Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen eighty three Hong Kong martial arts fantasy film Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain, directed by T. Sue Hawk, And Oh my god, this movie is so much. This is one of the most overwhelming films we have
ever watched for the show. And I've been wanting to cover it for quite a while, or at least for several months, because in sometime last year, I think it was November of last year, we covered another movie by Soyhawk, the nineteen seventy nine film The Butterfly Murders, which did involve killer butterflies and also had just crazy intrigue, a lot of like politics and backstabbing and assassins and cool characters, you know, the Big Boss of the Gangs and the
Green Shadow and all these wonderful characters. I loved that movie. But when I went to check that movie out at Video Drome, I think they actually didn't have it, but they told me about another movie by the same director. They were like, oh, yeah, you should see Zoo Warriors.
That one's really good. And so ever since, it has been on the list, and some further investigation online proved that this movie has a reputation as an absolute banquet of weirdness, just bursting with gonzo sorcery, shrieking demons, and relentless exuberance. And now that I've seen it, I can say, not only did it deliver on my expectations, it sort
of goes beyond. I found Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain to be immensely pleasurable, frankly to the point of exhaustion, like a kind of excess of pleasure that became pain, And by the end, I was just like, what has happened to me?
Yeah, this is one of those movies that I maybe should have watched in short installments. Sometimes I watch movies like that sometimes because I'll watch a movie that's maybe a little bit boring and I don't want to watch it all in one setting because it would be impossible.
This one, it's it's the opposite. It's everything is just so exciting and it just doesn't stop that you feel like you almost need a breather between these action sequences because the narrative itself doesn't necessarily provide those breathers.
Yeah, and other viewers I've read have commented about this quality of the movie that it's absolutely wonderful, but by the end it's like literally overwhelming. It's like too much to take all at once. So I would just say I do highly recommend Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain. Once I was done watching it, I was like, I must own a copy of this. I ordered a copy
to keep. But prepare thyself. Prepare thyself for more pinball demons and eyebrow to tenta goles and bubble wrap hands than you could have possibly imagined.
Yeah, yeah, this is there's high martial arts magic in this film. I was looking around it. You know, this is what different folks thought about it, and yeah, everyone seems to love this movie.
You know.
It was a huge hit, like a cross generational hit in China, so you had like the older generations going to the theaters and like, yeah, this is great, this is the kind of story we want to see, and then new generations of film fans also got on board with it because it was as we'll discuss kind of like a vision of the future. It's high tech, special effects cinema. And then you know, likewise, it quickly found
an audience outside of China as well. You know, for instance, Michael Weldon in the Psychotronic Video Guide speaks highly of it, like any anybody who saw this film was instantly overpowered by it.
A couple other things that I found really admirable about this movie despite it just being aforementioned banquet of weirdness.
The movie also, I think has a good heart, like even though it is a film about war and demons and supernatural combat, the moral Refrain is very much about trying to find a way for people to live together in peace, and so that sort of connects to one of the themes, which is that despite how crazy and overwhelming the movie is, it also in a strange way kind of has a very clear head, like it's organized chaos.
I think the feeling of chaos is actually a very smart depiction of the themes of the story, because you could argue that one of the things the story here is about is the great number of ways that people are distracted and interrupted and divided and set against one another always preventing them from achieving what should be their noble goals, for example, bringing about peace, ending war, or
protecting the end. Though in the end of the film the persistence, especially of the younger protagonists does pay off to some degree. But it's a rob When you and I were first talking about it off, Mike, you use the word side quests. Yeah, that very much describes a
lot of the structure of the plot. There's just a whole lot of the chaos is used to show this process for people always getting distracted from or driven away from by like personal infighting and differences from achieving what they know they should do.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, And yeah, it is a film with a good heart, and it's interesting to think about it in terms of Hawk's other films, especially as earlier films, and also comparing it dirrectly to The Butterfly Murders. The Butterfly Murders is in many way very in many ways
very dark film. We talked about it's nihilistic tendencies, and by this film it seems like he has moved away from some of the more controversial or confrontational elements of his work, and in this movie he's crafting a film that is funny, that is comforting, that is exciting, but yeah, ultimately has a good heart and is not here to show you deep dark truths or anything of that nature.
Well, yeah, it at least has a I guess you could say a semi happy ending, like it doesn't have a bleak ending like Butterfly Murders where all the good characters die. Yeah, not only do you remember Butterfly Murders not only die but explode.
Yes in the face as our Yeah, yeah, it's that one, startling. I still love Butterfly Murders. That's a great one. Well, Joe, what is your elevator pitch? If we dare for Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain?
Well, the plot of Zoo Warriors is infamously difficult to summarize and describe, So I'm gonna say a deserter from Incoherent Wars, a flying scholarly swordsman, a monk amongst apprentice, a magic man with prehensile eyebrows, an enchanted countess and her loyal bodyguard, a Heaven's Blade, and a bunch of blood demon disciples all walk into a bar on a magic mountain.
That sounds about right. Well, let's go ahead and listen to an English language trailer for this film.
Deep in the heart of every culture lives a legend that will not die for It is told of an enchanted mountain whose dark and vengeful spirit possesses the power to destroy all mankind. But now the courage of one man must rise to uncover the only weapon on earth with the power to bring about its destruction. Now restored and remastered for the first time, Hong Kong Legends invite you to experience the fantasy adventure which inspired a generation Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain.
All right, it sounds exciting, but without the visuals you only have like twenty percent maybe less of the spectacle here. Now, if you were interested in watching Zoo Warriors before we jump into it here, well, first of all, I do want to stress there's more than one film that has the title Zoo Warriors in it. There's more than one Hawk film that is a Zoo Warrior film. We're talking
about the nineteen eighty three film to be clear. And if you want to watch it, well we watch it on the excellent twenty twenty three Blu Ray release from Shout Factory. This is a Great Desk comes jam packed with extras, some of which I'll be referring to, including segments with Peter Koran and academics Victor Fan and Lynn Thing, as well as an interview from twenty twenty with Hawk himself.
I didn't get a chance to get into the extras on this disc before I handed it off to you, but yeah, it looks like a lot of great stuff on there, and so I'm excited for the copy I ordered.
I also I went for the Shout Factory one, but just to clarify in case people come across the other ones, there is I think the other version of this movie, or some variation on it that Hawk did, was a movie I think from two thousand and one, which I've heard has a similar kind of approach of just tons and tons of visual effects and strange imagery and all that, but it uses CGI, though I have so that on one hand, you think two thousand and one CGI that
sounds really awful. But though I haven't seen it, I've read some people saying very complimentary things about the movie that it sort of stands out as a better use of excessive CGI effects than most other films like that from that time.
Well, that would make sense with Hawk, because he seems like the kind of director who and I haven't seen the remake that you're talking about here, but he seems like the kind of director who would embrace the new technology but also figure out ways to use it effectively and in a way that would maybe hold up better than your average sort of scorpion king type usage. All right, well, let's talk about the folks involved in this movie before we start wading into the plot. First of all, yeah,
we have Choy Hawk here. If you have not set his name out loud or heard people speak his name, you may just see it on IMDb and other places, and it looks kind of like Sue Hark. That might be the way you're kind of like you mentally pronounce it, but it's more like Choi Hawk. I've heard also sort of a shoe hock, but Hawk will be the way that I'm going to predominantly be.
Referring to him, usually transliterated in English, most often as Tsui Hark.
Yeah, so he's a director here. Born in nineteen fifty Vietnamese born, Texas educated Hong Kong film director, producer, and screenwriter. He studied film at Southern Methodist University and then at the University of Texas in Austin. Graduated in nineteen seventy five, worked in New York City for a bit, I believe on a Chinatown documentary, and then returned to Hong Kong
in nineteen seventy seven. Now, we previously discussed Hawk in our episode again on his wild nineteen seventy nine film The Butterfly Murders, which was his first attempt to breathe new life into the wusha genre via the incorporation of sort of cross genre influences and a general zeal for weirdness.
I see a lot of commonality between these two movies, even though they are very different in some ways. So like The Butterfly Murderers is a much darker movie. I think you could say that it's more focused, it's less
ambitious in some ways. But what's behind them is in both cases what feels like just like a very steady narrative hand and in terms of directing, like it is a confidently told story in both cases, and also in both cases it's just there's this kind of like really powerful, relentless narrative drive, a lot of energy, no dullness, and like incredible density of platam.
