Weirdhouse Cinema: The Butterfly Murders

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1979 Hong Kong wuxia film “The Butterfly Murders,” directed by Tsui Hark. The film certainly delivers on killer butterflies, but it’s also a moody gothic castle film, an action-packed showstopper and a bit of a slasher. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and
today's pick on weird House is the genre defying nineteen
seventy nine Hong Kong Martial Arts Bonanza The Butterfly Murders,
directed by Shehawk. This movie is great. It has everything.
It's part wusha, it's part eco horror. I didn't expect

(00:37):
it to be so much like like Frogs and other
eco horror movies we've done. It's part murder mystery, but
it's also all killer butterflies.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's right. This one's a real tree. It's almost like
a fitting pre Thanksgiving dinner kind of a film because
it's just stuff to the gills as we as we'll discuss,
no doubt, this is perhaps a two of like talented
filmmakers first movie Syndrome, where clearly they had had so
many ideas that need to be unleashed on the world

(01:09):
and they're all present, you know. So it's maybe a
little a little bit overloaded in that regard, but yeah,
there's so many interesting elements I'd throw in proto slasher
gothic horror. And also there's a little bit of the
old reading of the Will drama thrown in there as well.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
You know, one thing I really respect about this movie
is that I don't actually know what it was called
in the I guess original Cantonese marketing, but the English
title delivers on the promise in a quite literal fashion.
So it's called The Butterfly Murders. And the Butterfly Murders
is not about like a serial killer who draws a

(01:46):
butterfly at every crime scene or something. That's what you
would guess based on that title, right, It's always that
kind of annoying fake out. But in this case, no,
it is literally about people who are murdered by swarms
of bloodthirsty butterflies.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Absolutely, yeah, And I think my initial guess when I
started running across this title was, oh, it's a serial killer.
It's some sort of like, oh, he leaves a butterfly
as his signature or something, But no, it's straight up
butterfly sworms.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Well, there are human intelligences behind the butterfly crimes, but
they really are carried out via swarms of butterflies. Multiple
reviews I've seen compare this film to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds,
and yes, I definitely see some similarities. I think there
may have been some conscious relationship there. Except as absurd

(02:34):
as the premise of The Birds itself was, at least
birds have beaks and talons. This is about killer butterflies.
And the crazy thing is this movie succeeds at making
butterflies scary. Well, I don't know that was my opinion.
I don't know if you agree, Rob, but I was
shocked at how creepy it makes the butterflies.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Absolutely, I feel like it is. It's essentially a goofy
concept right because you can you can break down and say, okay, well,
there are examples of butterflies and moths that have some
level of toxicity to them, but there's no such thing
as a killer butterfly. Butterflies are not threatening, and yet
this movie on the whole succeeds in making them feel
like at least sort of an ambient environmental threat.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
However, on top of just that home run of a
premise killer butterflies, I'm to say, across the board, I
thought this movie was generally number one excellent, like really
well made and number two bananas. It is just nuts
in basically every direction.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Now I do have to emphasize
that this movie in its currently available international form, is
not an easy to follow film if you're trying to
just absolutely absorb every detail of the.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
So much plot.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah it is, you know. It is a historic martial
arts fantasy adventure film, a wusha, but it's it's one
with yeah, complex plot, multiple characters, parallel mysteries and feuding
factions and all. That's perfectly fair. But the English subtitles
are rough. And while rough subtitles can prove perfectly serviceable
for many films, Son of Peach and Thrilling Bloody Sword

(04:10):
come to mind, and those have some really rough subtitles,
but with this one, again, given on that complexity, it's
an uphill battle because there's just so much going on
to try and understand it just going off the subtitles.
There's also quite a bit of narration. So I'm not
pinning any of this on the film itself or the
people who made it, but it is a struggle to

(04:30):
piece all this together at times while also taking in
all the excellent details those moody sets and the face
melting action.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
I'm going to say that I think you can watch
this movie and get perfect enjoyment, like at least ninety
percent of the potential enjoyment of this film without closely
following what all of the factions and alignments and plot
twists are. And I was actually wondering when we get
into the plot description section of this episode, I kind

(04:59):
of don't know how I'm going to handle it because
I made detailed notes trying to follow the plot, but
it is so complicated. I'm like, are we gonna have
to skip over a bit of this? I don't know. Yeah, However,
I would not say that all of the complicated plot
machinations are just like completely extraneous, Like you can enjoy
the movie without trying to follow too closely. And at

(05:20):
the same time, I think all of the plot twists
are like really fun and exciting. It's just sort of
twist after twist in the second half of the movie.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah. Absolutely, it never really lets up. There's always something captivating.
It's almost too captivating. Again, if you're trying to follow
everything with the subtitles. All right, Joe, what's your elevator
pitch for the Butterfly Murders?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Let's say a scholar, a gang boss, and a wireflying
Marshall heroin walk into a castle haunted by killer butterflies.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
All right, let's hear a little bit of the trailer audio.
Note that this is from in rather long trails, like
four minutes long. I believe this is the original Hong
Kong trailer. So we're just gonna hear a little part
of it, but hopefully getting some of that excellent theme
music in there.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
Lay Fly, Guppi, segm Sunset Sun. Say to Nani family,
don't sun dow way see Sun Mom, baby, Mama? What

(07:08):
in nikon ya?

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Now, before we proceed, you may be wondering, well, how
can I watch the Butterfly Murders? Well, it's not an
easy one to get your hands on. Unfortunately. Right now,
this is a film where the best available quality is
very watchable, but it has not benefitted from restoration. The
English subtitles they're not hard baked, but they are rough,

(07:36):
so if you are not a Chinese speaker, you're gonna
have some difficulties with it. It looks like it has
streamed on Prime before, back when they had loads of
weird stuff, but today you're limited to just a few
hard to find region free DVDs or international release DVDs.
We rented it from Videodrome here in Atlanta, and you
might find a watchable unofficial stream somewhere. But yeah, this

(07:59):
is one that's certainly has a following, and it would
be nice to see a, you know, a really well
produced release at some point in the future. I agree.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
I wish there was a really great Blu ray restoration
of this, because it clearly is a fantastic looking movie.
But even the DVD we had had a lot of
I don't know, it was not in good shape, but
there was a lot of like washed out color and
weird kind of like pop ins of different color shades
on certain scenes. So I don't know. It seems like

(08:29):
whatever source source film material they were working from was
was not in the best of shape. I even found
there was something of a history of this movie being
hard to get in good format. I was reading a
post about it on I think dig hkmovies dot com.
This seems to be some kind of website about Hong
Kong cinema that points out that the only way that

(08:52):
for many years that English speakers could watch the film
was on a laser disc which number one one had
like an improperly cropped aspect ratio on the on the screen.
And also there was a quote commercial for an amusement
park at the end of side one, So I almost

(09:13):
kind of want to see it in that format. That's
like the like the commercials and the Star Wars Holiday special,
like they're part of the experience.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, I guess. I mean it's it's details like this,
and of course, sadly like this is still in play
for this film, but you know, it reminds you of
the links folks had to go to to watch some
of these films back in the day. You know, this
on top of various VHS dubs and you know VHS
dubs of a Japanese laser disc of some European release
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
But like we said, there are some sort of under
the radar rips out there that are not great quality.
It's not the best way you're going to see it,
but this movie is worth seeing, so especially if you
can get access to to the DVD that's out there,
it's it's pretty cool. I'd recommend it.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh absolutely, yeah, And again, the best version that's out
there is very watchable. This isn't one of those situations
like with pod people or ettraterrestrial visitors, where the previously
available footage was just not great at all. More on that,
because we're going to refeature that one as a weird
House rewind and I have some updates about the available

(10:17):
quality on that film.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Oh yeah, the old version of that was almost like
watching a movie being projected in a cloud of smoke.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah yeah, this one though perfectly watchable. All right, let's
talk about some of the folks behind this. So we
already mentioned the director here, Sheika or Shea Hart or
Shea Hook. I think you'll hear his name referenced in
varying ways. We'll just keep referring to him as Hawk here.

