Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: A Chinese Ghost Story

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1987 Hong Kong supernatural romance comedy “A Chinese Ghost Story,” featuring screaming skulls, a seductive ghost and an evil tree demon. It’s a cult classic! (originally published 6/17/2022)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick, and oh boy, we got
a good one for you today. This was our episode
on a Chinese ghost Story. This one was a movie
from nineteen eighty seven that has Oh boy, it has romance,
it has adventure, it has monsters, screaming skulls, all that
good stuff. So yeah, I think we will Well, wait

(00:28):
a minute. I didn't say when it aired. This was
from June seventeenth, twenty twenty two. That's when it was.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
And I'm Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
So last year around this time, we watched the highly
influential Chinese supernatural horror comedy Mister Vampire from teen eighty five.
So we're returning once more to the genre with another
important eighties Hong Kong film, this time with romance thrown
in amid all the martial arts, spookiness and comedy. It's

(01:14):
nineteen eighty Seven's a Chinese ghost Story.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
This was a great movie. I was surprised how much
I loved this one, and much like the Lorelized Grasp,
this is another monster romance movie, except in this one
the romance is perhaps not as tragic and doomed as usual.
It basically has a happy ending.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, yeah, it does. When we were looking for a
film to follow up Mister Vampire here, I was looking
at this, and we were also looking at Encounters of
the Spooky Kind, which is another big film in this area.
Ended up moving towards this one after we watched the trailer.
There are a number of amazing elements to it, though

(01:54):
we may get back to Spooky Encounters in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
You know. Much like Mister Vampire, this also has just
a rad butt whipping Taoist priest yep. But unlike Mister Vampire,
the Taoist priest in this movie has a musical number,
and it is a rap about the doo. I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, I thought you were talking about another scene and
exaggerating a bit when you texted me about this, because
you were watching the second half of the movie before
I did. And no, it's as close to a full
on rap as you could possibly expect in an eighties
period piece. Chinese supernatural romance comedy.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
And it's the only musical number in the movie. I mean,
the movie has songs in it that have like lyrics,
but they're not sung by the characters. This is the
only song I think in the entire runtime that a
character on screen sings.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Aside from one little song that our lead character sort
of sings, kind of a whistling in the dark sequence
as he's running through the woods and trying to keep
himself from being completely terrified by all the wolves and
ghosts that are about.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I carry the six Classics in my heart. Yeah, yeah, well, okay,
what's the elevator pitch on this one?

Speaker 1 (03:08):
The elevator pitch pretty simple. Life is tough when you're
an impoverished scholar with impossible dreams, and also when you
have a ghost for a girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Ooh yeah, it's rough. I like how you picked up
on direct lyrics from those songs that the play in
the background that's not from the dowrap, that's from there's
like a recurring sort of lyrical motif about how you
must pursue impossible dreams passionately.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah. Now, one thing we will drive home here is
that the version we watched, which was as of This
recording streaming on Amazon Prime is in Cantonese with subtitles,
and the subtitles were at least good enough, but there
were some obvious errors here and there, as well as

(03:55):
sort of the traditional thing you might run into with subtitles,
where you might question whether this was the most most
elegant translation possible. And also you get into the issue
of okay, what is this comedic line actually translating through?
Most of the time, it doesn't matter. Most of the
comedy in this film shines right through the barrier of language.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Oh yeah, I found it extremely funny. I think the
comedy totally works across culturally. But yeah, so what I
would say is that the subtitles in this movie seemed
wrong in a way that had nothing to do with
translation errors. Like there were a lot of errors that
look like the kind you get from scanning in a
printed document into digital text, where things like lowercase o's

(04:38):
and a's being exchanged for one another. So I remember
one line and the subtitle said evil will never overcame good. Yeah,
I'm curious what process led to this. Could it be?
Could somehow there'd be a scanning of a paper document
to create the English subtitles. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, all right, well let's go ahead and hear at
least some of the trailer. We probably won't play the
entire trailer this time, but it will give you just
a taste of the sonic world.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Of this film, all maimung Yong, do.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
You go? All right? That? Of course, that can only
partially prepare you for the sights and the sequences, because
this is this is a really fun film with a

(05:45):
tremendous flair for the fantastic. Uh, some great martial arts sequences,
some solid slapstick. It has just about everything he could want.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
So I've read that this movie actually has sort of
a cult following among young people in mainland China, even
though it was not released in theaters in mainland China
when it first came out.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, yeah, you sent me a paper about this. I
was looking at that, and yeah, it's interesting one. This
one's one that definitely pops up in Michael Weldon's books
here in the West, the Psychotronic Film Guides, where he
was a big fan of it was like, yes, go
out and see this film. So it sounds like it's
a film that, yeah, maybe didn't get released the way
they might have wanted to release it initially in mainland China,

(06:28):
but subsequently the seeds grew in both the East and
the West, with people coming to appreciate all the things
this film has to offer.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
I think there's a lot about it that's more subtle
than you might expect. Like, this movie is tonally weird,
but in a very nice way. Like It's it walks
this strange boundary between being earnest, almost to the point
of being sappy, but also being very ironic and sort

(06:57):
of making a mockery of authority and tradition at the
same time.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, yeah, it is a nice balance like it There's
there's definitely slapstick, and there are definitely some just outrageous
comedic performances sprinkled here and there. But it's done in
a way where we're yeah, like the parts that are
serious and the parts that are romantic, Uh, they're they're
allowed room to breathe and feel authentic.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, this is this is not a movie that is
sucking up to the powerful. It's like it's full of bosses, policemen, magistrates,
basically anybody in a position of authority in this movie
is viciously mocked.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, so you can see how it would appeal to
the young people. And we'll get into some of the
examples of the of this in a bit, because yeah,
they're they're they're numerous terrible mortal authorities and you know,
I guess the the the supernatural authorities are pretty corrupt
as well. All Right, let's talk about some of the
people involved in this, because it does have some interesting
connections and uh, and it is a it is a

(07:54):
pretty big film. Like a lot of the people involved
in this were names at the time or certainly went
on to become big names in Hong Kong cinema and
or international cinema. So first of all, let's start with
the director. This is Sutong Qing born nineteen fifty three,
also one of the martial arts directors on the film,
Hong Kong action choreographer, actor, film director and producer. Probably

(08:18):
best known for this film, but he also directed such
movies as nineteen eighty six's Which from Nepal, a supernatural
film starring Chao Yon Fat, nineteen ninety three's The Mad
Monks starring Stephen Chow, nineteen ninety eights An Empress and
The Warriors starring Donnie Yin and twenty elevens The Sorcer
and the White Snake starring Jet Lee. So clearly he's

(08:38):
worked with some of the biggest names in Chinese cinema
at different points in their career.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Wait, I thought I saw maybe did Suetung Ching also
do Hero? The Jet Lee movie.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I think he was an action coordinator on that one. Yeah,
because yeah, because there are a number of credits that
he has that are pretty impressive that in which he
didn't direct them, but he was involved in choreographing the
martial arts. Because he's a guy. His father was actually
a Shaw Brothers studio director, and so he kind of
like came up in the system, I'm to understand. So yeah,

