May 2, 2025 • 60 mins
It's time for the craziest film ever made to get the spotlight with Martin and Gretchen. The Boxer's Omen is the Shaw Studios crossroads of Kung fu revenge, black magic, sorcery and homunculus creating wrapped up in the real guts and gore (no really, the guts and the gore are real viscera) of outlandish fimmaking. It's an insane ride and truly the craziest film either of us have ever seen. It's not for the light of heart.*
*VIEWER WARNING*There are live animals killed in this film. Do not watch this film if that can easily upset you.
Martin and Gretchen talk movies and more at Check the Gate. https://martinvavra.me
*VIEWER WARNING*There are live animals killed in this film. Do not watch this film if that can easily upset you.
Martin and Gretchen talk movies and more at Check the Gate. https://martinvavra.me
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
With the weird blowing eyes and kind of like shift.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Back for big head and this little tiny mouth. It's good.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Me, me, me.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
It is so freaking weird.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Man flying at Gretchen, Welcome back, You're back.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You're wearing your kung Fu Theater T shirt.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm wearing my kung Fu Theater T shirt for the
Hollywood Theater. The one of my is the number one
movie theater in the world to me, and I love
Punk Fry Theater every second Tuesday of the month, and
it is fantastic.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, it's very fitting for this one because.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That's the first time I ever saw this movie, the
nineteen eighty three completely bonkers off the wall black magic
kung Fu film The Boxers.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Omen Oh my goodness, this film.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Wow. I wish I had seen it in the big screen.
I've not. I have not been lucky enough. I somehow
have not caught it. I knew about it, I had
seen excerts of it, but I had not seen this
film and its entirety. It's funny how oftentimes I think
(01:16):
because of our generation and how we first where like
we saw like especially like offshoot cinema. It would be
like on things like night flight and whatnot. And those
were like shorts or excerts of versus the actual like
showing the whole film. So I think that's how we
get we consumed a lot of this stuff in this cult,
especially like cult status type stuff like this. Yeah, but
(01:39):
that's just me.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, this is a crazy film. And I do want
to start out with a warning to anybody who seeks
out this film and goes to watch it, because you
can actually find this right now as part of a
Shaw Brothers collection of films that I think is a
part of like the thirty six Chamber series and a
few others.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
You can get it on Blu ray and DVD.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
This film was made in Uh. It takes place in Uh.
It starts in Hong Kong, goes to Thailand, but there
is because of when and where it was filmed, there
are gonna be some very very grotesque moments in there.
Some animal yeah, there's there. There's gonna be two places
(02:24):
where uh, two chickens die. You're gonna see that. So
I just want to get that out there for you.
It's very tough for me to be able to watch
and I've even seen it three times. Uh, And so
just as a warning to the watchers. I think I
had warned you about it too.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, I think watching I was like, oh no.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit tough. But this film
has got everything, stuff that you would never even think about.
It is crazy.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
It is cuckoo bananas.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yes, So this whole film starts out with it starts
out this is like basically like a cascading event of
revenge plots, everything very.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, but it's like it's it's but it's also convoluted
and it's oh, not quite as bad as the last
film we watched, but like but still it has its
moments of like do I need to do I need
some titles because I'm not even sure that even this
even helps me at this point, right.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's well, it's so the whole thing starts out with
we have a boxing match and we.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Have a Hong Kong Fighterland and.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
A Thailand and they're kickboxing, and the Hong Kong fighter wins,
but the tie boxer and handed right, it's all over
with and he underhanded does a sneak attack on the
winner and uh ends up putting him into uh in attraction.
So he's like he may never walk again. Everything is broken.
(03:59):
He's a total mess, right, and in steps the brother
who is kind of a in the mob. He's kind
of a bad guy or like a kind of a
he's kind of like a gangster guy on the seats
of Hong Kong who has vowed revenge. He is going
to get revenge on. Yeah, he's also a fighter, yes,
yep so, but he is vowed revenge. But he starts
(04:23):
to see weird images of this uh, like this kind
of ghostly apparition of a person of.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
A Buddha guy or like a monk.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
He's a monk.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, he's like a Buddhist monk who is arriving at
very odd times for him.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
But he is on his mission to go and get revenge.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And he travels to Thailand to go and proclaim that
he is going to have a revenge boxing meet with
this guy. And we're kind of jumping right to it,
you know, because really, what happens while he's in Thailand
he gets uh, he ends up being attracted to well,
so he sees this image. Now not only does he
see the images of the Buddhist monk, but there is
(05:03):
a night where he is visited by this glowing chevron
cherrow kind of of an image.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
That that follows Stargate, right, yeah, exactly, it's like a
sign on exactly, and this thing but this is before Stargate.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So this thing is is moving through his apartment in
Hong Kong, and he follows it, trying to figure out
what this whole thing is. So he travels to Thailand
and he makes his revenge known that he is going
to fight this boxer at this time, and he's gonna
get back at him for having broken his brother and
(05:41):
and and made him a possible quadriplegic or paraplegic at
a minimum. And then it turns out that the image
he saw.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Was well before that though. He has to before he's
allowed to He has before he's allowed to take his vengeance,
he has to train.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Well, no, but we haven't gotten that far.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Oh that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right. He's trying to take the vengeance with the boxer,
but he's traveling by boat and he sees that image
and that that image that was floating around in his
apartment is the image.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Of the edge of the shrine.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It's right, it's the Buddhist temple roof.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I guess it's the now that I know the term
it's like that's what time monks live in a wat.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
There you go, and that's what it is. It's like
it is essentially the shape of that monastery with the
with those moments.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Just so random right like that that it's it's what
it's like the art shape. I mean that would be
like it's less the symbol itself is so like not
a symbol.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Right yeah, it's basically just like the eves and the
peak of a.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Roof with with with some a little bit like Japanese
you have like the you would have the like the
tory Gate, know that symbol tory Gate. You're like, ha,
got it? Like this, I'm like this is where that
game as a kid where you're trying to find spot
the image of like they give you the symbol and
you need to find it in the picture.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right, Yeah, that's what this is. This is literally just
the end of the roof of a monastery and that's
the power symbol.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And he's and so he's he's and he's on a
river going by he's basically commuting in like a water
taxi sees this and goes over there, and it turns
out that they are celebrating the death of a monk. Yeah,
and he's in there to say, hey, I've been seeing
these images and all of this stuff has been happening
to me. What's going on? Oh, well, you need to
(07:37):
go and see our brother over here. And they lock
him in a room with a corpse that is sitting
in a big clay jar, and they break the clay
jar to have the corpse out, and they leave him
and then he has his time where the dried up
corpse talks to him.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And a rubber suited dry cop corpse.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
That oh man, that is quite Yeah, for some folks
that have watched some Kaiju films in the day, that
was quite the rubber suit that they put on that person.
There are times where I'm like, I can't tell if
that's a rubber suit on a person and it's talking,
or if it's like some weird hand puppety thing, because I.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Know, so distorted.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
It's so weird looking at the idea of that actually
even being a corpse was like that was we talk
about suspension of disbelief.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Old boy. Yeah, yeah, it's very bizarre.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I mean not he's talking to a corpse a yeah,
but it's like this this and this is where things
are like starting to begin. We're starting to get into
our wacky wild adventure. Like it's like it's already kind
of like, oh okay, convoluted storyline. We're getting there. We're
getting there. It's I learn how to do a thing
to get a thing, and like that's the quest. But
(08:53):
this is when it starts to ramp up right like
into the effects land.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Right, because that really learning what our A story is,
our b story, what we think could be is we've
got the revenge of the brother is beat up and
he's been put in a wheelchair, and so this guy
is gonna go and seek revenge. Yeah, and that's a
very typical kung fu movie kind of a revenge thing
like accl, you did this thing to my frother, my brother,
my friend, whatever it is, and and I'm now I'm
(09:21):
gonna go get revenge. And you know, we're going against
the shell Land or the person who is trying to
take out the shell Land temple or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Very typical. But that's not even our a story.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Now a story is now getting lined up with he's
meeting this corpse and the corps is talking to him.
It had been astral projecting its spirit to this guy
when he was in Hong Kong, and now it is
here to tell him that in another life they were brothers,
and they were they were twins, right, they were twin brothers,
(09:52):
and their souls had been now separated in this life,
so they were they still had the souls of twin others.
Their spirits were connected in that way, even though our
hero has been the brother in this life to someone else.
So these soul brothers, these twins, have now spiritually met up.
(10:13):
And this corpse, which will not rot or decay, needs
to be avenged. And we are set up in our
second last back, and this is where we go into
our big flashback where this Tibetan monk had traveled to
Hong Kong to do battle against an evil uh a
(10:36):
dark wizard, black magic wizard. Yes, and so with so
many layers of so we've got, he goes, he goes
to Hong Kong to have battle. He goes to battle,
finds the wizard is actually I guess more of a witch,
but she is disguised as a guy. He finds her
(10:57):
in a train station, attacks her with the thing that
makes her like skin bubble up and corrode and all
of this stuff and popping, and they're using black magic. Tie,
They're they're using powers against each other that outs that
particular black magic, which she ends up dying in the
train station like melting away.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Like rotting shugard.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
That is when then the guy who is the head
dark Wizard has said, I must seek revenge far so vengeance.
So then he goes and has the vengeance that kills
this Tibetan monk, this Buddhist monk, and not Tibetan tie.
It kills this Buddhist monk. Yeah, and so now this
(11:43):
Buddhist monk is recruiting his soul brother from a different
life to seek revenge.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
On this dark wizard. So now we are on.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Our a story path of this completely insane film, right.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Oh boy, Yeah, but he's so he has right, right,
he has to, Like he gets his head shaved. So,
first of all, like one of those things that we
were when Martin and I were watching this film, I
kept me I was like, why is his hair so
like bonkers looking, because it's it's such a like a well,
(12:23):
and all on top of that, it was just like
such a bad like wig placement, Like there were these
elements and I was like why is he wearing a wig?
And then Martin's just like try to like play his cards.