And definitely weirdness. Like I want to stress that this isn't just a case of Hawk's work, especially as early work being weird to westernize, only because I believe it was Victor Fan and one of the extras on the disc who mentioned weird storytelling is being a key hallmark of his films, something we could of course tie into the long tradition of weird stories in Chinese tradition, as well as the global realm of sort of psychotronic cinema now based on Thing and Hark's own comments on the
disc there, I think a few things to keep in mind about the filmmaker here. So his earlier films prior to this are more confrontational. Like a lot of creatives, he had more of a zeal for that in his earlier films, but then he moved away from that. Is his career developed, challenging sensors, less, challenging viewer expectations, maybe
a little less, while also retaining originality and creativity. But even as he moved out of that kind of confrontational phase, he remained fearless when it came to bucking traditions, combining genres, and exploring filmmaking possibilities, Like they described him as being this kind of filmmaker who if you told him you don't do that or you can't do that, he would ask, well, why not, Why can't we do this? Why can't we try doing a film like this? Why can't we incorporate
this influence or another influence? And in Zoo Warriors we see this especially in his use of cutting edge Hollywood special effects via American experts brought in to work on the project. And we'll mention the in a bit, and ultimately the creation of a film that is at once old fashioned and based on a nineteen thirty two novel,
but also futuristic in many ways. So Hawk himself cites this idea that the film is in many ways science fiction but extending backwards through time instead of into the future. I've seen this idea explored concerning Western fantasy fiction before. I think I saw our Scott Baker talking about this, but in a way that's more perhaps more based in
myth and meaning. While I feel like Zoo Warriors exhibits this more visually, you know, like we are seeing a presentation of the mythic, legendary, literary past, but it has all the zeal of a futuristic effects movie.
Yes, and I would say that it comes through in the like the relationship between the characters and their magical implements and spells, because a lot of times in fantasy movies where there is magic, there's a kind of a kind of reverence with which the magic is treated, or a kind of old fashioned, almost kind of high Church mentality and relation to it, Whereas in this movie, I feel like the magic and the magical instruments are treated much more like technology in sci fi movies is treated
like people have a very just kind of like familiar instrumental relationship with their magical items and body parts and powers and stuff.
Oh yeah, that's a great point. Absolutely. Another way to think about all of this is, you know, we've covered several films already on Weird House that come in the wake of nineteen seventy seven Star Wars and attempt to cash in on its success. In this film, Hawk successfully does something similar. He takes inspiration from its effects, from its visual storytelling, but translates all of that into something distinctly Chinese and also distinctly his own. As a director.
Hawk remains a huge name in Hong Kong cinema and continues to play in active part in some of the biggest Chinese film projects out there as both a director and as a producer. Now a note, I'm the source material here. I mentioned like a nineteen thirty two novel. This would be Legend of the Swordsmen of the Mountains of Shu and this is by Han Chu Lao Chu, which I believe translates to Master of Returning Pearl Loft.
This is an author that lived nineteen oh two through nineteen sixty one, and this work is considered one of the most influential of the Wusha fiction and it's apparently the first work of that genre translated into English. I've not read it, but there are translations available online, and it appears to be a very traditional adventure saga in many respects, but with lots of fascinating myth and magic
woven into it. So I'm no expert on the genre, literary or cinematic, but I'd say that the text seems traditional, but yeah, also just full of the sort of magic that opens up the possibility for just wild visual interpretation. The screenwriter on the film is Chuck Hon Zetto, who was born in nineteen fifty four, Hong Kong screenwriter who's actually come up on the show before because he was
a writer on nineteen eighty five's Mister Vampire. Ah yeah, so this is one of his earlier credited screenplays, but he started out really strong working on films directed by the likes of Hawk and John Wu. I should also note that there is another screenwriter that is like a credited as being an uncredited writer on the film on both IMDb and the Hong Kong Movie Database, and that is Chung Yu Shu. Now, this film has a lot
of actors in it. We're not going to touch on all of them, but hopefully we have some of the main actors lined up to briefly discuss.
There are a lot of characters, all.
Right, So we have a master swordsman in this master ting Yin ting Yin, played by Adam Chang born nineteen forty seven, Hong Kong actor whose credits go back to the late sixties, and he also seems to have had a solid pop music career going back to the mid seventies. His other films include nineteen eighty threes, Titanium Blade, nineteen ninety three is the Legend in nineteen ninety four's Drunken
Master three. I looked him up on discogs, as I usually do for anybody has a pop music background, and I included a nice album cover here for you, Joe.
Oh Yeah. He's wearing a leather jacket with wide lapels and a cowboy hat. He looks super cool.
All right.
Another character we have, the Countess, played by Bridget Lynn. Lynn was born nineteen fifty four, iconic Taiwanese star of both films both in Taiwanese and Hong Kong cinema. Her best known films include nineteen eighty five's Police Stories starring Jackie Chan, nineteen ninety four's Chun King Express, and Ashes of Thyme nineteen ninety three is The Bride with the White Hair, and Hawk's nineteen eighty six five film Peaking
opera Blues. We also have a monk. This is Abbott Sauyu, played by Damian Lao born nineteen forty nine, Hong Kong actor whose credits include nineteen seventy nine's Last Tu Raw for Chivalry, nineteen eighty three is Duel to the Death, and nineteen ninety two's Royal tramp.
Now this next actor you've got here, Rob, I'm very excited to talk about because I made it all the way through my first viewing of the movie without realizing that he had a second role in the film. He plays two characters.
I had the same experience. I thought, because the actor is Samo Cambo Hunk or Samo Hunk, as many of you are going to be familiar with him. If you're not familiar with any of these other actors, you probably know Samo Hunk because yeah, the rotun martial arts acting and stunt legend. But yeah, at my first viewing of the film, I was like, oh man, they introduced him as this sort of side character and then we don't see him again for the rest of the film's runtime.
He just comes back again at the very end, and I'm like, that's not enough Samo. And then I found out, oh no, he was in it pretty much. It's the whole time, because he plays two characters.
Right, So in the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie, they're setting it up like the movie is gonna be like sort of a buddy comedy adventure between our arguably our main character, Die ming Chi and this red Army soldier played by Samo Hung, who I don't know if we ever learned that character's real name, do we? Or is he called Chubby?
He is referred to as Chubby, and I think he is often credited in English translation as Red Army Soldier. Okay, but yeah, the other character plays is Chang Mee, also known as long Browse Long Brows. Yes, yes, so he plays this one character who you think is going to be a major character in the movie, and then disappears for most of the movie but has an incredible payoff return in the last couple minutes and then he shows up.
We didn't realize it was the same actor, but he shows up as the wizard in the film, who has eyebrows that function like squid tentacles, like they can shoot out and grab hoole of things and even graft onto other people's eyebrows and become part of their eyebrows.
Yes, we're not exaggerating. If anything, we're under selling the weirdness of this.
But Samo Hung is fantastic in both of his roles.
Oh yeah, yeah, he brings fabulous energy. Yeah. His work as a stunt coordinator goes back to the late sixties, and his action acting credits go back to the early sixties, and along with Hawk and other actors and directors, he's often credited as part of the overall Hong Kong New wave cinema movement of the nineteen seventies. He was also very active as a producer for several decades. In fact, he was a producer on Mister Vampire. We did mention
him briefly in that episode. He played a huge part in the surge of spooky Hong Kong films and Jungshi hopping vampire movies, not only with the Mister Vampire film and its sequels and imitators, but also Encounters of the Spooky Kind from nineteen eighty and The Dead and the Deadly from nineteen eighty three. Other films of note from Samo includes seventy Three's Entered the Dragon, He's In There, twenty Tens, It Man two, and two thousand and fours
Around the World in eighty Days. He's worked extensively with Jackie Chan, among other Hong Kong cinema legends. Now, another character that is a whole lot of fun in this movie is Lee Iichi, the Ice Queen.
Okay, So this character I believe appears in the second half, where it's becoming harder to keep track of all the new plot developments. But is this the character who has retreated to the Heavens Blade Mountain to be in solitude with the two legendary swords.