(09:10):
he even his just stunt directing credits are pretty pretty interesting.
So you have two thousand and two's Hero, and according
to IMDb, he was an uncredited stunt coordinator on two
thousand and two Spider Man, the Sam Raimi film. I'm
not sure if IMDb is one hundred percent accurate on
that account.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Though you're right. I just double checked. He did not
direct Hero. He did action choreography and also also did
action choreography for House of Flying Daggers.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Oh oh yeah, that's a solid one too, so big
name this guy. He has at least one American film, though,
a film with a notable American presence, and that is
two thousand and three's Belly of the be starring Steven Sagal.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
It is almost it almost makes me want to scream
imagining someone of the talents of Su Tung Ching being
wasted on a vehicle for Steven Sagal.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, you pulled up a clip of this an action
sequence from this film, which I mean, as far as
action sequence goes, is not bad, but.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's not great.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
It's not good.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
But there's the.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Steven Sagall presence is almost too distracting because it's in
this film. I think he's playing uh, the basic, the
basic Stephen Sagall character where he's he's a CIA agent
but he's also a Buddhist master, uh, and he's really
great with martial arts also guns. Like that's that's most
Steven Sagall roles, if not all of them.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
He's ex black ops, I'm retired now.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
And then he's job. There's an IMDb trivia piece about
that film, Belly of the Beast, which says that that
basically they shot everything without Stephen Sagall and then we're
just going to bring him in at the very end
to do his shots, a lot of close up shots
and all that sort of thing, which I guess you
could interpret interpret one of two ways, right, either a

(10:58):
Steven Sagal has a busy schedule or as expensive you're
only going to have him for a short, short amount
of time. I know sometimes it's been said that he
doesn't like actually work very long during a given shoot,
so you know, they're just being economic about the whole thing,
or perhaps there was a certain reputation in place and
they thought, well, we need to be prepared to use

(11:18):
this little Steven Saghal as necessary. And according to this
bit of IMDb trivia, if it is accurate, is like
he showed up this last day. Everything else has been shot.
They just need to shoot some scenes so that they
can insert Segal in. You know, the rest of the
stuff has been done with stunt doubles. But he had
ideas about how things needed to be shot that of

(11:39):
course would just wreck everything else. So Ching says, okay,
that's fine, you can just you can shoot it yourself.
We'll leave and look at kind of like a standoff
and a studio put enough pressure on him that he
was like, Okay, I'll go along it with this, and
so the film was actually finished.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
That's a that's a heck of a bluff. You deal
with somebody who you know is an ego man but
is also lazy, and so you're hoping the latter will
win out over the former.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
But to be clear, I have not seen Belly of
the Beast in its entirety, so I don't know if
you if you have out there, if any of you
were Steven Seagal's connoisseurs, feel free to correct us on
the quality of this motion picture.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
You know, my feeling is Steven Saghal is you know,
you know, you always know what you're getting with that.
So really the quality of one of his movies has
to do with how Zany is whoever they cast is
the main villain, and so like you can really achieve
a certain peaks of of of greatness in like under
Siege too dark Territory just because because Eric Bogosia and

(12:38):
he is going going crazy on the computer.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Mm hmm, yeah. I remember enjoying that one way back
in the day when I saw it on the HS
or something.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's still pretty hilarious.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
All right, Well, let's get into the writing on this one.
This is this because this is pretty interesting. First of all,
the screenplay was written by Kai Chi Yun. Dates unknown,
or at least I wasn't able to pull him up,
but he was seemingly active eighty three through twenty twenty,
so may still be active. A screenwriter who went on
to work on nineteen ninety four's The Legend of Drunken
Master and nineteen ninety one's Once Upon a Time in China,

(13:13):
and also twenty twenties The Enchanting Phantom, which seems to feature,
like this film, a scholar who falls in love with
a ghost. As we'll discuss like this, there have been
multiple adaptations of the source material here.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Oh right, So yeah, I wasn't aware of this when
I was first looking at the movie, but you told me.
This is based on a story by pousong Ling from
the original The Tales from a Chinese studio it is.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah. So, poosong Ling, who we've discussed in the show
before both I Think Weird House and Stuff to Blow
your Mind, was aching Dynasty writer who lived sixteen forty
through seventeen fifteen, and he mostly worked as a tutor
during his own lifetime, but along the way he collected
and wrote down a number of weird stories that he
heard and he picked up, and a lot of these

(14:02):
stories that were later published after his death as Strange
Stories or Strange Tales from a Chinese studio in seventeen forty.
A lot of them have that air to them where
he'll be writing and he'll say, so and so told
me this tale. I heard this tale from such and such,
so and so swore that this was the truth, and
the like.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Every time I've read one of these stories, I find
it very exciting because they don't usually conform to the
standard narrative structure that you expect from Western fairy tales.
Get they're just full of surprises, at least to me.
I don't know if you are more familiar with Chinese

(14:43):
traditional stories if the structures are more predictable, but at
least to me, everyone is just full of surprises.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, they very tremendously. Some of them are scary, some
of them are funny, some of them are both. There
are at least a few that are a little bit body.
There are some that are essentially like, hey, this weird
thing happened. How about that? That's the whole story. They
just kind of abruptly end, like there was there's one

(15:11):
where it's like there's this old guy that would travel
around and he had these mice in his backpack. I
think they were mice, and they would come out and
basically do like a flea circus. They would do like
a little circus and perform, and then he would carry
on his way, and there's no story. It's just a
small tale of wonder or an account of something marvelous
that was experienced or seen.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Now, from what I gather, the main elements of the
pousong Ling story are carried over into the movie, but
it's probably worth discussing the differences because from what I understand,
the pousong Ling story is not quite as sweet as
the movie is.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
It's well, there's I guess there's less room for sweetness
in it, but it's not unsweet.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Well, I just remember something about the scholars like already
married when he meets the ghost woman and he has
to wait for his wife to die or something.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, well but he's very polite about it, so yeah.
The original story is sometimes titled The Magic Sword or
the Magic Sword in the Magic Bag. That's the title
in the Penguin edition of Strange Tales, which is definitely
worth picking up picking up and has some nice notes
on it, but the basic bones of the movie are present.