He's all like, you'll see let the story unfault, yes,
and then they shave his head and the training montage
because he has to become I essentially become.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
A monk.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And then he can be karmically clean enough to take
on the mission for his spiritual brother to fight against
the black magic. So there's all these rules in place, right,
Like one, it's like, you can't have had sex, you
can't have had well.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
In the training, you can, you can dismiss what your
prior life was. But when you're when you're let you
become the month become that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, you have to let all of that go.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
All those things have to go, and of course they
come into play.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
That comes out.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, it comes back, honest because why wouldn't it right?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Why set it up? We're not going to use it.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Is Chekhov's kung fu, right, oh man?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And it's so he has to be karmically clean to
do He's got the rules like what the no sex,
no no meat.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
No alcohol. Yeah, none of those possessions, earthly possessions.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So he's got the rules, and that becomes part of
the training montage where we have to get where we're
star trying to become strong enough to fight up against
the dark Wizard, but also strong enough to be able
to battle the tie kickboxer that injured our earthly brother.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, that's not part of this though.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Oh that's right, we aside.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
It's he's setting it aside. He's he lets that go
so that he can take this journey to become a
monk to seek the revenge for his soul twin brother
against this dark wizard.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yes, okay, okay, Yeah. For some reason, I thought I
remember there being like a phone call where he's talking
to his brother.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Between this, there is before before he goes into the
training to become as we.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Find out, his brother isn't as bad off as we thought.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right, he's in a wheelchair, but he's recovering. They find
out that he's gonna be okay, but he's he's still
going to be broken in a wheelchair, but he is okay.
So but he's he's made his decision now to go
and become a monk and starts that whole training montage,
which is really not we don't see a lot of
(15:00):
training training, which you know, and a lot of things
like again with the Shallon tempos and anytime we do
anything with like thirty six chamber, Like a lot of
these have their classic training montages where somebody is like
fighting the clay pots that have water in him, or
they've got all of the poles and they have to
like tiptoe their way across the poles, and there's like
somebody is like putting rods across there, so they have
(15:23):
to pick themselves up and be able to move across things,
or they're swinging logs, and you know, long before Jean
Claude van Dam was doing his training montages. Yeah, that's
all part of the training montage, and they didn't do that.
They kind of had some ceremony stuff and they talked
about some things, but we never actually got to see
him physically train or learn any of the magic arts
(15:50):
that he would need to go up against this dark wizard.
We kind of jump through all of that.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Stuff because yeah, why not.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah so, but but runtime exactly because we got runtime.
This movie is only an hour, and it's an hour
and thirty minutes, so it's it's ninety seven minutes long. Yeah, yeah,
so it it. Yeah, they're like trying to get to
some things because this thing goes so off the rails
so many times and has so much revenge.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Holy cow, we're only just getting started. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So he so he goes through all of that. He's
we've sidelined the tie Boxer and we're focusing on the
Dark Wizard. That's right now, do you want to start
talking about the first Dark Wiz? Well, so the thing
is he finishes his training and they say, now you
are ready to do battle with him, and it literally
(16:41):
just goes right to the due battle and they are
on some kind of like an odd cosmic plane area
with a moon. The moon is in the background, but
we never see there's no journey, there is no like
I'm coming for you.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
This was in his head or not. Like That's what
I kept trying to figure out, is like, was this
a dream?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
He just rides there?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, that was so confused.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
He just arrives there. It's like you're all trained and
ready to go fight, and boom they are in a
cosmic arena for the battle and he's mostly in like
a lotus position for all of this, where Dark Wizard arrives.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
To kill the chicken, battle with him.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well he does, he will, he will, he doesn't quite.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I thought it was a prep. There was a prep.
Maybe that was another battle.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Is a prep, there's a there's so many levels to
this battle. This movie is so off the rails, like
this is where all like it's it's it's there's so
much glop and goo and guts and stuff in.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
The oh yeah, because he has his assistant and they
are trying to power him up and things like that
during this battle. Right like they're off to another area
like pulling guts out of things and not yet.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So this is just our dark WA's so confusing.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
It's so confusing.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
There's so many things going because so the Dark Wizard
is there, and we start out because he kills the
first chicken here and tears that one apart, chews up
its guts, spits them into a bowl. And this is
where we have the first level of attack, which is
the crocodile heads, the crocodile skulls. So he's got the
(18:16):
Dark Wizard has all these crocodile skulls that are out here,
and he makes this whole gooey broth that he ends up,
putting all over the crocodile heads made up of what
he's chewed on, what he's boiled down, what he's spit out,
and then put on their heads. And then this is
attack level one, and so all the crocodile heads are
(18:37):
starting to come at him. There are skulls, yes, and
our Tibetan in lotus position monk. Now hero is there
to deflect them and battle against them as they are
coming at him.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Oh boy, And there are so many things that happen
in this film that made me go, like, what's I
forgot the sequence of them. That's what's so buckers.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I've had to see it three times to follow this
sequence of it.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I've not seen it enough. Clearly, it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
So he's so he battles the first level. So first
level is crocodile skulls, and he fights them and successfully wins,
and he's there's all sorts of like close ups where
they're snapping at him and trying to get him, and
he's doing some rolling out of the way and they're
coming at him, but he fights them off and they
all get kind of crushed and turned to dust. But
that's where level two comes in where he's got the
(19:25):
pot that had all the chicken guts and everything in it,
boils that all again, chews up some more stuff. The
second chicken dies that gets a bunch of guts in it,
And that's the one where after it's boiled and spit
in he pours it out on the ground and that
big alien head comes up out of it with the tail.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
With the weird blowing eyes and kind of like shift.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Back, big head with his size and this little tiny mouth,
and it's going.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Me, me, me, It is so freaking weird, man.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Mean, flying at him.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And I remember talking about because I was like thinking.
I was like, is this thing related to that like
Malaysian vampire where there it's like generally it's a woman,
but it's like her head and her spine come out
of her body and like wander around at night.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Really have you seen that?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
No? Oh my god, mystics a Bali so good? Yeah,
I mean what will been doing to those episodes about
that one? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh just yeah. Anything that's off the hook like this,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Just like that is off the change has a goopy
guts of all the things, but it's not a it's
not a kung Fu movie.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
It's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Oh well, and and in part of this too, part
of what if I forgot this because there's so many
different layers of this too. The thing that ends up
uh instigating part of the battle is that the spirit
of the original Dark Sorceress was being held in the
(20:53):
corpse of a bat and he tried to resurrect the bat.
Oh that's that was trying to attack as well as escape,
and they ended up using their their I guess good
wizard magic to destroy the bat skeleton.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
That bad skeleton went on for way too long.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Way too long.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
The film ridiculous, that ten minutes of my life.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
This just ridiculous, stupid thing that's like running and working.
But that was the thing that that was that was
right before the battle plane is that he ended up
killing the spirit of the Dark Sorceress and that was
where they were like, now you are ready to fight
the Dark Sorcerer. And then they were on the battle plane.
So now they're on the battle plane. We get through
the croc attack, croc skull attack. Yes, we've got giant
(21:43):
alien head attack which he is what is and just
crazy sounds and again it's making it me me like
this weird beaker sounds as it attacks and is shooting
lasers at him that he is deflecting and and has
to uh he ends up deflecting the lasers being shot
(22:05):
off of that thing and then uses his He uses
because it's trying to blow out the flames that are
around him on the candles too, So that's part of
if those go out. They don't tell you this, but
I think if the flames go out, he loses his power.
So that's also part of the battle where he's trying to.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Like keep the candles lit moile.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
This thing is attacking, and he uses a flame attack
off of the candles to kill the giant floating head
with the whippy tail because then we have the third level,
which is the multi bat attack.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yes, but doesn't he defeat the wizard in this.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
He does, okay, because that is where the acolytes come in.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
After this.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
We can't we got we can't get to the yeah,
because we got a whole yeah or gollum or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I know.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, I think it could be a goal. I like
hoculus just because I like the word. You know, yeah,
We're going to get to that yeah because uh yeah,
so that we've got the multi bat attack that's taking
care of really quickly. The bats are all like burned away.
He uses like kind of a he as part of
(23:21):
his training. He had the big ceramic bowl around him again,
or he's in a ceramic pot and all their chanting
words come at him. He glows.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
It's like the letters of the pot like absorbed unto
his skin and like spread over his body.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Their chance become to him. Yes, so he exerts that because.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
He's in their sutras, right, because they're doing like the
whatever like sutra.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So but he does the chance that he absorbs. Yeah,
then turns on the bats and flames out all the
bats and kills them. So now we're at our final
level of attack movie. It's so fucking crazy. This thing
is unheard of.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
We kept we kept watching that. I would be like
what and making you explain it.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Even the third time, I'm just like, man, this this
is this is not a film that is off the rails.
The rails were never built, nothing was ever put on
the rails.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
This thing is just.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Fucking crazy from the beginning, Like it's just ridiculous. It's
just ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
But it's not one of those so bad it's good
either though, don't you think I.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Don't think it is.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
It's it's not like it's not a story.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
There's not a lot of going on to be like,
no seriously.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And there's we have the only kung fu, the only
like physical fighting that we've had so far. It's just
the opening scene where the brother and the tie boxer
are going at it. We haven't touched kung fu or
tie boxing since then. We are all now in just
like Black Magic Territory, wizards and chanting and like lasers
(25:06):
and glowing stuff and stuff going. So but that gets
us to our our final boss battle for this arena
for this round. And do you want to talk about
how the wizard puts in his final attack?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
This is This is where he suddenly has like makeup
on and stuff right like.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
He had the makeup on. This is the one where
he has the paste. He takes the paste out of
the pot that he had. He had spilled the pot
out on the ground, and that's where the big head
came out of he's He reaches into that pot and
he wipes it across his neck, starts doing a chant,
and his head separate.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
That's when I was like, oh, this is like mystic
some bali Like that's okay, that's the point because he does.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Head attack, right, So his head comes off and flies
at him.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And it's a puppet too, Like isn't that an animatronic
or something like.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
A head too?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, it looks good.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, it's an attempt at looking like ash from Alien
a little bit bit because it flies in over him.
And then and we're getting into the thing a bit too,
all of those tendrils come down and start wrapping out
some Buddhist mak hero and he's trying to chant and
trying to do this and it's taking him over. And
he's really trying to battle it out and fight against
(26:22):
this head that is strangling him and taking him over
with whatever its tendrils are while it's chanting. Yeah, and
he's but he is having to chant against it, and
he ends up having a memory that he channels into
that to battle off the floating head because this is
the final battle.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember that. I can't. I can't remember.