(10:44):
He was born in nineteen fifty Vietnamese born, Texas educated
Hong Kong film director, producer, and screenwriter. He studied film
at Southern Methodist University in Texas and then at the
University of Texas at Austin. Graduated in nineteen seventy five,
worked in New York City for a bit. I believe
he worked on a documentary about New York's Chinatown, and

(11:07):
then returned to Hong Kong in seventy seven. So this
was his first film, and it was a bold attempt
to revitalize with the Wushau genre with various genre influences
and excellent cinematic craft. While apparently not a huge hit
at the time, it's now considered a minor masterpiece. I
saw it referred to as such in an article in

(11:27):
the South China Morning Post by Richard James Havas, and
it's also considered something of a new wave sensation in
Chinese cinema. It's long been a cult favorite internationally as well.
I was not surprised at all to see that Michael
Weldon had it cataloged in the Psychotronic Video Guide from
decades back. Now Hawk went on to have an exceptional career,

(11:49):
and it's still active as a director and producer. His
directing credits include nineteen eighties Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind,
nineteen eighties, Were Going to Eat You That Is a
Cannibal Film nineteen eighty three, Zoo Warriors from the Magic
Mountain nineteen ninety ones, Once Upon a Time in China
ninety three is Green Snake, and twenty ten's Detective d

(12:09):
and The Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
You mentioned Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain in multiple sources.
I have seen that movie highlighted as sort of his masterpiece,
or at least his masterpiece. If you're looking for like
weird Hong Kong cinema more instead of his Western.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Movies, all right, we may have to come back and
look at that one now. Purely Western audiences might know
him best from his films from two films in particular,
Double Team from ninety seven. This is a film that
starred Jean Claude Van Dam, Dennis Rodman, Paul Freeman, and
Mickey Rourke. Have you seen this one, Joe, I don't

(12:47):
remember if I did. I saw it before I could
appreciate it. I think I looked back to see what
Ebert had to say about it. Roger Ebert wrote, Double
Team is one of the most preposterous action films ever made.
And I do not mean that as a criticism. It
will give you some notion of this movie strangeness. If
I tell you that Dennis Rodman does not play the
most peculiar character.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Great, I mean I want to see it now.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Another film that he did that International audiences might have
heard of his Black Mask two City of mass from
two thousand and two. It has a cast that includes
Tobin Bell that's old Jigsaw where he saw fans, pro
wrestler Rob Van Dam, Tracy Lords of Blade Fame, and
also Tyler Maine who I think he played Michael Myers

(13:31):
and some of the Rob Zombie films, didn't they And
he played saber Tooth in the first X Man.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yeah, that's right, I have not seen it. I have
not seen it either. I guess I feel like I
don't think I've seen any of his other movies that
I recall, and I've got to fix that.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, absolutely, because there's so many of them, and he's
had such a long career. Certainly the weirder entries. I'm
interested in Zoo Warriors, I'm interested in the Cannibal flick,
and who knows what else is in there? All right.
The writers on this, we have Chiu Ming Lamb, who
is active from nineteen seventy nine through nineteen eighty four,
probably best known for this film along with nineteen eighties

(14:10):
The Buddhist Fist in nineteen eighty four is the Ghost Informer,
and then the other writer is Fan Lynn. This is
their only credit on multiple databases, including Hong Kong Movie
Database All right now. Getting into the actors a bit.
I'm not going to highlight everyone, but try and hit
our main main ones here and Joe you may have
to jump in here because the names that I have

(14:32):
are mostly the character names are mostly off of IMDb.
You might have a different version from.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
The subtitles, because I think the subtitles to deb eight
a little bit spelled differently. Yeah, so our main character,
according to the subtitles, was known as Fong. This is
the scholar, the nerd of the film, if you like.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yes, And the actor here is Sueming Lao born nineteen
thirty one, Hong Kong. Actor known for nineth eighty Seven's
a Chinese Ghost Story, which we watched. He plays the
tree devil in that nice two thousand and six is Recycle,
nineteen eighty Seven's A Better Tomorrow two, as well as
the two thousand and three film The Medallion. I think
that's a Jackie Chan film. I don't recall off hand.

(15:16):
I'm also going to just looking sometimes. I just enjoy
finding strange titles on especially international films. There's nineteen eighty
nine film titled eat a Bowl of Tea, so why not?
Why not eat a bowl of Tea.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
I like his portrayal of this character. So he is
the essentially the only non warrior character completely surrounded by
warriors in every other direction. So he's not he's a lover,
not a fighter, but he's not really a lover either.
He's a chronicler. And yet they don't portray him as
like a like a coward. He is a brave non

(15:53):
fighter in a way.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, like other movies might have positioned him as more
of kind of like you're sniveling even comic relief character,
but he's more of a scholar in sort of the
traditional it's sort of in the traditional Chinese sense of
of like you know, he is he is a He
is a noble scholar who is recording these strange events
and sharing them with with with the with the surviving world. Yeah,

(16:17):
all right, we also have oh what a character we
have Green Shadow.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
I love Green Shadow. Sign me up for the Green
Shadow fan club.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yes, Green Shadow. Her specialty seems to be flying around
on wires and grappling hooks and using like wire based
martial arts.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
I don't know when exactly this started in film, but yeah,
this is her performance in this movie is cited as
an example of what's sometimes called like wire fu or
like wire work in martial arts films, but it's not
one of those cases where like in some films, characters
are depicted as having kind of a energy or magic
power that allows them to sort of like fly or

(16:57):
leap beyond what would be normally physically possible for humans,
and that is achieved via wire based special effects. In
this case, she explicitly and openly uses wires that that
is her martial arts style, Like she swings from chords
and wires and zips along on them and dangles from
apparently just out of the sky on wires.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, she's a wire specialist and she's
a light. Played by Michelle Young born nineteen fifty six,
Hong Kong cinema actress. This was not her first film,
and I think it kind of shines through because she
has this kind of god, I don't know, just this
sort of this effortless charisma in the film. Yeah, just
just very likable. She's a lovable scamp and just did

(17:40):
a light every time she's on the screen.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
In this situation of like death and disease and high
stakes conflict and factional fighting and betrayal, and secret murders.
She's just always extremely cheerful and two steps ahead of
everybody else.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, so yeah, she's a lot of fun. She's also
in the nineteen eighty cannibal movie We're Going to Eat You,
and she was also apparently a popular force on Hong
Kong television for a long time.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Love Green Shadow, but I would say this movie actually
has a lot of really charismatic martial arts heroes in it.
The other main fighter hero we follow in this movie
is Boss ten or ten Fung, and he I also
found him super charismatic, even though he's less of a
nice character than Green Shadow.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, he's you know, he's a professional criminal and gang leader.
But has this great stern face, this great presence. I
would almost compare him to sort of a snake pluskin
sort of a vibe, you know, an Old West kind
of a vibe.

Speaker 4 (18:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Again, very stern face, very stern presence, solid performance, great
at great great action role here. The actor is Shutong Wong,
who lived nineteen forty four through twenty twenty one, Hong
Kong actor and director, whose other acting credits include nineteen
seventy two's Five Fingers of Death. He also worked as
a stunt coordinator on various films, including this one.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, so obviously his stunt work in the martial arts
scenes is great since he's the stunt coordinator, but also
I think he does really well as an actor. He's
got a great face for the role. He has this
kind of stone like kind of immovability in many scenes
where you're just like, you know, no, he's not gonna
budge all right.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
The next character we have is the master of the Castle,
Master Shum. I've also seen it as Shin in the credits,
but this is another strong screen presence for reasons we'll
get into. But the actor here is Ku chu Cheng
born nineteen forty eight, Taiwanese actor, active from seventy four
through present. His other films include nineteen ninety one's A

(19:48):
Brighter Summer Day, ninety six is Maijong, and nineteen eighty
one's Love Massacre. That's not a horror movie. It looks
like it's some sort of a drama for some reason,
as the English name Love Massacre. All right. Now, there
are a number of other like gang members and specialized
fighters we'll get into. I'm not going to highlight all
of them. But I have to mention the magic fire

(20:11):
guy here. Yeah, Guya, who's played by Eddie Coe born
nineteen thirty seven, easily recognizable Shaw Brothers veteran active from
nineteen sixty seven through present. He acted in a lot
of Wusha and did some notable Hong Kong TV back
in the seventies and eighties. Eventually migrated to Canada and
has appeared in such Western films as ninety eight's Lethal

(20:32):
Weapon four and twenty fifteen's The Martian, though I believe
he's still quite active in Chinese cinema and TV as well.
But he has this very expressive face, and in this
movie he spends a lot of time blowing stuff up,
catching his enemies on fire, and then laughing maniacally.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
You know, I was kind of surprised by the thunders,
Like when they were first showing up. It really catches
you off guard because you don't really know whether they're
good guys are bad guys. And that really continues like
long after they have appeared. You're trying to figure out
how to sort them mentally. Because this guy, in some
scenes he's kind of you're kind of with him. He's

(21:09):
kind of one of the good guys. But also he
is like he is a nasty fire shooting killer and
he ultimately I don't well, I don't want to spoil
the ending just yet. We will have spoilers later in
this episode. But the ending is a shock and it
involves him.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah. Yeah, so fun character I did. When a thunder
started really showing up in Earnest, I was also a
little bit worried because I'm like, oh my goodness, it's
getting more complex. Yeah, I'm not gonna give track of everyone,
all right, Just one other actor I'll mention Tino Wong
plays thousand Hands leak him. He was also the action
director on the film. I'm not necessarily all in the

(21:45):
clear on who did what on this movie, but he
is credited as action director and not just a you know,
like a stunt coordinator or whatever. His other films include
nineteen seventy eight Drunken Master and seventy eight Snake in
the Eagle Shadow.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Another great martial arts focused performance here.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, and then the score is by Frankie Chan born
nineteen fifty one, Hong Kong cinema composer, actor and director, who,
in my non expert opinion here absolutely knocks it. Out
of the park with a score full of more traditional
feeling wusha motifs as well as bonkers synth notes that
hit you right in the boards of Canada and the funk.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
There are funky parts.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
There's a little funk there too. Now I'm not clear
on like how I couldn't find any details about the score,
and I know sometimes you're dealing with a score in
these movies that maybe are borrowing from multiple sources, So
I can't say with any clarity how it all came together,
or if this is all original, or if it's coming
from other films or stock, et cetera. But yeah, I