(16:20):
In that story. A traveling scholar is too poor to
stay in town, so he goes out to an old
temple to sleep, and he encounters both a magical swordsman
and a ghost who reveals that she haunts the temple
due to improper burial is and has been forced to
do the bidding of a yaksha demon that's sort of
like a corrupt in this case, a corrupt nature spirit,

(16:43):
a malevolent nature spirit, though I don't think all yakshas
are necessarily malevolent. The magic sword in question is a
miniature sword that gives the swordsman his power, and he
also has a bag, the magic bag from the title,
which he gives to the scholar, and we later find
out that this was the swordsman's head bag, and so yeah,

(17:05):
he ends up falling in love with this ghost woman.
He digs up her grave, takes her remains home to
his own home, buries them there, and as a way
of thanking him, she says, well, why don't I be
a servant here? And he's like, yes, that would be great.
So she's a servant. Then eventually his wife dies of
consumption or it's translated his consumption in the version I read,

(17:28):
and at that point he marries her. They have a child.
He also gets a concubine and has a child through
the concubine. These are the details that are given. But
then she also has another child, so you know, it's
essentially a happy ending. Especially as far as tales about
marrying a spirit or or a fox spirit or a
ghost or something. A lot of times there's a there's

(17:50):
a twist at the end that's there to get you.
So as far as those sorts of stories go, i'd
say it's a happy end.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, why don't you take that ribbon off your neck?
Kind of twists?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, exactly. Anyway, it's a fun story. Sometimes you'll, i
think on IMDb in some places you'll see it credited
as a novel. It's not a novel. It's like a
ten minute read.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
If that, well, I should I should go read it.
I have enjoyed literally every poo song link story I've read.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
All right, let's get into the cast a little bit
at the top of this playing our impover's scholar with
impossible dreams. It's Leslie Chung playing the scholar ling choice son.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
So.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Leslie Chung was born nineteen fifty six died in two
thousand and three. He was a huge star of music
and was apparently a Kanto pop pioneer, so that's like
Chinese Hong Kong pop music of the time. I believe.
His first album came out in nineteen seventy eight and
he started appearing in films that same year. He was

(18:55):
especially big in the eighties, noted for is in androgynist style.
After immigrating to Canada in the nineteen nineties, he famously
came out as bisexual in Time Magazine a Time Magazine interview,
which was quite a move at the time, especially in
the within the Chinese film industry. Now, this is a
fun fact. He chose the Leslie moniker. You often see this,

(19:18):
especially with Hong Kong actors. You know they'll choose the
sort of a Western first name. He chose Leslie as
a tribute to the British actor Leslie Howard, who's probably
best remembered in general for being the you know, the
star of such films as nineteen thirty eight Pygmalion for
Appearing and Gone with the Wind. But I imagine you and
I probably know him best from the I think, in

(19:40):
my opinion, pretty excellent nineteen thirty six film The Petrified Forest.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Oh who was he in that?

Speaker 1 (19:46):
He's the he's the lead. Well, he's actually a traveling
scholar in that. Oh, okay, Leslie Howard is he's been
traveling across he's the British character.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, I thought I'd like to see the Pacific Ocean
perhaps ruey that one.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, so he's the star opposite Betty Davis.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Okay, as soon as you said that, it makes it.
I can hear his voice that. Yeah. But this is
also the guy who played like Ashley Wilkes and Gone
with the Wind and on all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, it kind of kind of classic looking, dry, handsome dude.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Now.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Leslie Cheung sadly took his own life in two thousand
and three, and the twenty eleven remake of a Chinese
Ghost Story was dedicated to his memory, but he left
behind a pretty extensive filmography, including Days of Being Wild,
Ashes of Time and Nomad, a lot of you know,
serious dramas, so this one. I'm not an expert on

(20:38):
his filmography, but I get the feeling like this is
kind of more of a standout in that it's an
action comedy, because it seems like most of the films
he's really well known for are serious dramas, including two
key Chinese LGBTQ films of the era, Farewell, My Concubine
and nineteen ninety seven's Happy Together. His co star in
that film was Tony Lung, another huge name in Chinese

(21:00):
cinema who many of you may know from in The
Mood for Love, Internal Affairs, The Grand Master, and most
recently Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings,
in which he played the title character's father, which is
a really great role in that movie, in my opinion,
great Marvel movie, perhaps my favorite Marvel movie that's come out.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well. I think Leslie Chung is excellent in this movie,
and I can see that he wouldn't have normally been
in action or horror related movies because he's he is
the hero of this film, but he's not an action hero, like,
he doesn't do a lot of physical fighting. He really
only has a few moments of physical heroism. Mostly he's

(21:38):
a hero by being a sort of meek nerd who
finds courage by falling in love.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah exactly. So, yeah, you're not going to see him
do huge action sequences. We have other characters to do
those scenes. Yes, all right, well, let's let's mention his
romantic interest. Our lady ghost is this is the character Susinne,
played by Joey Wang born nineteen sixty seven.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
She's great too. I'd say the whole main cast, the
three main characters of this movie, all three are fantastic.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, And I think one of the great things about
Joey Wang in this is that you might expect a
character like this, who again is a ghost woman in
a Chinese period piece. Essentially, you could expect this to
be be very one note, very passive in many ways,
and we do see some other examples of female ghosts
that very much match that template. But in this she's

(22:33):
delightful and funny. You know, she's being ghostly and haunting
and sort of distant as needed, but throughout it she's
also just you can see the charisma shining through.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh yeah, and the scenes where she's supposed to be scary,
she is pretty creepy.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah. So she was active in film from nineteen eighty
three through two thousand and four, probably best known for
this film, but she was also in two of its sequels.
Maybe these were the only two sequels. There's Chinese Ghost
Story two three, She was in God of Gamblers, which
I'll mention again in a minute, and also various supernatural films,
including The Beheaded one thousand and nineteen ninety two's The

(23:10):
Painted Skin, which is also based on a story recorded
by pouson Le.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
So you mentioned the Chinese Ghost Story has two sequels.
At least do you know anything about these or they.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Supposed to know that some of the same characters come back,
if not all the same characters like it yea. So
beyond that, I'm not sure, but I think the at
least the first sequel is also streaming on Prime, if
not the third one as well, same director, I believe
as well. Yeah, all right, now it's time to discuss
our swordsmen. Swordsman Yen played by Wu Ma who lived

(23:42):
nineteen forty two through twenty fourteen.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
This is our irreverent, wisecracking, tough Taoist priest.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's amazing. The actor here Ma. He
appeared in Writing Wrongs, the Dead and the Deadly Iron
Monkey two Once Upon a Time in China. He was
also in at least the first sequel, Chinese Ghost Story
two and This is Fun. He was the rice seller
in Mister Vampire. Do you remember this role.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yes, there's a scene in Mister Vampire where to repel
the evil spirits they have to use glutinous rice, and
apparently other types of rice will not do, so they're
going to get the sticky rice, and the rice seller
corruptly is trying to mix in some plain rice with
the sticky rice to pull one over on the kid
they send to buy the stuff. And I think this

(24:33):
has disastrous consequences.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
This is fun because it reminds me of a line
that Swordsman Yen has later on in the film, where
he's getting very emotional about the fact that in the
spirit world everything's black and white, you know exactly what
side they stand on, but in the human realm, everything's complex,
everything's potentially corrupted. So even though when you're dealing with
the spirit world you know exactly what sort of rice

(24:56):
you need, you know you know which side of of
ordering chaos. Everyone stands on, but the human realm who
knows the rice cellar might give you what you're paying for,
or he might be cheating you.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
This is a great point and something I wanted to
come back to. I would say this seems to be
a major theme of the movie, like the part where
so Swordsman Yen gives this speech about how he was
he once a magistrate. They said he was like a.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Judge or a magistrate, was a judge or something.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, yeah, and so he was a judge, but he
said he became sick of that job because you know,
there was all this ambiguity and people were always lying
and you could never know what's true. So instead he
gave that up to go like kill ghosts, because there
you always know what's right and wrong. You never have
to wonder if you did the right thing. Now, I

(25:46):
don't know if that's something that you can really live by,
because of course, you know, we do have to make
judgments all the time in situations where the facts are ambiguous.
But it's interesting that this is expressed and sort of
related to a couple of other things that come up
in the movie, like the questions about you know, what
is scarier mortals or ghosts. This comes up a few times.