Yes, and she has freezing powers. She has like sub zero powers that are as magical and convincing as anything you'll see in a Mortal Kombat game or movie, but without the use of computer generated effects. But anyway. She's played by Judyong born nineteen fifty Taiwanese Japanese singer and actress who made her debut in the nineteen sixty one Japanese US production The Big Wave, based on the Pearl Buck novel. This is the film that launched her career.
But she wasn't really a Wusha star prior to this movie. She was more of like a romance, comedy and drama star. But this kind of pointed her in different directions, I think, at least for a little bit. I think she did some other Wusha films after this, But yeah, she has a great presence in this movie. She has like an elfin energy.
And there's another character we meet around the same time later in the film, who is sort of like an Atlas type figure, but he is chained to a giant ball on the mountain peak. And this is this is the Heavens Blade embodiment.
Yes, he rolls around comically at times.
Too quite truly funny.
Yes, that's another thing I just want to drive home about the movie. As we'll discuss. It's very funny and intentionally so. But yeah, Heaven's Blade is played by Norman Chew born nineteen fifty five, Hong Kong actor and director, known for seventy five is the Flying Guillotine nineteen eighties We're Going to Eat. That's also Hawk eighty three is Duel to the Death in nineteen eighty eight's The Dragon Family. Has something like one hundred and sixty credits on the Hong Kong Movie Database.
So at this point you're probably thinking, Oh, that's got to be all of the weird magical characters right now. I don't think we've even talked about half of them yet.
No, I'm leaving out like whole central characters. I'm sure I didn't even credit the deserter or the monks, the Abbot's assistant. These are also vital characters, but these are.
Like our two main heroes basically.
Yeah, yeah, basically, and yeah. When it comes to the antagonists of the film, we have our kind of big bads, which we'll get to, you know, our blood Demon and whatnot, but we also have these sort of lesser antagonists who could easily be the big bad in any other Wushaw film.
I'm thinking specifically of the Devil disciple Leader, which is a super fun character in this Oh yes, there's some great sorceress actions scenes with this character and both, but two different actors are credited as playing the role on both databases that I was looking at. One is hark On Fung, who lived nineteen forty eight through twenty sixteen, and the other is Korey Jun born nineteen fifty one,
who we've talked about before on the show. I think maybe kore June is playing the action parts, like is essentially the stunt actor here, but I'm not sure on that. Korey June had a bit part in The Oily Maniac and went on to have a really impressive career. Co directed The Transporter for Western audiences. I did two thousand and six's doa Dead or Alive along with some really big Hong Kong films, and he was the stunt coordinator on this movie.
Okay.
Fung, on the other hand, made a career out of playing bad guys. He appears in such films as Police Story, It Man two and two thousand and four is Kung Fu Hustle in a bit part. He's definitely the actor that we're looking at in most of the scenes where where you see the face of the Devil Disciple leader, he's the.
One who's like leading the Devil Disciple church service basically. Yeah, you know, like the call and response sections where he is like, what do we do to nice people kill? What do we do to people who help others kill?
Yeah, I mean it's a funny character too. Yeah, but he gets to bust out some really cool like nightmare lightning effects that are a whole lot of fun. Speaking of effects, yeah, this is a big effects movie. It's just wall to wall after a while, and it certainly involved multiple Hong Kong effects talents, but the film notably
again makes use of Western effects specialists. Key here are Robert Blallack, who lived nineteen forty eight through twenty twenty two, Peter Kuran, who's interviewed on the disc and then Chris Cassidy. All three of these individuals I believe worked on the original Star Wars and that's kind of like one of the main ends here, Like they were individuals who at the time we had been involved in and the biggest
groundbreaking special effects movies that Hollywood was producing. Piles additional credits include the likes of Altered States and Wolfin Kuran also had worked again on Star Wars, but also just tons of famous practical effects movies such as Conan the Barbarian, at least the first two RoboCop films, Grimlins, Critters two, John Carpenter's The Thing, and much more. Cassidy worked on the first two Star Wars movies, Tron Freaked, Highlander two again,
just to name a few selections. And so some of these I think most of them were more like consultants from Afar, but at least one of them was on set. I think maybe Chriscasity was on set if I remember correctly. So it was a matter of consulting, but also someone being there to practically show the Hong Kong team how to do some of these effects and to help them pull it off. For this movie.
This movie is truly a feast for the eyes. And I think everything about it looks wonderful, not just the special effects of the you know, animating the sorcery and having people like walk on ceilings and fly around and stuff that stuff. I do love the way that looks, but everything looks great. I love the look of the sets, both like the real location shots and the sets that use like models and interior sets and set design there of the temples and the palaces and all of that.
It's wonderful stuff. I love the costuming, especially like the costuming of the armies, and the way that like the different colorful uniforms of the armies when they're clashing, really enlivens what otherwise might be some of the duller action scenes. It's just it's a great movie to look at in every possible way.
Oh yeah, absolutely. And the effects are I don't know if this makes any sense, but so sometimes great effects are you utilized very well to enhance a scene that otherwise makes sense without those effects. But so many of the effects sequences in this film are just like reality is transformed. You know, It's like you're just completely in the matrix at any given moment, certainly for what felt like two thirds of the picture, but in a way that feels practical and grounded and you completely buy.
Into yes, totally.
Now.
One thing we haven't talked about yet that people do bring up about this movie is the idea of Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain being a major influence on Big Trouble in Little China by John Carpenter.
Yeah, yeah, and I think you know, once you've seen both films, you see this connection. You can see that the heightened martial arts sorcery that you see in Big Trouble in Little China does feel inspired by this film. You know, Like this, like Big Trouble Little China is like a cocktail. It combines several different different elements, and one of those elements is like the hard stuff from this picture.
It's kind of Zoo Warriors meets Buckero Bonzai.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in those extras on the Shout Factory disc Peter Karan mentions this a little bit. They ask him, and it does seem like Carpenter and a company were inspired by the visionary effects and use of traditional Hong Kong stunts in this film, and it seems like they wanted to channel that energy and Big Trouble in Little China, and this may have included attempts to recruit some of the same stuntmen, according to Koran, or at least stunt men with expertise and some of the
traditional Hong Kong fight techniques, like he mentioned specifically some of the wire stuff. I don't think that that was necessarily an art form that people in the West were able to imitate at that point, But I don't know to what extent they fully pulled that off, because you look at the credits and La born James Lou was the fight choreographer and Big Trouble for instance, and I think a lot of those guys that were stunt actors,
you know, had sort of like La connections. But yeah, you still you do see the possible influence of this film on Big Troubles, high magic and martial arts, though to my eyes, not in a way that feels at all like a rip off or anything. It's it's kind of it's a lot like the way Hawk himself took Hollywood's Hollywood effect techniques and made them his own for this film, while John Carpenter and his crew took the flavor of this kind of high wusha action and used it in telling their own story.
Yeah.
I mean the way that you can see a movie and you're not going to copy the movie, but it just sort of fills you with a kind of energy and you want to take that energy and make your own version. And so I think a lot of filmmakers, you know, I don't know, they saw Star Wars and it filled them with that kind of energy and they wanted to go make their own thing. And I can totally see Zoo Warriors having that same kind of effect on people. It has just such an infectious, exuberant sense
of joy in storytelling and filmmaking. It's hard to imagine being a director in the eighties and seeing a movie like this and not just feeling like pumped up to go make your own you know, to take that feeling and go make something yourself.
Yeah, all right, And one more note. I just mentioned really quickly here that the music is credited to Kwan Signal, who lived nineteen forty four through twenty eleven, Asia television musical director with only a handful of credits. But I like the music in this film. There's one pitty that plays over and over again on the Blu Ray menu that I kept coming back to, and it's it's nice and sweeping and epic.
Oh yeah, I really like the music in it too. All throughout I did notice there's one part in it that either just is or sounds like Night on Bald Mountain. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yes, yeah, now that you mention it, I do remember that.
I don't know if that was just a incorporation of Night on Bald Mountain into the score, or if it was something that was just kind of inspired by and similar to it, and pay close enough attention, but it brings that kind of feeling of just like the demons are gathering on the mountaintop and looking down on the civilization and they are ready to strike.