(22:49):
loved everything I heard in the movie. That first synth
cascade upon seeing a butterfly that really knocked my socks off.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
There are a lot of moments in this movie where
you suddenly get an extreme close up of a butterfly,
and then there's something that's I don't even know if
I would call it music. There's kind of a rhythmic
thumping or drumming sound that becomes very loud. It's almost
like you are hearing the movements of the butterfly's legs
or wings on the scale of an insect. But it's

(23:19):
like a John Bonham drum fill, and it's really cool.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
He's credited with composing on a number of other films,
including seventy eight's The thirty Sixth Chamber of Shaolin, nineteen
eighties Encounter of the Spooky Kind seventy six is Master
of the Flying Guillotine, And that one gives me pause
on this whole, like how the music come together, because
I know that's one that give memory. Serves famously draws
from Western music sources.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, too great effect, I mean, in a brilliant way.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah. He also is credited on seventy five's The Super Inframan,
seventy six is The Oily Maniac. A lot of movies
we've covered, yeah, in His directorial credits include nineteen nineties Outlaw.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
Brother m.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
All right, you want to get into the plot.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Oh, let's get into.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
It all right. So, as I teased earlier, it's kind
of difficult to figure out how to approach this one,
like should we try to explain the whole plot or
employed the skip a bit brother principle from Monty Python.
I'm going to start off talking in some detail, and
then if we find this is too too much, maybe

(24:32):
we can zoom out a little bit.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Okay, sounds good, all.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Right, So the film begins with narration. It shows mist
blowing in front of a full moon, and the narrator,
who we will later find out is Fong. The scholar,
tells us quote in the thirty six year period before
the New Era, two devastating wars took place in the
martial world, and the idea of a martial world seems

(24:57):
to be a sort of concept in this movie, where
it's like, this is the world in which all of
the martial arts fighters sort of compete for power, and
it includes especially whatever this character will get to in
a minute, Boss ten is doing. He's in charge of
something that seems to me to be maybe like mercenary armies,

(25:21):
maybe a criminal gang, maybe some sort of pseudo or
quasi governmental thing. But he just commands a lot of fighters.
So he's big in the marshal world. Is that how
you understood it?

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean he's kind of like a master
of a guild or guild of warriors kind of a thing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
So Fong tells us a narration that there was this
first war in the dim Chong Mountain. Many were killed,
hungry condors filled the skies. There's a second war in
wu Doong Mountain or in the bottom of Wudong Mountain.
It says there many were killed again, and then it
says from that time on where it's quote, most masters
in the martial world were all dead. Thus the martial

(26:04):
world entered the Quiet period, lasting over thirty years. On
the surface, it was a strange truce. In fact, there
were undercurrents of unrest. Then emerged seventy two new forces
termed these seventy two Trails of Smoke, heralding the dawn
of the new era. And then here, while the narration

(26:24):
goes on, we see this barren, sandy landscape with smooth
white sand, almost like a beach, though I don't think
it's a beach. I think it's a desert. There are
mountains in the distance, and in in the foreground there
is a single, lonely tree branch blowing in the wind.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
So already we're kind of in the deep end here.
But I love the texture that has presented because, at
least as far as I was understanding the subtitles on
all of this, like it's almost a post apocalyptic setting,
like the warriors have become so skilled that they killed
each other and killed everyone off. And so we're in
this momentary, heathful period, but there's still these undercurrents of

(27:03):
like reaching and grasping for the old military technologies and
tactics that will, of course inevitably bring us back up
to where we were before.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
That's exactly right. Yeah, that's how I understood the setting.
There used to be a bunch of martial arts heroes.
They all killed each other. Then there were thirty years
without martial arts heroes, and now the marshal world is returning.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
This would be a great They keep doing you a
sequels to all these fighting games, and it's always the
same thing every time, Like do this instead.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, I think it's a good premise, Okay, But the
narrator goes on to explain his own place in this.
He says, in these warring years, a traveling scholar, untrained
in martial arts recorded the important events of the era
and sold them for a living. His name is Fong,
and I am that one, He says, to this martial world.
I was an observer, but inevitably I become totally involved.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
This is a good sort of taste of the subtitle character. Yes,
is that it's it's you. You can follow it, but
there's a little but there's some nuance missing there.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah, there's some translation issues and things get clearly getting
lost in the translation of the English subtitles. We can
mention a few more moments like that as we go on,
but overall, yeah, you can follow what's happening. So we
see we see a man come over the horizon and
crunching through the sand. He wears simple robes, appears to
be a humble and quiet fellow, and this is Pongong

(28:25):
approaches a castle surrounded by tall grass, and then there
is an explosion in one of its towers, and then
the narration continues. Returning from Tibet in the twenty fourth
of the New Era, I met ten Phone, the leader
of the Ten Flags, and intriguing encounter. And then in
a quite funny way, there's a sudden cut to just

(28:46):
like funk music, like heavy funk groove and wikiwiki guitars.
So on screen we see a hand of an unknown
person reaching for the sky, fingers curled into a fist,
and then the hand opens to reveal in its palm
a butterfly. The butterfly flies away. Title screen the butterfly murders,
and we get a song with lyrics, So I want

(29:08):
to say what the lyrics are. As translated in the
subtitles here, the lyrics are Smoke arises, blood is in
the air, life of death. I must face it, trying
to escape, Yet you are already trapped. Suspicious arise, confidence shattered?
One whiff, and I am down forever. Who is to grieve?
Who is to be glad?

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Isn't this all? From the Bridge to Metallica? Is one
like I can just imagine it, James Headfield like belting
it out like dat confidence shattered?

Speaker 3 (29:40):
But no, it's it's a kind of lilting ballad sort
of melody.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, it's nice. I think you probably heard part of
it in the trailer audio we played, but now you
know what it's said. Roughly.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
All the while this opening credit sequence, while the music
is playing, it is trying really hard to make butterflies
look menacing, and to my surprise, succeeding. We see butterflies
landing and alighting from rocks along the bank of a
mountain stream. Then there are several shots where butterflies are
not flying but perched on the rocks and just sort

(30:14):
of pumping their wings rhythmically while they stay perched there.
I've seen this movement before, of course, never thought to
interpret it as threatening. But for some with the right focus,
somehow it does look a bit that way. It does
look a bit like some kind of I don't know,
like predatory animal flexing its jaws. It's interesting how framing

(30:36):
can change the way you see an utterly harmless animal.
Oh but also I thought, before the song is finished,
it just cuts off like in mid line and smash
edits to a roaring waterfall with no music playing. So
here it goes on introducing the characters. It says the
powerful Tinfong leads his ten flags of men, so I

(30:57):
think he rules. The ten flags are ten different gangs
or guilds of martial arts fighters, and so overall what
he leads I think is known as the Tin Clan,
But there are ten different gangs within it, and they're
like color coded, so there's like the red flags and
the white flags and so forth. And the camera pans

(31:19):
and we see the bodies of many swordsmen lying dead
on the rocks in the middle of a river, with
blood running into the foamy rapids and swirling around them.
I think this is supposed to indicate like, these are
the enemies of Boss in Boston has defeated them all.
Then it cuts to something else. It's like, okay, here's
here's a scene for you. It happened in the twenty
fourth of the New Era, on the sixth day of

(31:40):
the sixth month, in bar Bridge paper mill founded for
over eighty years, an unusual incident happened. That's the narration.
So here we see a pre industrial paper mill in operation.
Workers are boiling down wood products and rags in water,
pounding out sheets of paper and hanging them up to dry.
But it's not just a paper mill. This appears to

(32:02):
be a combination paper mill and printing press. So some
of the workers are in like a different part of
the setting, are arranging type blocks and pressing them with
ink and then pressing paper against them.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I loved all the little details in this sequence. I
feel like he does a really great job establishing the
setting and the sense of enterprise here. It was just
really drawn in. Again, this is a technically a very
proficient film, so you know, all this stuff that might
be sort of wasted motion in a lesser film is
all very engaging.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
I agree. I feel like this director is really skilled
with setting and situation. This is a movie where you
always have a really good feeling of where you are
and what it feels like where the scene is taking place.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Now here we get our first real time scene with dialogue.
A man, a kind of suspiciously behaving man, comes into
the paper mill with a proposition for the boss. They
sit down and share a cup of tea. The boss
he smokes his pipe or something, and the visitor produces
a book in what looks like scroll form from his satchel.
He asks if the mill would be able to print

(33:09):
five thousand copies of this document within ten days.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (33:14):
The mysterious visitor says he came across this book by accident,
but that it is the memoirs of Pong, describing the
quote unusual events of the last ten years, and this
causes like a music sting. The boss is surprised. He
almost sort of spits out his pipe, and the visitor
says that the boss will make lots of money by
selling this book. Okay, so the boss of the paper

(33:36):
mill is not just making paper, not just printing on it,
but I think also operating a book store and selling books.
But anyway, the visitor is like, okay, print up this book,
sell a bunch of copies, you'll make money.