(26:09):
I think there's some kind of thread running through the
movie about how I don't know, maybe the most treachery
or danger is not always in the place you would
expect it to be.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah. Absolutely, Now Wuma, I should also note he has
he has numerous other roles. I think he has something
like two hundred and ninety four acting credits on IMDb,
so I'm probably missing something else that stands out. But
he also has forty three direction directorial credits, including the
Chinese Ghostbuster and My Cousin the Ghost. So I guess

(26:38):
it goes for any film scene that once you've been
a part of a successful genre film, that genre or
subgenre kind of becomes a part of you, at least
professionally speaking.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
You know. You know those stories about certain big Hollywood
celebrities who have their own like script doctors or agents
who go through any script, you know, to like make
sure that it's more it has lines that are sort
of tailored to their personality. Yeah, I imagine that wu
Ma has got to have a situation like that where
like anytime he takes a role, they got to work
a rap about the dow in there because once you've

(27:09):
done that, you can't go back. It's like, that's got
to be what people are looking for every time exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Now, those are the three main actors in the film,
but there's some other performances of note I'm gonna mention
them a little more briefly, but we have Why Lamb
playing swordsman. How dates unknown, but this guy, I believe
it's still active. This is a brash swordsman that's encountered
early in the picture. Fun role. This guy's been in

(27:36):
a lot of stuff over the years, including nineteen eighty
three's The Boxer's Omen. This is a Shaw Brothers picture
that's often held up as a prime example of a
psychotronic film. It has a lot of really you know,
kind of psychedelic imagery in it. So he's fun in
this stern character while we lasts. He's on the original
Chinese poster, so I guess he's worth mentioning here, though

(27:57):
he doesn't really factor into the plot all that much.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, he dies I think like fifteen minutes into the movie,
but he's very cool looking, so yeah, yeah, you gotta
put him on the poster.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
We also have Sue mng Lao born nineteen thirty one,
who plays the Tree Demon, one of our main antagonists.
He was also in a bunch of films, including other
Chinese ghost story movies I think this in the same
character role, as well as a couple of big Jackie
Chan movies. He was in the Legend of Drunken Master
and The Medallion. Then this last acting credit I'm going

(28:30):
to mention is just it's a small, outrageously over the
top role. A crooked magistrate, a crooked judge. It doesn't
have a name, but just so over the top, played
by this actor Jing Wong born nineteen fifty five. It's
worth calling out because Jingwong himself is a huge name
in Hong Kong cinema, with over one hundred producing and

(28:51):
directing credits across multiple genres, including the gambling genre, which
I've read is one of his specialties. So he's responsible
for that film God of Gamblers that I mentioned earlier,
and he was apparently especially a big deal, big moneymaker
in the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
He is funny in this, but it's not dry humor.
He is like over there, he's like Jim carrying it up,
you know, full body, just like wet Wet acting, and
basically every line in his scene is him demanding a
bribe from someone.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, it's one of these roles where, yeah, it's just
how over the top and how corrupt could we have
a portrayal of a local magistrate and let's just have
him say all the quiet, quiet things out loud, just
blatantly talking about being lazy and wishing that we could
just get a bribe and finish this early. It's fun,
but it is. It's it's the hammiest part of the film.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
It's like, should I have you beaten and then demand
a bribe? Or should I demand a bribe and then
have you beaten?

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Exactly? All right? And finally, the music on this one,
it's credited to Romeo Diaz and James Wong. James Wong
lived forty through two thousand and four, and he's a
particular note here because not only did he score a
bunch of films, he also was a cantopop lyricist and songwriter,
and he acted in a bunch of films, including Iron Monkey.

(30:14):
The music in this I actually quite enjoyed. I would
have to say there are may be a few cheesy
parts here and there, but it has kind of this
blending of a little bit of synth but also traditional
music to invoke a dramatic, historical Chinese cinema feel.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah. I don't know what the term for this is.
This might be technically like a subgenre of cantopop, but
it's Yeah, it's a type of Chinese popular music that
has kind of like a lyrical ballad quality, very broad
themes about love and dreams and stuff, and then like
a flute in the background.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah. If there any cantopop fans out there, feel free
to write in. We'd love to hear your thoughts on
these names that we've referenced regarding kantapop. Please, all right, Well,

(31:11):
shall we get into the plot of this one a bit?

Speaker 2 (31:14):
All right? Well, so this movie begins with our hero
a good natured young scholar and debt collector. And I'm
a little curious about the historical notes, like is it
common for a young scholar to also be a debt collector?
Or is that a strange pairing? I wasn't sure, but
this is master ling choice on and I would I

(31:35):
think I already said this, but I would describe Ling
as in many ways kind of your classic film nerd
hero He is initially timid. He's meek, frail, unlucky, but
he's also kind hearted, and through falling in love, he
discovers an inner courage that he never knew he possessed before,
and that's sort of the arc of his heroism. But

(31:56):
he acquires friends along the way who will sort of
complement his abilities when they face the big demons at
the end.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Young scholars like this are pretty much doomed to be
seduced by ghosts or fox spirits and tales like this,
and I guess, I guess that trope kind of transcends
Chinese tales in general. You know, you're probably having lonely
scholars in various cultures writing fictional tales about lonely scholars
being seduced by, you know, invisible lovers and so forth.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
So anyway, at the outside of the story, Master Ling
is roaming through the countryside. He's on a journey. He
seems to be headed for a particular town on a
mission to collect debts for his boss. I've also seen
him described in some sources as a tax collector, though
the movie makes it seem more like he's supposed to
be working from a ledger of private debts. Maybe there's

(32:50):
some overlap of these things within the historical setting. I'm
not sure.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, Like there's that one scene where I guess we'll
probably describing a bit here where something happens to the
tax ledger and the individual he's visiting. He's like, Oh,
I don't owe you anything now, then get out of here.
And granted this is a broad comedy, but one wonders
if that is the response you would have towards towards

(33:16):
the state debt versus private debt at this time.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Right, So, anyway, we watch young master Ling. He's sort
of traveling around the forests and the byways, and the
movie's weird sense of humor immediately comes through, even in
this opening montage, because there's a part where we see
Lings sit down to eat lunch, I think, and when
he tries to bite into something. Is this a piece
of bread? It's some kind of food. It might be

(33:42):
a roll or something bun I'm guessing, yeah, And he
bites into it and it's too hard for his teeth
to pierce, like he almost cracks a tooth on it.
And then he bashes the bread against a rock and
the rock cracks in half, and then he kicks the
bread and frustration and it punches a hole in his shoe.
He is toe poking out.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
All of this stuff here. It has this kind of
almost silent era like Buster Keaton or Yes where Charlie
Chaplin kind of vibe to it.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Totally yeah, like like modern times or the kid Yeah Oh.
In the whole time, there is this this sentimental song
playing about how you must pursue beautiful, impossible dreams.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
So clearly he's just having problems with this mundane aspirations
like can I have shoes without holes in them? Can
I have an umbrella that's not already shredded? That sort
of thing.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, is collecting debts in rural townships his impossible dream.
I don't think so. But ling he gets lost because
he doesn't he reads a sign thats like the town
is three miles south, But then he's like which way
is south? And his compass needle is just spinning wildly
all over the place, and he gets caught in a
storm and he tries to open his umbrella and it's
riven with holes. So he's just having a bad, bad