Now, before we dive here into the story, I also want to mention really quickly, they didn't include like all of the questions that went along with the responses, But Peter Karan on the interview segments on the Shop Factory disc stresses three or four times that this movie does have a story and points out that you might not catch it on your first viewing of the film, but
it's there and it's really good. He had a lot of great things to say about the production, but I did find it funny that he stressed a few different times that there is a story. There's a story here, It's not just wall to wall eye melting special effects.
This is a good disclaimer to insert at the beginning of the place where we would normally do a full plot breakdown. So if you've seen this movie, you will understand trying to do a detailed plot recap may indeed drive a person mad. Current is right. It's not because the movie doesn't have a story. It does. It's just that the movie is so thick with NonStop plot developments and strange things that you would want to make note of. If you were making notes normally on the plot of
a movie, it's really almost impossible to keep up. So I was watching it initially trying to make pretty detailed notes. At a certain point I just started getting overwhelmed. I had to step back. And so part of what makes this movie so pleasing is the same thing that makes it difficult to recap, that sort of relentless, enthusiastic drive of the story toward new characters, strange new details and events.
So that is absolutely not a criticism of it. That is one of the things that's most wonderful about the film. But I think what this means is my notes about the plot are going to have to be more detailed early on, and at a certain point we're gonna have to step back a bit and give a more zoomed out summary and maybe just focus on some individual things after that point that we want to talk about. But
I do want to set the scene in detail. So the first of all, after the beautiful Golden Harvest production pre roll, which you know, it feels so good to see,
we get an opening voice over narration. It plays as the camera zooms through a model landscape of jagged, narrow mountain peaks and bottomless canyons with lonely scrubby trees clinging to the rocks, and everything is just wrapped in a cloak of fog, and the narrator says, Mount Chu was the collective name for the mountain chain in ancient Shoe in western China. It is also the Sichuan of today. Mount Hue was of great military and strategic importance in
ancient China. As such, it was constantly in a state of war, regardless of rain and dynasty. But in Chinese legends and folklore. Mount Shoe was also a place of mystique, for it harbored numerously exotic peaks and old temples from which many legends were born. This was where our story began. Then we see a sky boiling with columns of milky gray smoke, and we get some hanzi flying out of the smoke. It's sort of like these characters flying out of the smoke like space ships, and the characters are
Shoe and Mountain. And then there's the full title Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain. Wonderfully dramatic credits, and again they're set to this orchestral music that sounds like night on bald Mountain, so it's it's like, got your your adrenaline is pumping. Post credits, we see a sunrise half obscured by local clouds over the sea scape of breaking waves, and the narration goes on. It says it was in the fifth century, China has been suffering from decades of
civil wars and unrest. And then we see soldiers mounted on horseback galloping in formation across dunes of sand at the beach, and further out on the shore there are foot soldiers who are assembled in rows with pole arms and banners flapping in the wind, and an officer on horseback. One of the two commanders of the army gathered on the beach says, get me the scout immediately, so we get a big entrance for the scout. And the scout is one of our heroes, Deeming Chi, and we see
him coming in doing horseback riding tricks. I'm not sure why he's doing them, but they're great. So he's like doing wirefu essentially, as he is just like coming to the generals to make a report, and he does a leaping somersault off of his horse to address the commanders.
Now, this actor is Val Jung, who is born in nineteen fifty seven, and his other film include The Prodigal Sun from eighty one, Shanghai Nun from two thousand. I think it just has a small part in that Righting Wrongs from eighty six, and Project A from nineteen eighty three.
It's an ensemble story in the end, but he is I think the closest thing to a single protagonist the story has. He's our good hearted youngster who is constantly exhorting the distractable other characters to like, shape up and try to do something good, to make a difference in the world.
Yeah, and we can relate to him. You know, this is not a guy who knows a bunch of crazy magic, or at least not yet.
He can do some writing tricks though, Yes. So the scout, the two commanders, and the troops on the beach, they all have blue uniforms and blue flags, so these are representatives of the Blue Army. They make it pretty easy to follow the politics here because each army is color coded. There are at least two other forces we learn about here, the Red Army and not that Red Army, just a fifth century army with red un and also the Yellow Army.
So when deeming Chi arrives before the officers, they demand to know what he has learned of the position of the Yellow Army, and he says they have been routed in battle, and the surviving remnants of the Yellow troops are hiding down at Sanzan Creek. And so the left commander of the Blue Army says, that's wonderful, we will
attack by water and finish them off. But the scout says, well, they're already wounded and disorganized and if the Blue army attacks Sanzan Creek, the civilians living around the creek will be harmed. And then the commander on the right says, then we will go after them on land. The left commander says, the land route meanders and is too dangerous. Deeming Chi, lead the attack by water. The right commander says, no, the waters take too long and will give the enemy
an opportunity to retreat. Lead the attack by land. So the left commander and the right commander argue back and forth, and instead of coming to an agreement between themselves, they each give deeming Chi contradictory orders and threaten to kill
him if he does not obey. Uh. I didn't realize upon first viewing, but this is really going to be in keeping with one of the themes that that carries throughout the movie is the sort of like, uh, the the fractiousness and bickering that prevents useful things from happening.
Yeah, and it's it's ultimately it's a great way to start the film because again we have the the absurdity of these these brightly colored armies. Like if you haven't seen it, you might be wondering how yellow, how red? I just power rangers. Yeah, think of that, like, that's that's it's it's a ridiculous level of colored coordination here.
And then you know, to be put in this absurd scenario, Yeah, I mean the real world is is goofy and frustrating and uh and it's in a way we see more sense in the world of magical fantasy.
That's right. So he first tries to say that he will follow both orders. They say this is insubordination and he must die. Then he says he will follow neither order. They also say this is this is even worse in subordination, and they order their troops to kill him, and a fight breaks out. So all of the soldiers are trying to kill Deeming Chi and it leads to this thrilling chase scene. He manages to fight off a bunch of armed infantry with spears, then he leaps over the cavalry
to escape on horseback. Eventually, he jumps from his horse and hides in the tall grass until he so he like crawls away through the grass and he comes across a fishing boat piloted by a whimsical old man, and here he meets the Red Army soldier aka Chubby played by Samo Hung, and they start to fight for control of the boat. So like he orders the old man
to you know, take him away to safety. But this Red Army soldier, who I think is also a deserter from his army, he's got a he's got a sword at the boat pilot's back and and he's like, no, this.
Is my boat.
Go find your own boat. So they they've initial start fighting.
They know.
One of them says, your army killed four generations of my ancestors, and the other one says, well, your army killed five generations of mine. And they attack and attack and attack until the Yellow Army shows up and starts firing arrows at both of them, and they have to escape by diving into the water.
It's an hilarious sequence though, but also deceptive because at this point in the film, you're like, I can follow this. This is going to be sensible, it's nice, it's color coded. Nothing could possibly confuse me. That feeling will not last.
Right, So later, after swimming away to escape, we catch up with the Red Army soldier and Deeming Chi and they're camping together on a rocky shore. They're still wary of one another, and at one moment, Red Army soldier raises his sword, but it is only to tell Deeming Chi that he should not worry because he's tired of fighting. He wipes his sword on the bottom of his boot
and leaves camp on his own. Only Deeming Chi notices that Samo Hung has left his water goard behind, so Deeming Chi picks it up and runs after him to give it back to him, But Samo Hung gets spooked and thinks Steaming Chi is coming to kill him, and he's like, I don't want to fight, and he runs. He tries to flee until he finally realizes what has happened, and they sort of have a laugh over it, and Deeming Chi tells him, you are so big but such a timid cat, and the Red Army soldier says, hey,
we just met. I didn't know if you're a good guy or a bad guy. This theme will come back also, but they they sort of become fast friends, like they discover that they grew up in neighboring villages and they lament that they've been sucked into these wars where neighbors are forced to kill each other for no discernible reason. But while they're in the middle of bonding like this.
Suddenly they're caught in the middle of a battlefield. The Green Army and the Orange Army I think, appear over the hillsides to fight one another, and they're both trying to fight Deeming Chi and Sam Mahan.
Yeah, more combat. Hilarity ensues and we get even though we're gonna have like blistering magical martial arts later on in the picture, the martial arts sequences here are still just amazing and so fast and well executed, a real joy to watch.