Speaker 4 (33:47):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
In just in the middle here we get this little
interlude where it's just showing us the printing the printing
press workers who are arranging the words on the type blocks,
and they're narrating. One is narrating the text to the
other while he puts the characters in place, and the
narration goes, my beloved came riding on a bamboo horse,
and the guy kind of sings along. I just really

(34:10):
liked this moment. Yeah, But the boss says he does
not think that these pages are authentically the work of
Fong because they do not match Fong's handwriting, so he
knows what Fong's handwriting looks like. And then next thing,
paper mill workers find the boss dead, hanging upside down
in the back of the print shop, and the visitor
is gone. He seems to have busted out through one

(34:31):
of the windows. It's very eerie scene. There are all
these papers hung up on clotheslines for the ink to dry,
and they're flapping in the wind from a smashed window.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
So already we have printing press drama in this film.
What was going on? What was this mysterious apparently fraudulent
work that was they were trying to get published and distributed. Well,
we'll find out later on in the film.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, why would this guy kill a print boss for
refusing to or for refusing to print this book or
for recognizing that it was not Fong's handwriting. Well, next
to the narration tells us that the bar bridge, the
place where the printing press was and the paper mill was,
was in the territory of tin Clan's White Flag. So
that's one of Bosston's gangs. So it's like they control

(35:20):
that area, and so it says. Several days afterwards, we
see someone in a wide brimmed hat running through a
field of tall weeds, pursued by a gang of men
with hooked blades. He's caught and unmasked, and it is
the guy from the paper mill, the visitor who brought
the who brought the scroll and apparently killed the boss there.

(35:42):
And the White Flag warrior who captures him says, poisonous wasp,
you killed the paper mill's boss. The White Flag leader
tries to interrogate him, He's like, why did you kill
the boss, but the stranger doesn't answer. Instead, he tries
to fight his way out of the situation and he
gets killed. So no answers there.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
They'll refer back to him, I believe Wasp. So apparently
poisonous Wasp was not like they weren't caught, you know,
it wasn't profanity. It was like, that's just his name.
He's poisonous Wasp.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, okay. Narrator goes on to say in the sixth
of the New Era, droughtstruck, bandits abounded, the living was difficult,
starvation caused cannibalism. Those still strong enough were busy digging
up graves. Thirteen royal tombs in Wei Ying were dug
up in one night. General Ping Nam's tomb in Butterfly

(36:28):
Valley was rumored to be full of treasures. Ah okay,
so there's a grave full of treasures. And we cut
to a spooky scene of workers out in the middle
of the night, swinging pickaxes in a grove of trees
by yellow lamplight, and suddenly they stopped digging. One of
the workers asks what's wrong. Another one says, it seems
like they're being watched. Then a lamp swings from a branch,

(36:50):
and these these patterns of light and shadow rock back
and forth in the tree canopy while the workers are watching,
almost like they are expecting something to come down at
them from above, and there's this whispering wind. The atmosphere
in the scene is so cool, and after listening for
a moment, the workers start digging again. But in the
foreground we see a single black butterfly flutters down from

(37:12):
the sky and it lands softly on the bark of
a tree branch. Then you pan to tree limbs directly
over the worker's heads to reveal the branches are covered
in butterflies. Normally that wouldn't seem so menacing. Here it
really does. There are these very effective close ups of
the wings flexing and the spiral shaped prebocess like unfurling

(37:35):
and catching the light. And so just when the workers
strike a hard surface at the dig site, suddenly the
butterflies explode with activity, swarming all around the men. The
men scream in pain, they're terrified, they fall to the
ground somehow the butterflies are killing them.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
And again, like it's effectively done. The animals attack element
of this film is on the whole more believable than
then most of the other all animals attack sort of
films that we've talked about in the past, like far
more terrifying than frogs. Yes. Agree.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Also, there was a green fireball in the scene. I
don't know what that means, all right, So I made
all these hard times and bad things going on. We
finally see a meeting of multiple tin Clan warriors. So
the White Flag warriors meet with warriors dressed all in red.
I guess these are the Red Flag warriors. They are

(38:28):
gathering on a cliff on a misty mountain slope. The
Red Flag gang is led by a woman named number ten.
The White Flag Gang is led by a man named
number three. Number three says their boss has been acting
very strange since he acquired the twelve districts. I guess
that means he gained power over twelve territories. I don't

(38:49):
think this information is important, but just to give you
a flavor of like all the complicated like numbers and
factional naming that happens here. One of number three says,
since the Yellow Flag ran down the Pangs, the ten
Klan is the third most powerful of the seventy two.
Since then, Boss has quietened.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, yeah, it does. Again. Part of it is the
fact that the subtitles are a little bit confusing. It
may not be the case if you're watching it, you know,
as part of the intended original audience. But yeah, a
lot of this feels like maybe we could have cut
this and maybe simplified it a little bit, because it's
not all going to be essential once we get into

(39:28):
the second half of the picture.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
But the Red Flag Leader and the White Flag Leader
discussed it. They talk about how they think Boss ten
is trying to gain repute and that there's a vendetta
among the seventy two I guess the seventy two what
was it called smoke trails. Yeah, that I guess are different,
different gangs arising in this new era, and so the

(39:54):
fights between them cannot be solved, and their boss, the
boss of their gangs, is trying to look good, I guess,
trying to trying to get repute.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, just a great deal of martial arts gang drama
going on.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah, and then done dun doune. Suddenly heavy music, sting,
heavy bass and sudden and the boss is here. The
boss pops up. This is the first time I think
we've seen Tinfung. He's also got another guy with him.
They sort of jump out from behind a rock and
everybody's like, boss and oh boy, Tinfong the boss has
magnificent hair. He's standing with one leg up on a

(40:28):
kind of pulpit of rock on the mountain side, overlooking
the gang members. Underneath him stands some kind of lieutenant
that we later find out is named Big Eyed, who's
wearing like pink robes and a cape. Tinfong himself is
wearing a cape or a cloak and this like cool
black outfit with kind of a V neck. He's just
got rock star hair. He looks really cool and stern

(40:51):
and like, yeah, he.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
He would be a good gang boss. I think, yeah.
If he were to ask if we could dig it,
I would have to agree we can take yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
But he explains to his fighters. He says, three days ago,
Shume Castle sent me a secret letter. The master of
Shum Castle and I only met once five years ago.
Yet he's asking for my help. An unusual event occurred
at the castle recently. They say what event, and the
Boss says, butterflies baffled looks all around.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Now we have we have a call to adventure. Here
we have the invite to the spooky castle.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
That's right then and then specifically, this is another one
where I would guess that the original line is delivered
in a very hard hitting fashion, but the way it's
phrased in the subtitles doesn't quite capture it. The sentence
that he speaks is they found butterflies which kill in
the castle.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it, clearly it's better in the
original language, but that's what we get via subtitles.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
But here we get like a cut to an extreme
close up of a butterfly head. The heavy drumming sound
I mentioned earlier, and it's laying that groundwork. It's making
butterflies scary. So the boss says, I'm going to go

(42:14):
to the castle. I need the white flags and the
red flags to go ahead and set up checkpoints on
the paths around the castle, to surround the castle and
monitor who comes and goes ahead of time, and I'll
be there in three days. Meanwhile, just to emphasize again,
like how cool a lot of the settings are here.
The landscape around Boston while he's giving the speech is

(42:36):
just livid, like there are jagged rocks everywhere, the earth
is belching out these clouds of fog, and there is
just a steady rumbling sound under everything, like there's maybe
a volcano erupting in the distance or something.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, Oh.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Also, Tinfung sends his lieutenant Big Eyed to the castle
ahead of time to sneak into the castle find out
what's going on. So Big Eyed says, right, boss, and
he goes to do that. But next we follow Tinfung
on the road, traveling alone, apparently in disguise in a
hood and cloak. There are a lot of disguises in
this movie. But he's walking along a path in the country,

(43:14):
and then he suddenly stops and calls out, you've been
following me for two days, come on out. And so
whoever he saw hen do does come out, and it's
Green Shadow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, first Green Shadow scene.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah, and she's just instantly delightful.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
So Green Shadow swings through the air, crosses the path
in front of him, then appears dangling from a rope.
Green Shadow is a young woman dressed in sort of
forest green robes. She is kind of a cross between
Spider Man and Predator, so like like the Predator, she
uses the trees, you know, she swings from branch to branch.