It's so because I, like, I get so lost in
this field.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
It's such a mess because none of them makes sense.
It's just like these multiple weird attack sequences from the
Dark Wizard.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
At him that make no sense. None of this makes sense.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
No, So it's but the the tendrils are out and
it's wrapping around him and he's battling it and it's
pulling him around. He's starting to lose his concentration. He's
reaching up at him, like our dark Sorcerers are.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Cutting two back at this point again, they were also like.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Chanting exactly, and that's the chanting that recenters him. That's right,
that's the chanting that resenters him, and we and we
hear them doing that, and that pulls him together because
they're also chanting next to that corpse again, So we're
at that place with the corpse is in there, and
that is what powers him up to fight against the tendrils,
(27:36):
to blow them off, and then that head explodes.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I remember being like, wait, that's the end of that, man.
What right?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
We're barely we're worried about a halfway mark of this film,
and now our Dark Wizard is gone.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So makes you go, okay, so what what else could
I know?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
What? Yeah? So, well, our guy goes back on his
mission of the original Revenge.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
He gets thanked by them. They're like Yay, good job,
Dark Wizard dead. Yay, everybody's success. We're going to cover
that body with gold so that it can be put
in peace. Right.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
They start putting the little gold leaflets on there, which
everyone this is why we have our gold mannequin back
hair that is all decked out. Could not believe this
is like perfect, yes, because there is. They're starting to
put little gold leaf on that corpse to finalize it
because he had said his corpse will not decompose, right,
(28:35):
and he will, I guess, not pass on to whatever
the next life is or pass on to the place
where there is the ability to be reincarnated until this
Dark Wizard is is is defeated.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So now we have this defeat and he's going to
go back.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
On his revenge or his brotherly brother.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, well he goes back to Hong Kong too. So
he goes back to Hong Kong and he hooks back
up with his girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
We totally glossed over the very that that sex scene, though.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
I kind of did that on purpose. There is a
bit of a aggressive, aggressive second. Yeah, before he goes
to Thailand.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
And has his awakening.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah, when he's still kind of the like gangster thug.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah, he's a thug.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
And everything's consensual.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is aggressive, it's aggressive, but it's consensual. Yes, we
can move past that. Now he's but he's he has
returned to her.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yes, he is stoked.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
And she is and I guess he is considering that
his time is done, so he's not considering himself a
monk anymore. So he's kind of going back to who
he was, so that kind of breaks the vow of
being the monk that he had become in doing so,
and he is now getting ready to for the for
(29:56):
the match that is the revenge match for having the
tie boxer who broke his brother. So we're and we
don't there's no again, there's no training sequence for this.
We don't see any kind of training sequence. We get
after he's reunited with his girlfriend and there they have
their moment of being back at it. We're back in
the ring almost from where we left off is now
(30:17):
now our monk is in there.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
And what I love about is that there's this moment
where he's talking about this experience, but he just kind
of glosses over it.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
She's all like, how was it? And he's like oh
it was I did some battling and he never explained. No,
nobody talks about it, not at all. Nobody talks about it.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Nope. But while he is back in Hong Kong and
back with his girlfriend, we are then introduced to his
to the Dark Wizard, the Dark Sorcerer's acolytes, the Three Acolytes.
So we have the three acolytes who have found revenge.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
You killed our master, you.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Now, so we're still on the revenge kick. We're on
another layer of revenge. Yeah, and that is where our
three our three acolytes have moved their plan into action,
which is to create amunculus. They don't explain it, but
the build up for the homunculus, so it's very involved.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It is because we talked about like there's a lot
of moving parts that make that happen. Like there, they
have to do a bunch of different kind of like
in the ah just hit me so kind of in
the same way that he had to train to like
make himself karmically clean to become a monk to do
battle for his on the spiritual plane, they are kind
(31:46):
of doing like the anti version of right.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
They're doing like black magic.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Destroying things and like guts and like darkness.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Those it's very involved because they have to make a paste.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
First off, they bust this corpse out of a out
of track.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
They get, Yeah, they get the corpse out of They've
got like a bunch of cortes in a hole in
the floor where there's like a couple of them. They
pull that one out.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
She looks great, Yeah, let's go weird hair.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, no, we haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Because they pull it out, it's all wrapped up and
they place her in the worst crocodile that's right. So
they take theodile. They have this store into it. Right,
they have this terrible crocodile dummy, but it's very fake.
So we're we're not done with the animal stuff yet.
But the crocodile is very fake, and they put this
(32:38):
kind of weird corpsey thing, this weird body into it,
and they sew the crocodile together after.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
They've made the paste and the guts and the things like.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
They do they do the Yeah, so they put they
put that body into their sewed up we're inky bat
were because that is the thing. We go, We're back
in Hong Kong and that guy's getting ready to do
his battle. Because then they they pull the the crocodile,
they cut it open and they pull her out, and
(33:11):
it's all covered in like maggots and meal worms, and
she's still wrapped, but they start to rinse it all off.
And so this real person has real maggots and meal
worms covering her entire body, plus whatever paste they had
on her. So they had all this paste and stuff naked.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
She's totally naked.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Which is shocking sep for kung fu films and things
like that, because like I mean, like we're like fully naked,
like front, the ludity.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
It is everything, and that's where the paste starts to
come in. So they prep the paste. Do you want
to talk about them prepping the paste? What all they do?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
They kill a chicken, They kill a chicken, They eat
some guts, They spit some guts out.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
And they chew on it. Like one of them choose
it all up, spits it out into it, and they
hand it to the next one. And then the next
one scoops it all up a more to it, chews
it all up, spits it out and hands it to
the third alcolage.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Now there are no beats missed no, we're gonna stress ef.
They probably just ate after each.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Other, right, it goes from one to the other.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
They are chewing up, Yeah, they're chewing up all of
this stuff, spitting it into uh spitting it into this
bowl and handing it on its sorry, check it out.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Can't do this is can't do.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
There is a lot of commitment to this revenge plot,
a lot of commitment to this because once they've chewed
it all up and have that whole thing spitting done
into the bowl, then they feed it into our newly
uh revealedmunculus and to animate her into her mouth, they
put all of that stuff into her mouth and then
(34:48):
they move her jaw to start it kind of going,
and they chant to her, and.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
That is how they revive this thing.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
It's gross.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
That's how babies are made.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
It's truly, it's truly gross. It is amazing. But now
we've got our living homunculous. We've got our guy in
the ring who is about to start fighting. And as
he starts to have the fight and is winning against
the tie boxer, our naked homunculous evil sorceress woman is
(35:20):
now being chanted and walked over to basically like a
voodoo doll. Yeah, because remember she's they put these little
needles on her fingers and that's where she pokes into
the voodoo doll thing.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And effigy of him, right, and his eyes go out
and he's right.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
And at the same time, the gold leaf corpse has
starts to like lose gold leafs off of it. It's
it's starting like flying apart, and it's like starting to
have shock.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
And they were.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Getting a flashback sequence of him like something happened to
his eyes too, or something.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Like that, and we were getting the flashbacks because how
he died was the poisoned tarantulas that had needles, had
had poisoned needles that forced into his eyes that made
him go blind and die. From the dark sorcerer that
our guy killed who had his head come off. Yeah,
there's so many layers of revenge in this thing.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
It's insane.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And I've owned two tarantulas. They don't have needles. No,
they don't start to attack my eyes.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It's so crazy. So yeah, so that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So all of that starts to come back from those
layers of Yeah, those it's just totally insane. So now
our guys in the boxing ring he's getting his ass
whooped by the tie boxer, and we have got themunculus
sorceress is damaging the the voodoo doll and it's causing
(36:50):
issues with the corpse and all this. So now this
guy's just getting his ass kicked and he ends up
losing the boxing match against He loses the fight, and
he doesn't understand or how or what happens, So he
goes back to the monks. He returns to Thailand to
go and see like what happened and what's going on,
(37:10):
and they're like, well, it's not over with. Apparently that
dark magic is still here. We still have these acolytes
that we have to deal with. Did you break your
monk's code?
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Well, to get back into the thing of swing of things,
we have to make sure that you can do all
the things or do all the training again. And did
you break your code? Did you have sex? No?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
And a candle goes out. You lied, and the spirit
of your dead twin brother from another lifetime knows it
and it has extinguished it and you cannot continue to
have our support.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, which I thought was like that was after all
of that. This is the one thing, this is the
deal breaker.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Right, because he lied about it.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well, if he hadn't lied, they probably could have trained
him through it again. He could have made his vow again.
But he lied, and that was the point because he
goes on a tantrum and goes over to where the
corpse is still sitting, that's had all of the gold
leaf blown off of it, and he's pissed off at
the corpse and he starts trashing the altar because we're
(38:24):
about to go on our next mission because we've had
the acolytes have now had their revenge on him, which
is not fully complete.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
They just poked his eyes out with the homunculus on
the voodoo doll and he's lost his fight, but now
he wants to have his revenge against them for what
they have done to him. And he's got his fight
and fight and we still have to fight it, but
he is impure, so he can't. And they have said
there is only one way for you to be able
to get back into the good graces, and you have
(38:59):
to travel to this city, to this temple. And at this.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Time there is a moment in tar ashes.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, it's a it's the ashes, that's right, it's the
ashes are in the hand of Buddha, of Buddha.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
But it's like like kind of like in Indiana Jones,
where on the.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Only at that one moment.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
The light gets hits this thing perfectly, that's the only
time it's visible.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
It's only time it's visible and physically there and physically there.
And that is when they give him that that tier
in the little locket as extra protection because he needed
he needs to have that in order to have the
strength to get the ashes and survive that that moment
(39:46):
there parts, there's so many things that have to be
aligned and functional.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
This really is so crazy.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
So now he's on his next mission to go to
that town.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right, Yeah, we're hidden that we're hitting in the.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
We're in the third act here to get to this thing.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Right, our hero's journey continues.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, absolutely, and so and he takes the tourist uh tour,
that's right. He joins a tourist group.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
That's where we joke about the exposition part of this
because they're the only time where anything is explained in
this entire film is where he is at this temple.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
He is.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
On a tour group and they are explaining the ashes
of the of the Buddha that are in the Buddha's
hand and the spiritual significance of this thing, because nobody
else bothered to explain it to us at any point
in this film right until that.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
This is the thing that needs the most explanation for whatever.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Reason thrown out there. And you're like, Okay, that just happened.