And really funny. Like they're trying to they're trying to pretend to fight one another to blend in, but Sam w Hung is like, hey, don't fight so hard, take it easy.
And then they played dead for a little bet. But then there are other enemy soldiers that are trying to do the same thing, and they're like, hey, what you guys are playing dead too, And then they all jump up and fight each other some more.
Yeah. Uh, So they end up escaping once again, pursued by multiple armies. They get backed up against a cliff and they've got this great bond of friendship. Now. Uh, Deeming Chi is accidentally pushed off the cliff, but survives by clinging devines on the way down, and the Red Army soldier is caught as Samahung gets a sword to his neck, and we don't know what happens to him next. So now on his own once again, deeming Chi, he's
down on the beach below. He wanders around and stumbles into a hidden cave just as a storm is breaking out. And the cave has a temple inside. It's got these old statues and it seems disused, may be forgotten for many many years. And he makes camp inside the temple, but he's not alone. There is murmuring coming from these giant vessels in the temple, and in the darkness there are lids that pop off to reveal some kind of entity.
I've seen these described on the internet as vampires. I don't know what the queue that they are vampires is, but they are. They're great. There's some kind of monster that's like a flying martial arts ghost Jahua with crystal blue eyes.
Yeah, I got a send. I thought of them as kind of like shadow ghosts, you know, some sort of a shade.
I mentioned Jahwa because they've got they're wearing these like robes with hoods, but their faces are almost kind of mummy like they're they're sort of covered in uh in strips of fabric like they're wrapped or something. And they yeah, they have these glowing crystal blue eyes the hoods on, and they fly, fly around and attack with magic. They can like send fines out to attack de Minchi and stuff. And just when dimon Chi thinks he is done for
suddenly he has saved. A blazing figure dressed in white robes enters the fracas and beats up the ghosts. And this new figure seems to have all kinds of powers. So he can fly, he can he can act at super speed, He has telekinesis. He can order his swords to fly out of their scabbards on his back and zoom through the air at a target by shouting unsheath.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is the point in the film where the action escalates, but like one thousandfold, because suddenly we have like magical effects on both sides of any given battle.
So this new figure manages to sort of deactivate all of the ghosts or the vampires whatever they are. The flying Jawas and deeming Chi chases after the hero who saved him, and we learned that this is Master ding Yan, a man dressed in white robes. He's wearing the black hat I think of a scholar, like he's supposed to be dressed as a scholar. He's got the two swords on his back, so he's like a wandering master swordsman, scholar. And Deeming Chi kneels at the feet of the master
and says, my savior, please don't go so soon. He explains, He's like, surely you must know that the world is plagued with war and destruction. With your great martial arts and abilities, you can put a stop to all this mayhem. So Deeming Chi is like, finally, it's you know, the world is all messed up. It doesn't make sense. But here's a guy, here's a hero who does good, and he has the power to fix it. So you can fix it. Will you fix it? He says. Wars and
unrest are perpetual through the history of man. Quote, but the troubles were all caused by men who kill each other and have no respect for human lives whatsoever. There's nothing we can change. You should go into seclusion in the mountains while you can still tell right from wrong. So ding Yan firmly refuses as the call. He's like, there's nothing we can do to make the world better. It's not going to change. Just give up, go try to hide and survive. But deeming Chi is not convinced.
He says to the Master, please do not give up. If everyone can give their best, peace will come. And by the way, while there's talking here, like wind is howling around them, there's lightning striking in the distance, and there still seems to be like an aura of evil man in the air. It's not like everything is fine now. And so Dingyan says, oh, so you're lecturing me now, I'm afraid this is just not your time. If you do not leave now, you will become one of them,
referring to the Jahwua things. And now they look like they're sort of tangled up in vines now, and they look very scarecrow like, just these ghastly bodies wrapped up in vines like insects and a spider's web. And the Master disappears, but deeming Chi he keeps holding out hope.
He runs around looking for him and shouting hero and he chases out onto this beautifully gloomy landscape with a pathway leading into a shallow canyon between masses of what looked like jagged volcanic rocks, and everything is covered in green moss. The sky is overcast. It sort of reminds me of some places in Iceland. It's just like a very beautiful location. And we can hear deeming Chi's inner monologue in which he says, all legendary heroes come and
go in mysterior ways. He's testing me. Now, fine, I'll wait for him here. So deeming Chi sits on a rock and waits, and we see the moon rise behind the clouds in the gray sky, but at night, signs of evil return. There are red lights flashing through the air, sort of like fiery spirits on the breeze, and Deeming Chi stumbles into a cavern where the floor is littered with human skulls, and he does, indeed here run into the wandering hero once again. So Dingyan says he believes
it is foolish that dieming Chi waited for him. He says, if you stay around here, hell is waiting for you. And deeming Chi asks if the skulls on the floor mean this place was once a battlefield, But Master ding Yan says no, all the skulls here bear the sign of the Evil Disciples. So he explains that these are the bones of virgins sacrificed so that the Evil Disciples could develop their magic. And at first deeming Chi expresses relief that he himself is a virgin, but Master Dingyan says, no,
it doesn't matter if you are or not. That evil Disciples will kill you either way. So dieming Chi says at this point, he's like, I want to be your student, Dingyan. You know, let me you be my master, teach me to have powers like you. And Dingyan tries to refuse this. He says he works alone, he doesn't take students, but the young scout is very persistent and they argue until
they are suddenly attacked by blood crows. These are red and white sort of fiery birds that fly out fly out of the sky and attack them, and deeming Chi tries to fight them off with his sword, but they melt his sword.
Yeah, these are like really, I thought of them as like kind of laser birds.
So Dingyan does come back once again. He reappears to fight the blood crows, but suddenly, while they're in the middle of fighting, these monsters, the blood Crows are shattered in mid air by what looks like a flying circular saw blade. Huh, well, the circular blade was thrown by a new character whom we see standing nearby on a rocky promontory framed by a gigantic moon in the background. And here we are about to meet a couple of other major characters that will be with us for the
rest of the movie. A powerful Buddhist monk from Kunlun named SiO Yu played by Damian Lao and his young apprentice Yijin played by Mang Hoi. Their introduction is extremely cool. They also possess powers of airborne sorcery and where what they're wearing what looked like hats made out of pumpkin hemispheres, like if you cut a pumpkin in half, horizontally hollowed it out, and put it on your head. I love these hats.
Yeah, yeah, they got some great fashion going on here, and yeah, all sorts of crazy additional magical martial arts powers are at into the right.
So when we first see them flying the saw blade frisbees they throw seem to like lock on the tops of their pumpkin hats to form a thrust engine that works like helicopter blades, except it's like this solid sharp edge disc. This connects, by the way, one of the many examples of magic that feels like technology in this movie. Yeah, but when deeming Chi first sees these guys, he's like,
he doesn't know that they're friends yet. He's like, oh, no, devils, but Dingyan says, no, no, they are the good guys. So the two monks they can also Oh man, another thing they do I'd forgotten about until I was looking at this the second time. They can sort of lock onto one another and form a sort of like two monk mech thing, and they glide across the ground like a vehicle with treads, but it's the monk sort of riding the apprentice as he glides.
Yeah, now, Rob, maybe.
You can help me with if you know any more about the story that I caught. It seems ding Yan and the monk shall you know one another? Somehow? I think they say they haven't met in ten years, but the monk has been summoned here by someone they both know. This would be Cheng Mai or Long Brows, to help face a great evil. Did you understand that both he and ding Yen were summoned here for the same purpose by longbrows.
That was That was the sense I got of it. Yeah, okay, they were both summoned here to deal with this problem. But you know it's like they're different, they represent different pursuits, so they they rub each other the wrong way.
That's right. So exactly, ding Yan says, hey, we should join forces. But z how you scoffs at this? He says, monks are merciful and liberate people, yet the Blood Devil has become rampant. And the monk says he's been searching
for disciples of the Blood Devil for three years. They finally tracked them here and says, you go your way, I'll go mine, and then they both In fact, there are many times in this movie where characters say things in unison at each other, and this case is one of those where the scholar and the monk yelled at each other stay out of my affairs. And again this touches on this theme of failure to unify or focus in the face of a problem, just endless, pointless fractiousness and digression.
