Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Boxer's Omen

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe dive into the grisly black sorcery and mind-bending Buddhist magic in the legendary Shaw Brothers film “The Boxer’s Omen,” directed by Kuei Chih-Hung. (orignally published 9/19/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb,
and oh, we have a weird one for you here today.
This is gonna be last year's episode from 9-19-2025 on
the deliriously weird Shaw Brothers film, The Boxer's Omen, full
of just grotesque black magic and just so many mind-bending shenanigans.

(00:25):
Let's go ahead and jump right into it. Welcome to
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we are going to be talking about the 1983 Hong
Kong action horror film, The Boxer's Omen, directed by Kwee
Chee Hung. This movie is a lot of things. First
of all, it is just a lot. Through one lens,
it is an action-packed martial arts revenge film. Through another,

(01:06):
it is magical insanity, just an overwhelming storm of rituals
and magical items being combined, magical recipes, necromancy. You've got
creaky bat skeletons, needle-nosed tarantulas, red devils, skin balloons, crocodile skulls,

(01:28):
rotten guts, bikini mummies. Just all kinds of stuff. Basically
more unhinged sorcery, slop gore, and wizard battles than you
could imagine being crammed into a single film.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
That's right. It's pretty wall-to-wall. And the connective tissue in
there is....

Speaker 2 (01:50):
No pun intended.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
No pun intended. When the film isn't being just absolutely crazy,
there's some very well-crafted connective tissue there. that I think
also adds to the weird feeling you get watching this picture. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, I was going to say, I wonder if this
is what you're alluding to through yet another lens. It's
a kind of interesting exploration of like Buddhist monastic piety
and the quest for immortality. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah. I don't think now to be clear, you're not
going to learn much about Buddhism, uh, watching this picture,
but as we'll point out, there's some very nice locations here.
There's some, some nice, almost documentary-style scenes of, like, street
processions and normal people going about their everyday business in
Nepal and in Thailand and also in Hong Kong, which,

(02:39):
you know, can kind of, like, provide this real-world setting
that really works to make all the crazy stuff feel
like a real injection of another world into ours.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Though I also want to acknowledge
that what this movie is mainly known for, which is
just wet madness. Uh, it has, it has a reputation
among the midnight movie crowd for being an exercise in extremes.
It's kind of like, Oh, you like Hong Kong horror movies.

(03:11):
I have got one. You're not ready for, uh, and
maybe you're not ready. I would not recommend as I told, uh,
I watched this one first. And as I told Robin JJ, uh,
I would not recommend watching this while you're eating, though
I think maybe you did anyway.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I ate during part of it and JJ ended up
eating during part of it.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
That could be a bad move depending on how strong
your stomach is. But I would recommend watching it to
some extent if you have a tolerance for this sort
of thing, at least, because it is one of the
most amazingly, stupendously bizarre and remarkable films I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Absolutely. It is pure magic. And it's fitting that we
say that because the film's original title is Mo, which
just means magic or devil and can certainly mean dark magic,
depending on the context. We get to see both light
and dark magic here. Mo is also part of the
word mogwai, just to give it a little more clarity there.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Oh, I see. Did you have a note is like
the character, the Chinese character Mo is the thing that
appears at the beginning of the film?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
It is. And I think it's really interesting here. And
maybe Mandarin readers can break down what's happening here a
little bit. But we yeah, they're going to they're going
to put up the kanji for Mo, but they kind
of roll it out in three phases. And so initially
the character that is added is the character that means

(04:40):
ghost character. And then the rest of the character is
added that spells out the full title, Magic. So I
don't know if a native Mandarin reader would interpret that
as ghost magic. Does that affect the title of the
movie as you read it? I guess we sometimes have

(05:03):
things like this in English language titles for pictures where
it looks like it's going to spell one thing and
then it spells another, but I don't think I'd seen
this done before, you know, like a Chinese or a
Japanese film.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, that is interesting. But it's also interesting just thinking
about the title being in one sense magic or, you know, sorcery, enchantment,
whatever this refers to. Because that is like actually the
main theme of the movie. And so in English, we've
got this title, The Boxer's Omen. which paired with the
opening scene makes it seem like this movie is going

(05:37):
to be about kickboxing, which is a real bait and switch.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, yeah. It does seem very concerned with kickboxing for
a little bit there, but then really goes off the
cliff here into realms of magic and demons and sorcery
and all sorts of gross and mind-bending things that are
pretty far removed from Kicks to the Head.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not only that does it, it not only moves mainly
away from the kickboxing plot, it literally like forgets to
conclude the kickboxing.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
There's a kickboxing thread running through. It's like a revenge thing.
And it never, it never finishes. We never get the
final showdown. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
We were, we were joking about this off mic that
perhaps Shaw brothers came to, uh, uh, to the director, uh,
and said, Hey, we want you to make a kickboxing movie.
And he's like, got it.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, this is about as much about kickboxing as The
Shining is about hotel maintenance.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah, what if they had called The Shining the hotel manager?

Speaker 2 (06:46):
But I like the way in which this movie is
about magic. It's like there's a healthy balance of treating
magic as On one hand, of course, just an object
of absolutely insane spectacle and exploitation, but then also as
an object of what feels like genuine respect?

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, yeah. The magic systems in this film are fascinating. Like,
this movie takes its magic seriously. We've all seen movies
where evil wizards dabble in necromancy. And I was thinking
about this, too. A lot of people, I think, play
Dungeons & Dragons, and you know there's spell components in there. And...
Your character is supposed to wave their arms and say

(07:29):
certain things. But we often just skip over all that
and say you cast a fireball. And that's the way
movies sometimes do as well. This movie does not. There's
almost really like a hypnotic, ritualistic way that especially the
dark magic spells are presented. And in general, like the
light and dark of these different magical schools is just, man,

(07:51):
it's just so well executed here.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
It's almost more focused on the rituals that evoke the
magic than on the magic effects themselves.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, yeah. And the way that the spells are generated
tell you a lot about the practitioner. So the Buddhist
magic is the pure expression of noble virtue, while the
black magic is the exact opposite. It's just pure degeneration, madness,
and self-destruction.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
In the same way that the Abbott is on the
verge of achieving enlightenment and immortality through righteousness and equanimity,
the wizards in the picture seem to be doing everything
they can to just kind of like bottom out as
if they're not only, you know, plunging into the hells,
but doing everything they can to accelerate their descent so
they can like blast through the floor and come, come
out the other side in a kind of perverse counter enlightenment. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah. In more than one way, I noticed this, the
bad wizards in this movie, uh, practice magic and do
their rituals. Not with the kind of scary solemnity. We're
used to seeing Satanists do their stuff in the movies
where it's like, Oh, you know, no, no, no. In
the inferno. So being very serious while they're lowering the dagger,

(09:03):
like in a, what was it? We just empire of
the dark. It's not like that at all. It is a,
they basically have two modes of ritual. They have depraved
chaotic frenzy. And then they also have, Impatient annoyance. I
made the comparison. I was going to talk about this later,
but there's one part where we see the first main

(09:25):
evil wizard doing a bunch of rituals when he's trying
to get a bat to revive after it has been destroyed.
And he's talking at the ritual like somebody talks at
their car when they can't get it to start. It's
just this familiar, impatient annoyance, not somber Satanism with chanting.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. And at times there's also a detached defilement to
what they're doing. You know, it's like they're doing like
really gross and debased things. But it is it is
also just kind of like what they do. And, you know,
it takes hours to pull this off, but it's a
these are necessary steps in order to achieve their sorceress.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Goals yeah that's more in the chaotic frenzy era because
they're just frantically kind of I don't know picking picking
up guts and chewing them and cutting things off of
animals and chewing them and spitting them out and cutting
things open and it seems half the time like they're
barely paying attention to what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah Now, the magic systems that are depicted in the film,
they seem to have many connections to magical traditions in
Thailand and East Asia, real or attributed. And to be clear,
in the case of black magic, as we've discussed before,
we're certainly not always talking about practices that were ever
necessarily practiced, even by a thin minority of people. But,

(10:42):
you know, you end up with these tales about these
sorts of things, these sorts of spells that the dark
wizards and witches engage in. Right.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
A lot of times what we might mean by calling
something authentic, culturally authentic evil sorcery does not mean it's
what people, what like sorcerers of that culture actually did.
It's what people of that culture actually thought sorcerers did. Right.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
And then you have levels of like, what did outsiders
and foreigners think about the things that they heard about
magical practices, real or imagined? And then there's in this exercise,
how is all that amplified through the lens of exploitation cinema?
Because this is exploitation cinema, to be clear.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
That's right. I feel like with this one, maybe we
should start with the plot summary at the top, because
in the plot section, we're probably just going to talk
a lot about these wizard battle scenes and the rituals.
So the plot basically takes this form. A Hong Kong
criminal named Chan Hung is drawn into a quest for

(11:46):
revenge against a cruel Thai kickboxer who paralyzed Chen Hung's
brother with an illegal strike during a match, actually after
a match was over. And then at the same time,
he is drawn by dreams and visions to a Buddhist
monastery in Thailand where he discovers that he has a

(12:06):
spiritual connection to the recently deceased abbot of that temple,
a The abbot was a powerful and holy Buddhist monk
who died in the middle of a feud with a
clan of evil sorcerers. Chan Hung discovers that in order
to both avenge his worldly brother and protect the immortality