(43:48):
But like Spider Man, she's kind of a web slinger,
like she swings from wires and ropes and zips around
on them. But also she's just so positive, Like Green
Shadow has a really friendly and exuberant personality, and she
always knows something that other people don't.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah. Yeah, she's on top of the situation and she's
here for a good time.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Also in the scene, I don't know if Tenfong is
just he happens to be crushing a butterfly in his fist,
but he gets around asking Green Shadow, why are you
following me? And she says, I've always been interested in
other secrets. Yeah, we can tell Green Shadow you know
everybody's secrets before. Yeah, you clearly are nosy. Now they
appear to have some kind of past, like they know

(44:33):
each other. It's not really fully explained, but I don't
know if they've been enemies in the past or allies,
but they know each other somehow. I don't know if
you caught any detail on that I missed, Rob.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Now I just kind of picked up like maybe it's
like a professional thing, you know, It's like, well, of
course they know Green Shadow everybody's heard about the exploits
of Green Shadow, and of course Fung is the boss,
so everybody knows who Fun is.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
But we do know she's not one of the seventy
two factions that are fighting because Green Shadow warns him.
She says, many amongst the seventy two are coming for you.
He says, Boss Ten says they'll all end up the same.
Green Shadow says, I'm not amongst the seventy two, so
I should be the exception. So Green Shadow offers to

(45:14):
help him. At first, he's kind of stand offish, but
she reveals she knows a lot. She knows what's going on.
She knows he's going to the Shum Castle. She knows
what happened at the Barbridge paper mill. She knows about
the murder and the eight pages of Fong's memoirs. She
reveals that she knows about the killer butterflies, since they
are mentioned in the memoirs that the guy was trying

(45:35):
to get published at this paper mill. Tenfung is like,
you believe in Fong's memoirs, and she says, yeah, he
actually knows a lot, and Ten reveals his anti scholar
bias here. He's like it's easy for scholars to talk,
but there's a great difference between writing and fighting.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah, and this will come up time and time again.
Good point.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
So Ten isn't going to trust Fong. But then Green
Shadow makes a good point. She's like, at least he's
not amongst the seventy two, So you know, Ten knows
he's not one of the enemies that's coming for him.
So they agree to go to Shum Castle together, just
as he ordered. Tin Fung's gang is already there ahead
of him, and they report that there has been neary
a peep from the castle. No lights, no smoke. It's

(46:18):
like there's no one there. And Big Eyed, the lieutenant
who is sent ahead ahead of time to investigate the
castle and report back, nobody's heard anything from him. So
they go inside inside the castle walls. At first, everything
appears deserted. The courtyard is kind of barren. It's the
sandy rectangle of earth with no signs of life. It's
almost even like a lot of the like all the

(46:40):
furniture has been removed from the castle. It's just empty.
And Tin Fung's men they scour the grounds, They run
along the battlements at the top of the walls, they
run in and out of the buildings. Tin Fung himself
wanders into one room where a massive shape of some
sort is hidden underneath a curtain. He pulls the curtain

(47:01):
away to reveal a demonic statue. Seems to be some
kind of malevolent, predatory or dragon like figure. It's got
real like Pazuzu statue from The Exorcist energy.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, it definitely has more of the vibe of a
European or American Gothic castle set as opposed to like
a really ornate Chinese dragon, because I mean, it is
obviously a set, and we'll see it later when it
of course explodes, because you can tell, you can tell,
like this was made to blow up. This thing's going

(47:34):
to blow up and crash at some point, and it
will in spectacular fashion. But yeah, this scene and all
the other like again, the director just does a great
job establishing location. You know where you are in the castle,
and especially as we begin to add on different sections
of it.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
I agree, as an aside, I feel like that is
a really important and underappreciated skill in filmmaking, underappreciated by
life of audiences. The importance of a director making you
using film to make you understand and feel a setting.
You know, there's some filmmakers who are really good at this,
like I would pull it, like the Coen Brothers are

(48:14):
really good at making you, like understand the feeling of
a room where the scene is taking place. Of course,
a lot of good directors are able to do this,
but a common feature of bad filmmaking is that like,
scenes are taking place in a setting where you don't
feel like you understand where you are, right, And this
is the opposite as we were saying, that the settings

(48:35):
are really well established, you feel them, yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
And it's effortless and it doesn't require language at all.
So it's one of those things that the subtitles don't
get in the way of that because it's speaking directly
to you, no matter what your native tongue is.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Right, But anyway, the White Flag fighters come to Tinfong
to inform him that they have found Big Eyed. Big
Eyed is dead, his body lying beside a pond in
the courtyard. His skin is covered in scorch marks and
black smudges, and inside his clenched fist is a butterfly.
Of course, Tinfung is furious at this to find his

(49:10):
lieutenant dead. Just then he and Green Shadow finally meet
someone who appears to be an inhabitant of the castle.
It's a young woman holding a lantern. Tinfung runs up
to her or tries to question her, but she seems
either unable or unwilling to speak, and she also seems
afraid of him, and they wonder why. Tinfung's like, why
is she carrying a lantern in the daytime? But Green Shadow,

(49:33):
who again always seems to be mentally one step ahead,
says it's because she came from underground. Green Shadow's right.
They rush around the corner to find a cellar door
propped open, and then the young woman with the lantern
leads Tinfung and Green Shadow down the stairs into an
underground tunnel where they meet the master of the castle.
It is Master Shum. He's very glad they've come, and

(49:55):
he escorts them deeper into the rocky catacombs, where they
find a kind of improvised living space illuminated by torchlight.
So down in the space is Master Schum, there is
the girl with the lantern, whose name we learn is Chi,
And there is the Madam of the castle, Madame Schumer,
Ladyshum Also, there is another guest who has arrived. It

(50:18):
is the scholar Pong, remember him from earlier, He was
the narrator. This is the alleged author of the eight
pages of memoir from the incident at the paper Mill.
And as we could expect, there is tension between Tinfung
and Fong. Boston does not trust him. He says, although
your memoirs have some repute, a scholar like you can

(50:38):
only get in the way and make things worse. Not
a fan of these nerdy scholars. But Master Schum says, hey,
he needs Fong here. He invited him here to chronicle
the events that have happened and to make an accurate
report of what's going on at the castle, to serve
as a warning to others.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
All right, so already you know we've got this strong
mystery gothic plot developing here, mysterious castle, strange events. People
with diverse backgrounds have been invited to witness what is
unfolding there here.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Master Shum explains the backstory, and so we see it
like re enacted as he tells it. He says, earlier
this year, on the fifth day of the fifth month,
it was a day to commemorate his ancestor's death, and
so we see a sort of temple shrine within the
castle grounds, and there are offerings. There's like a roasted
chicken and a pig's head and a fish being offered up,

(51:35):
I guess in honor of his ancestor. And the first
strange occurrence here is that during the celebration, a servant
finds a reeking display in one of the rooms of
the castle. It looks like some kind of dead tropical
bird hanging upside down with its feathers covered in blood,
and it has a butterfly in its beak. Second event

(51:56):
is one night Lady Shum is weaving in her chamber
and is bitten so that blood is drawn, but she's
bitten by a butterfly that lands on her neck and
then on her hand. After this, the servants decide the
castle is cursed. They start running away, leaving the Schum
family by themselves. One day, Master Schum finds that masses

(52:17):
of butterflies are swarming around the outside of the windows,
and the butterflies attack. They kill his last loyal servant,
as Master Shum himself barely escapes with his life into
the underground tunnels. So now it appears to be just Schum,
Lady Shum, and she living down there in the tunnels.
Everybody else is dead or has fled the castle.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
And this is a great set, Like, the more details
we get, the more amazing it is. Yeah, it's like
they're living underneath the Gothic castle in this complex that
it seems just increasingly. I mean it's expressly described as
a labyrinth later on. Yeah, with lots of confusing twists
and secret passages.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
So just great setting, agree, And I love the rooms
they find in these passageways later on. But oh, we
also get some backstory about the third person there, about Chi,
the servant. Lady Schum explains that she found her alone
while traveling away from the castle years ago, that she
was deaf and mute the lady, so Lady Schum brought

(53:18):
Chi back to the castle with her to live there
and serve as her personal maid. So we met all
the characters here now. Later that night, Fong the scholar
and Master Schum have a conversation in Master Shum's secret
meditation chamber where he's got a go board setup.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
I think, yeah, I guess it's supposed to be like
a study. I think we might more realistically, think of
it as his secret study.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
Yeah, so Fong says, why did you bring me here?
And Schum says, do you believe in ghosts? Fong takes
a diplomatic view that I think could be read multiple
different ways. He says, ghosts exist if you believe in them,
otherwise they don't. And I feel like you could there
are a few different ways you could take that.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
I don't know how you read it, Rob, I mean,
I took it to be like Fong is a no
nonsense kind of guy, you know, it's like that that
realizes that belief in ghosts is a powerful thing, even
if ghosts don't exist.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yeah, yeah, that's sort of how I took it too.
But then I also wondered if, well, maybe he means like,
ghosts do exist and have power, but only over those
that believe in them. And yeah, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yeah, either way it works.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Yeah, anyway, Master Shum starts talking about the anniversary of
the death of his father, and there is a there
was a funny moment here with like the way the
subtitles work, with like the timing. Master Shum says he's
killed by butterflies ten years ago and then there's a
music sting and Fong bolts up from his chair. But