Yeah, it's almost like Sussian at times. You know, it's there's this energy of absurdity throughout the entire film.
I love it.
I was actually wondering if. I don't know for sure, but this felt like something bigger than just these two characters in the movie. I was wondering if this might be a version of some kind of conflict between cultural archetypes as understood in Chinese storytelling. Closest analogy I could come up with was like jocks versus nerves words, but
this would be like the scholar versus the monk. It seems like it's not just that these two characters dislike one another and bicker, but they sort of have a framing of one another as the type of character they are. Like the monk I think calls the swordsman bookworm, and you know the monk is the impetuous man. I don't know if you know anything about that. Rob If like scholar versus monk is a thing.
Well, it might be something particular to the novel that I'm not familiar with. But I mean, also, in general, I guess you're dealing with essentially a secular versus spiritual kind of a rivalry here. And then also, I mean, there are plenty of there are different periods in Chinese history where you might see the persecution of say, Buddhist monks,
you might see the persecution of scholars. It just depends on what particular time and place you're looking at, So it might be just something more general, like, you know, one is more secular and one is more spiritual, but they both can do magical things.
Yes, they have kind of similar powers. And despite their bickering, all four of them decide to go into the nearby temple to investigate the source of the wicked magic that lingers on the mountain side. And as they enter, Deeming Cheek, it's more chances to marvel at the powers of his new I don't know allies, or some uncooperative allies. They can not only fly, but they can run on the ceiling as if it were the floor. That's cool. And they continue bickering once they get into the temple. But
uh oh, here comes some magic. A few things to mention. First of all, I love this temple set. There is like a giant statue of a figure. I don't know if this is understood to be a specific person. It's not a Buddha, it's some kind of I don't know, Emperor looking sort of figure.
Yeah, they don't really establish who this is, you know, it could have been a mythical emperor, it could be some of the Chinese immortal of note, but it is very impressive.
And then the Evil Disciples pop out. They say that, oh I love them. They come out with these flags, kind of like the soldiers all have their flags. This is like a new faction almost, but they're not colorful like the soldiers. These are in a very cold black and white uniform and they have black and white flags, and they say the Devil's Protector welcomes you. But then they also say who are you? How dare you come here? And looking on from the rafters, deemon Chi asks Yijien,
the apprentice of the monk. He says who are they? And Yijen says they're the bad guys. Didn't you know that?
Yeah? And oh yeah, I just I love their style. Like these guys are just absolute whosha evil. You know. They have some sort of trisha la or trident emblem that is on their all their foreheads and on their iconography, the same emblem that's carved into the the skulls of the dead virgins, and like that, the leader of the Devil crew here is just fabulous and he has he has like some sort of nightmare lightning effects that he's using against his adversaries. H so evil, so glorious.
Yeah, So Dingyan explains that they're here to punish the Devil and the leader of the Evil Disciples. This is the part where he does that like call and response chant where he's like, we kill those who punish the Devil, and then all of the disciples yell kill kill. He says, we kill those who are righteous, kill, we kill those who liberate lives, kill, and they do that with a few other things. And then d ming Gi wonders who do they not kill? And he explains the blood demon
rep says, those who obey, we spare. But the monk says, you know, no sense talking to these guys. They're not going to be talked out of being Evil Disciples. A fight is inevitable, and who boy is it ever? So begin now one of the wildest battle scenes I've ever seen. So the battle with the Evil Disciples is absolutely nuts. There is monk telekinesis of giant bells hanging in the temple, like flinging them with blue waves of force. Projection magic.
There's a lot more walking on the ceiling, barfing jets of flame. There are some parts of this fight that have themes of pinball with the demons, like bouncing repeatedly as if against bumpers and a pinball machine. They use the flying circular saws some more. They also use the flying circular saws as a vehicle, like as a surfboard for deemon Chi to ride on. There's lightning coming out of everything. There's one part where the monk wields a giant flaming pillar as a club, and this is like
a you know, not like club size. It's a pillar that would be way too big for a person to actually hold. There's fire versus water magic. There's demon lightning backpacks blasting against a flying sin and sword that ding Yan sends out. It's just everything, it's it's it's nuts.
Yeah, And we're not even what We're not even halfway through the film at this point, like when we're already just having fight sequences just so blistering that they would be the climax of many another film, right.
So at the end, it seems our heroes must retreat. They're sort of driven out of the temple, deeming Chi is apologizing for it. I think he's I don't fully recall exactly what the issue was, but it seems like it's sort of his fault that they have to escape the temple like he was in danger. And afterwards the bickering starts up once again. The Ding Yan and see how You. They're arguing about whose fault it was, and see how You says seeing you is never a blessing.
Maybe we never meet again. And they say that they sort of hate each other. They're going to go separate ways. And despite the fact that the masters here hate each other, the two young pupils seem to bond a bit, like Yi Jen says to deeming Chi, take care soldier boys, see around. You know he seems nice.
Yeah yeah, I mean in a way, they're like two siblings with bickering parents here.
Yeah. So they go their separate ways, and then also Master ding tries to leave deeming Chi behind once again, so he's alone on this cursed mountain, and deeming Chi's wandering around calling out to his master in the wind, saying, what's the use of having all this power if you won't use it to protect people? You're a coward no wonder Evil is rampant, and Dee says that he sort of resolves. He says he'll fight the evil on his
own if he has to. Then suddenly all three of the flying Warriors return to the side of Deeming Chi at once. At first, he seems kind of happy, like, oh, did they come back? A We're gonna work together to fight evil now, But it seems they were maybe driven back because he and the rocks started erupting with river of blood, and then the blood Geysers all begin to intertwine and weave into a giant bodily form. So that's
probably not good. And I love the design of the monster that we see birthed here, because you might expect it's going to be a giant towering, you know, blood fountain type of monster, but instead, all of the stuff that the blood Geysers spit out sort of comes together
to form fabric. It becomes a loose sail or sheet floating on the wind, and then the sheet coalesces around an invisible form, kind of like a ghost covered in you know, classic ghost costume, a body covered in a sheet but bathed in red light, and it is so cursed and looks so wrong, and I love it.
Yeah, this is not what I was expecting either, but it's tremendous. I mean, on one level, this is another effect that it does make me think about the fact that we're watching these movies in higher quality than perhaps was intended. There are some moments earlier in the film where we you know, we see the wires a little bit more than I'm assuming you would have been able to see on the screen, so I feel like we also have to keep that kind of thing in mind.
But it's just that this creature just looks bonkers.
You know.
It is like it's blood, but it of course is clearly fabric, but it's blood made fabric. It just it exists in its own reality.
I love it. I love this monster. Also, it commandeers all of their weapons, so it's like biting master ding sword and the monkst circular blades. It's got those in its hands, and then those things catch on fire and melt, and there's more sorcery fighting. Like our allies try to use magic weapons against the ghost, but it sort of
like absorbs the weapons and takes control of them. They are clearly outmatched, and they make a tactical retreat, and somehow in this fight, the monk seems to have been injured, not just physically but magically. An enchanted illness now grips him and ding Yan this is the where he does the I transfer energy into you scene. This happens several times in the movie where he has to save somebody who's been sort of grazed by evil magic by transferring energy into them.
Yeah, this is this is the less extreme version, right, this is the non Kronenberg this sequence in which he transfers energy.
But the monk doesn't want energy transferred into him, so he's like. The monk is like, okay, I've got the illness now, and he tries to like bash his own head into rocks. I guess to destroy himself to stop the evil from taking hold. But ding Yen is like, no, I will save you, and he's like gripping him and
he's sending magic into his body. And then Yijen is being given contradictory orders, just like deeming Chi was by his commanders early on, Like ding Yen is saying like go away, you know, stand guard while I save him, and the monk is saying like stop him right now. So yeah, so that's happening. So the young pupils are sent out to guard the mountain pass while ding Yan saves the monk's life. Deeming Chi here is somehow he ends up on his own and he is confronted by
the blood demon once again. He tries to stand up to it for a moment, but then he gets afrayed. He runs away in terror, and then he this is so weird. He starts throwing rocks at the monster, but somehow one of these rocks as he throws it, transforms into a human body, and it's the body of a wizard dressed in white robes. And the wizard temporarily drives off the monster. And then Deeming Chi is like, what's
going on? And he goes up to a hole in a rock on the cliff face of the mountain, and then white hairs shoot out of the hole and graft onto his eyebrows and become part of his eyebrows, and he's like, what's going on? And then the rock that has these like white hair strands coming out of it says, I'm Chang Mee, the founder of the a May School, and some like d somehow pulls him out of the rock. This is cheg me long brows, our sagacious old wizard played by sam O Hung. He's in a white robe
with a hood. He's got a long mustache and beard, long gray white eyebrows, and the eyebrows are like prehensile, They're like tentacles. They can grab hold of things, and they're they're grafting on to Deeming Chi's face. And meanwhile, this is happening. D is like, are you a good guy? And he says, of course, bad guys don't wear white like this.