(12:27):
of his spirit brother, the abbot, and then finally also
to protect himself, because we learn that his fate is
linked to the fate of the abbot, he must renounce
his hedonistic life of crime, shave his head, and become
a monk. And this practice of piety and self-discipline and
self-denial will allow him to gain supernatural strength to fight

(12:49):
his enemies, both physical and magical. And then from this
ensues a massive series of wizard battles and escalations of
wicked enchantment. Along the way, Chan Hung faces doubt, weakness, temptation,
and setbacks. Though actually those are kind of limited in scale.
Like we get those concentrated in very specific moments in

(13:12):
the film. But it ends with a sorcerer showdown in
a Buddhist temple in Nepal. So stupendous that I think
many viewers will probably not even notice that the movie forgets,
as we said earlier, to tie up the kickboxing revenge plot.
As you speculated, Rob, I mean, you almost wonder if
the Shaw brothers, you know, were like, we need a

(13:32):
kickboxing film. And that was just the price of admission
to get this film financed. But once the wizardry begins,
like why settle for anything less? Do we really want
to end this film with a kickboxing conflict as the
final confrontation when we could have a demoness giving birth
to plastic bags full of eyeballs that turn into putty

(13:54):
mummies that cut themselves open and cut their own fingers
off to bleed on each other and turn into eyeball dinosaurs?

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Exactly. Yeah, I don't think anybody's left wondering exactly how
the kickboxing resolved itself. All right, well, like we said,
this one is a film that certainly has a reputation.
It's been a very popular midnight movie for quite a while,
so you almost can't provide an elevator pitch for it.
It is the boxer's omen, and it casts a long shadow.

(14:24):
But I would say, you know, one man is about
to be sucked into a world of black magic and vengeance.
That's really all you need to know. The rest is
more of a, It's more about sensation. Yeah. Let's listen
to just a little bit of the trailer audio. Though
this is one we're just going to dip in and
out of it because the trailer is mostly sound effects.
But maybe you'll get just a little bit of a
sonic vibe here. All right. Well, if you would like

(15:19):
to go and watch The Boxer's Omen before proceeding with
the rest of this episode, it is available. I watched
it on the Image Entertainment DVD, which I believe came
out in 2007, and I rented that from Videodrome here
in Atlanta. It was also released on Blu-ray in the
Shawscope Volume 2 box set, which actually seems like it

(15:39):
might be the best presentation of the film, with extras,
but you have to buy the entire 10-disc set to
get your hands on it. There's even a commentary track
by the late critic Travis Crawford on there. Though I
believe JJ was telling us that you can also stream
this from Arrow via Arrow's online streaming presence.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
And to be clear, the box set you're talking about
there is the Volume 2 Shaw Brothers collection from Arrow Video.
Because there are also some Shout Factory Shaw Brothers box sets.
And I was looking at their Volume 2. That's not
the same thing.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, make sure you get the right one. I mean,
even if you make a mistake, you can end up
with a whole bunch of Shaw Brothers pictures, which, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Probably a good time.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
It's a pretty good time, yeah. But yes, I believe
it's volume two that has the boxer's element on it.
It is. All right, well, let's talk a little bit
about the people behind this picture and in this picture.
All right, let's start at the top with Kwechi Hung.

(16:44):
The director, also the story credit, and he did the
special effects. He lived 1937 through 1999. Hong Kong movie director,
active from 61 through 1984. So Boxer's Omen is his
penultimate film and his final horror movie. He directs just
one more film with the same screenwriter as this picture,

(17:06):
an action comedy titled Misfire, before he apparently immigrated to
or re-immigrated to the United States. I was more on
that in just a minute here. But he apparently ran
a pizza restaurant in California for the remainder of his life.
I have so many questions about this pizza restaurant, but

(17:28):
I wasn't able to find out much about it. I
was even looking up interviews with his son, Ming Beaverquay,
who is an American film producer. In fact, he was
an associate producer on the Meg movies, the recent Giant
Shark movies.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Oh, the ones with Jason Statham.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
The very ones. But he didn't really get into it much.
But I mentioned re-immigrated because apparently Ming's grandfather attended Cornell,
and he says graduated in 1922, worked in Detroit in
the 1930s, and then went back to China during the
Second World War. So I don't know. I found that interesting.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
So from what I understand, Kui Chi Hung was not originally...
best known for making, like, horror or supernatural films, right?
I mean, this was some of his later work, but
early on he made a lot of, like, crime dramas and.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Stuff like that. Yeah, he did a lot of different stuff,
but he's probably best known internationally for this late career
period when he did a lot of black magic films.
Mostly in the 1980s, playing off a tradition that was
kind of popularized in the 1970s by the likes of
oily maniac director Ho Ming-Hua. who we discussed this film

(18:43):
previously on Weird House Cinema. This is a film from 1976.
But Kwechi Hung takes things to just new, dizzying heights, obviously.
So in addition to The Boxer's Omen, these black magic
films include 1980s Hex, 1980s Hex vs. Witchcraft, 81's Corpse Mania,
81's Bewitched, to which this film I've seen sometimes described

(19:05):
as kind of a sequel, 82's Curse of Evil, and
82's Hex After Hex. Obviously, these are all English titles,
and one can generally assume that the actual Chinese titles
were maybe a little less silly sounding. He also directed
some horror films in the 1970s, 73's The Bamboo House
of Dolls, 74's Ghost Eyes, 74's The Killer Snake, 75's

(19:29):
Fearful Interlude, and 76's Spirit of the Raped. But he
also directed several action films, including... 1980s Killer Constable, generally
considered his only Wushu film, and he also directed the
1974 serious crime drama The Tea House, and 1976's The
Bod Squad, which is a kung fu sex comedy. Nice.

(19:51):
So a popular and obviously daring visual Shaw Brothers director here.
But it's easy to focus on the crazy visuals in
a film like this. But he also valued great locations,
which is something we see in The Boxer's Omen, as
well as our lead character travels to Thailand and Nepal.
And often he would have subtle nods to the actual

(20:13):
lives of common people, which we see here as well. Again,
almost giving it a kind of documentary vibe in its
real world moments. And I'm to understand in his other films,
he also tackled to varying degrees the subject of corruption,
police corruption and so forth. And yeah, but before he died,

(20:34):
he apparently immigrated to the United States and ran a
pizza parlor. So. Again, I wish I could find out
more about that pizza parlor, but it remains a mystery.
All right, moving on to the screenplay. The screenplay is
credited to On Setso, who lived 1927 through 2021. His
other writings include Killer Constable, Corpse Mania, Bewitched, 82's Buddha's Palm,

(20:58):
and also Curse of Evil. Obviously, these two work together
quite a lot, but Setso's was in general just a
very prolific writer. On the Hong Kong movie database, he
has something like 259 writing credits.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Wow, that's a lot.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
All right, getting into the cast here. Again, our main
protagonist is Chan Hung, played by Philip Ko. Philip Ko
lived 1949 through 2017. Hong Kong actor, stuntman, and director,
active from 1970 through 2006. He has an uncredited guard
role in 1973's Enter the Dragon. which this is not surprising.

(21:36):
I think it's often the case when you look at
Shaw Brothers pictures, like everybody has some connection to Enter
the Dragon, even though Enter the Dragon was not a
Shaw Brothers motion picture. I believe that was a Golden
Harvest picture. But anyway, Philip Coe, his other acting credits
include 84's The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, 87's Eastern Condors,

(21:58):
and 88's Dragons Forever. He was also in 83's Seating
of a Ghost, 86's Magic Crystal, and 85's Ninja Terminator,
starring Richard Harrison, who we just talked about, played the
lead cultist in Empire of the Dark. Right. Philip Coe
worked with such Hong Kong greats as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan,

(22:18):
Sammo Hung. His directing credits include 1980's Killer Romance and
92's Hard to Kill, starring a young Robin Shue of
Mortal Kombat fame. Oh, yeah. So he often played villains
and was married at one point to Japanese actress Yukari Oshima,
who appeared in a number of Hong Kong and Filipino pictures,

(22:38):
including 1991's Ricky O, The Story of Ricky, in which
he plays one of the Gang of Four.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
May come back to that movie someday.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, it's a connection from one notoriously bloody picture to another. Okay,
so Chan Hung is helping out the Abbott. I think
we've established that. The abbot in question here, the one
that he is connected to, that they are like reincarnations. No,
they're twins in a previous life. Yeah, that's right. We're
going to find out. This abbot is played by Elvis

(23:09):
Su Kam Kong, born 1961. Hong Kong actor whose other
films include 83's Shaolin and Wu-Tang. This is indeed the
picture that's one of RZA's favorite films. 1986 is The
Seventh Curse. 89's The Iceman Cometh. I've seen that one.
I believe that one has a lot of swordplay in it.