And if you weren't paying attention, or if you like
just looked away for a moment, this is where you're like,
you be get lost big time even yea, because this
is where we He waits until he can. He kind
of goes back after the temple like closing.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
He goes in there at closing time and sleeps through
the night to be there so that when that first
ray of light comes through he can he can he
can cross the threshold, but he's attacked by some of
the statues that are there that are protecting the Buddhist
sculpture and the open hand with the ash in it.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
It was like talking or something like that. Were they talking?
Speaker 2 (41:29):
They were talking, but they attacked him.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Were they talked but the things were talking to each other? Right?
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yes, they were.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
There was like a comical moment, right which was like
weirdly out of tone right where they're like the statues
themselves that are the guardian of this Buddha statue.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
We are having a conversation, and this is where he
needed that that tear drop in the locket to be
able to get across the threshold and pass them to
get to the ashes.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
In the palm.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
It was like his ticket. Uh huh okay okay.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
So but we also have our three acolytes and our
homunculus are closing in on this temple. There is no
explanation as to how they know that he is there
or that they know that he needs to get these
ashes to get all of this stuff to get himself
back into the good graces of Buddha and the monastery.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
But they arrive.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Just as he is about to get those ashes, and
that is when they unleash the first crocodile attack on him.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
So what I want to know is like because they
don't ever explain it, like because she was like came
out of a crocodile that she like has crocodile.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Powers, I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
And it's the significance of the crocodile. This is this
thing I don't know, Like as far as Thaie or Chinese.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Yeah, no idea, it's just off the fucking.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Rails, insane.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
She has a crocodile that comes out of her and attacks. Yeah, yep,
so the crocodile is attacking. He's kind of jumping back
and forth and avoiding the attacking crocodile among the now
back to unanimated non animated statues that are in there,
trying to avoid this whole thing and get up to
(43:19):
the palm where the ashes are. Well when the moment
is going to happen, So crocodile attack happens.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Sa urbon parts have happened, and things have to do right.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Oh, and this is the one where very similar to
the crocodile attack that he did before, he stuffed something
in its mouth and it chews up and breaks up
one thing.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
But then he stuffed something else into the.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Crocodile mouth that ends up kind of stopping it for
a moment that allows him to get to the ash.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Is it like a sutra or something like that, like
on a It.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Was like an ornamental piece that was there that he
was able to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Wasn't it an arch image or something like that?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Or it might have been one of those some in there. Yeah,
there was some little artistic piece that was that that
he was able to jam into its mouth.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
And then that's when he's able to get to the ashes.
And this is where this is so insane. That is
when the spirit of him, as an old man with
a hat and a white beard and mustache sitting in
a completely different altar appears and transports itself onto him
(44:28):
and merge. So he becomes that old man wizard, white wizard.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
I didn't understand that.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I have no idea, Gretchen, There's there's no explanation for it.
It's it is.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
It is somehow, uh.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
And I think it's him. I don't think it's the
I don't think it's.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
His spirit brother.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
I think it's him just in a white beard and
mustache in a never.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Established it's going to talk to his future self.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
No it's not.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And it's and I don't know if it's a future
self or if somehow getting those ashes and the Buddha
has now said that you are worthy, that it transforms
him into like the white Wizard, like he becomes the
white Gandal.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
So he is now that sitting in lotus position in
kind of its own altar that is surrounded by a
bunch of stuff and transported into that that monastery area
in front of that Buddha. And now we're into other
big boss battle stuff. Now this is where he attacks.
(45:37):
He attacks the the homunculous sorceresses and kills her. She dies,
but then the three acolytes are like, this is not
over with.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yet, one more with one more, hey god?
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah, so they commit suicide over her.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Yeah, and and.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Basically fall all over her, and and all all their
bits and pieces that fall onto her turn into three hairy,
one eyed, four legged creatures that shoot laser beams out
of their eyes and start marching toward him.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
In the same vein of like animation as the bat
Or are the meak head yeah, the weird alien? Yes?
But like so I want to know It's like because
just because I'm culturally ignorant of this, like is this
of significance? Is this like uh, I don't know, because
(46:47):
like you know, like if this was a Japanese film,
I'd be like, this is a yokai or this will
be this And but because I'm ignorant of this, like
is the are these monsters or goblins or creatures or
ghosts from like Chinese mythology.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
I think anything could have been up until this moment.
I mean, like like the bat and the crocodile on
the homunculus, and like all of a.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Sudden, those things like feel relevant.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
And things like that exactly, but like the floating alien
head with the whipping tail, no idea where this is
coming from? Like that, Yeah, I think I literally think
they were like, what do you got, prop department?
Speaker 3 (47:23):
What can we make?
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Because they got left over from other films.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Well, and because we're watching these things march toward our
now fully revitalized monk in his white wizard state, and
these things aren't but about six or eight inches tall,
because we see like a wide shot from the back
where they're like, but marching forward, they're not very big.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Well, remember how we were talking about like how like
this is so involved just to get these tiny I
was like, so they kill themselves over her body for
these tiny monsters. Yeah, they couldn't just go at him theirselves.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Well, and also too, there was a step we missed
in because when she dies and falls apart, out of
her for JJ is a whole bunch of saran wrap.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
They get that that like shoots all.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Over them and wraps them in like this Soran rap
before they commit suicide, spill their guts onto her to
turn into these little three one eyed teachers.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
That are marching toward her vagina.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
I did too, like, how.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Do you not blank that out? It's crazy?
Speaker 1 (48:26):
So these no rhyme, no reason. Thanks for leading us
on this, because this journey has quite.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
The It's so insane.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
This movie makes no sense. There's nothing like this film.
There's nothing like this film anywhere that I have ever
seen in my life.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Have you seen human lanterns? No, that has some elements
that are like this, like or is it human things
called skin? Human lanterns? It's like a but it's a
like a samurai film. Oh really, So it has these
kind of this vague like dark spiritual aspects, but not
(49:05):
like this, like well it way more like but it
makes a lot more sense versus boxer.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Zemen, which has a little more story to it.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah. Yeah, it's less convoluted because I remember being like
when the vagina thing, it was like, this is a
lot just for these things, right, just for this thing
to happen.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Even singing there, You're like, how did we get here.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Right, like, and how easily they are defeated.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, Well that's the thing is they're marching forward and
they're shooting laser beams at him, and he uses his.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Mong stuff again.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, oh, this is because this is where he's got
the ball. This is the final blows. I think this
is where he's got the bowl. He's doing the singing
bowl right, okay, and that's where they are defeated. Yes,
with the singing bowl and the chant wow, because they
flame out and then die.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Yeah, which I was thought was really anticlimactic for how
much how hard of work they did to get to this.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
They were out of budget, they were out of prop department.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I mean it also, we got like ten minutes left
this film was wrapped this.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Up right, like this has got to be over it,
Like there is no other there's no other layer of
revenge that we could possibly try to get to with this. Yep,
let's bundle this little puppy up and call it good.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
I mean, bundling is not even the term I would
go for. Like, I feel like it left left us
on a like a note of where I remember going
to you saying, So he doesn't even get to battle.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Right, right, It's it's literally like him in the lotus position,
chanting and doing stuff, and that's you.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
You don't go back to our girlfriend. We don't go
back to our earthly plane. Brother, We don't go back
to revisit the monks. We don't go back to.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Such a kung fu film.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
There's so many kung fu films that I have watched
where like the final guy is defeated and it's like
ha ha to that and it's over it like it's
it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
That's what I'm saying is like this thing was so
like That's why I mean, if anybody deserves an MS
three k tree met, this movie does. But I don't
even think they could.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Oh it's so gloppy. Yeah, there's far too much. Like yeah,
you there would be so much you would have to
edit out of this thing. True, Like it's seriously, we're not.
I'm not kidding you anyway. When I say gloppy, like
it is literally like guts and entrails and.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Like like I think it's real. I'm like, am I'm
a sympathetic puker. I'm like that kid can stand by me.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
Well when they when they cut that homunculus out, that's
a it's it's it's a fake crocodile like, but it's
full of real guts, awful and like stuff is like
spilling out onto the floor and it's like this is
real beef internals hitting the floor here. Yeah, like they're
not messing around. It's it's intense. I have to continue
(51:58):
to tell myself. This is made in nineteen eighty three.
This was long over with before I even knew that
these films were made, let alone I ever watched it.
It was a lot to watch the first time though,
on the big screen it was like, what the fuck
am I one.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Of those old Italian films too? Like the one. Yeah,
our last episode with there's a lot of like rat
death and you know, things like that people, you know,
I mean, I'm sure those bugs weren't like take care of.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
There's a lot of the maggots and the yeah, all
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah, it's it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah, but that's yeah, that's our big final boss battle.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
It's so completely.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
I can only compare to the fact like human lanterns
and I can only could say that there's I mean,
I can't only say but I mean as far as
I like a horror element to most things, or supernatural element.
I'm going to be drawn to shows in particular, or
movies in particular what they have, even if they're like
(53:03):
a comedy, but it has like a horror element or
a supernatural element, I'm going to be drawn to it.
And I think that's what. There was a bunch of
these films and this this time that the Shaw Brothers did,
I feel like. And then there was also like Golden
Harvest Died some two that were have a very like
supernatural vibe, right, yeah, like that one that's like the
(53:25):
crossover between like the Seven Golden Vampires or whatever and
the Bloodthirsty Trilogy. But those like that's a Japanese horror.
But yeah, like like, isn't black Magic one?
Speaker 3 (53:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Or Black Magic three? There wasn't there three of them?
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Well?