(34:53):
day and eventually takes shelter under an abandoned pavilion, and
let's see this point. Suddenly, oh, this is a swordsman
runs up. You hear somebody saying don't run away, And
I think this is the first instance of a theme
repeated for comedy throughout the movie, which is people shouting
don't run or don't go yeah, which is later, well,

(35:18):
we can save the Keystone cops thing until we get
to the town, but yeah, it'll be a common thing
that the police respond to once we get into town.
And so there's a swordsman chasing down a bunch of
thieves and he chases them to right in front of
the little hut where master Ling is hanging out and
he and then master Ling just stands there. So he

(35:39):
catches them, he beats them up, and then the last
thief there says to the swordsman, please, sir, forgive us.
I'll return your money to you. And Ling is just
standing there, frozen in fear, watching the swordsman execute the
thieves who stole from him.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah. Their head's top toppling through the air.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
It's one yeah, yeah, heads are rolling. And then when
the swordsman slashes the very last guy, it squirts blood
directly into Ling's mouth.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, he's like, oh, he's just yeah, just horrified.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
So he's standing there terrified, and then there's a moment
where the swordsman seems to take pity on Ling. He
tosses him a bun. It's a soft bun this time,
and he kind of makes this face that I took
a screen grab of for you to see, Rob because
the swordsman's face here is really good. It's it's almost
like it could be the new Robert Redford nodding meme.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah, yeah, I can see it. Yeah, I mean, this
guy's this guy has made a fabulous and violent introduction.
He looks really cool. I have to say. He's dressed
all in black with some gold and a little bit
of red, so yeah, he looks fierce. And now he's
just sitting down casually having a bun, and he's like, hey, yeah,
you're all right here, I have a bun too.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
He has a profound jaw, it's.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Possibly because he has part of a bun in his
mouth in this shot.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
But as soon as the swordsman walks away, Ling spits
out his bun all over the place and he scrambles
and fearing get stuck in the mud. As he's strengfly.
But next we come to Ling's arrival in town, and
there are a number of things to discuss here, because
he'll return to town several times. And there are these
running jokes. I think one is sort of the Keystone Cops.

(37:15):
So there are police or soldiers in town. Who are
they are trying to catch criminals? I think because there
are bounties for criminals. But what this turns into is
anytime they hear somebody say like don't go or don't
run or don't leave, they immediately start chasing and just

(37:38):
grabbing people because they say anytime someone says don't go,
that's because they're saying it to a thief who has
stolen something.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, And then here they come running in. They're like
who said that? Who said that? Good? And they're chasing
after them.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
And so one of the things that happens is these
these incompetent policemen like grab poor poor Ling and they
like shove them up against a wall. And then they're
looking at all of these drawings of criminals unwanted posters
and they're like, ah, he's not any of them. Get
rid of him. But as they shove him up against
a wall, they press him against the front of a

(38:12):
stall of I'm not sure what this profession would be,
like an undertaker or a funeral arts master. Anyway, somehow
ling gets pressed against a wall covered in joss paper
or money for the Dead, some kind of funerary printed material.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, paper talisman, ceiling spells, that sort of thing. These,
of course, were also featured in or very similar talismans
were featured in Nature Vampire as being something that you
could use to sort of deactivate a vampire, to deactivate
a djung shei.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Right, Yeah, you'd put the kind of like yellow receipt
on their forehead and they would power down.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
But yeah, he's been pressed up against them, so initially
he has them stuck to his back, and later on,
once they've been peeled away, they've still stained the the
text onto the back of his shirt.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
So his back now has warding magic power that he's
completely unaware of. Yeah, but like you mentioned earlier, when
he goes to collect his debts, he oh, so he
shows up at like a tavern and he's talking to
the tavern owner and he's like, hey, you know, it's
time to pay up, And the tavern owner says, why
a different debt collector every time, and Ling is like, ah,

(39:24):
the last one was murdered. And then the By the way,
this movie is just it takes place in a world
where everybody is constantly getting murdered. Like basically half the
characters that are encountered or mentioned at some point are murdered. Yeah,
it's a it's a lawless land. But so the tavern
owner then says to Ling, he says, well, since you're

(39:46):
going to be murdered anyway, why don't you do me
a favor and not collect the debt? And Ling's like,
don't make jokes. But then when he opens up his
account books, they're ruined because they got soaked I think
in the rain or maybe when he got stuck in
mud somehow. They're all wet, and now the records are destroyed.
And when the tavern owner discovers this, he is overjoyed.

(40:07):
He's like, as there's no record in the accounts, that
means I don't owe any money, which Ling has no
comeback to this. He's just like, oh man, yeah, that's
I've got nothing.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
That's how Fight Club ended, right, I didn't.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Think about that. That's good. So the poor scholar he
gets thrown out in the street. He can't do his
debt collection. He has no money and not a friend
in this world, so what's he going to do? Well,
he starts asking around, is there anywhere I can sleep
for free tonight? And one of the locals tells him, Yeah,
there's only one place around here where you can have
free shelter, and that is the lan Yuk Temple. And

(40:45):
as soon as that word is uttered, as soon as
that name is uttered, all the locals are like, huh,
and they all turn and lean in the you know
they're they're telling him, you like, yeah, go through the
woods with the killer wolves until you see a creepy
looking temple and that'll be where you should sleep.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
So at this point in the film, and I have
to say, it's very well paced, like there's not really
a dull moment in the entire film, but at this point,
you know you're after the races, because oh, he's gonna
have to travel through haunted woods, get to inevitably haunted
Temple and it's just gonna be fireworks from there on out.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
So he goes through the haunted woods, he gets menaced
by wolves with yellow eyes, and then when he arrives
at the temple, he happens to stumble into the middle
of a brutal fight between two master swordsmen. Now is
one of them the guy who got the blood in
Ling's mouth earlier.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yes, one of them is the strong jawed, bun eating
swordsman from earlier. The other one is a new character
who will turn out to be our Dallas superstar Swordsman
slash Sorcerer Swordsman Yin.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Right Swordsman Yin Chikha, who is again also a former lawman.
But this is an awesome fight scene. It's like dark
and foggy and windy, and they're like flying around and
flipping in and out of buildings and onto balconies, and
at one point and like it seems pretty evenly matched.
But then at one point the swordsman we saw earlier

(42:13):
sort of loses track of where the new guy is,
and then the new guy like explodes out of a
wall at him and seems to get the better of him.
Oh but right when he does this, they're both standing
there holding their swords out, and then right between them
is Master laying like his head is between their two
sword tips and the new swordsman. Swordsman Yen says brother Ha,

(42:33):
how you've been fighting me for seven years and lost
for seven years. And then we learn in their exchange
that Swordsman Yen has been living for six months at
the lan Yuk Temple, and they taunt each other, but
Swordsman Yen tells brother Ha how that by being overly
concerned with worldly titles, with fame and glory as a swordsman,

(42:54):
he actually let his skills go to seed, and that
is why he has always Beaten. He's too concerned with
being scene is the best rather than actually being the best,
and he's too hot tempered. So they both got their
swords pointed at each other. Master Ling's throat is right
between them, and then master Ling is like, hey, why
not be nice to each other. I think it really

(43:15):
says that, and then he says, you have to know
that the universe is infinite and true love lasts forever.
So he's got a good heart. And eventually I think
the other swordsman gets so annoyed that he just leaves
and Ling is accidentally he's like standing on the swordsman's
cloak as he's leaving, and it rips part of it off.