(23:30):
1996's Viva Erotica and 2013's The Grandmaster. Now, we have
multiple dark wizards in this picture, and I had a
hard time nailing down exactly which character was which and
who played each character. I was working off of the
Internet Movie Database as well as the Hong Kong Movie Database.
But for this movie in particular, we don't necessarily have

(23:50):
the names of the characters or even a character description
entailed as well.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
I think most of the characters, we never learn their name.
The movie never says.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
This is not that sort of movie where you get
to know each and every dark wizard. I was really
intrigued as well by a character that pops up pretty
late in the picture, a sorceress or demoness that is
summoned or resurrected. And I believe, I really had to

(24:21):
hunt around for this one, but I believe she's played
by someone named Xiao Yanlin. But this is a case
where we have no idea when she was born, no
biographical data about her, and I think this was her
only credit. But still, very memorable, sexy, demonous role, as
we'll describe later on in our plot summary.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
This is the character who the parental guide on IMDb
warns us that she is underdressed for entering a temple.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yes, yes. Among all the other blasphemous and awful things
she's involved in, she is underdressed. All right. Now we
are going to get to someone who is instantly recognizable, though,
and I think easily the most internationally recognizable actor in
this whole picture. It is Bo Lo Yong playing Bubo,

(25:11):
the Thai boxer, getting to the boxing subplot that is
pushed to the forefront by the English title for this picture.
Born in 1946. You've all seen this guy before, I think.
He is also known as Chinese Hercules.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
He is a mountain. This guy, this guy is a
muscle man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah. He is a beast and is like, he's kicking,
like he's fast, super muscular, kicking with these legs that
look like tree trunks. I mean, he's just intimidating and
also has this just natural heel charisma, just oozing off
of him. You can see why this guy was so successful.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
In fact, in the kickboxing scene where the movie opens,
I am by no means a kickboxing expert. I don't
really know anything about it. But even my amateur eyes
were looking at this and I'm like, wait, these two
guys are in the same weight class? It doesn't look
like they would be.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, Bolo is just intimidating. And if you have ever
seen 1973's Enter the Dragon... Uh, Bolo is the guy
who fights John Saxon's character. And you may have had
similar thoughts in that matchup. You know, like, uh, John Saxon,
you know, you're super cool, but there's no way you
would have any realistic chance against this monster of a man.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Well, that would make more sense of, wouldn't it originally
in the script that John Saxon's character dies and then
they had to change it because he didn't like that?

Speaker 1 (26:37):
I don't remember. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Maybe misremembering, but.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
It's been a long time since I've seen it. And
I don't know much about its, uh, you know, behind
the scenes, uh, But yeah, Bolo was definitely in Enter
the Dragon. His Hong Kong film credits go back to
1970 and include the 1973 film Chinese Hercules, in which
he is not the star, but it was clearly promoted,

(27:01):
at least internationally, with this title to capitalize on his
screen presence. I included a poster here for you, Joe.
If you're out there listening, you should look this up
as well. It says Chinese Hercules, the first and only
muscle mad monster of the martial arts, the superhuman beast
of the East. And then he's there's an illustration of

(27:21):
him like, let's see, he's got like two guys in headlocks.
And then there's a lady biting his leg as he
with his elbows like bust down the pillars of some
sort of a temple.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Oh, yeah, like Samson. He's pushing the pillars out. Is
the lady biting his leg because she likes him or
because she doesn't like him?

Speaker 1 (27:41):
I cannot determine. And I'm not sure that actually watching
the film would answer the question. But yeah, this guy
was the real deal. He was a student of Bruce
Lee's and obviously appeared alongside him in Enter the Dragon.
Was in a ton of these Hong Kong action films.
But then in 1988, he scored the main antagonist role
in a little movie called Bloodsport. This is where I

(28:04):
think most people are familiar with him from. This, of course,
starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Donald Gibb and Forrest Whitaker. And yeah,
Bolo is the intimidating kickboxer that I believe, if I
remember correctly, like brutally murders or injures Donald Gibb's character.
And then Jean-Claude Van Damme has to seek revenge against him.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Looking at this made me think about the possibility that
some at some point in time, People have rented and
popped in Boxer's Omen because they were a fan of
Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. And they're like, oh, another kickboxing movie.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah. Well, there's like maybe five minutes of it in
the picture. And it's impressive. There's some cool kickboxing as
we'll discuss. But at any rate, he'd work, getting back
to Bolo here, he'd work with Van Damme again in
1991's Double Impact. And then apparently slowly retired from acting
after a bit there. with his last film credit as

(29:00):
of this recording in 2015. Of note, he also directed
and starred in a film titled Bolo, playing the character Bolo.
This is 1979. I don't think it's autobiographical. I think
it all just happens to come together that way.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Well, I believe Bolo is not his birth name, right?
I think that's like a nickname. Am I wrong about that?

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, I believe so. A lot of these Hong Kong actors,
as you may have noticed, listeners, they have... like an
Americanized show name on top of their actual Chinese name.
Bolo's other major films include 72's Five Fingers of Death
and the 1993 action film titled TC 2000, which also

(29:43):
features Billy Blanks and Matthias Hughes from I Come in Peace.
So there's a lot of muscle in that picture.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
That's the Tai Bo guy? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Wow. All right, let's see. One more actor to mention here.
because she is specifically called out in the movie databases.
We have Wai Ka Man playing Chan Hung's girl. That's
his girlfriend. She doesn't really have a name as far
as we can tell beyond that. Much like the wizards, yeah.
She is his often-naked lady friend back in Hong Kong.

(30:16):
Her other credits include 83's Seating of a Ghost, 85's
Devil Cat, 85's Ghost Festival, and 93's Sexy Flower. All right,
getting behind the scenes a little bit, there's some interesting
names here. Horace Ma is credited with either art director
or scenery, depending on which database you're looking at. And
he was active from 83 through, I believe, 2022. And

(30:40):
I think this was his first film. He'd gone on
to win numerous awards for 2019's Shadow and also worked
on RZA's 2012 passion project, The Man with the Iron Fist. Hmm. Now,
we have two credited composers here. There's Chin-Yung Hsing, and
then there's also Chin-Hao Su. Let's see. Hsing was active

(31:02):
from 81 through 94, and his credits include The Seventh Curse,
Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, and Dragons Forever. His work was
also used in Kill Bill. Kill Bill, of course, samples
some various scores from different Hong Kong action films. And
as for Sue, he also worked on some of the
same films, but also worked on Human Lanterns, Seating of

(31:24):
a Ghost and Bewitched. In general, I'd say the music
here is really fun. There are a lot of like
cool electronic effects, some of which were lifted. There's one
particular sound that a number of you will remember from
1980s Flash Gordon. That's sort of like wow sound. That
is lifted and used in this picture. And I've also

(31:47):
read that there are some sound effects from Alien that
are utilized here as well.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Oh, okay. I did not catch that, but I can
believe it. But yeah, there's a lot of fun. It's
a playful musical score. Like there's some wailing guitars and
some funny parts. All right, you ready to talk about

(32:12):
the plot?

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Let's get into the plot.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
So we already laid out a brief sketch of the
plot earlier, but at the beginning of the story, our protagonist,
Chan Hung, is a mid-level Hong Kong gangster. And when
the story begins, he seemingly has everything a guy like
him could want. He's got money, power, a beautiful girlfriend,
a nice house, luxuries, and it seems like respect in

(32:37):
the criminal underworld. He's a respected criminal.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, he has some cool sunglasses.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Chen Hong also has a brother. Um, now about the
name of the brother, I was like some online synopses,
like the Wikipedia page for this movie calls his brother
Chen wing though. When I was just rewatching it, I noticed,
I think the only time somebody said his full name
in the movie, it was a boxing announcer who called
him Chen Y. Um, so I'm, I'm not sure which

(33:06):
is more right there, but, um, His brother is also
quite successful in his own domain, which is kickboxing. And
they never talk about this, from what I recall, but
it is implied later in the film that Chan Hung
himself has previously had a career as a kickboxer.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he seems competent getting into the
ring to kickbox himself later in the picture. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
So the film opens on a kickboxing match in Hong
Kong with two fighters for the heavyweight championships. And the
fighters are Chan Hung's brother, Chan Wing, or Chan Wai.
And on the other side of the ring, a Thai
boxer named Bu Bo. That's the guy played by Bo
Lo Young.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, and again, just an obvious physical mismatch here. You
can tell a murder is about to take place in
the ring.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Yeah, so they're fighting. And I might be a little
bit confused about the rules of kickboxing because in this fight,
the Thai boxer kicks Chan Wing in the back of
the head between rounds. while his back is turned. I
was like, wait, how is that not instant disqualification? I
think the ref says something like, if you keep that up,
I'm going to disqualify you. It seems like one time

(34:16):
would be instant, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah. Yeah. I guess as with Buddhism, we should be
reluctant to, to learn too much about kickboxing from this movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
It seemed more like pro wrestling rules than something with
line of fair competition. But yeah. Anyway, through this, uh,
and through, so because he's like, you know, kicking him
in the back of the head while his back's turned,
and because he's just smugly grinning a lot, we get
the idea that Bubo, the Thai boxer, is a bad
sportsman and a bad dude. He's vicious, he doesn't fight fair,

(34:48):
and he has no sense of honor or shame. Now,
there is no magic in this scene, which is an
interesting choice that the movie does not begin with a
supernatural prologue or any indication of how weird it's going
to get. From the opening scene, you could easily assume
that this is just going to be a hard hitting
terrestrial kickboxer movie. And, you know, I think it works

(35:11):
pretty well in that vein. Like this is a good
fight scene with strong choreography. And most importantly, I think
good sound effects. It has that great, uh, frequency spanning
slap with every punch and kick that connects. Uh, this
is characteristic. I think of a lot of the best
Hong Kong action movies is they have really great fight
sound effects. Uh, and that core, uh, connection sound is

(35:34):
like a combination of a bass drum kick, a rim shot,
and then a strip of wet brisket slapping on parchment
paper all at once happening. Love those percussive fight scenes.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, we have really solid sound effects throughout this picture,
whether it's kicks and slaps or dripping entrails and demon slime.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Anyway, the fight is quite brutal. At different times, both
Bu Bo and Chen Wing are landed just disgusting hits.
At one point, Bubo has a bunch of floppy pink
gore tinsel hanging off the side of his head. He
gets kicked in the head and it's just like, whoa,
it's like his wires are coming out, it looks like.