Speaker 3 (53:44):
And there's yeah there what's a what is the one
I'm thinking of? It's the one that.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
The Hollywood does every Halloween. I think it's, uh, the
Five Golden Brothers meet Dracula like they did a Hammer
kung Fu.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
That's the Seven Golden Vampires one, right, it might be.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I thought that one had five in it. I don't know,
but it's it is it's still they're trying to do
that same kind of supernatural crossover, totally trying to have
a horror and that and that one was very intentionally
like a Hammer. They partnered with Hammer absolutely vie.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
Yeah that vibe. Yeah it's And that one's.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
I was Renaissance the Revival, medieval revival, like a Dwardian
look kind of sixty seventies. Yeah that it's I love
this film. I mean, I love I like this film
a lot. It's a lot of fun to watch. I
wouldn't say this is something I'm gonna be like, yes,
let's watch this all the time, because yeah, it is
so messy, not just not the visceral aspects of being messy,
(54:46):
but like the story being messy. But I really like
a good like kung fu action film like this.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Yeah, yeah, I so, I love my kung fu films.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yeah, and I love to watch this one.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
It doesn't have the repeatability of some films like I
have to wait for a couple of years. Well, and
it is convoluted and it is. One of the things
that I love about kung fu films is just the
sheer audacity of the things that they do.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Oh, there's always a journey too, whereas I feel like
this one, the journey gets interrupted a lot, and like
our hero is a flawed hero and it's a that
those aspects, those tropes are being met, but the spiritual
growth is only spiritual. It's not like he doesn't actually
have much growth to him as far as like a character.
(55:33):
He's not very redeem right.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Yeah, this thing is this is kind of a shock
value film.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah, yeah, And I wonder I want to know, like
what would what was the behind the scenes of this too,
Like yeah, like what was their intention? Like who wrote this? This?
This grande best.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Well, and this is another one of those where this
guy made a lot of films, most of them pretty
much unknown and never really being acknowledged by anything. However,
his son went on to be a big time producer
and was a producer for Jet Lee's films. Like you
go back and look at all the big jet Lye stuff,
his son was the producer.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
For all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Yeah, so Hero, any of that stuff this guy's son
was producing his hero. Yeah, yeah, Hero, And then he
was doing a lot of that the American films that
Jet Lee.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Was doing, like Romeo is Bleeding and things like that.
Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
He was a producer on that one. What was the
one where Jet Lee was the fighter with the caller
on him? One?
Speaker 3 (56:35):
The one?
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Yes, this guy was a producer on all of that stuff. Yeah,
it's crazy. Yeah, well that's an odd one.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
I mean, isn't that Morgan Freeman?
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Yeah, and he's like he has a twin?
Speaker 3 (56:50):
Yeah? Is that the one? No, that's not the one
with the twin?
Speaker 1 (56:54):
What's the one? What's there is one with a twin
but he twin?
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, there is one.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
That's that one.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
That's not the one.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
No, the one is like he's like a he's a
kind of a bad guy?
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Is it? But there I'm there's there's one where he's
kind of being like bought and sold and traded back
and forth. I think Morgan Freeman is blind. He has
a collar on him and it's the color. Because that's
not the one.
Speaker 1 (57:16):
The one is the twin one that's the one where
he's like kind of a bad guy and the way
twin the one.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
I know one with Bob Hoskins and because Hoskins buys him, yeah,
owns him and he's and he puts him in cage
fights and gladiator, the cage off or you flip the
collar off of him, it triggers him and that's when
he fights. Yeah, and then you have to put the
collar back on him.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah, that guy was producing though.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
So yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
A crazy film, Gretchen. Yeah, and I'm glad we got
to watch and talk about it, because this is a
film that not a lot of people watch, and so
I don't get to talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:51):
No, I think that's what we're trying to do here
as far as our show.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Yeah, talk about the stuff that you don't always get
to talk about people.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
That are not as common are. That is not that
we're gonna be just focusing on like obscure, but I
mean that's kind of fun about talking about films. And
there are some elements of really strong filmmaking, like the
special effects in this are special effects I do do
a good job of, like creating gore and creating group
(58:22):
and things like that, like cuts and wounds. Everybody looks
disgusting and injured and things like that, like THEO but
they're they're over the top, don't get me wrong. But
we do get to see those elements at least. And
I love a good practical effect.
Speaker 3 (58:38):
Yeah, and that is. This film is full of practical effects.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
Lots of puppets, lots of wires, lots of lighting.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
And lots of mirrors.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
And they do a lot of that kind of upositing, compositing,
rotoscoping stuff and all of that with like the laser
bolts and the lightning and uh and the monk chants,
oh yeah, that are permeating his body and then yeah, totally, totally, yeah,
it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
It's there.
Speaker 2 (59:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (59:09):
They there's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
They were doing it like they were making a film.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
They were going for it. It's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (59:14):
So well, thank you so much for watching this one,
yes and talking about it. What are we going to
watch next?
Speaker 1 (59:20):
We're going to watch Ken Russell's Altered States.
Speaker 2 (59:22):
I am so excited to watch this film again. I
watched it for the first time about two years ago,
remembering and we talked about this. I was remembering as
a little kid. I was freaked out by that film
from the trailer.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Everything from the that like the Aha music video to
that kind of harkened to it. Oh man. I remember
every time I'd see the trailer, I would be like
like I'd have to run into the other room because
It scared me so bad because it just the way
it was so ominous.
Speaker 3 (59:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy and it's and it's crazy to watch.
Speaker 1 (59:56):
It the Bonkers films.
Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yeah, I'm a excited to watch this one again and
talk about it. So yeah, until next time, Gretchen, thanks
so much.
Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Thank you, Martin.
Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
All Right, we'll see you see.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
The Check the Gate podcast is hosted by Martin Vavra
and Gretchen Brooks.
Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
The show is directed, produced, and edited by Martin Vavra.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Produced by Galaxy Sailor Productions twenty twenty five. The show
is filmed and recorded a special thanks to Adam Carpinelli
and Aleandro Barragon
With the weird blowing eyes and kind of like shift.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Back for big head and this little tiny mouth. It's good.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Me, me, me.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
It is so freaking weird.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Man flying at Gretchen, Welcome back, You're back.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You're wearing your kung Fu Theater T shirt.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm wearing my kung Fu Theater T shirt for the
Hollywood Theater. The one of my is the number one
movie theater in the world to me, and I love
Punk Fry Theater every second Tuesday of the month, and
it is fantastic.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, it's very fitting for this one because.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That's the first time I ever saw this movie, the
nineteen eighty three completely bonkers off the wall black magic
kung Fu film The Boxers.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Omen Oh my goodness, this film.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Wow. I wish I had seen it in the big screen.
I've not. I have not been lucky enough. I somehow
have not caught it. I knew about it, I had
seen excerts of it, but I had not seen this
film and its entirety. It's funny how oftentimes I think
(01:16):
because of our generation and how we first where like
we saw like especially like offshoot cinema. It would be
like on things like night flight and whatnot. And those
were like shorts or excerts of versus the actual like
showing the whole film. So I think that's how we
get we consumed a lot of this stuff in this cult,
especially like cult status type stuff like this. Yeah, but
(01:39):
that's just me.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, this is a crazy film. And I do want
to start out with a warning to anybody who seeks
out this film and goes to watch it, because you
can actually find this right now as part of a
Shaw Brothers collection of films that I think is a
part of like the thirty six Chamber series and a
few others.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
You can get it on Blu ray and DVD.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
This film was made in Uh. It takes place in Uh.
It starts in Hong Kong, goes to Thailand, but there
is because of when and where it was filmed, there
are gonna be some very very grotesque moments in there.
Some animal yeah, there's there. There's gonna be two places
(02:24):
where uh, two chickens die. You're gonna see that. So
I just want to get that out there for you.
It's very tough for me to be able to watch
and I've even seen it three times. Uh, And so
just as a warning to the watchers. I think I
had warned you about it too.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, I think watching I was like, oh no.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit tough. But this film
has got everything, stuff that you would never even think about.
It is crazy.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
It is cuckoo bananas.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yes, So this whole film starts out with it starts
out this is like basically like a cascading event of
revenge plots, everything very.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, but it's like it's it's but it's also convoluted
and it's oh, not quite as bad as the last
film we watched, but like but still it has its
moments of like do I need to do I need
some titles because I'm not even sure that even this
even helps me at this point, right.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's well, it's so the whole thing starts out with
we have a boxing match and we.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Have a Hong Kong Fighterland and.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
A Thailand and they're kickboxing, and the Hong Kong fighter wins,
but the tie boxer and handed right, it's all over
with and he underhanded does a sneak attack on the
winner and uh ends up putting him into uh in attraction.
So he's like he may never walk again. Everything is broken.
(03:59):
He's a total mess, right, and in steps the brother
who is kind of a in the mob. He's kind
of a bad guy or like a kind of a
he's kind of like a gangster guy on the seats
of Hong Kong who has vowed revenge. He is going
to get revenge on. Yeah, he's also a fighter, yes,
yep so, but he is vowed revenge. But he starts
(04:23):
to see weird images of this uh, like this kind
of ghostly apparition of a person of.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
A Buddha guy or like a monk.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
He's a monk.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, he's like a Buddhist monk who is arriving at
very odd times for him.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
But he is on his mission to go and get revenge.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And he travels to Thailand to go and proclaim that
he is going to have a revenge boxing meet with
this guy. And we're kind of jumping right to it,
you know, because really, what happens while he's in Thailand
he gets uh, he ends up being attracted to well,
so he sees this image. Now not only does he
see the images of the Buddhist monk, but there is
(05:03):
a night where he is visited by this glowing chevron
cherrow kind of of an image.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
That that follows Stargate, right, yeah, exactly, it's like a
sign on exactly, and this thing but this is before Stargate.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So this thing is is moving through his apartment in
Hong Kong, and he follows it, trying to figure out
what this whole thing is. So he travels to Thailand
and he makes his revenge known that he is going
to fight this boxer at this time, and he's gonna
get back at him for having broken his brother and
(05:41):
and and made him a possible quadriplegic or paraplegic at
a minimum. And then it turns out that the image
he saw.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Was well before that though. He has to before he's
allowed to He has before he's allowed to take his vengeance,
he has to train.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Well, no, but we haven't gotten that far.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Oh that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right. He's trying to take the vengeance with the boxer,
but he's traveling by boat and he sees that image
and that that image that was floating around in his
apartment is the image.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Of the edge of the shrine.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It's right, it's the Buddhist temple roof.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I guess it's the now that I know the term
it's like that's what time monks live in a wat.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
There you go, and that's what it is. It's like
it is essentially the shape of that monastery with the
with those moments.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Just so random right like that that it's it's what
it's like the art shape. I mean that would be
like it's less the symbol itself is so like not
a symbol.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Right yeah, it's basically just like the eves and the
peak of a.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Roof with with with some a little bit like Japanese
you have like the you would have the like the
tory Gate, know that symbol tory Gate. You're like, ha,
got it? Like this, I'm like this is where that
game as a kid where you're trying to find spot
the image of like they give you the symbol and
you need to find it in the picture.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right, Yeah, that's what this is. This is literally just
the end of the roof of a monastery and that's
the power symbol.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And he's and so he's he's and he's on a
river going by he's basically commuting in like a water
taxi sees this and goes over there, and it turns
out that they are celebrating the death of a monk. Yeah,
and he's in there to say, hey, I've been seeing
these images and all of this stuff has been happening
to me. What's going on? Oh, well, you need to
(07:37):
go and see our brother over here. And they lock
him in a room with a corpse that is sitting
in a big clay jar, and they break the clay
jar to have the corpse out, and they leave him
and then he has his time where the dried up
corpse talks to him.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And a rubber suited dry cop corpse.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
That oh man, that is quite Yeah, for some folks
that have watched some Kaiju films in the day, that
was quite the rubber suit that they put on that person.