I love it. The theme just carries on through the whole film.
So what is going on with his beard being stuck on Deeming Chi. I don't know.
In general, though, I think, you know, like the basic idea is that he's old and wise, and it's kind of like the idea of like some of these mythical Chinese immortals that we've discussed in the show before, where some of the attributes of old age become transformative and like take on the nature of superpower. So like, yeah, old guys their eyebrows grow out, become bushy and long, and so for a powerful wizard like this, of course
that is an advantage. Of course, that is in itself a power that he's able to exploit to fight evil.
So the blood demon appears again in the form of Saou the monk, and then says, the so called righteous people are vulnerable to my attack. I have wounded this monk. The venom will reach his heart in ten days, then I will possess him. You can't defeat the devil. And he looks very evil with like you know, pink light behind him, But long browse is crafty. He intervenes, and he launches his eyebrow tentacles out at the demon and
ensnares the demon. And we see it like the demon's trying to fly away, and it's in the form of this like glowing orange coal up in the sky, but the eyebrows have it. The eyebrows grab it and pull it down. And then the glowing red coal of the demon, which the wizard says is its soul a symbols a body made of virgin skulls around itself, becoming a kind of skull asteroid floating in the air, tethered by Chegmei's eyebrows.
Yeah, and this is easily point in the picture where you might wonder if you just lost your mind entirely, but no, you're like, we're only ten minutes. Unto the film, at this point.
We're like thirty minutes. But so eventually the Blood Demon comes down, takes root as this formation that looks kind of like a vertical reef made of skulls, with a little windows that show it glowing pink inside, and then eventually hundreds of horns come and stick out of the little windows, and Chang May manages to subdue this form of the Blood Demon with a common of his eyebrows and a magical sky mirror, but the Wizard says that
even the sky mirror cannot destroy it. And here, this far into the movie, I think we finally sort of get our main quest of the story assigned. Yes, so Longbrowse says that he will be able to contain the demon for exactly forty nine days, but after that, when the Big Dipper begins to shift, the sky mirror will lose its power, and at that point it will be up to Deeming Chi to take over, and d says me.
The Wizard says, the young inherit the earth, but Cheng Me says, hey, don't worry, there are magical weapons you can use to accomplish this. There are two sacred swords of a May. One is purple and one is green. E Chi took them eighteen years ago, took them to practice in solitude on a mountaintop. They can destroy the Blood Devil once and for all. Lee has them up
on Blade Peak. D You've got to go there and get the swords at once, and Cheng Mei finally says, if this aggression is complete, the Blood Devil will be unstoppable.
Bam, we have our core quest here. What are we trying to do? We got to get the two swords so we can defeat this blood dimon threat that is held temporarily and checked by a wizard's eyebrows.
That's right in the sky Mer in the sky Marr, Yes, yes, So I think this is the point where maybe it's better to zoom out and discuss the rest of the plot in broader strokes, because again, it would take it would be impossible to try to keep up this level of detail. So one major diversion that happens after this sort of quest has been assigned, And I guess the first thing that happens after this is the journey to the Heavenly Fortress to cure the curse of the blood devil,
which actually happens multiple times. Yeah, but you recalled that the monk is cursed like his skin turned silver, and if the venom reaches his heart in ten days, he will die. First thing he tries to do, the monk tries to do his transfer control of his brotherhood to his apprentice Yesen, and then kill himself by ramming his head into a rock, but his allies prevent him from doing this, so eventually he is taken to the Heavenly
Fortress to be cured by the magical countess there. Oh before we get that, should we talk about the fish scene with Yugen. Oh yeah, super goofy but also genuinely funny.
Oh yeah, because the monks here are vegetarians, and there are several jokes made at their expense about this, especially with their younger monk. Here. It is were we're to learn that, yes, he was a vegetarian, but he desperately wants to eat fish meat, as anyone who looks at a live fish will do.
Apparently he really wants fish deeming Gee catches a fish, grills it, he's eating it, and and Yjen is looking at it, and he's like, want to bite and I think he's in the middle of maybe he's about to eat some when they get attacked by a by a figure that looks like Ding Yan, but it's not him. It's like the Blood Devil in disguise. The Blood Devil keeps attacking them while they're on the road in disguise, taking on the form of others. Here it's Master Ding.
After that it attacks them in the form of this intimidating witch dressed all in red and her head comes off and they're They're like, what's going on there? So eventually they they fight off the Blood Devil in this attack. But then Master Ding comes up to Yzen and he's like, you know, why is your robe smoking? And it's because he has the grilled fish hidden in there and he
has clearly eaten much of its flesh. Yeah, but he tries to say, I was going to set it free and be merciful, but it's like a fully fully eaten dead fish.
Yeah, like cartoon level of like the fish bones and the fish hit. It's great.
Later there are scenes at the Heavenly Fortress. I want to say, all of the sets in this movie are awesome. But these are particularly gorgeous.
Oh yeah, this, this whole this main that the Heavenly Fortress is just amazing to behold, Like the statues that are, you know, important set pieces in some of the fights that ensue tremendous. Has these three elephants that end up being moved around a lot.
It's great in like a romantic fight scene between ding Yen and the Countess. They're like riding these elephants around like bumper cars.
Yeah.
Yeah, the romantic fight scene is a key trope I think in a lot of these Hong Kong action films.
So anyway, Heavenly Fortress is controlled by a mystical countess who is protected by a large retinue of female bodyguards. And the servants here at the castle tell our heroes that they cannot help the monk. Only the Countess can heal him, but she cannot be disturbed in her seclusion. She will only come out to heal heal the monk if it is her destiny or if it is his destiny.
I guess it would be both of their destinies. And there's some kind of thing I didn't fully understand where there's like a sacred flame in a brazier and if the like the flame, if it continues burning. This has something to do with the timing of when the countess will come out, and Dingyan tries to keep the thing burning. It's like an ice flame. Dingyen says, even if it
SAPs my energy, I will keep it burning. But the head of the servant says, everything is governed by destiny until the doors behind which the Countess is hiding open, and then we get some more magical tentacles. Instead of eyebrow tentacles, this time it's scarf tentacles. Like, so the countess has a scarf that flies out, and they like ensnares people with magic.
Yeah, well there's a lot of flying scarfs in this sequence.
The countess is extremely cool. So Yizhen and deeming Chi are first at first terrified because they see her and they're like, hey, that's the witch that attacked us at the river. But of course we know it was not her, it was the blood devil stealing her form. But still the young guys they don't know any better. They're like, she's a witch and a fight breaks out.
Uh.
There a bunch of weird stuff happens here. At one point the Countess gives ding Yen bubble wrap hands.
It does kind of look like bubble in this scene.
I think it's ice.
Yeah, yeah, the ice effect looks the practical ice effect does look a lot better in some of the subsequent scenes, but maybe it was a tiny bit lacking at least in this film quality.
At this point, I'm not complaining. I love the bubble rap hands.
Yeah, but but I just want to stress it looks less far less like bubble wrap in subsequent scenes.
Right, because she also ends up freezing. Uh, I think Ey's in and uh like sort of ice skating across the room on him.
Yeah, there's a lot of ice magic that goes on.
Yeah. Also in the fight, this is the part where deeming Chi gets magically wounded, and here ding Yen must once again transfer energy into him to save his life. But in this version, he's like inflating deeming Chi like a balloon with magic, so he makes like parts of his body puff up and poke out of his skin. They've got like a prost you know, They've got his head coming out of a prosthetic body to make this happen, and like parts of his shoulders puff up like balloons.