(43:36):
He tries to hand it to him and the swordsman
just yells at Ling. He says, go love it so
that guy brother how split swordsman Yen warns Master Ling
not to stay at the temple that he but he
warns him in in a bunch of kind of rebald ways,
like he says, you know, if a tiger appears, you'll

(43:57):
probably want to hide in my trousers. At one point,
Ling's like, why do you keep yelling at me? And
he says it's because I have bad breath and I
want you to go away.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yeah, that's a great, great line too.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
But Ling doesn't listen. He has nowhere else to go,
and so he picks a room in the temple to
put down his things. Now this goes into a sequence
that is I guess it's followed up on it multiple points,
but this is master laying in the bark zombies, and
I loved this whole thing. Rob, Do you want to
describe what's going on here?

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah? So we start getting these shots of what seems
to be the attic of the temple or part of
the temple complex here, and it has these desiccated corpses
up there, you know, perhaps past victims. Because I believe
that the film opens up even with a sequence where
somebody is attacked whilst being loved up on grounds that

(44:51):
look like this temple, and so eventually we see these
remains start to move around. And so yeah, they are
partial rendered with stop motion effects that definitely have a
nineties tool video vibe to them, you know, like it's
it's not quite you know, Harry Housing level, but it
still looks really cool and I loved every bit of it.

(45:13):
Later on, they're also played, they're created via puppetry and
also costumes, and at times legitimately creepy, but it's a
great there's a great The great thing about this sequence
is that Ling is completely unaware of them. They start
off in the attic, they end up falling through into
the basement at times. At at one point Ling falls

(45:34):
partially falls through the basement and his his his rear
end is down there and they're like trying to grab
his butt and they tear off part of his clothing.
And then he winds up in the basement later on
and they're creeping up on him. You think they're gonna
get him, but then he opens some shutters and that
the sunlight just melts them away, and he never knows

(45:55):
they were there at all.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
It's fine, Yeah, it's It's very much the Baby Herman cartoon.
At the beginning of Roger Rabbit. He's just bumbling about
and constantly in peril but just evading them by accident.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah, so it surely fun. And then and again the
bark zombies look incredible. I thought they were a lot of.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Fun, excellent bark zombies. But meanwhile, while he's doing all that,
we learn about something that's going on at this temple,
the plot of the Seductive Ghost Ladies. So the forest
around this temple is swarming with these beautiful ghost ladies
who one of our main characters will be one of

(46:33):
them that seduce men and then suck out their life
force and turn them into these screaming husks. And this
happens to the other swordsman, the brother ha how he's
like made a campfire and then a beautiful woman like
shows up and she's like, oh hey, and they start kissing,
but she unfortunately sucks out his life force and leaves

(46:56):
him a shriveled, dry, dry corpse. When I watched this
part with Rachel, she said that she dietamacious earthed him.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Yeah. In the original story by bousong Ling. The ghost
Woman will do one of two things. Either she will
come up to you and ask if you want to
make love, and then when you do so, she will
eventually poke a hole into your heel, I believe, with
some sort of a spike so that your essence can

(47:27):
be drained out of the hole. Or if you say no,
thank you to the love making, she'll offer you what
seems to be like a golden coin, and if you
accept that, then you'll be overcome by the magic as well.
So like one of the two vices will get you.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
It's a great time to chee lust and greed in
favor of gluttony. Oh but we do see some like
magical implements of this kind in the scene, because like
in the scene where the ghost woman is seducing the swordsman,
we see that she has a sort of a magical
ankle bracelet on that it seems to have charmsing off
of it. And then also when swordsman Hahowe is lying

(48:06):
there shriveled, he is discovered by Swordsmanien who's like, oh,
look what they did you. But then he like wakes
up as a corpse and starts attacking him, and Swordsman
Yen is like, ah, even in death, you attack me again,
and so he has to pull out a holy needle
and plunge the needle into the corpse's eye and that
like shuts him down. These needles frequently are used against

(48:29):
unholy spirits.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, I love Swordsmanien's arsenal here because of course he
has his sword, his magic sword, but yeah, he has
these needles that it can also be thrown as projectiles,
and I understand basically throwing implements like this are used
in different martial arts, but not as effectively clearly as
Swordsman Yen is using them here. He also has several

(48:53):
magical spells that he uses he's able to He does
this wonderful bit later on where he like cuts into
his palm, does some sort of a symbol there, and
then is able to like shoot out essentially like magic
missiles and fireballs and the like, but in a way
that is super cool, especially within the confines of a
martial arts sequence.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
He also has a Sanskrit phrase that he says that's
the opening line of a of a book, like a
holy Sanskrit book. Though it's interesting because there's a scene
later in the movie where he's finally he's sort of
teaming up with the scholar and he's like, if you
need to save yourself, you know, say a line from
this book, and the scholars like, but I can't read Sanskrit,

(49:33):
and he says, we'll just open your heart to the
Buddha and the Buddha will tell you what to say.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah, yeah, just just be relaxed and you'll be able
to do it. And also ring this ball. Like he
basically ends up the whole plot ends up being like,
I need to get this this big bad that's responsible
for all this. I need to get these ghosts. You're
going to be de bait.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
But that's later on, so before we get there, we
have to actually get the love story, which is so
master ling. Being afraid out in the forest, eventually encounters
the ghost woman nip Chu Sin, and Su Sin is
a vampiric ghost, so she's she's not just like holy innocent.
She is draining people's energy. She's seducing, you know, hapless

(50:14):
dudes in the forest. They end up turned into a
bark zombie. It's no good, and it seems like she's
going to do the same thing to Ling when they
first meet, but Ling ultimately just turns out to be
too nice a guy. Did you read it that way?
Also that yeah, yeah, he's like so sweet to her
that she can't really do it.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yeah. It's kind of a fun twist from the original
because in the original story, she basically is like, hey,
do you want to make love? And he's like, no,
I would, I would never, And she's like, well, do
you want this gold coin? He's like, I'm not taking
that kind of money from, you know, someone hanging out
in a you know, temple ruins, and she's like okay.
But in this one it's less. I mean, part of
it is that he's you know, he's moral, and it's