There are times where I'm like, I can't tell if
that's a rubber suit on a person and it's talking,
or if it's like some weird hand puppety thing, because I.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Know, so distorted.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
It's so weird looking at the idea of that actually
even being a corpse was like that was we talk
about suspension of disbelief.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Old boy. Yeah, yeah, it's very bizarre.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I mean not he's talking to a corpse a yeah,
but it's like this this and this is where things
are like starting to begin. We're starting to get into
our wacky wild adventure. Like it's like it's already kind
of like, oh okay, convoluted storyline. We're getting there. We're
getting there. It's I learn how to do a thing
to get a thing, and like that's the quest. But
(08:53):
this is when it starts to ramp up right like
into the effects land.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Right, because that really learning what our A story is,
our b story, what we think could be is we've
got the revenge of the brother is beat up and
he's been put in a wheelchair, and so this guy
is gonna go and seek revenge. Yeah, and that's a
very typical kung fu movie kind of a revenge thing
like accl, you did this thing to my frother, my brother,
my friend, whatever it is, and and I'm now I'm
(09:21):
gonna go get revenge. And you know, we're going against
the shell Land or the person who is trying to
take out the shell Land temple or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Very typical. But that's not even our a story.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Now a story is now getting lined up with he's
meeting this corpse and the corps is talking to him.
It had been astral projecting its spirit to this guy
when he was in Hong Kong, and now it is
here to tell him that in another life they were brothers,
and they were they were twins, right, they were twin brothers,
(09:52):
and their souls had been now separated in this life,
so they were they still had the souls of twin others.
Their spirits were connected in that way, even though our
hero has been the brother in this life to someone else.
So these soul brothers, these twins, have now spiritually met up.
(10:13):
And this corpse, which will not rot or decay, needs
to be avenged. And we are set up in our
second last back, and this is where we go into
our big flashback where this Tibetan monk had traveled to
Hong Kong to do battle against an evil uh a
(10:36):
dark wizard, black magic wizard. Yes, and so with so
many layers of so we've got, he goes, he goes
to Hong Kong to have battle. He goes to battle,
finds the wizard is actually I guess more of a witch,
but she is disguised as a guy. He finds her
(10:57):
in a train station, attacks her with the thing that
makes her like skin bubble up and corrode and all
of this stuff and popping, and they're using black magic. Tie,
They're they're using powers against each other that outs that
particular black magic, which she ends up dying in the
train station like melting away.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Like rotting shugard.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
That is when then the guy who is the head
dark Wizard has said, I must seek revenge far so vengeance.
So then he goes and has the vengeance that kills
this Tibetan monk, this Buddhist monk, and not Tibetan tie.
It kills this Buddhist monk. Yeah, and so now this
(11:43):
Buddhist monk is recruiting his soul brother from a different
life to seek revenge.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
On this dark wizard. So now we are on.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Our a story path of this completely insane film, right.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Oh boy, Yeah, but he's so he has right, right,
he has to, Like he gets his head shaved. So,
first of all, like one of those things that we
were when Martin and I were watching this film, I
kept me I was like, why is his hair so
like bonkers looking, because it's it's such a like a well,
(12:23):
and all on top of that, it was just like
such a bad like wig placement, Like there were these
elements and I was like why is he wearing a wig?
And then Martin's just like try to like play his cards.
He's all like, you'll see let the story unfault, yes,
and then they shave his head and the training montage
because he has to become I essentially become.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
A monk.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And then he can be karmically clean enough to take
on the mission for his spiritual brother to fight against
the black magic. So there's all these rules in place, right,
Like one, it's like, you can't have had sex, you
can't have had well.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
In the training, you can, you can dismiss what your
prior life was. But when you're when you're let you
become the month become that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, you have to let all of that go.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
All those things have to go, and of course they
come into play.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
That comes out.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, it comes back, honest because why wouldn't it right?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Why set it up? We're not going to use it.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Is Chekhov's kung fu, right, oh man?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And it's so he has to be karmically clean to
do He's got the rules like what the no sex,
no no meat.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
No alcohol. Yeah, none of those possessions, earthly possessions.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So he's got the rules, and that becomes part of
the training montage where we have to get where we're
star trying to become strong enough to fight up against
the dark Wizard, but also strong enough to be able
to battle the tie kickboxer that injured our earthly brother.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Well, that's not part of this though.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Oh that's right, we aside.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
It's he's setting it aside. He's he lets that go
so that he can take this journey to become a
monk to seek the revenge for his soul twin brother
against this dark wizard.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yes, okay, okay, Yeah. For some reason, I thought I
remember there being like a phone call where he's talking
to his brother.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Between this, there is before before he goes into the
training to become as we.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Find out, his brother isn't as bad off as we thought.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right, he's in a wheelchair, but he's recovering. They find
out that he's gonna be okay, but he's he's still
going to be broken in a wheelchair, but he is okay.
So but he's he's made his decision now to go
and become a monk and starts that whole training montage,
which is really not we don't see a lot of
(15:00):
training training, which you know, and a lot of things
like again with the Shallon tempos and anytime we do
anything with like thirty six chamber, Like a lot of
these have their classic training montages where somebody is like
fighting the clay pots that have water in him, or
they've got all of the poles and they have to
like tiptoe their way across the poles, and there's like
somebody is like putting rods across there, so they have
(15:23):
to pick themselves up and be able to move across things,
or they're swinging logs, and you know, long before Jean
Claude van Dam was doing his training montages. Yeah, that's
all part of the training montage, and they didn't do that.
They kind of had some ceremony stuff and they talked
about some things, but we never actually got to see
him physically train or learn any of the magic arts
(15:50):
that he would need to go up against this dark wizard.
We kind of jump through all of that.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Stuff because yeah, why not.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah so, but but runtime exactly because we got runtime.
This movie is only an hour, and it's an hour
and thirty minutes, so it's it's ninety seven minutes long. Yeah, yeah,
so it it. Yeah, they're like trying to get to
some things because this thing goes so off the rails
so many times and has so much revenge.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Holy cow, we're only just getting started. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So he so he goes through all of that. He's
we've sidelined the tie Boxer and we're focusing on the
Dark Wizard. That's right now, do you want to start
talking about the first Dark Wiz? Well, so the thing
is he finishes his training and they say, now you
are ready to do battle with him, and it literally
(16:41):
just goes right to the due battle and they are
on some kind of like an odd cosmic plane area
with a moon. The moon is in the background, but
we never see there's no journey, there is no like
I'm coming for you.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
This was in his head or not. Like That's what
I kept trying to figure out, is like, was this
a dream?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
He just rides there?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, that was so confused.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
He just arrives there. It's like you're all trained and
ready to go fight, and boom they are in a
cosmic arena for the battle and he's mostly in like
a lotus position for all of this, where Dark Wizard arrives.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
To kill the chicken, battle with him.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well he does, he will, he will, he doesn't quite.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I thought it was a prep. There was a prep.
Maybe that was another battle.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Is a prep, there's a there's so many levels to
this battle. This movie is so off the rails, like
this is where all like it's it's it's there's so
much glop and goo and guts and stuff in.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
The oh yeah, because he has his assistant and they
are trying to power him up and things like that
during this battle. Right like they're off to another area
like pulling guts out of things and not yet.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So this is just our dark WA's so confusing.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
It's so confusing.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
There's so many things going because so the Dark Wizard
is there, and we start out because he kills the
first chicken here and tears that one apart, chews up
its guts, spits them into a bowl. And this is
where we have the first level of attack, which is
the crocodile heads, the crocodile skulls. So he's got the
(18:16):
Dark Wizard has all these crocodile skulls that are out here,
and he makes this whole gooey broth that he ends up,
putting all over the crocodile heads made up of what
he's chewed on, what he's boiled down, what he's spit out,
and then put on their heads. And then this is
attack level one, and so all the crocodile heads are
(18:37):
starting to come at him. There are skulls, yes, and
our Tibetan in lotus position monk. Now hero is there
to deflect them and battle against them as they are
coming at him.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Oh boy, And there are so many things that happen
in this film that made me go, like, what's I
forgot the sequence of them. That's what's so buckers.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I've had to see it three times to follow this
sequence of it.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I've not seen it enough. Clearly, it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
So he's so he battles the first level. So first
level is crocodile skulls, and he fights them and successfully wins,
and he's there's all sorts of like close ups where
they're snapping at him and trying to get him, and
he's doing some rolling out of the way and they're
coming at him, but he fights them off and they
all get kind of crushed and turned to dust. But
that's where level two comes in where he's got the
(19:25):
pot that had all the chicken guts and everything in it,
boils that all again, chews up some more stuff. The
second chicken dies that gets a bunch of guts in it,
And that's the one where after it's boiled and spit
in he pours it out on the ground and that
big alien head comes up out of it with the tail.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
With the weird blowing eyes and kind of like shift.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Back, big head with his size and this little tiny mouth,
and it's going.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Me, me, me, It is so freaking weird, man.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Mean, flying at him.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And I remember talking about because I was like thinking.