There's one part where his head puffs up and the effects are great.
Yeah, I mean this is where he gets a little bit body herd. Not in the way that it actually feels horrific, but it is that level of like fleshy surrealism that brings to mind, actually brings to mind to drawing to connect it to one of the films we mentioned earlier, but altered states. It's like that kind of a feeling.
Yeah, And it.
Also seems like a sequence that may have inspired some of the effects in Big Trouble Little China, concerning the one of the three storms, Thunder, whose main superpower is that he when he gets mad, he inflates himself like a balloon.
That's right, I thought of exactly. That's in comparison. Yeah, I wondered if this inspired that.
Yeah, And again, like in Carpenter's film, they go in an entirely different direction with it, but you know, you can still see the connection between these these two effects. What if we did something like this but instead did it this way.
But by transferring some of his power into deming Chi, he makes deming Chi increasingly formidable, Like he gives him sort of like some magic juice. So deming Chee's stock as a great sorcery warrior is rising. And after this, there's a moment where the partially possessed monk tries to attack Dingy in then the Countess like flies out of her room again. She shoots sub zero magic at him, freezes him into an ice block, and then ice skates on him across the room.
Now, when he's attacking, is this the sequence where there keep like pinpoints of light keep springing up across his body.
I don't remember.
Like he's almost as if he's being shot by a magical machine gun off screen. This is a recurring effect in this film that I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but it looks amazing, and like a lot of the magical effects in this film, it also just feels like you are witnessing something that is indeed connected to some sort of very rich and complex magical reality
that you can only barely understand. Like it's the right kind of confusion to have when engaging in some sort of a magical realm, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.
So eventually the Countess does take the monk into the chamber to heal him, and she sort of like pumps magic into him and telekinetically is moving these Buddhist statues around in the room that seems to be part of the healing process, and the Countess eventually cures the monk, but in doing so suffers magical injury and collapses into Dingyan's arms, and they sort of have a moment. She wakes up and sort of slaps him, but it's also
clear that they are destined to be in love. Meanwhile, there's other stuff going on where the two young heroes are like trying to get into the chamber, and there's a bunch of goofy jokes about like their ants keep falling down in front of the female warriors, and then yeah, and then they try to like escape from the female warriors by going through a hole in the hallway that goes out to a magical underwater world, but Yijen can't swim, so they have to come back, and then they end
up being sort of like caught and disciplined by the Countess's bodyguards, including the main bodyguard here I think Moo Song, who is played by Moon Lee, who they use like flying swords to cut off all of Yijen and deeming cheese clothes, and then they're like standing there naked being mocked by the bodyguards, and she's like, I'm going to tell your masters on you, and they're like, Yijen at least does not want the master to know about his
shameful conduct. So I don't know, there's all that kind of silliness going on, but Moosong will eventually sort of join our heroes and become one of the one of the main heroes.
I want to throw in at Moonlee was also in Mister Van Empire. A lot of connective tissue between these two films, it turns out.
And later after this there's that that like romantic fight scene with Dingyan and the Countess where they're like riding the elephants around the elephant statues around in the room. Oh man, I so I'm running out of steam to recap your no.
No, I mean, that's that's how you feel with this film, Like it's like you watch the most amazing now not all even necessarily like a fight scene, concertainly like the romantic fight sequence. You have the choreography element to it, and then you have like the various levels of you know, of wire stunts that are involved and bits of the
set moving around it. Yeah, it's just like you you make it through that sequence and it's just overwhelming, and then it gets even more overwhelming in the next sequence. Like the movie still successfully builds up towards its finale, and by the time you get to the finale, it is just otherworldly, and it's just it's it's a take.
In so so a couple of very broad strokes about things that will happen later. We know eventually our heroes will make the progress towards towards the Blade of Heaven Peak. They'll go up there, they will attain the swords, they will meet the guy who's chained to the Big Ball who we talked about earlier. There's going to be a
conflict with the Blood Demon. There's going to be a lot of our young heroes sort of like ascending and taking over the mantle from the older their older counterparts, and you sort of have you know, the older counterparts
sort of exist on three levels. There's like ding Yan and Deeming Chi, there's the Monk and his apprentice, and there's the Countess and Moussong, and so the younger ones will sort of ascend and take over responsibilities, and there's going to be a lot of like flying through the astral plane to battle the demon in the end, and again just visually amazing fight sequences towards the end. Oh god, what details do you want to zoom in on?
Rob Oh? I want to zoom in on the fact that we finally get the two swords to battle the Big Bad with like ten minutes remaining. This is one of those movies where I'm like, really, you got we got ten minutes to pull this off. These swords better be amazing. Fortunately, the swords are amazing do incredible things, Like there's this whole bit about how to wield the swords.
They have to be of one mind. Like it gets very trippy and weird, not only in visual presentation but also in just like the information that you're having to absorb, and I, you know, at this point in the film, I also realized I should have probably just done the English dub on this so that I'm not reading everything at the same time. As as Karan pointed out in his extra on the Shout disc, it's like, anyway you
watch this movie, you're watching it dubbed. You either watching it dubbed into Mandarin, watching it dubbed into Cantonese, or you're watching it dubbed into English, you know, so you can you could get into an argument over what's the most I vocal track. But I don't know. By the end of it, I was like, I don't know if I need to read anything. There's just so much going on on the screen. I should just be absorbing it that way.
I agree, this is the next time I watch it, I'm going to watch it with the English dub. I watched it with subtitles, and I kind of regret it. I just want to be able to look at what's happening, and I'll listen for the dialogue.
Yeah, but yeah, it's incredible flying swords, Swords that multiply, swords that have to be wielded by individuals whose mind has been forged together via psycho spiritual magical powers. Absolutely crazy.
They have to go back to the Countess and get cured again because ding Yen also gets cursed. Yeah, yeah, so that happens twice. Oh and then we Samuel Hong Kong comes back as the Red Soldier at the end because they like come back down to Earth and there's a battle going on, and it's like, oh, there's my old friend sam O Hung. Yeah, and they reconcile.
Oh and Samo Hung is fighting another warrior. I believe the warrior is in blue. And this is our director. This is Hawk in a nice little director's cameo, locked in mortal combat with Samo Yo Semo Hunk. It's it's it's it's tremendous, but also a complete what is happening kind of ending. It just suddenly stops, almost as if there's just no more energy for this film to continue happening in front of our eyes.
Yeah, it's like, is this the conclusion or is it just like this is as much as you could do. Yeah, and it was a lot.
And in the end, is evil defeated? Is? I guess evils defeated? But the world seems to still be possessed by battle and strife. So I guess we kind of knew from the outset that we weren't going to be able to cure the world of that. But the blood Demon is defeated, so at least we have that going for Yes.
Order of priorities, blood Demon is the worst thing, and then you stop the strife after that.
Yeah, I'm just glad they found time to defeat it again, not until the last ten minutes of the picture did they actually have everything together enough to go after the big bat. Not criticism, that's just how it ended up being structured.
Okay, there is much more to say about this movie, but I cannot do it. I cannot say more.
Yeah, Zoo Warriors. Yeah, this is one that I think invites multiple viewings to fully digest everything that's happening, and men also invites just multiple conversations. You can have a whole conversation about any given sequence in this picture. It's almost too much. It's almost too much movie to talk about in a weird house. I feel like if we come back to Hawk's filmography, maybe we should do We're
Going to Eat You. I feel like that might be okay, you know, venture into the horror comedy, zombie comedy kind of area here.
I am gamed to do any movies by this man.
All Right, we'll go ahead and close it out here, but we'd love to hear from you out there, if you have thoughts on Zoo Warriors, if you have thoughts on other films by the director, other films featuring some of the actors we've talked about here, Because I know some of you out there are probably more experienced with Wisha and Hong Kong cinema than we are, and if that's the case, you know right in share your expertise and your love with us. We would love to hear
from you. As usual, will remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to see a complete list of all the movies we've covered so far and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next, you can go over to letterbox dot com.
That's l E T T E r blxd dot com, which is a great website for chronicling the films that you've watched or want to watch, doing little mini reviews about them and so forth. Fun site, and we have an account there it's weird House. You'll find a list of all the movies we've done and it's a pretty fun interface to play around with.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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, or just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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