(50:56):
good moral fiber. But the other part, yeah, is that
he's just a sweet guy. And as she is not,
you know, herself completely a creature of evil, like she
herself is ensourcelled by another force that will discuss here,
Like the part of her like recognizes that, and so
we do have room for like this legitimate, believable love
story to to blossom here.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
I think one of though it is funny. One of
the things that first indicates to her how kind he
is is that he says to her, He's like, wow,
you don't look so good. Do you need to go
to a doctor? I think, referring to the fact that
she's pale because she is dead.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
It's like, you're really pale, and he's talking about our
skin being cold and all this.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Yeah, we need to get you some medical attention.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah. The script, it really feels punched up, like they
really they really got in a lot of a lot
of comedic jabs here and sequences like this.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
But of course, at first, I think when when Susan
likes Master Ling, you know, she understands it as like
a love that cannot be right. She's not like, oh,
stay here and be with me forever. She's like, oh,
you know this is bad for him.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, And so a lot of it ends up being
a situation where she's like, look, you don't need to
be here when when my master shows up, when the
others come, you need to get out of here. You
need to leave these grounds. You're a good dude. You
don't need to be here. But she doesn't seem to
think that she has any kind of a future with him.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Now we should be clear though, that when Ling first
meets her, he has no idea she's a ghost. He
doesn't understand.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
He's not picking up on the clues.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Yes, this is something he has to be convinced of.
I think Swordsman Yen tells him. He's like, no, no, no,
everybody at this temple is a ghost except me. They're
all just ghosts.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah. Yeah, Because there's a scene where one of the
other ghosts gets cut in half by by master Yin
and he's like, you killed that woman, right, I mean,
that's the long and short of it. And he's like, no, no,
that was a ghost. I didn't kill anybody.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
So eventually he learns the whole plot and we do too.
So so what is the whole magical hierarchy here? What's
the org chart for the ghosts and demons at this temple?

Speaker 1 (53:10):
So basically we have this malicious nature spirit, this tree demon,
or this Yaksha demon as it's described in the original story.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Is this the figure they're calling the old Dame?

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Yes? Yeah, which is this? You know? This this kind
of royally dressed individual who shows up and they kind
of speak simultaneously with like a like a gravelly masculine voice,
but also a feminine voice, the kind of one superimposed
over the other. And and this character is ordering around

(53:46):
both by both Susanne, the our ghost love interest, but
also some other female ghosts that are being used as
agents of seduction by this demon. So the demons the
one harvesting life energies and life forces, but he's using
these ghosts to do it, or at least to lure

(54:06):
them in, to get them in a in a position
to where the tree demon can creep up on them
in vine or tongue form, as we later find out
is the case, and sap their life force.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Oh yeah, there's a lot of creepy tree demon morphology
later on, especially when the all tongue emerges. But yeah,
so we learn a lot of this in a in
a great sort of comedy scene where Master Ling is
visiting Susin. Win like, the boss shows up and he
has to hide underneath the water in a wash basin

(54:41):
while while the while the demon is there and while
the other ghosts are there, and they're all like talking
about how that Susin has been pledged in marriage to
this horrible monster, the Monster of Black Mountain, and I
guess their marriage is coming up soon. It's like a
week away or something, And so she's just trying to
get him out there so that they don't catchling in

(55:01):
there and kill him. And there's a bunch of a
bunch of this has played for comedy, yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
And also for the romantic angle. It's like, oh, we're
both hiding in the same place at the same time,
and we're almost kissing that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Well, she does kiss him, so at one point she
like hides him by leaning into the wash basin and
then kisses him under the water, and he's like, wow, geez.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Yeah, that's a key scene that is that we revisit
later on with like a musical motif.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
So she is falling hard for this this lonely scholar mortal,
and he is falling hard for this female ghost even
though he doesn't know she's a ghost at this point.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Right, But he eventually discovers basically what's going on, like
they are a bunch of different things. Well, he doesn't
discover it at this point, I think, but I remember
there's one point where I think he like does some
kind of like harm to her by like accidentally showing
her his back, which is where all of the warning
magic was printed.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah, yeah, which he recoils from you know, because these
are holy scriptures and she cannot look upon them.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
But there's also a conflict because he's been kind of
friendly ish with Swordsman Yen and swords Minyen is there.
He's like, no, no, no, ghosts are to be beheaded and destroyed,
and this lady is no good. But then Ling also
becomes convinced that Swordsman Yen is a murderer, so so

(56:26):
he you know, he's he's getting bounced back and forth
between between alliances, and at one point he ends up
taking before a magistrate in this really funny scene where
where he's I think he's trying to be like, yeah,
he's a murderer, you've got to stop him, and the
magistrate is just totally uninterested.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Yeah, there's a great vet where he calls in the
guards and they're like like, what's he talking about, Like, no, no,
we already we already captured the guy on the warning poster.
We already caught that guy. And then they're like, but
of course we do catch the wrong guy like most
of the times. Yeah, so they're like, all right, let's
hear it out. But then there's a lot of discussion about, yeah,
should we beat him first, or accept a bribe first,

(57:05):
and then eventually it's like when they find out the
ghosts are involved in it, they're like, oh, well, that's good.
We don't have to weigh in on this. We can
just leave early because we were tired of even pretending
to work oh before.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
So okay, So we're barreling towards the end, but before
we get to like some of the final confrontations, we
need to take a moment to discuss the dow rap.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Oh my goodness, it's so good. Yeah. I almost want
to include a sample from it here, because whatever you're
imagining can't quite equal what you get.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
There's one part where the subtitle, at least of what
he's rapping is I spit, I spit, I spit, I spit.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Yes, Oh, it's so good. Yeah, And he's the whole time,
he's going through these different martial art true teams too,
so it's like he's really getting you know, REVD up
for battle. Oh it's it's you have to see it
to believe it. And of course we could play part
of the audio, but you wouldn't have the subtitles, so
you wouldn't get the full experience, and you wouldn't get

(58:02):
to see him moving around, so it has to be seen.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Okay, but eventually, so we're skipping lightly about over much
that happens in the middle of the film, but eventually
it's going to progress toward a big showdown with the
demons because we learned the backstory of Susin. What is
going on with her? Why has she been why has
she been trapped in this cycle of seducing men in
the forest or at the temple so that their life

(58:28):
force can be sucked out? And basically what we discover
is that Susin was murdered many years ago while traveling
once when she was mortal, and her father gave her
a temporary burial under an old tree in the forest,
but then he was murdered before he could move her
bones to holier ground. So now nobody else knows she's there,

(58:52):
so she's stuck there and her spirit is trapped in
servitude to the demon that lives within the tree. I
think this is the Old Dame, and now the Old
Dame is her boss. The Old Dame makes her seduce
men so that she can kill them steal their energy,
and Sussin has been pledged to marry against her will,
the old monster of Black Mountain, and the only way

(59:14):
she can escape from being a ghost and finally be
reincarnated again is if someone digs up her ashes and
her bones and takes them to her village to be
reburied there. And it's interesting how this is a recurring
theme in a lot of the Chinese horror comedy martial
arts movies we've watched, because proper and improper burial was