(36:16):
So Chan-Hung's brother wins the fight, but after he has
declared the winner, the Thai boxer becomes furious. He runs up,
he sucker punches him in the back of the head
again and And then when he falls down, he stomps
on his body until his neck is broken.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Brutal. Brutal.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Once again, you'd think like, okay, that that's not just disqualified.
Like you'd be arrested, but instead it's just kind of like, no,
you're not supposed to do that. Later after the fight,
we see Chan Hung in his element. He swaggers into
this cool Hong Kong club that's flooded with red light.
He is wearing a sleek gray suit with a pocket
square and a black shirt open about four buttons down

(36:56):
from the neck. Also sunglasses at night indoors so that
he is a cool cat. So he comes into the
crime den and he is addressed as Brother Hung. Chan
Hung is called in for a meeting with the boss,
Uncle Chi, and the boss tells him that he has
to go to a 1 a.m. meeting with the representatives
of a gang from the mainland. Hung agrees, and he

(37:18):
makes plans to have backup with weapons waiting outside the
meeting place in case anything goes wrong. Well, something does
go wrong. In fact, it is a trap. The meeting
takes place at some kind of construction site, and as
soon as Chan Hung comes in and sees the leader
of the mainlanders, he's obviously like, this is not going

(37:39):
to be a happy meeting. He takes off his sunglasses,
there's a guitar wail on the soundtrack, and Hung says,
you're very cocky. You just arrived and already you're fighting
for territory. And I do love, by the way, the
outfit of the mainlander. He's got like this cool hat
cocked to the side and he's smoking a cigarette. I
don't know, something looks kind of like 1920s gangster about him.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a real vicious air to him.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah. So the gangster says, you know, it's bold of
you to come here alone. And Hung says, I've been
in Hong Kong a long time. I've seen it all.
But then the mainlander guy's like, bet you haven't seen this.
And then from somewhere up above, he drops a burlap
sack full of chopped up human body with bloody arms
poking out of it. And whoops, inside the sack is

(38:28):
Uncle Chi, Hung's boss. And then the other gang reveals
that they also killed all of Hung's backup. And now
they're about to kill him as well. So they like
tie him up, hang him upside down by his feet
and plunge his head into a bucket of water. So
it's brutal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
So suddenly we've gone from sports movie to violent crime movie.
And it seems like that movie is about to end
here rather quickly.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
But now we're about six minutes into the film. We're
about to get the first sudden intervention of magic. There
is a divine interruption of this gangland execution when an
otherworldly wind and an emanation of white light burst into
the scene, frightening and confusing the gangsters. And then we

(39:13):
cut away to see the source of this power. In
the doorway to the warehouse, there is a bald monk
naked at the shoulder but wrapped in gold robes with
a gold band around his head from which dangle these
two large spheres or discs on either side down below
his jaw. And then in the dark all around, we
can see jets of white radiant energy squirting off of him.

(39:37):
He almost literally looks like a lawn sprinkler of holiness.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
He does. Yes.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Suddenly Chan Hung is free of his bindings. The ropes
come undone. He looks around and he can stand up.
And all of the rival gangsters lie dead on the ground.
The apparition of the monk says, Chan Hung, you must
follow me. Chan Hung asks, who are you? But he
doesn't have time to figure it out. He hears police
sirens approaching, so he has to flee the scene. And

(40:04):
then he goes back home to spend the night with
his girlfriend.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, and a really steamy sex scene ensues. But it's
also important because it helps establish that our hero is
a lover. He is a lusty gentleman. which is going
to be important later on.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yes, I think you were supposed to think back to
the scene immediately when he later promises the Buddha a
vow of sexual abstinence.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
So later that night, Chan Hung has another strange vision.
He is awakened from a dream to see a glowing
orange symbol floating in the air over his bed. It
sort of looks like a carrot symbol or like a
capital letter A without a crossbar.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, and I'm not sure if it's intended to be
read this way, but the symbol sort of looks like
the character for Ren, which means man or person.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Also, the symbol has its own soundtrack cue. It's like
a hollow rhythm beating on a metal drum. And the
symbol leads Chan Hung into the living room where the
TV is on. It's blasting static and filling the room
with blue light. And then the vision of the monk
in bodily form appears once again. He tells Hung that
there's something he needs to explain to him. But the

(41:13):
vision disappears when Hung's girlfriend walks into the room and
startles him. The next day, Chan Hung visits his brother
in the hospital. His brother is still in traction, covered
all over with bandages like a burn victim. I don't
understand why the bandages are like all the way around
his head.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, it's like a cartoon level of bandaging here.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah. The doctor informs them that the brother's kickboxing career
is over. He's going to be paralyzed for the rest
of his life. And Chan Hung is shaken and the
brother whispers that Hung must take revenge for him. He
wants to see Hung get revenge on the Thai boxer.
So we cut right to it. Next, we're in Thailand

(41:53):
and we see busy city streets filled with cars. You've
got rivers, canals with motorboats, beautiful Buddhist temples and shrines
all around. Chan Hung goes to an event where a
local promoter is presenting an award to Bubo, the Thai boxer.
The gist of the ceremony is kind of like, well,
they say Bubo showed the Hong Kong champion what boxing

(42:15):
is all about. And then they say that, you know,
the Hong Kong judges were biased against our guy. The
fight was rigged. So the judgment doesn't really count. So
we declare our fighter the winner. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
It's a small gathering, but it looks like the local
press was invited. And of course, our hero has shown
up as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
So the MC presents Bubo with a championship belt, but
before he can claim it, Chan Hung walks up and
he smacks it to the ground and he starts cussing
it at Bolo Young here. And they yell at each
other for a bit. And then they finally agree that
in three months, the two of them will fight a
grudge match in Hong Kong.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
And to your point earlier, it really does feel like
pro wrestling at this point. Here we have our obvious
heel and our obvious face here teasing the next big matchup,
the grudge match.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
In my English subtitles, by the way, they were calling
each other Hong Kong boy and Thai boy.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yes, same for me. So, okay, it seems like the
vengeance here is off to a great start. You know,
they have something on the books, so good enough.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Sure, but it's about to get more complicated, because while
riding in a motorboat down the river canal after the confrontation,
Chan Hong suddenly sees a familiar shape. At the peak
of a roof of a Buddhist temple... He sees that
glowing orange shape from his waking dream. So it's like,
what's this? He has to go in and investigate. When

(43:41):
Chan Hong approaches the entrance, a monk in orange robes
greets him and already knows him by name. He says
they've been expecting him. Inside the temple, we're treated to
visions of altars and shrines glowing with gold and candlelight
in the dim interior. And the monks all sing a
hypnotic repeating chant. We will hear this chant or something

(44:02):
like it many times in the film, and it has
a powerful effect. The way it just kind of like
cycles on itself, I found it deeply hypnotic.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
And of course, these temple locations that they're using are
also just so amazing here. We'll have some sets later on,
but At least a number of these early interiors that
we're encountering. Like these are, I believe, actual Thai temple interiors.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Well, the head monk wastes no time getting into an
explanation for Chan Hung. He says, a year ago, our
abbot went to Hong Kong to take care of a
black magician, Mai Gu Su. Okay. And so then we
see the sorcerer in question. He is getting out of
a taxi cab and going into the airport. And he's
not dressed like a wizard, by the way. In fact,

(44:53):
to show that he practices black magic, he's dressed all
in black. He's wearing a black shirt, black shoes, black pants,
black belt, and has Elvis hair. Yes. So this guy's
walking into the airport and then suddenly from behind him
appears the abbot dressed in his orange robes, illuminated from behind.
So he shimmers with this pious light. And his head

(45:16):
is also surrounded by a halo. There's a circular pattern
of rainbow-colored prismatic feathers. And the abbot calls out to Maegusu,
who turns and looks at him like, oh no, I've
been caught. And then the abbot holds up in his
hand a tear-shaped shard of mirror and then throws it
at the wizard. It attaches to the wizard's forehead and

(45:39):
immediately starts to sap his black magic and destroy his body.
So the magician starts screaming in pain, and then he
starts clutching at his face, which begins to melt and
turns into white, goopy paste. Green light floods the scene,
and then the wizard starts exploding. Not in one big explosion,