I was like, is this thing related to that like
Malaysian vampire where there it's like generally it's a woman,
but it's like her head and her spine come out
of her body and like wander around at night.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Really have you seen that?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
No? Oh my god, mystics a Bali so good? Yeah,
I mean what will been doing to those episodes about
that one? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh just yeah. Anything that's off the hook like this,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Just like that is off the change has a goopy
guts of all the things, but it's not a it's
not a kung Fu movie.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
It's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Oh well, and and in part of this too, part
of what if I forgot this because there's so many
different layers of this too. The thing that ends up
uh instigating part of the battle is that the spirit
of the original Dark Sorceress was being held in the
(20:53):
corpse of a bat and he tried to resurrect the bat.
Oh that's that was trying to attack as well as escape,
and they ended up using their their I guess good
wizard magic to destroy the bat skeleton.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
That bad skeleton went on for way too long.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Way too long.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
The film ridiculous, that ten minutes of my life.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
This just ridiculous, stupid thing that's like running and working.
But that was the thing that that was that was
right before the battle plane is that he ended up
killing the spirit of the Dark Sorceress and that was
where they were like, now you are ready to fight
the Dark Sorcerer. And then they were on the battle plane.
So now they're on the battle plane. We get through
the croc attack, croc skull attack. Yes, we've got giant
(21:43):
alien head attack which he is what is and just
crazy sounds and again it's making it me me like
this weird beaker sounds as it attacks and is shooting
lasers at him that he is deflecting and and has
to uh he ends up deflecting the lasers being shot
(22:05):
off of that thing and then uses his He uses
because it's trying to blow out the flames that are
around him on the candles too, So that's part of
if those go out. They don't tell you this, but
I think if the flames go out, he loses his power.
So that's also part of the battle where he's trying to.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Like keep the candles lit moile.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
This thing is attacking, and he uses a flame attack
off of the candles to kill the giant floating head
with the whippy tail because then we have the third level,
which is the multi bat attack.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yes, but doesn't he defeat the wizard in this.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
He does, okay, because that is where the acolytes come in.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
After this.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
We can't we got we can't get to the yeah,
because we got a whole yeah or gollum or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I know.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, I think it could be a goal. I like
hoculus just because I like the word. You know, yeah,
We're going to get to that yeah because uh yeah,
so that we've got the multi bat attack that's taking
care of really quickly. The bats are all like burned away.
He uses like kind of a he as part of
(23:21):
his training. He had the big ceramic bowl around him again,
or he's in a ceramic pot and all their chanting
words come at him. He glows.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
It's like the letters of the pot like absorbed unto
his skin and like spread over his body.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Their chance become to him. Yes, so he exerts that because.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
He's in their sutras, right, because they're doing like the
whatever like sutra.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So but he does the chance that he absorbs. Yeah,
then turns on the bats and flames out all the
bats and kills them. So now we're at our final
level of attack movie. It's so fucking crazy. This thing
is unheard of.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
We kept we kept watching that. I would be like
what and making you explain it.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Even the third time, I'm just like, man, this this
is this is not a film that is off the rails.
The rails were never built, nothing was ever put on
the rails.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
This thing is just.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Fucking crazy from the beginning, Like it's just ridiculous. It's
just ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
But it's not one of those so bad it's good
either though, don't you think I.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Don't think it is.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
It's it's not like it's not a story.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
There's not a lot of going on to be like,
no seriously.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And there's we have the only kung fu, the only
like physical fighting that we've had so far. It's just
the opening scene where the brother and the tie boxer
are going at it. We haven't touched kung fu or
tie boxing since then. We are all now in just
like Black Magic Territory, wizards and chanting and like lasers
(25:06):
and glowing stuff and stuff going. So but that gets
us to our our final boss battle for this arena
for this round. And do you want to talk about
how the wizard puts in his final attack?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
This is This is where he suddenly has like makeup
on and stuff right like.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
He had the makeup on. This is the one where
he has the paste. He takes the paste out of
the pot that he had. He had spilled the pot
out on the ground, and that's where the big head
came out of he's He reaches into that pot and
he wipes it across his neck, starts doing a chant,
and his head separate.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
That's when I was like, oh, this is like mystic
some bali Like that's okay, that's the point because he does.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Head attack, right, So his head comes off and flies
at him.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And it's a puppet too, Like isn't that an animatronic
or something like.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
A head too?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, it looks good.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, it's an attempt at looking like ash from Alien
a little bit bit because it flies in over him.
And then and we're getting into the thing a bit too,
all of those tendrils come down and start wrapping out
some Buddhist mak hero and he's trying to chant and
trying to do this and it's taking him over. And
he's really trying to battle it out and fight against
(26:22):
this head that is strangling him and taking him over
with whatever its tendrils are while it's chanting. Yeah, and
he's but he is having to chant against it, and
he ends up having a memory that he channels into
that to battle off the floating head because this is
the final battle.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember that. I can't. I can't remember.
It's so because I, like, I get so lost in
this field.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
It's such a mess because none of them makes sense.
It's just like these multiple weird attack sequences from the
Dark Wizard.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
At him that make no sense. None of this makes sense.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
No, So it's but the the tendrils are out and
it's wrapping around him and he's battling it and it's
pulling him around. He's starting to lose his concentration. He's
reaching up at him, like our dark Sorcerers are.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Cutting two back at this point again, they were also like.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Chanting exactly, and that's the chanting that recenters him. That's right,
that's the chanting that resenters him, and we and we
hear them doing that, and that pulls him together because
they're also chanting next to that corpse again, So we're
at that place with the corpse is in there, and
that is what powers him up to fight against the tendrils,
(27:36):
to blow them off, and then that head explodes.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I remember being like, wait, that's the end of that, man.
What right?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
We're barely we're worried about a halfway mark of this film,
and now our Dark Wizard is gone.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So makes you go, okay, so what what else could
I know?
Speaker 2 (27:59):
What? Yeah? So, well, our guy goes back on his
mission of the original Revenge.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
He gets thanked by them. They're like Yay, good job,
Dark Wizard dead. Yay, everybody's success. We're going to cover
that body with gold so that it can be put
in peace. Right.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
They start putting the little gold leaflets on there, which
everyone this is why we have our gold mannequin back
hair that is all decked out. Could not believe this
is like perfect, yes, because there is. They're starting to
put little gold leaf on that corpse to finalize it
because he had said his corpse will not decompose, right,
(28:35):
and he will, I guess, not pass on to whatever
the next life is or pass on to the place
where there is the ability to be reincarnated until this
Dark Wizard is is is defeated.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So now we have this defeat and he's going to
go back.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
On his revenge or his brotherly brother.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, well he goes back to Hong Kong too. So
he goes back to Hong Kong and he hooks back
up with his girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
We totally glossed over the very that that sex scene, though.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
I kind of did that on purpose. There is a
bit of a aggressive, aggressive second. Yeah, before he goes
to Thailand.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
And has his awakening.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah, when he's still kind of the like gangster thug.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah, he's a thug.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
And everything's consensual.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is aggressive, it's aggressive, but it's consensual. Yes, we
can move past that. Now he's but he's he has
returned to her.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yes, he is stoked.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
And she is and I guess he is considering that
his time is done, so he's not considering himself a
monk anymore. So he's kind of going back to who
he was, so that kind of breaks the vow of
being the monk that he had become in doing so,
and he is now getting ready to for the for
(29:56):
the match that is the revenge match for having the
tie boxer who broke his brother. So we're and we
don't there's no again, there's no training sequence for this.
We don't see any kind of training sequence. We get
after he's reunited with his girlfriend and there they have
their moment of being back at it. We're back in
the ring almost from where we left off is now
(30:17):
now our monk is in there.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
And what I love about is that there's this moment
where he's talking about this experience, but he just kind
of glosses over it.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
She's all like, how was it? And he's like oh
it was I did some battling and he never explained. No,
nobody talks about it, not at all. Nobody talks about it.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Nope. But while he is back in Hong Kong and
back with his girlfriend, we are then introduced to his
to the Dark Wizard, the Dark Sorcerer's acolytes, the Three Acolytes.
So we have the three acolytes who have found revenge.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
You killed our master, you.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Now, so we're still on the revenge kick. We're on
another layer of revenge. Yeah, and that is where our
three our three acolytes have moved their plan into action,
which is to create amunculus. They don't explain it, but
the build up for the homunculus, so it's very involved.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
It is because we talked about like there's a lot
of moving parts that make that happen. Like there, they
have to do a bunch of different kind of like
in the ah just hit me so kind of in
the same way that he had to train to like
make himself karmically clean to become a monk to do
battle for his on the spiritual plane, they are kind
(31:46):
of doing like the anti version of right.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
They're doing like black magic.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Destroying things and like guts and like darkness.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Those it's very involved because they have to make a paste.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
First off, they bust this corpse out of a out
of track.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
They get, Yeah, they get the corpse out of They've
got like a bunch of cortes in a hole in
the floor where there's like a couple of them. They
pull that one out.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
She looks great, Yeah, let's go weird hair.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, no, we haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Because they pull it out, it's all wrapped up and
they place her in the worst crocodile that's right. So
they take theodile. They have this store into it. Right,
they have this terrible crocodile dummy, but it's very fake.
So we're we're not done with the animal stuff yet.
But the crocodile is very fake, and they put this
(32:38):
kind of weird corpsey thing, this weird body into it,
and they sew the crocodile together after.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
They've made the paste and the guts and the things like.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
They do they do the Yeah, so they put they
put that body into their sewed up we're inky bat
were because that is the thing. We go, We're back
in Hong Kong and that guy's getting ready to do
his battle. Because then they they pull the the crocodile,
they cut it open and they pull her out, and
(33:11):
it's all covered in like maggots and meal worms, and
she's still wrapped, but they start to rinse it all off.
And so this real person has real maggots and meal
worms covering her entire body, plus whatever paste they had
on her. So they had all this paste and stuff naked.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
She's totally naked.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Which is shocking sep for kung fu films and things
like that, because like I mean, like we're like fully naked,
like front, the ludity.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
It is everything, and that's where the paste starts to
come in. So they prep the paste. Do you want
to talk about them prepping the paste? What all they do?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
They kill a chicken, They kill a chicken, They eat
some guts, They spit some guts out.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
And they chew on it. Like one of them choose
it all up, spits it out into it, and they
hand it to the next one. And then the next
one scoops it all up a more to it, chews
it all up, spits it out and hands it to
the third alcolage.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Now there are no beats missed no, we're gonna stress ef.