(59:36):
also a major theme of Mister Vampire.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah. Yeah, the idea and really tied up with the
idea of the Chinese vampire, the Chuang. She is the
idea that this person was not properly buried, their spirit
is not at rest, and the only way to really
defeat them is to make sure they are moved to
a place of proper rest. And that's the case here
as well. But of course she can't just dig up
her bones and get away with it, because there's a demon.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Involved here, oh man.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
And and so you get a in the movie version, here,
you get a big throw down between the demon and
our heroes, and the I was totally surprised by the
form I was expecting. You know, it's a tree demon, right,
So it's going to be some sort of a ant
like creature. But no, the true form, or at least
one of the true forms, is revealed as being this

(01:00:25):
just this endless tongue, this all tongue as you described it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Yeah, I was thinking about the doors that ride the tongue.
The tongue is long seven miles. It's it's just like
this gigantic tongue that wraps all the way around the
temple and can like wrap around people. So it's like
a giant, you know, octopus arm basically, and and it
has like multiple tongues within the tongue.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Yeah, And it's it's kind of like it has a
beginning because it does shoot out of the human form
of the of the Dame's mouth at one point, but
then in another scene, the dame just becomes the tongue.
So it's it's almost like there is no beginning to
the tongue. It is just this endless tongue that's just
lashing about throughout this entire action sequence.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
And there's like a tongue versus mouth mechanic because the
tongue will try to grab people and then go into
their mouths and so like swordsman Gin is yelling at
at Ling. He's like, be careful, don't let her tongue
into your mouth. So they're they're trying to fight it
off and the and Yen eventually ends up like chopping
off pieces of the tongue to prevent them from from

(01:01:30):
getting in people's mouths.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yeah, there's there are a number of sequences in which
people get wrapped up in tongue or later on, wrapped
up in tentacles and uh, and then usually Swordsman Yen
has to jump in with his sword and slash through
those tentacles and splash goo all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Oh, there's so much gou later on, well there's so
much goo in general. But uh, there's there's goo, there's slime.
And then we get to see Swordsman Yen's arsenal again,
so he uses his holy needles. In fact, Ling has
to come through in the pin because Yen gets grabbed
up and Ling has to get the needle and come
save him, and at one point he accidentally stabs him

(01:02:07):
in the butt.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Right in the butt. Yeah, and then Yen has to
has to pull the needle out of his own butt
and then use it to stab the demon.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
It's great yeah, but they do eventually defeat the Old Dame.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Yeah, we see some sort of a final form. It's
just this monstrous amalgam of light, tentacles and planned and
I don't know, alligator and human face. You know, it's
a real monstrosity. But they are able to defeat it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Unfortunately, Sussin is dragged away into the underworld. Yeah, and
so in the very last act, the coda, the final confrontation,
it's not our world anymore, buddy, you got to go
into the underworld to save the princess.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
That's right. And it's I really like the way they
created this underworld sequence because it's it's a lot what
you might expect in a dark realm. There's there's mist
and smoke. They're like hands grasping out of nowhere. There
are disembodied heads, there are mountains of skulls, and of
course we encounter the dark individual who's Susan is betrothed to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Right, this is the Monster of Black Mountain, And oh man,
how this guy's really cool. How would you describe him?

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Just kind of like imagine a gloomy dark lord in armor,
and that's basically what you've got here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
I could say, maybe a point of reference for the
young folks these days. Elden Ring Boss. He's got elden
Ring Boss vibes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like kind of like kind of
like the outline of a of an armored individual, right,
but then they're they're increasingly more monstrous elements the deeper
you dig into that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Right. One of the big things, in fact, one of
my favorite images or effects in the entire movie was
when like his cloak is peeled open and his entire
form is made of faces.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a pile of disembodied heads their
faces in there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Yeah, and they're all screaming yeah yeah. Really good arms
their arms coming out of the walls. Like, the Underworld
sequence is just great, and there are great heroic moments
for our characters. There's a there's a wonderful part where
like Susin is flying through the air with a sword
in her hand and yeah, yeah, it's it's it's really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
And we get a nice climax where like tentacles are
lashing out. The dark Lord ear has wrapped everyone up.
The tentacles are holding our hero up and they're starting
to rip his clothes apart and will probably soon start
ripping his flesh apart. But then we remember what does
he have underneath his his his cloak, underneath his robes,
he has that Holy Sutra, which immediately it's mere presence starts,

(01:04:45):
you know, incinerating the villain here.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
It's red hot. It's so good. And oh there's a
detail I forgot that I really liked though, that when
Swordsman Yen and master Ling first arrive in the underworld,
they're sort of a to walk amongst the dead without
being disturbed at first, because Swordsman Yan says, when ghosts
are in the mortal world, they're invisible to us, but

(01:05:09):
when mortals are in the ghost world, we're invisible to them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Oh, but in the end we do get a happy ending.
They are able to all make it out of the underworld,
and they do, and they are able to relocate the
mortal remains of Su Sin, and so it's it's pretty
much a happy ending, and it makes you think, like,
are there more adventures to come?

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Well, they say, they basically say, like, let's go on
adventures now, Yeah, and clearly they do. There are two
more films in the series at least, so yeah, I'm
interested to eventually check out the next one, and there's
again I have to drive on. There's so many sequences
we didn't even mention here that are so well executed.
There's not really a dull moment in the film. It's
a very well paced so it's it's a lot of fun.

(01:05:54):
I highly recommend it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Totally agree that this one's really a highlight Chinese ghost story.
It's beautiful, it's truly weird. It's up there with the best.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
And again, this is a big picture. This was a
This has been a very successful film. It's generated a
cult following around the world. It's been remade, as I
mentioned earlier, but also the story about the Magic Sword,
of the Magic Sword and the Magic Bag. This was
adapted at least a couple of other times, nineteen sixty
nine's The Magic Sword and nineteen sixties The Enchanting Shadow,

(01:06:26):
which I've read was also kind of an inspiration for
this film. So there are probably some other movies out
there that you'll find that have some of the basic elements,
you know, traveling scholar, spinning the night in a temple,
falling in love with a ghost. It's a winning formula.
Now since this is a major motion picture, Yeah, It's
been out in various formats over the years, so you

(01:06:48):
want to watch it on VHS, you can find a
copy somewhere. DVD, it's out there. There are blu rays,
I can't really speak for the various regions and so forth.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Lasers.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Probably probably on a laser disc, go for it. But
we watched it streaming on Prime and as of this recording,
it is streaming on Prime in the States, and it
may be streaming some other places as well.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Two tongues up.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Yeah, this one was a lot of fun. We'd love
to hear from anyone out there who is also a
fan of this film, or if you have experiences with
this film, or if there are any other films in
the same genre that you think we should be aware
of or should cover in the future, let us know.
We'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, if
you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema,

(01:07:34):
it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your
Mind podcast feed. We are primarily a science podcast, but
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and we
just talk about a strange film. Let's see. If you
want to follow everything that we're doing here. Let's see
over at some immutomusic dot com. I do blog posts

(01:07:54):
about each film and if there's additional information, additional media
and bed that there. We also have a letterboxed page.
If you just look up a Weird House on there,
you'll find us. You can follow there, and we just
have all the movies listed that we've covered, so if
you just want to like a single visual layout of
the films we've covered on Weird House Cinema, you will

(01:08:16):
find them there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
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 topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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