(46:00):
but lots of little explosions, beginning with balloons that inflate
underneath his sloppy skin. And they're all over his arms
and his neck and face. kind of like an infestation
of boils, but they are full-on skin balloons which each
blow up and pop.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
There are a number of subgenres that can be applied
to the boxer's omen. We should mention that one of
them is body horror. There's a lot of body horror
in this movie. So if that's not your thing, if
you're not open to it, then I would maybe pass
on this one.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah. So the wizard collapses to the floor while he's
popping all over, popping off. He collapses to the floor
of the airport terminal and He melts some more and
screams on the floor, and then he pulls himself up
over the top of a bunch of orange plastic chairs,
at which point he has morphed into a different form,
that of a withered old wizard with long white spiderweb

(46:53):
hair and pale skin and a big black spot on
his forehead with long pointy bugle fingernails. I guess... This
means that this is my Gusu's true form, and the
Elvis wizard, the guy in black, was sort of his
glamour spell.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, yeah, that was my interpretation as well.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
The abbot, now sitting cross-legged on the airport lobby floor,
is praying with hands folded, and this keeps exerting magical
suffering on the wizard. And then the wizard collapses on
the ground, seemingly dead, with dry plaster skin. And then
out of his mouth, something begins to wiggle. It is
a bat. It is a bat crawling out of his mouth,

(47:33):
a bat that lived inside the wizard's mouth. And it's
so cute. And it squeaks and flies away.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
But if you think that's the end of it, it
is not. One thing you'll quickly learn about this film
is most pictures would leave it at bat, but not
the Boxer's Omen.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
No, no, we're just getting started. The abbot catches the
bat in his hand. He puts the wiggling bat in
his pocket and then goes back to his temple in Thailand. So, like,
did he get on an airplane with the bat squeaking
and writhing the whole way?

Speaker 1 (48:03):
I don't know. It was a different world back then
when it came to flying around.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Back at the temple in front of a shrine with
a golden Buddha, he does a ritual to defeat the
black magic involving a bunch of candles, a dagger, a bell,
a pink flowering tree branch. This might be a cherry
blossom branch. I'm not sure. But here we begin to
see a symmetry. While the abbot is doing a holy

(48:36):
ritual in his holy place, we first get a glimpse
into the realm of the anti-holy, some kind of devil's temple.
Somewhere else, there is a large room filled with shelves
containing clay jars. And at one end of this big
room full of jars, there is a giant shrine to

(48:57):
the demons and dealers of black magic. So we have
a roaring bonfire presided over by a statue of a
huge winged devil with glowing yellow eyes, four horns around
a bald head. And note that the fire seems to
be basically emanating from the demon's crotch. And then in
front of that, four giant white statues representing Han. with

(49:20):
curled clutching fingers, and on each hand, a statue of
some kind of nasty animal. You've got scorpions, bats, spiders,
and I think snakes, or maybe caterpillars. All around, there
are various other implements of evil strewn about the room.
You've got skulls, daggers, and a tea kettle, I guess,

(49:41):
for tea.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Well, you gotta have tea either way. So, yeah, this
is glorious looking. Some great use of red and green gels.
This looks like the most amazing Halloween decorations you could imagine.
Very well done. And I could be off on this,
but I think maybe each nasty animal corresponds to a
different wizard we're gonna see during the rest of the
picture here. But at any rate, we're about to touch

(50:06):
base with with a related wizard to the wizard that
was just murdered in the airport. This is going to
be our main wizard for the picture. And then later on,
we'll deal with some of his apprentices, three of his apprentices.
So four wizards remaining in this movie. Right.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
So back at the temple, we see the abbot doing
his own kind of magic. He's doing an exorcism of
the evil magic by hammering a gold dagger into into
the heart of the demon bat that he holds captive. Um,
and then we see the bat at the evil shrine
and green goo starts to pour out of its heart.
And then the Abbott pours holy water over the captive bat.

(50:49):
And at the evil shrine, the bat statue dissolves and
melts away, leaving only a bat skeleton behind. Then we,
it's kind of like the moment where something has, something
has gotten the attention of a higher up in response. Uh,
Out of somewhere in the evil shrine, a being awakens.
We see it first as a figure in black with

(51:12):
glowing red eyes, then revealed to be a man wearing
a monstrous bat mask with a big white wig. The
figure flies across the room, takes off the bat mask,
revealing that he is a man with a mustache, wearing
a black headband, a red and gold mark on his forehead.
And this will be our main evil wizard for the film,

(51:34):
or at least the first half of the film. And
he looks down at the skeleton, a little bit sad,
and says, how dare he kill my bat? So let
the counter rituals begin. And I want to say, just
by describing it, it is hard to convey the ludicrous,
frenetic feeling of the scenes where the bad wizard carries

(51:56):
out his black magic invocations and recipes. Part of the effect,
I think, is the cinematography. Something feels almost in fast
forward about it. Part of it is also the actor's performance.
The actor who plays the evil wizard has this uncontrollable, mischievous,
satanic spider monkey energy. He's so good. And then part

(52:20):
of it also is in the content of what he
is doing, which is so off the wall. So it's like,
open a jar, grab a live rat out of the jar,
take a bite out of the rat. spit blood all
over the bat skeleton and start screaming at it to revive, revive.
And this is the part I was talking about earlier
when I was like, it's not the kind of somber
reverence for Satan that you expect out of movies like

(52:42):
The Devil's Reign or Empire of the Dark. Instead, this
is a guy in a hurry yelling at his car
when he's turning the key and it won't turn over.
I don't know. It's a delightful choice, I think. And
so the wizard gets his bat skeleton and up and
walking around and he's chasing it, clicking a bone at

(53:02):
it and, uh, trying to get it to move faster.
And meanwhile, at the Abbott's temple, while he's doing that,
the bat skeleton at the Abbott's temple gets up and
starts walking around too. It's walking toward the door. So
the wizard is remote controlling a distant bat skeleton with
his own bat skeleton. Yeah. Covered in rat blood that
he spit on it.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
In both cases, it's moving with kind of a windup toy. Um, yes. Uh,
energy to it. And this is a, I mean, all
the scenes in this movie are pretty weird. This one
is weird early on because I'm like, am I rooting
for the bat skeleton? The tension we're building here, I
think I want the bat skeleton to escape the abbot.

(53:43):
And our dark wizard is like saying things like, get
out of there, get out of there. There's nothing else
to see. You got to get out of there. And
I'm kind of like, yeah, go bat, go.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
He's so annoyed though. The wizard is just like, get out.
There's nothing to see. Yeah. He's trying to get it
to hurry up. Fortunately, I guess, uh, from the Abbott's
point of view, the Abbott catches the bat skeleton in
mid escape. And then he gets out a giant Looney
Tunes size hammer, like a huge mallet and smashes it.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah. Just over and over again to just smash, smash, smash, smash, smash.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
And the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, wizard does not
like this. He says he broke my magic again. Damn.
So the magic continues. The wizard starts frantically playing a
reed pipe instrument like a snake charmer. He still has
blood on his mouth from biting the rat, by the way.
Serpents come out of several clay jars. Their tongues are flicking.

(54:35):
They slither on the floor. The wizard grabs them and
milks the snakes for venom, which is a kind of
green sour apple juice that drains into a flask. And
then he opens another clay jar and pulls a head out,
a defleshed skull. covered in jelly, like spam, with eyeballs

(54:56):
and brain intact.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Oh, it's so gross. It's so gross. But it just
perfectly executed. This is pure Halloween right here.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
He pulls a bunch of worms off the head, breaks
open the skull, revealing fresh brain, like full, fleshy, fresh brain,
pours the snake venom that he just milked into the.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Brain, stirs, Yeah, scrambles it all.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Scrambles it, pours the venom slash brain combo into a
clay pot and cooks it, pours out the green juice
on the resulting green juice on this like white board,
then gets out a sack and releases from it three tarantulas,
which crawl out and drink the juice through straws. And
the tarantulas, much like the bat, are sort of felt

(55:43):
textured and look very cute. Adorable.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Yes. Yeah. Again, very much a wind-up toy sort of
vibe going on here with these little creatures.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
And the wizard is screaming, grant me infinite power, Lord
of the Dark. And then later we see the wizard
sneaking into the abbot's temple, Assassin's Creed style. There's some
fence climbing and light parkour. He's a very agile wizard.
And he obviously hates it in here, all these Buddhas
and this holy stuff. He's repulsed. But the wizard finds

(56:14):
the room where the abbot is sleeping. He crawls up
the wall like a spider. I guess he has sticky hands.
Then he crawls on the ceiling, then releases his magic tarantulas,
which descend on threads to the abbot's bed, climb on
the abbot's face, and pierce his eyeballs with magic golden needles.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Yeah, and again, this is all a flashback. This is
all providing a little backstory here. But it's also just
a nice snapshot. at where the film's going from here.
So I want to add just a general note here
that part of the movie's real charm is the way
amid glorious set design and lighting, we'll go from some

(56:53):
really grisly prop use and things that might be entrails
from a local butcher shop to some really cool looking
animated effects. And then the use of puppetry and wind
up toy effects for things like bats, spiders, skulls, and
little demons. And on one level, yeah, there's, kind of
a wide drift here in the quality of the effects