(54:45):
then Master Shum says kind of sadly that his father
didn't believe in ghosts, and for this reason he had
no worries about trying to dig up the buried treasures
of the General of Pinan or General Pinan. I'm I
think this is maybe the same tomb we saw being
dug up by people earlier in the movie. I don't
know if it was supposed to be a depiction of

(55:07):
the same scene, but you know, people digging for treasure
in a general's tomb, though the general's name appeared to
be spelled differently.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Yeah, it has to be the same, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Mastershriam says his father lived peacefully for ten years after
this act of grave robbing, but then one day ten
years later was attacked by a swarm of killer butterflies.
They assaulted the castle in the form of a cloud
and descended to slaughter many men that day, and in
the re enactment we see butterflies circling the towers and
the castle walls. They leave soldiers and servants lying bloody

(55:38):
in the courtyard. There are a lot of these sickening
close ups of butterflies crawling over dead men, and then
another line where I think it's not supposed to be funny,
but something gets lost In the subtitle, Fong says, don't
worry over it, let's work out together.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Yeah. The subtitles are again generally confusing in places, but
rarely like actually, goofy. This is I think maybe the
one real exception, and I had a nice hearty laugh
about it.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
I think what it must mean is let's work it
out together. I think he's saying like, we will solve
the problem. That's how I took it, right.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Yeah, that's I think clearly what they meant. But I
also I couldn't help it. Then imagine like, yeah, let's
go work out, let's hit the weights.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
Yeah, some of these characters might work out together, but
I don't think it would be Fong who would do it.
He does not even lift. Okay. Meanwhile, we get a
report to ten Funk about Big Eyed and how he died.
They say that his wounds are made of numerous tiny

(56:41):
holes and his skin is swollen, all symptoms of poison,
and in a line that will be repeated by many
characters many times throughout the film, someone says, are there
really killer butterflies? It's sort of unanswered. That seems like
maybe there are. There are some general creepy stalking around
in the tunnels in the dark. Who's following who? I

(57:03):
don't always know? But Green Shadow is in the mix
here somewhere.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, kind of the Scooby Doo section of the film.
There's a lot of creeping around. Who's creeping? You're not
really entirely sure, but hopefully masks will be pulled off
later on?

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Oh boy will they? So suddenly the sneaking around is
interrupted by a scream. One of Tin Fong's White Flag
soldiers is found lifeless on the ground up above, killed
in the same way as Big Eyed. I guess by
the butterflies. They're really piling on the butterfly deaths at
this point, so Bosston he comes up with a solution.
Tin Fong gets his warriors together and he says, cover

(57:36):
the castle in nets. So surely these nets will prevent
any butterflies from getting in. Is that gonna work? Is
it gonna work? Of course not?

Speaker 2 (57:45):
But will it look cool? You bet it will.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
They're like they're really just like stacking butterfly murders every
couple minutes at this point between the flashbacks and and
what's happening in the present, so we also see the
Red fl out hunting. It's mostly like the White Flag
warriors who are hanging out at the castle with Boss Ten.
We see the Red Flags out hunting for butterflies with

(58:10):
handheld nets, and they remark that there is not a
single butterfly to be found in a twenty mile radius.
Where could the killer insects be hiding. But here we're
about to get into some investigation scenes, and just a warning.
If you want to go into this movie without any
of the surprises spoiled, you know we're about to spoil
things as we go along, so be fore warned. Inside

(58:33):
at night, Fong, the Scholar, and Green Shadow meet in
one of the tunnels to discuss the castle. They conclude
that there has to be a secret entrance to the
underground labyrinth, but they cannot find the door even though
they've both been looking for it. So while they go
looking around, they come across a hidden room with these
hanging screens covered in thousands of dead butterfly specimens. It's

(58:58):
like a lepidoptery.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Now, this is highly suspicious. Now we seem to be
getting somewhere with the butterfly mystery.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Right, So Fong and Green Shadow discuss whose work the
collection could be, possibly the servant Chi. They note that
they both thought that Chi had been with them separately
at the time the White Flag soldier was found killed
the previous night. So how could Chi have been in
two places at once. Hmmm, we'll come back to that,
but oh no. Next, Master Schum is attacked by butterflies

(59:28):
inside his meditation room. He's but he's like locked inside
the room, so they cannot go in and help him.
The door is locked from the inside, and everybody's watching
through a grate in the door as he is killed
by a swarm of butterflies. Eventually they are able to
blast the doors open with gunpowder, but it's too late.
Master Schum lies dead on the floor, surrounded by pieces

(59:49):
from his go board. Oh boy, Rob, I know you
like a will reading scene, don't you.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Yeah, this is where we get the will reading, where
it's like, oh, he left a will? Did we read it?
Should we gather everyone together? Are there agents or individuals
out there who don't want us to read the will?

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
I think that might be the case.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
So yeah, Lady Shum says, Master Shum left an unusual will.
It says, quote, my dear wife, I have a wish
left let out the message carrying pigeon, and in three
days time, Shin, Quak and Lee will arrive. I have
a letter to be read to them. Remember read it
in all threes presence. Remember, So these new characters are

(01:00:32):
being introduced, Shin, Quack, and Lee. Who are they?

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Fong says that it's rumored that ten years ago a
very knowledgeable hermit lived. Not only was he an excellent
martial artist, he was also learned in the human sciences,
and he had four students known as the Thunders. Now
one of the students, one of the Thunders, was named You,
and you is now dead. But the other three are Lee,

(01:00:58):
Shin and Quak, and they are the three mentioned in
the will. So here we get a summary of the
three Thunder's courtesy of Pong. Fong says, First of all,
Lee Lee is best at small hand weapons. He is
called the thousand Hands. His attacks are totally unexpected. His
expertise is second to none. Second we have Quak. Quak

(01:01:19):
is also known as magic Fire. He quote has the
most killing power, and here we cut to a raven
flying a scream and men lying scorched on the rocks.
And apparently he wiped out a sect known as Fireball
in one night. So there's some indication that Quak can
like send a bird that somehow leaves men lying scorched

(01:01:41):
on the earth. How does that work? Who knows. Finally
there's Shin, who is known as Flying Cloud. Nobody knows
what he looks like, and he once went through the
Forbidden Palace. They say, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Do we eventually see Flying Cloud. I'm a little hazy
on this.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
I you know, I'm confused. There may be some one
thing I missed. I totally admit that it may have
gone past me. But I don't think Shin actually appears
in the film, Okay, unless it's like the secret identity
of another pre existing character and that's revealed at some
point and I missed it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Okay, I'm I'm not alone there, Okay, I don't think so. Okay.
The other two we definitely see, though, and they play
important parts, especially Clark, who I mentioned in the cast.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
But they're both really cool. So the thunders are on
their way, and Tinfong warns his fighters not to confront
the Thunders. This is a dangerous situation because on one hand,
you've got Tin Phong's warriors. You know, they're fighting for power.
But the Thunders are these other extremely dangerous martial heroes,
you know, these people from the martial world, and you

(01:02:48):
put the put them all in the place together, They're
they're gonna fight. I think at some point Boston says,
two tigers can't exist at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Now, not discounting other influences, of course, but I mean,
one can't help but be reminded of John Carpenter's later
film A Big Trouble in Little China, in which we
have the four Storms, who are exceptional martial artists slash
sorcerers who have all sorts of crazy weapons and abilities,
and you know, here we have the three Thunders. So

(01:03:19):
you know, I can't help but wonder if this had
any influence on the ultimate form of that film.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
Well, I think I've read somewhere that the same director's
other film, Zoo Warriors in the Magic Mountain, was a
major influence on Big Trouble.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
All Right, we'll have to come back to Zoo Warriors
it just sounds too Entyson.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
But the film goes a great length to express and
it's good to hammer home here that this is a
dangerous situation having Boston and the Thunders in the same place,
because these are rivals, they are likely to come into conflict.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Next, there's a scene where Fong, the scholar, questions Chi,
the servant at the castle. He asks her about the
lepidoptery room with all the butterfly specimens, and she confirms
that it is Master Shum's room. And then Fong asks
her why there are two cheese, because you know, remember
he and Green Shadow both were with Chi in different

(01:04:14):
places at the same time. She acts frightened by this
question and tries to run away, but she leads Fong
to a different hidden room, a strange room that is
revealed to be something like a cross between an arsenal
and an alchemist's lab. It's full of these weird ancient
scientific instruments, things that look like weapons, and containers of powders,

(01:04:36):
and these like wooden planks with burn marks on them,
almost like I don't know, like explosives or incendiaries have
been tested here. And so here Fong meets with Green shadow.
They explore the room and they discuss the the sort
of a principle of like gunpowder I think being explored here.
They discuss a sort of secret history of gunpowder weapons,

(01:05:00):
including a legendary secret weapon known as the fire gun.
So it's a question I think, like, was the owner
of this room trying to create a like secret gunpowder weapon.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
You know, it's again kind of interesting synchronicity here because
for our Crossbow episodes that aired earlier this week, I
was reading, you know a great deal and need them
about about gunpowder innovations and gunpowder weaponry in ancient China,
many of which used crossbow or crossbow related elements, and