(57:14):
that's one way of looking at it but there's also
kind of a house-esque otherworldliness to it that can almost
be hard to explain like just a real madness to
the whole affair that the wind-up toy effects kind of
punctuate you know.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yeah yeah like the the variability of the effects textures
almost emphasize the unpredictability of the story and and the
things that are happening.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah and just like you know he goes to all
these grotesque extremes committing multiple atrocities to create some sort
of magic potion. Then this like obvious wind up toy
creature drinks. And then we move on to the next
level of the spell slash vengeance plan that's in effect.
But again, I think the other way to interpret all

(57:59):
this is that dark wizards are as crazy as they
are vile. Like you just have to be completely shamelessly
unhinged in order to practice these dark arts. But don't fret.
There are going to be more spells and there are
going to be more spell components. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
The other thing I wanted to say about the Dark
Wizard is it almost feels, I mean, they're productive. They're
on this constant improvisational grind. These guys feel like, you know,
get up at six and get to the dark magic immediately.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah. Yeah, those atrocities aren't going to commit themselves.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Anyway, finally, we're sort of getting caught up. So back
in the present, the monk finishes explaining this backstory to Qianhong.
He explains that the abbot, again, whose name was Qingzhou,
was about to achieve immortality.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Or as a different translation might put it, maybe like
enlightenment or liberation.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
But because of the poison injected into his eyes by
the cursed spider's He can no longer attain that goal
unless somebody breaks the magic spell. And the abbot prophesied
that three months or a man named Chan Hung would
come to the temple and he would be the one
who could break the curse. Chan Hung does not believe it,

(59:18):
but there will be proof. The abbot's body was placed
inside a giant urn upon his death. And if there
is any decomposition of the abbot's body, they will know
that it was nonsense. But if the body is perfectly preserved,
then they'll know it was all true. So they go
to check out the urn. Some monks shatter it with
big mallets, and the abbot is not rotten at all. Uh-oh,

(59:40):
Chin Hung is now implicated. He's got to help.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah, fabulous scene. I love the shattering of the great urn.
And inside, yeah, the uncorrupted corpse of the abbot. Playing
on very real traditions in both the East and the
West of holy men whose bodies do not fully decompose.
You know, also getting into traditions of self-mummification.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Also, right after this, the monks lock Chan Hung inside
the room with the abbot's body. He's trying to get out,
but they lock him in there. And the body starts
talking to him. It says, you must be curious as
to why I've summoned you here. It's because we were
twins in our past lives. That's why your fate is
similar to mine in this life. So whatever happens to

(01:00:20):
me will happen to you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Uh-oh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
So because of the golden needles in his eyes, if
they were normal people, the abbot's body would already have
decomposed and Chan Hung would already be dead because the
same thing would happen to him that happens to the abbot.
But the body is not decomposed and Chan Hung is
still alive. And the abbot explains this is because of
his practice of Buddhism. He says, I almost achieved immortality,

(01:00:47):
but because I was hit with the poison spell, I
couldn't succeed. But by the time my body decomposes, it
will be your time of death. You can't avoid it.
So that's the setup. These two are magically linked as
twins from a past life. The abbot can no longer
fight this battle because he is dead, and only Chan
Hung can save them both. If Chan Hung can defeat

(01:01:09):
the evil magic, his life will be saved and the
abbot will be able to achieve immortality. Otherwise, it's curtains
for them both.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Yeah, yeah. And don't really worry about the kickboxing revenge anymore.
It's less important at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Yeah. Chan Hong doesn't want to hear this, of course.
He cusses out the monk and he leaves. But that
night in the hotel room, he has some eel vomiting issues.
He vomits up a live eel in the sink. He
doesn't like that. Great sequence.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Would be the most memorable scene in many other movies. Here,
it can become a little lost in the shuffle. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
So next day he's like, okay, I don't want to
do that again. So he goes back to the temple
and he says, I will help you fight. But then
the next shoe drops. In order to have the magical
abilities he's going to need in order to fight this battle,
he has to become a monk. And that means shaving
his head, giving up his life of crime, giving up
sin and earthly pleasures. Oh no, but he does it.

(01:02:07):
And we see a ceremony where he is led into
the temple complex riding on the back of an elephant
with dancers marching all around. He makes an offering and
he bows before the Buddha and he begins his practice.
And this part of the movie is kind of like
a long Buddhist monk magic warrior training montage. He goes
through the rituals, he humbles himself, and even receives a

(01:02:30):
new name that the monks at the temple call him Kaidibaluhu.
The training has several different things. One is enduring leeches
in a river. He has to get in a river
where he gets covered in leeches. And his master is like,
you stay there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
This is played for laughs, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yes, hilarious. And then there's also a scene which was
so strange, but I wonder if this is based on
anything real. Where he gets inside of a giant clay
pot that starts to glow. The pot is covered with
sacred writing. And then Chan Hung is on the inside
and his hands are wrapped in ropes and the ropes

(01:03:08):
go out of the pot and are held by monks
all around him who are chanting. And then he is
absorbed in a scripture tornado where the sacred writing on
the pot spins all around him and becomes a funnel.
And then the lines of scripture flow down his arms
and into his blood.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Great use of animation here. And
I really think it's a great element of the film here. Yeah,
with the black magic is consistently like gross and over
the top and just completely mind-rending. But also the good
guy magic is also so visually impressive here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Yeah, that's right. And there is a strong, I mean,
even aesthetically, the two different schools of magic really emphasize
themes of like order versus chaos. Like the sorcerers are
doing chaos magic. And there is something that feels very
traditional and ordered and structured about the magic practiced by

(01:04:07):
the monks here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Yeah, and it's centered around language, you know? I mean,
it's so orderly. I think this is a great point.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Another thing that comes is the vows. So this is
an important plot point. In order to maintain purity, he
must keep his vows as a monk. So he swears
to follow the Buddha and do a bunch of stuff.
He has to abstain from prohibited activities such as gambling, murder, sex,
and drinking alcohol.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
But he's up for it. He's like, let's do it. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
And then the head monk after that says, so you've succeeded.
You are now ready to defeat evil. It feels like
it comes on so fast, but they're wasting no time
at all. We cut straight to an amazing wizard battle.
I'm not going to narrate this one with as much
detail as the last one. Well, the last one wasn't

(01:05:05):
a battle, I guess, but the last ritual scene. But
I do want to mention at least some of the
incredible sites and developments throughout. First of all, do you know, Rob,
where this takes place? Is it in another plane of existence?
It feels like it's kind of in the middle of
a void world.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah, a Place becomes less important here, doesn't it? Because
it's just like two magical forces doing battle with each other.
It could be like basically the way it's presented here
visually is one practitioner seated on one end and the
other practitioner seated on the other. And magical effects are
kind of going to war between the two of them.
So you could certainly interpret this as happening like within

(01:05:43):
the astral plane or within the mental realm that exists
between their shared minds. Or, yeah, did they go to
some sort of neutral zone where it's like, okay, we
have to go to the battle chamber where the wizards
do get out? I guess I lean more towards the
idea that it's in some sort of a zone in

(01:06:04):
their head, but I don't know. You go either direction here.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
So it begins when the evil wizard flies in through
the night in his bat mask costume, and then he says,
show me what you got. And then, by the way,
the evil wizard has... ultimate warrior face paint on. It's awesome.
And like purple satin suit. He's surrounded by an army
of crocodile skulls, which are animated by chicken blood.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
He throws chicken blood. Yeah, makes them clack and crawl
around and eventually chase after a chicken carcass.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Oh, and warning to people in this scene, there is
what appears to me to be probably an unsimulated beheading
of a chicken. I'm not positive about that, but it
looks to me like it's real, so. I don't know.
You get that with some of these older movies.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Yeah. Most of the animal violence in this picture does
appear to be quite simulated.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
All of the other stuff seems to be fake.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Yeah, but this chicken and maybe another chicken scene are
a little questionable. Well, to be clear, the other chicken
is definitely dead, but also very gross. So, yeah, this
is a gross movie, just to drive that home once more.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
So anyway, you've got blooming red eyes out of these
crocodile skulls. You've got bats in the eye holes. And
then the wizard is saying, get up, attack the monk.
So the bats fly at him, but he kind of
surrounds himself with a magical force field that becomes a
glowing hot glue trap for bats. They get stuck to it,

(01:07:38):
and then it incinerates them. And then we get the
evil rice. The wizard starts... throwing out handfuls of rice
over the crocodile heads and saying, dark Lord grant ultimate
power to this rice. And then Chan hung is attacked
by a score, a swarm of animated crocodile skulls, which
are chomping like wind up teeth.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
Yeah. And he dispatches these by like throwing a little
Buddhist ambulance into all their mouths. Yeah. So yeah, basically
like each wizard is a general commanding these different magical
effects against each other.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
That's right. So the bad wizard is, He starts eating
rotten guts and vomiting them and eating them and saying,
I'm full of power now. And then there's pink vomit
from a giant pot that's bubbling and becoming a green
Martian head with this giant cranium and pointy ears. And
this like rises up out of the pot. Where does
this green Martian come from?

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Words cannot describe how bizarre this point in an already
just completely crazy sequence is. Like this is such an
ultimate WTF moment in this film. And just my jaw
literally drops at this point in the movie. And then
it just keeps happening. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
And then it becomes scanners because the monk uses his
scanners powers to make the green Martian head explode The
wizard then pokes himself in the neck with needles and
then severs his own head. And his severed head flies
away from his body with arteries dangling out of the
ragged neck and then attacks the monk by strangling him
with the arteries. And then the monk fights back and

(01:09:13):
makes the wizard's head melt with the power of a
red sun.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
Yeah. And then this is the finish to the match.
This wizard is now for real dead.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
That's right. That part is over. So Chan Hung is
like after the battle, he's talking to the head monk
who tells him evil is defeated. The abbot can achieve
immortality and you can go back to Hong Kong. So again,
it's pretty, it's like, wow, that was sudden. But as
soon as he gets home to Hong Kong, Chan Hung,
he like comes in through the door. He sees his

(01:09:43):
girlfriend in the shower and he is overcome with lust.
And at this point, I think he was wondering, wait,
do I still have to keep all those vows I
made to the Buddha? Unclear. Don't know if I'm still
bound by that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
I think, yeah, I mean, it's my understanding, especially in
Thai Buddhism, like, you know, you can enter the priesthood
and become a monk for a certain period of time,
such as, like, before you become married and so forth,
or perhaps later on if you're changing something up in
your life, that sort of thing. So, We can't really

(01:10:17):
apply some of the same thinking that we would apply to, say,
Western Christian monastic traditions. So my understanding here is it's
kind of like he's in the clear, right? He did
the monk thing. He fought evil. He defeated evil. They
told him he could go home. He is totally in
the clear here to get naked with his already naked girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
Yeah. So lust wins out. He gets in the shower
with her. Uh, and, uh, also there's some funny dialogue
in the scene, but she, she's basically like, did you
cheat on me a lot in Thailand? And he says,
I was a monk for three months. And she goes,
it's about time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
In the end, right? They live happily ever after.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Oh, you would think so. Uh, no, uh, they live
happily for a bit. Uh, but then there is more
wickedness to come. So we get a funeral for a
bad wizard. I think this is supposed to be the
evil wizard's body burning on a big funeral pyre.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Right, has no head.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
Who's burning it? Uh-oh, we see three more wizards of
the Black Magic School looking on. Are they supposed to
be colleagues or apprentices of the main wizard? Maybe like underlings?

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
They could have even been enemies, but hey, once a
holy monk takes out one of your own, that's a
uniting principle. They are clearly hell-bent now on seeking vengeance
against those who took out this dark wizard.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
And then they're going to ratchet up the craziness. So
these three, they go to a spooky house in the
woods with owls hooting outside. And then from under the house,
they retrieve a mummy, you know, from the mummy storage cellar.
It's a wet mummy, by the way, wrapped in vines.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
Yeah, it's like a bog mummy, a swamp mummy, nasty
swamp corpse.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Yeah, I don't know. Do you describe what happens from here?

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
All right, so yeah, they really get to cooking, basically.
So they don't do a lot of describing, so we
just have to sort of follow along. But what they're
going to try and do, apparently, is either create a
body for an evil spirit to inhabit, or they're going
to resurrect an older, powerful sorceress. And so what they're

(01:12:26):
going to need for this, whichever route we're taking here,
is they have to get that dead body from the swamp,
And then they need to steal or acquire a crocodile.
And then they're going to get that crocodile corpse. They're
going to put the dead human body inside the crocodile corpse,
sew it up, and then all manner of depravity.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Like a crocodile Wellington.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Yes, yes. And then all manner of depravities have to
be committed in order to complete the spell. Like, I mean,
there are flayed human heads just hanging around, watching on... meanwhile,
I guess the body is kind of like cooking inside
of the dead crocodile while the three wizards conduct foul
rituals and prepare quote-unquote food for the soon-to-be-revived body of

(01:13:13):
the demon sorceress.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Which involves a lot of chewing up and eating disgusting,
gross stuff and then either spitting or vomiting it out
and then maybe another one of them eating it and
chewing it up again.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
Yep, in the same shot. You can't suspend disbelief on that.
So it's like Yeah, they're chewing up pieces of chicken, entrails,
durian fruit. I'm assuming like rotten durian fruit because new
durian fruit in and of itself is perfectly tasty, if
not a little fragrant. But so for these guys, normal

(01:13:45):
durian fruit clearly is not going to work. This is
probably something that's rotted a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
So, yeah, just madness. Gross madness. Amazing. And then we
see the effects of their evil work in two different
intercut scenes. First of all, we've got the monks at
the temple. They are preparing the abbot's body for immortality.
They're covering it with gold and chanting all around it. Meanwhile,

(01:14:09):
Chan Hung is, remember the kickboxing grudge match?

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
It's happening. Now it's happening. He's fighting the Thai boxer
for revenge. So while these things are happening, the demoness awakes.
And they give her Freddy Krueger fingers, by the way.
And she wakes up and they guide her over to,
I guess it's supposed to be a statue of the abbot.
And she pokes the eyes of the statue with her claws.

(01:14:34):
And then, oh no, that inflicts simultaneous curses. First of all,
the gold falls from the abbot's corpse and seems to signal, uh-oh,
he's not incorruptible anymore. He's going to decompose. And then
in the middle of his kickboxing match, Chan Hung loses
his sight and not only loses his sight, but acquires
maggot vision.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
This is so glorious because, yeah, suddenly he goes blind
during the match. You know, he's having to blind punch
and kick while Bolo pummels him. And you might wonder, then,
as a viewer, well, what does he see? And, yeah,
we get the POV shot, and it's just maggots. It's
like a visor shape on the screen, and it's just
maggots rolling around there. And then later on, he's going

(01:15:16):
to get a backstage, like, mirror vision where he sees
maggots just falling out of his eye sockets. So, yeah,
there are a lot of gross worms in this movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
So Chan-Hung is beaten badly.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
But he pulls out the victory, though.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
Oh, he does? I forgot about that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
Yeah, he somehow kicks Bolo over the top rope. Bolo
goes through a table.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
And then our hero runs backstage with his maggot eyes.
And then, you know, he looks in the mirror and
he sees maggots falling out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
I totally missed that he actually beat Bolo. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
So I guess maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
Maybe that is the conclusion.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Maybe vengeance is acquired here. I could be. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
Now I feel bad. I feel like I was totally
wrong about the fact that it doesn't tie up the
kickboxing thing because I was under the misimpression that he
lost in this match because of what happened to his eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
Well, he doesn't get to savor the victory. That's for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Yeah. I mean, I was paying attention. I guess his
victory is short enough that I looked away and look
back and yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
It's, it's easy to lose sight of the, um, the
mundane plot at this point because the, the crazy magic
plot is just growing in size.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
Anyway, he goes back to the temple to find out
what went wrong. And the monk there is like, uh,
you didn't break any of your vows, did you?

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
He's like, no, no, of course not.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
Oh, he doesn't admit to it immediately, but they will
eventually figure it out with the help of a supernatural
fire-based lie detector test. Um, but, uh, anyway, uh, he, uh, first, uh,
the monks, they think he has still been faithful and
the head monk says, don't worry, I'll, I'll arrange another
duel for you. Uh, but first they're going to do

(01:16:56):
a power up scene.

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
That's right. That's right. They're going to need some sort
of extra power. Uh, and so, uh, they, uh, they
go out to search for the thousand year old Ganoderma.
So again, it's easy to get caught up in all
the hideous rituals of the dark wizards, uh, and so
caught up in it that we can forget the sublime
wonder and weirdness of the Buddhist magic scenes. So that's

(01:17:22):
exactly what we have here with the quest for the
thousand-year-old Ganoderma. That is presumably a reishi mushroom here. It
is in the genus Ganoderma. So the reishi mushroom, if
you're not familiar with it, it holds an important place
in traditional Chinese medicine, various other Asian folk medicine traditions.
And also in general in the world of like alternative

(01:17:43):
medicine and supplements and so forth. A few years back,
my wife and I prepared a tea from some reishi
mushrooms that we foraged. Oh, nice.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
How was that?

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Very bitter. Very bitter. But it enhanced my chi, eased
my spirit, and, you know, probably promoted longevity. So these
are some of the ideas that are held concerning the reishi. And,
you know, it's still consumed all over the world. Paul
Stamets is a big fan of the reishi mushrooms. But anyway,
this is our magical take on it. This is a

(01:18:13):
thousand year old mushroom they're seeking out. So our hero
and the current abbot, they find this ancient mushroom in
a chasm of a great Buddha's eye in an underground temple.
And I have to say, this is just a fantastic set.
This is not a real temple location, just an incredible set.