(01:05:32):
and you know, none of what we see in this
film here even really captures like the weird variety of
gunpowder based weaponry that was developed in China over the centuries.
It's pretty pretty amazing stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
Now, next we're going to meet some of the Thunders.
Not they don't arrive at the castle conventionally because like
the White Flag warriors are sort of outside awaiting the
arrival of the Thunders. Instead, we see the Thunders meeting
each other in secret, already underneath the castle. They're in
the tunnels beneath the castle. It's a very cool, creepy

(01:06:07):
scene where Lee and Quak here appear in shadow, wearing
hoods and cloaks at first, so their faces are hidden
in darkness. At first, they're almost even a little suspicious
of each other. They say, why did Master Schum invite
them to the castle early? They say, Shin used to
be the first to come here. Why isn't he here yet?
But then suddenly their little rendezvous is interrupted by discovering

(01:06:29):
that Green Shadow is there. Green Shadows spying on them again,
always one step ahead, and they try to They try to,
like throw weapons at her and stuff, but she's too quick.
They can't catch it, and so here eventually all of
the characters meet one another. We get the full all
cast introduction, and the Thunders kind of get up to
speed on what has happened so far at the castle,

(01:06:51):
but they're still a waiting for Shin, the third Thunder
to arrive so that the letter can be read. And
more characters ask the same question, and that keeps coming up.
Do killer butterflies really exist? The Thunders discuss this in
secret between each other. They're very wary of the others.
Lee and quak. They say that anyone who is in
our friend is our enemy, and these people don't seem

(01:07:13):
to be friends.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Yeah, a lot of distrust here, but yeah, but it
would also seem like, well, we finally have all of
the characters in play that are going to be in play.
He might well think this, but he would also seemingly
be wrong, because there are more mysterious individuals who are
going to show up and impact the plot.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
Right, But before the last really important character shows up,
we get a few more sort of like scenes of
Green Shadow and Fong, our two main investigators working out
what's going on here. So they meet one night. But
first of all, it's funny because Fong's just like out
for a walk and Green Shadow does wire stunts, like
just dropping in on him while nothing's going on. So

(01:07:51):
they talk about killer butterflies. But then Fong and Green
Shadow sort of compare notes. They say, you know, the
Thunders seem to know the castle well, and they were
close with Master Shum. Why didn't he call them for
help initially? Why did he call Boss ten instead of
the Thunders?

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
You know, coming back to where he said about Green Shadow,
it really does feel like Green Shadow has not just
walked down a hallway or just strolled from point A
to point B in a very long time. It's always
on wires.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Yes, I love it. She's living that wire life, you know.
Also more plot updates. Remember those eight pages of Fong's
memoirs from the paper Mill, Well, Tinfong shows them to
Fong and Pong confirms, Yeah, the guy the paper Mill
was right. I did not write this. This is not mine.
Somebody is forging works in my name. Pong reasons from

(01:08:39):
this because the pages of his memoirs are stories about
killer butterfly attacks. He says, there must be someone trying
to use my name to spread the rumor of killer butterflies.
I wonder if that same person is controlling the butterflies.
And then oh whoa. Things totally do a major shift
once again, we get our first slasher movie. Basically, Madam

(01:09:02):
Schum in her chambers at night is attacked by this
film's Jason Vorhees the Armored Warrior, rob what do you
want to say about the Armored Warrior And the scene.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Oh, the Armored Warrior is just absolutely terrifying. Just you know,
black armor seemingly just impossible to hurt. You can't maim
him or stop him. Just a strong proto slasher vibe here,
and he eventually busts out. A lot of his action
is just more like punches and grabs and throws, and
then like some sort of like more minor cloth type stuff.

(01:09:36):
But he also has this other strange weapon that he'll
bust out that looks kind of like a cross between
a lacrosse stick and a deep friar basket, only you know,
more deadly looking, and it seems to slash and shred
when it comes into contact with human flesh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
I was going to compare his weapon to the goat
foot lever that we talked about in the Crossbow episode.
It's like it's a claw hook weapon that's got like
two toes on it. But yeah, this rough material, almost
like barbed wire strung between the two toes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Yeah. I looked around a little bit. I couldn't find
anybody talking about this and comparing it to known weapons.
So I don't know if it actually has anything like
a real world analog, if it has something it's supposed
to be inspired by, something to do with butterflies, I
don't know. I'm assuming for now that it's just you know,
purely a creation of fantasy, but it's very effective.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
But the scene is interesting because it starts as like
it's like a slash or horror scene. This you know,
this monstrous warrior attacks Lady Shum in her chamber.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
She escapes.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
The fighters get there in time to defend her and
chase this warrior off. But then there's like a series
of awesome fight scenes. So it's like Tinfong versus the
Armored Warrior and Tin Fong is cool. He we finally
see him in action. He fights with this another strange weapon.
It's like a very short baton. Know what this would

(01:11:00):
be called?

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Rob I'm not sure now does this baton shoot things?
Or am I thinking this is just a straight up baton?
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
There are some things that shoot things. I don't remember
if his shoots things.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Yeah, things get very The fighting is again kind of
mind melting, and there are a number of unique weapons
being utilized. Pure fantasy action here.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
But then there's also Green Shadow versus armored warrior, and
she uses wires in her fighting of him. But eventually
the armored warrior escapes into the night. He gets away,
so they don't get to catch him, and they don't
get to unmask him or know the identity of the killer.
Now Madam Schum thinks she knows the identity of the killer.
She thinks it must be the third Thunder who hasn't

(01:11:42):
arrived yet, Shin, And she's like, maybe he wants to
get to the letter or the will that Master Schum
left before everybody else does. But hey, remember that thing
about how Bosston was saying, you know, two tigers can't exist.
At the same time, we see some real confick breaking
out because the red Flags and the White Flags end

(01:12:03):
up fighting with the Thunders, and the Thunders just mess
them up. There's like a scene where the Thunders attack
the red Flags in the forest and are just like
chopping their arms off and stuff, and they fight with
the white flags. The white Flags are no match either.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Yeah, the Thunders are not to be messed with. You're
gonna get shredded, you're gonna get blown up, you're gonna
get caught on fire.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
But then later the two Thunders we see Investigator. They're
running around in the tunnels underneath the castle and this
is Lee and Quak and they catch sight of the
armored Killer. So they see him and they're like, hey,
and they chase after him in the dark, and this
leads to the Butterfly room, the one with all the
butterfly specimens mounted on screens and another amazing fight scene.

(01:12:45):
So there is an attack where the armored Warrior like
tries to attack the thunders by throwing I guess the
poison butterflies at them and the thousand hand thunder Lee
he intercepts the butterflies with darts and it's this awesome,
scary fight scene tight quarters. I thought this was a
really good one. Again the armored warrior whose identity is hidden.

(01:13:06):
He's using the strange claw hook weapon. It's very visceral
and scary and up close and personal. And there's one
moment where you think Lee has won because like the
armored Warrior goes down, but then he suddenly pops back
up and he is victorious. He kills Lee by like
ramming his head into a clay pot.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
This is a great kill sequence, and it's one of
these where like the way we describe it, like Okay
puts them in a headlock, rams his head into a pot,
that doesn't sound as impressive, but the way that it
shot it's very thrilling and feels like just very viscerally violent,
even though it's not like super bloody or anything.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
Okay, next we get some big reveals. Like we said,
there are a lot of twists that come in this movie.
So next we follow Chi in the underground tunnel by herself.
Remember she's the servant who carries the lantern, and she
wanders with her lantern wearing a mask over the bottom
of her face. What's she doing? Oh, suddenly we see
her walking not just through the tunnels, but she's walking

(01:14:03):
into a cavern like an opening in the tunnels, where
she's surrounded by butterflies, and yet she's not afraid of them.
They don't seem to be harming her. She kneels beside
an underground pool and then she puts something in the
water and makes it foam and sizzle, and it produces
these white fumes. The butterflies seem like affected by the fumes.