(01:18:34):
It has this like magic flaming tree growing out of
the eye socket as well. And so they kind of
like rope down to it and then they draw the
magic out of the mushroom by applying honey to it.
And this allows the magic goo to then clear goo
to drip down from the mushroom into this little amulet container.
That way our hero can use it later on when

(01:18:55):
he's fighting evil.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
By doing self-surgery on himself.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
Yes. Yeah. He's going to have to terminate his arm
in a really gross scene. So even the good magic
practitioners here do get into a little bit of body
horror for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
But also, by the way, before the duel can be arranged,
the monks figure out that Chan Hung broke his vows.
So that's really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Yeah, they're like, you lied to the Buddha. It's some
serious business. It is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
They take it seriously and they're like, no, there's nothing
you can do now. You're just, yeah, too bad. But
Chan Hung doesn't accept it. So he goes to the abbot,
to the abbot's body, and he's like, is there anything
that can be done? At first, he doesn't get an answer.
And then he's like, I'll trash your temple. And he
starts like smashing everything up. And finally, the abbot's like,

(01:19:43):
stop throwing a tantrum. And he tells him there is
one way they can be saved now. It's the only
way is by if Chan Hung retrieves a sacred Buddhist
relic from a temple in Nepal. These would be the
abbot's ashes from one of his past lives when he
was a lama there. So let's go to Nepal. Chan

(01:20:12):
Hung travels by plane, lands, he gets his bearings in Nepal,
and eventually he finds this temple where the ashes are stored,
but they apparently only... show up during a special magic
time of day. I think maybe it's a dawn.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
Yeah, where the light's going to shine through into this
underground temple, and it's going to illuminate the ashes. We
learn this because he goes on a tour of the temple,
and there is a tour guide that's informing him, as
well as there's a Western tourist lady there as well.
And we get the full rundown on this place.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
So he does the self-surgery. He puts the amulet inside
his body. And he goes in during the off hours
to collect the ashes, but he is not alone there.
First of all, he deals with some magic, some magical
security measures where there is like a statue at this
big Buddhist shrine that starts yelling intruder alert, intruder alert,

(01:21:10):
which is so good.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
Yes. Yes. And then like the, the statue, the multi-armed
statue comes alive. So we have like a Nepalese statue.
buddhist automaton here that is going to do battle with
him uh but he makes pretty short work of these
i'm not sure how much of it is that you
know he's just far above them at this point or
maybe they didn't like the way the effects came together

(01:21:32):
or we just we were running long on time here
and we just needed to get to the final conflict right.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
And then the evil wizard's demoness appears uh i don't
know rob do you want to describe this how i
don't even know how.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
To begin I mean, skimpy outfit, high heels, like a
crazy golden crown. She appears to have elongated arms at
first glance, and I guess does, but her arms terminate
in skeletal claw hands that are either extensions of her
arms or being used as weapons. Anyway, a very glamorous, sexy,

(01:22:11):
hellish entrance here for our final boss. Equal parts alluring
and revolting all at once. And, of course, illuminated in
all sorts of cool green and red gels.

Speaker 2 (01:22:23):
Yeah, so I can't describe everything that happens in this conflict,
but among other things, she shoots detachable alligator armor hands
at our hero, and they grab Chan Hung's chest and
grip his pectoral muscles and cut them.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
Yeah. Later on, they're going to crawl around on the
ground and then hold him in place. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
She creates a giant crocodile that crawls on the floor
and attacks him.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
He escapes the giant crocodile, but then she grabs his
head with her legs. And then he is like pinned
down on the ground by the hands. And then, oh God,
I forget what happens after. Oh, she puts the caterpillars
on him.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
Yeah. So she kind of, she gives him like a
thigh squeeze and like kind of shimmies around and then
she stands over him. And she continues to shimmy and
kind of do a little sexy dance, but then makes
caterpillars rain down on him. And they crawl over his body.
And then they begin to crawl into his nostrils and
into his ears. So we get a little Wrath of

(01:23:27):
Khan energy in this picture as well.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
But then there is a kind of intervention, right, from
the shrine itself because the light comes in. And it
awakens the spirit of the llama. Did you understand it
that way as well?

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
And then the llama kind of like rides down.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
On like a tram, basically.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
Yeah, like a laser palanquin. And interferes, like saves him
from the demoness. And then the demoness battles the llama.
And they have this kind of like super magical energy standoff.
He wins, because she tries to wrap him up in
her hair, and then he just pulls her hair and

(01:24:09):
her skin off. And that causes her to then flail skinless, defleshed,
and fall back onto the floor, where she begins to
writhe in agony. But, oh, it is not over yet.

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
No, but there she looks like just one sniff of
that fog, and you're inside out.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Yeah, she does look like that. She looks like she's
inside out. A little bit like Slim Goodbody, too. Full
body Slim Goodbody. just writhing on the floor. And she
begins to leak purple slime everywhere, like purple slime falling
out of her body.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
And then gives birth to three plastic bags full of eyeballs,
which walk around on the floor and then expand and
turn into putty mummies that are going, and then they
turn into the three wizards. That's where they were.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
But then they produce knives and stab themselves. One of
them cuts open his belly. The other two cut off
their own fingers and bleed on the guy's belly. And
then that turns his body into little eyeball brontosauruses that
attack on the floor.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
Yes, little pink demons that look kind of like brontosauruses.
I've also seen them described as poodle demons. And they
begin to crawl toward the llama. And I mean, at
this point, we're just in such crazy town. It's almost
senseless to try and make any sense out of it.
This is just like crazy wizard nonsense. But my interpretation

(01:25:38):
is that in this final transformation on the part of
the dark wizards, it's like a last ditch effort to
assume a very particular specialized range spellcasting demon form, three
of them, one for each of them, that might allow
them to take out their enemies. So they begin blasting
their eyeball bolts at the llama. And I don't know,

(01:25:59):
maybe they've got a chance, maybe they don't. But that's
not how it goes down, because the llama then causes
the statues in the temple to fling their vajras, these
little Buddhist thunderbolts, artifacts at the pink demons, which then
cause the pink demons to explode, killing them.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
And that is our final victory over evil here.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
And to be clear, the pink demons very much wind
up toys, getting into that wind up toy energy that
we keep experiencing throughout the picture.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
I don't want to, because I have to be clear,
I'm not an expert in this in any way. So
I don't want to oversell the cultural authenticity of the
magic depicted here, but I am struck by, by how
much more specifically Buddhist in flavor the magic and the
magical conflict in this movie is when compared to the

(01:26:57):
magic you'd see in a lot of other movies. That
is often, I don't know, a lot of the specific
real-world religious imagery or connections feels de-emphasized in favor of
a kind of generic appeal. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
Yeah, I know what you mean. This is something we
enjoy to a lesser extent in the Indian horror movie Paranamandir,
in which they're using very Hindu iconography to overcome spirits
of evil. So it is nice to get supernatural horror
outside of the sort of traditional Western Christian motifs.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
Yeah, that has some cultural specifics actually in it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like with these Vajra artifacts serving as
holy hand grenades to blow up the pink demons. Yes.
But with this, I believe, and the movie seems to believe,
the evil wizards are now completely defeated. Wizard number one, dead.
Wizard number two, dead. Wizards three, four, and five, dead.

(01:28:00):
Demoness slash sorceress from beyond the grave also returned to
being full dead. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
And the Abbott can at least attain immortality in which case,
I don't know, maybe he could help again if more,
more wizards appear. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
Yeah. We see the eyes open on the, uh, the
Abbott's body. Uh, and then we, the eyes of our
hero are also cured and he's able to, we actually
get a nice little scene there at the end where, uh,
the monks are coming in to pray in front of
the Abbott's body and he gets up and he walks
out the door.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
Actually before the, We see him, there's like happy music
playing like, oh, we finally did it as our hero
is pulling needles out of his eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
Very long needles like, oh, yeah, supernatural needles being, you know,
I don't think he's necessarily pulling them. He's kind of
like magically excreting them straight through his eyelids.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
So just a little last bit of holy body art.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):
Made me think of those tear-drinking moths we talked about
last week for poking their proboscis into the eyeball. Okay, well,
that is The Boxer's Omen.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
Absolutely, yes. Sights and sounds well beyond anything you've tested.
Highly recommend this one for anyone out there. Though, if
you've listened to it all the way here, I think
at this point either you are pretty clear this is
not a film you want to see or this is
a film you absolutely have to see Or I think
in many cases you have seen the film, you love it,
and you just wanted to hear our thoughts on all

(01:29:34):
of the sheer insanity that occurs in this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):
Overflowing with ritual madness. I wonder if I would like
recommendations from listeners for movies that show not just the
use of magic, you know, like people casting spells and
power emanating from them that show not just the magical effects,
but spend as much attention on the process of acquiring

(01:30:01):
magic power or of like the recipes for spells as
this movie does.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Yeah. Yeah. I'd be hard pressed to think of one. I,
I mean, I'm more readily think of examples of the
opposite where wizards and witches just do things and you
don't really know much about the preparation that goes into them.
There's probably too much of that. Whereas, I mean, really
this gets down to the sort of the Shakespearean roots, right?
where you know everything that's going into the witch's cauldron.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Yeah, that's right. Actually, yeah, Boxer's Omen, in the tradition
of Macbeth.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Yeah. You could also think of this as a black
magic procedural. Very obsessed with all the steps that go
into casting your dark, dank magics. So indeed, if you
have suggestions for other examples of this, or counterexamples, write in.
We would love to hear from you. We're going to

(01:30:54):
close out this episode. Yeah, would love to hear from
everyone out there. If you have thoughts on The Boxer's Omen,
other films by this filmmaker, or just other great recommendations
from Hong Kong cinema in general, write in. A reminder
that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

(01:31:17):
If you are on Letterboxd.com, find us. We are Weird
House on Letterboxd. And we have a nice list there
of all the movies we've covered over the years and
sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Again,
you can always find Weird House Cinema in the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. But we also have
a playlist that is just Weird House Cinema. So you
can also look up Weird House Cinema wherever you get

(01:31:38):
your podcasts and follow us that way as well.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. 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 stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
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