(01:14:24):
Rob what did you did? It seem almost kind of
like the butterflies were like boiling up out of the
water or something.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
I guess. Yeah, this was one of the moments where
I'm kind of piecing it together, but I'm blaming the
subtitles for my lack of a pure understanding of what
we're dealing with here, because again, so many things in
the film like just makes sense on a visual level.
You don't need the subtitles to explain what's happening. But
there's some sort of like magical potion based ex explanation here,

(01:14:53):
and we're not getting all of it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
I mean, I think I'm following what's happening. I could
be making mistakes, but essentially here she is caught Green
Shadow and the scholar Fong appear they have been watching her,
and they reveal they say, we know you're not Chi.
You are Madam Schum disguised as Chi. That's why there
were two cheese. There's the real Chi. And then Madame
Schum has a Chi costume that she puts on and

(01:15:16):
she like hides part of her face to pretend to
be her. They say that she has quote butterfly controlling
medicine and that lady Schum has discovered the art of
controlling butterflies. Apparently Fong talks about it almost like the
art of controlling butterflies is something that is known to
have been known in the past but was lost and

(01:15:39):
now has been rediscovered.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Okay, all right, fair enough, Okay, it's all making sense now.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
So Green Shadow and Fong here are confronting her. They're like,
now you're going to tell us everything that's going on,
because we know you're in on it. But they're interrupted
by the armored Warrior in the black armor, the mask
the weapon. He comes out and Madame Schum is killed,
and the armored Warrior escapes, and we see butterflies crawling
over Lady Shum's dead body as if to mourn it,

(01:16:06):
and then later the armored Warrior comes back and caresses
Lady Shum's body as well. Here's the scene with the
killer reveal. The killer is unmasked and it is Master
Schum himself, the Master of the Castle. He's not dead
after all, and he's confronted by Pong alone this time,
who's put all the pieces together. He says that Master

(01:16:29):
Schum is actually you remember when they were describing the thunders.
There are three thunders still living, but one of the
thunders was already dead. Well, it turns out that that
thunder was you, and he wasn't dead. It's Schum, the
Master of the Castle. So this is a plan of
the Thunders, many years in the making, to create secret weapons.

(01:16:50):
Here at the castle to protect the secret of the weapons.
And now you must be doing some new stage of
the plan.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
Okay, I'm buying all of that, but I still don't
know why we invited people to the castle. I don't
know why the secret will. I feel like there's a
lot of stuff that I can't quite stitch together.

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
Oh no, no, no, I think I understand it. So
take me Master Schum and Madam Schum here. They used
killer butterflies first of all, to get rid of all
the spies in the castle, because there were spies here
sent by the other Thunders to keep track of you. Okay,
so they drive all the spies out with butterflies that
either killed them or made them flee, and then they

(01:17:32):
keep using the butterflies in attacks all around to create
a confusion. Then Schum created the false memoirs of Fongs
to spread stories about the killer butterflies killed the paper
mill owner when he saw through it. The whole point
of this was to get the other Marshall heroes to
get Tin Fong and Green Shadow to the castle to

(01:17:54):
make them fight with the Thunders. Because you wants to,
I think, rule over everything. He wants to be in charge,
so He wants all the other martial heroes to get
together into a tight space, to be in the same
place and have to fight each other, just like what
happened and we heard in the backstory when all the
Marshal heroes fought each other and wiped each other out.

(01:18:16):
He wants to be the last one standing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Okay, so everything is going is going according to plan here.
It's about getting these all these great warriors together, having
them destroy each other so that he can rule over
everyone instead. Okay, yeah, that's right, all right, I could again.
I feel like I would have been on top of
it had the subtitles bing just a little tighter. But
I'm there now.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
I mean, it is a complicated plot, but I think
it's a good twist. And so Schum basically admits, Yepfong,
you figured it out. But men who know too much
cannot live. So he reveals his claw weapon and he's
going to kill Fong. There's like a chase, and then
all kinds of different fighting happens. Schum ends up killing Chi,

(01:18:57):
the actual servant. Chum then fights Green Shadow. Fong watches
as Shum fights Green Shadow. He's helpless, He's not a fighter.
He can't intervene, and then Tin Fung shows up and
he gets involved in the fight again. It's like trading
off between the different heroes fighting the Armored Warrior, but
Schum once again escapes into a tunnel.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
I have to and I have just drive home here
that you know, I'm not like a Hong Kong action
completist or anything. There are a number of like very
prestigious Hong Kong action films that I haven't seen, so
I can't like speak universally in all of this. But
all of this action is just blistering. It's just very
like technically proficient, you know, well shot inventive. It's just

(01:19:40):
you never know what's going to happen next. And so
even though you get just multiple fights and different pair ups,
everything is just captivating.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
And I really love that the different heroes have their
different like fighting styles, so when they trade off fighting
the villain. There there's a lot of variety in the
fight scenes. It's not just like a samey kind of
fighting over and over. You get Green Shot with her
like wire stuff, you get Boss ten with this little baton.
You get of course, the you know, the Armored Warrior
with his scary visceral kind of fighting with the claw weapon,

(01:20:10):
and then of course you get the Thunders. So after
showm escapes, Fong says, this is the terrible situation. This
is going to turn into an all out war between
Tin Fung and the remaining Thunders. So Fong leaves the
castle at dawn to avoid the battle, and then we
see the final battle going on again. Two Tigers can't

(01:20:30):
exist at the same time, so we've got ten versus
the Magic Fire Thunder. He's the one left alive. The
Armored Warrior returns and it's a three way fight. They're
sort of like all trying to kill each other. They
end up there's like an explosion. I think it's when
the statue, the demonic statue explodes. They fighters fall through

(01:20:51):
the floor into the catacombs below. Magic Fire is pinned
by a falling pillar. Then you and Magic Fire have
this like conversation. Who says, you know, I was left
here to protect the secret gun. Why did you other
thundersind spies to report on me? And you know, they're
like hashing out their grievances and you is giving a
speech as the victorious villain. But meanwhile Boston sneaks up

(01:21:15):
on you, and as he does a maniacal laugh, bost
Tin springs from cover and there's another fight again. There's
some ground grappling, there's some sliding along on wires, and
then finally the villain is defeated when Tin like slams
his head into to a rock face while while running
down down the length of a wire.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
Yeah, kind of like a hyper accelerated zip line death
sequence that if I when I explain it like that,
it doesn't really sound like like he probably can't picture it.
But within the context of this ridiculously elaborate three way
fight scene, it's highly effective.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Oh but it's not over because Magic Fire is still
alive even though he's like trapped under a pillar. He's
sends his killer bird after Ten. And you don't know
what the bird's gonna do. It's just like a bird
flying around chasing bost ten. What's going to happen? Well,
you think Green Shadow comes to the rescue. She's here
to save ten. She flies through on a wire. She's
gonna save the day. But then, oh, the most devastating

(01:22:17):
ending do you want to explain rob?

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Oh my goodness, Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna say
that the stunningly nihilistic ending came out of nowhere because
issues with subtitles aside, it does seem like we were
ratcheting up to it, Like there's this sequence when the
scholars leaving where Hang and Fung have this last little
conversation and Fung is like, I hope you win, and

(01:22:42):
it feels you know, very stark and in dark, and
we end up like flashing back to that here in
a bit. But yeah, so Green Shadow like zips into
the scene with her you know, general optimism, and she
goes and like catches the bird in mid air and
the bird explodes like a hand grenade, just blowing Green

(01:23:04):
Shadow up. Like there's no way she survives this. Yeah,
just killed instantly, and and you know, Fung is like
like no, and then it comes flying right at Fung's
face and explodes in his face. Freeze frame and that's
pretty much the end. Yeah, And I was like wow,
Like that was just jaw dropping, because again with this

(01:23:25):
feels like a major Wusha subversion here, like this is
not our heroes conquering evil or it's not a you know,
the sort of tropes that you would expect to encounter
in a film like this. No, this is like all
of our heroes are dead except for the scholar, who
only survived because he left ahead of the cataclysmic final battle.

Speaker 3 (01:23:47):
Yeah, and so, but there is a symmetry like it
talked about in the backstory with the narration at the
very beginning. The movie seems to end with all of
the Marshall heroes have killed each other. They're all gone
now and the only one is the chronicler to tell
the story.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
Yeah, so it, I mean it really really packs a punch. Again,
just a fitting way to cap all of this just
you know, essentially like high tech fantasy martial arts that's
happening here and just have this just again just very
nihilistic ending where everybody dies. But again, like I say,

(01:24:23):
it doesn't it. They were clearly building up to this
in many ways, so it doesn't feel forced in any
fashion either.

Speaker 3 (01:24:29):
So in the end, I'd give a big thumbs up
to the Butterfly Murders. It is not only its Bonker's
premise of killer butterflies. It is that, but it is
so much else. It just gives you so much to
work with and it keeps you guessing.

Speaker 2 (01:24:43):
Yeah, absolutely so, Yeah, highly recommend this one and you know,
I hope it gets a better release at some point
in the future. It would be great. But on the
other hand, I didn't see any indication that that's coming,
So I would say, don't you know, don't waste time.
If this interests you, go watch it in whatever whatever
format you can find it in, because it's it's worth
the journey. All right, Well, that's it for this episode

(01:25:07):
of Weird House Cinema. We're going to go ahead and
close out, but a reminder that we're primarily a science
podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on
Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
about a weird film here on the Weird House Cinema.
If you want to see a list of all the
movies we've covered over the years, go to letterbox dot com.
It's l E T T e r box d dot com.

(01:25:27):
Our username is weird house and we have a list
of all the movies and sometimes a peek ahead at
what's to come. If you would like to follow us
on social media while we're in the usual places as
stuff to blow your mind On Instagram, we are stbym
podcast and that's worth following for Weird House fans, because
currently our social media crew is putting up a little

(01:25:48):
video kind of like teaser of the film, so you
can quickly go there and get maybe a taste of
the trailer in addition to the trailer audio that you'll
hear in the actual episode.

Speaker 3 (01:25:58):
Huge thanks, as always are excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.