They probably just ate after each.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Other, right, it goes from one to the other.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
They are chewing up, Yeah, they're chewing up all of
this stuff, spitting it into uh spitting it into this
bowl and handing it on its sorry, check it out.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Can't do this is can't do.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
There is a lot of commitment to this revenge plot,
a lot of commitment to this because once they've chewed
it all up and have that whole thing spitting done
into the bowl, then they feed it into our newly
uh revealedmunculus and to animate her into her mouth, they
put all of that stuff into her mouth and then
(34:48):
they move her jaw to start it kind of going,
and they chant to her, and.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
That is how they revive this thing.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
It's gross.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
That's how babies are made.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
It's truly, it's truly gross. It is amazing. But now
we've got our living homunculous. We've got our guy in
the ring who is about to start fighting. And as
he starts to have the fight and is winning against
the tie boxer, our naked homunculous evil sorceress woman is
(35:20):
now being chanted and walked over to basically like a
voodoo doll. Yeah, because remember she's they put these little
needles on her fingers and that's where she pokes into
the voodoo doll thing.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
And effigy of him, right, and his eyes go out
and he's right.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
And at the same time, the gold leaf corpse has
starts to like lose gold leafs off of it. It's
it's starting like flying apart, and it's like starting to
have shock.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
And they were.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Getting a flashback sequence of him like something happened to
his eyes too, or something.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Like that, and we were getting the flashbacks because how
he died was the poisoned tarantulas that had needles, had
had poisoned needles that forced into his eyes that made
him go blind and die. From the dark sorcerer that
our guy killed who had his head come off. Yeah,
there's so many layers of revenge in this thing.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
It's insane.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And I've owned two tarantulas. They don't have needles. No,
they don't start to attack my eyes.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It's so crazy. So yeah, so that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So all of that starts to come back from those
layers of Yeah, those it's just totally insane. So now
our guys in the boxing ring he's getting his ass
whooped by the tie boxer, and we have got themunculus
sorceress is damaging the the voodoo doll and it's causing
(36:50):
issues with the corpse and all this. So now this
guy's just getting his ass kicked and he ends up
losing the boxing match against He loses the fight, and
he doesn't understand or how or what happens, So he
goes back to the monks. He returns to Thailand to
go and see like what happened and what's going on,
(37:10):
and they're like, well, it's not over with. Apparently that
dark magic is still here. We still have these acolytes
that we have to deal with. Did you break your
monk's code?
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Well, to get back into the thing of swing of things,
we have to make sure that you can do all
the things or do all the training again. And did
you break your code? Did you have sex? No?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
And a candle goes out. You lied, and the spirit
of your dead twin brother from another lifetime knows it
and it has extinguished it and you cannot continue to
have our support.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, which I thought was like that was after all
of that. This is the one thing, this is the
deal breaker.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Right, because he lied about it.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well, if he hadn't lied, they probably could have trained
him through it again. He could have made his vow again.
But he lied, and that was the point because he
goes on a tantrum and goes over to where the
corpse is still sitting, that's had all of the gold
leaf blown off of it, and he's pissed off at
the corpse and he starts trashing the altar because we're
(38:24):
about to go on our next mission because we've had
the acolytes have now had their revenge on him, which
is not fully complete.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
They just poked his eyes out with the homunculus on
the voodoo doll and he's lost his fight, but now
he wants to have his revenge against them for what
they have done to him. And he's got his fight
and fight and we still have to fight it, but
he is impure, so he can't. And they have said
there is only one way for you to be able
to get back into the good graces, and you have
(38:59):
to travel to this city, to this temple. And at this.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Time there is a moment in tar ashes.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, it's a it's the ashes, that's right, it's the
ashes are in the hand of Buddha, of Buddha.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
But it's like like kind of like in Indiana Jones,
where on the.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Only at that one moment.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
The light gets hits this thing perfectly, that's the only
time it's visible.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
It's only time it's visible and physically there and physically there.
And that is when they give him that that tier
in the little locket as extra protection because he needed
he needs to have that in order to have the
strength to get the ashes and survive that that moment
(39:46):
there parts, there's so many things that have to be
aligned and functional.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
This really is so crazy.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
So now he's on his next mission to go to
that town.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right, Yeah, we're hidden that we're hitting in the.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
We're in the third act here to get to this thing.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Right, our hero's journey continues.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, absolutely, and so and he takes the tourist uh tour,
that's right. He joins a tourist group.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
That's where we joke about the exposition part of this
because they're the only time where anything is explained in
this entire film is where he is at this temple.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
He is.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
On a tour group and they are explaining the ashes
of the of the Buddha that are in the Buddha's
hand and the spiritual significance of this thing, because nobody
else bothered to explain it to us at any point
in this film right until that.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
This is the thing that needs the most explanation for whatever.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Reason thrown out there. And you're like, Okay, that just happened.
And if you weren't paying attention, or if you like
just looked away for a moment, this is where you're like,
you be get lost big time even yea, because this
is where we He waits until he can. He kind
of goes back after the temple like closing.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
He goes in there at closing time and sleeps through
the night to be there so that when that first
ray of light comes through he can he can he
can cross the threshold, but he's attacked by some of
the statues that are there that are protecting the Buddhist
sculpture and the open hand with the ash in it.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
It was like talking or something like that. Were they talking?
Speaker 2 (41:29):
They were talking, but they attacked him.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Were they talked but the things were talking to each other? Right?
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yes, they were.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
There was like a comical moment, right which was like
weirdly out of tone right where they're like the statues
themselves that are the guardian of this Buddha statue.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
We are having a conversation, and this is where he
needed that that tear drop in the locket to be
able to get across the threshold and pass them to
get to the ashes.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
In the palm.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
It was like his ticket. Uh huh okay okay.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
So but we also have our three acolytes and our
homunculus are closing in on this temple. There is no
explanation as to how they know that he is there
or that they know that he needs to get these
ashes to get all of this stuff to get himself
back into the good graces of Buddha and the monastery.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
But they arrive.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Just as he is about to get those ashes, and
that is when they unleash the first crocodile attack on him.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
So what I want to know is like because they
don't ever explain it, like because she was like came
out of a crocodile that she like has crocodile.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Powers, I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
And it's the significance of the crocodile. This is this
thing I don't know, Like as far as Thaie or Chinese.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Yeah, no idea, it's just off the fucking.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Rails, insane.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
She has a crocodile that comes out of her and attacks. Yeah, yep,
so the crocodile is attacking. He's kind of jumping back
and forth and avoiding the attacking crocodile among the now
back to unanimated non animated statues that are in there,
trying to avoid this whole thing and get up to
(43:19):
the palm where the ashes are. Well when the moment
is going to happen, So crocodile attack happens.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Sa urbon parts have happened, and things have to do right.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Oh, and this is the one where very similar to
the crocodile attack that he did before, he stuffed something
in its mouth and it chews up and breaks up
one thing.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
But then he stuffed something else into the.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Crocodile mouth that ends up kind of stopping it for
a moment that allows him to get to the ash.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Is it like a sutra or something like that, like
on a It.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Was like an ornamental piece that was there that he
was able to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Wasn't it an arch image or something like that?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Or it might have been one of those some in there. Yeah,
there was some little artistic piece that was that that
he was able to jam into its mouth.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
And then that's when he's able to get to the ashes.
And this is where this is so insane. That is
when the spirit of him, as an old man with
a hat and a white beard and mustache sitting in
a completely different altar appears and transports itself onto him
(44:28):
and merge. So he becomes that old man wizard, white wizard.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
I didn't understand that.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I have no idea, Gretchen, There's there's no explanation for it.
It's it is.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
It is somehow, uh.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
And I think it's him. I don't think it's the
I don't think it's.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
His spirit brother.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
I think it's him just in a white beard and
mustache in a never.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Established it's going to talk to his future self.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
No it's not.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And it's and I don't know if it's a future
self or if somehow getting those ashes and the Buddha
has now said that you are worthy, that it transforms
him into like the white Wizard, like he becomes the
white Gandal.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
So he is now that sitting in lotus position in
kind of its own altar that is surrounded by a
bunch of stuff and transported into that that monastery area
in front of that Buddha. And now we're into other
big boss battle stuff. Now this is where he attacks.
(45:37):
He attacks the the homunculous sorceresses and kills her. She dies,
but then the three acolytes are like, this is not
over with.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yet, one more with one more, hey god?
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah, so they commit suicide over her.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Yeah, and and.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
Basically fall all over her, and and all all their
bits and pieces that fall onto her turn into three hairy,
one eyed, four legged creatures that shoot laser beams out
of their eyes and start marching toward him.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
In the same vein of like animation as the bat
Or are the meak head yeah, the weird alien? Yes?
But like so I want to know It's like because
just because I'm culturally ignorant of this, like is this
of significance? Is this like uh, I don't know, because
(46:47):
like you know, like if this was a Japanese film,
I'd be like, this is a yokai or this will
be this And but because I'm ignorant of this, like
is the are these monsters or goblins or creatures or
ghosts from like Chinese mythology.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
I think anything could have been up until this moment.
I mean, like like the bat and the crocodile on
the homunculus, and like all of a.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Sudden, those things like feel relevant.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
And things like that exactly, but like the floating alien
head with the whipping tail, no idea where this is
coming from? Like that, Yeah, I think I literally think
they were like, what do you got, prop department?
Speaker 3 (47:23):
What can we make?
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Because they got left over from other films.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Well, and because we're watching these things march toward our
now fully revitalized monk in his white wizard state, and
these things aren't but about six or eight inches tall,
because we see like a wide shot from the back
where they're like, but marching forward, they're not very big.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Well, remember how we were talking about like how like
this is so involved just to get these tiny I
was like, so they kill themselves over her body for
these tiny monsters. Yeah, they couldn't just go at him theirselves.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Well, and also too, there was a step we missed
in because when she dies and falls apart, out of
her for JJ is a whole bunch of saran wrap.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
They get that that like shoots all.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Over them and wraps them in like this Soran rap
before they commit suicide, spill their guts onto her to
turn into these little three one eyed teachers.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
That are marching toward her vagina.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
I did too, like, how.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Do you not blank that out? It's crazy?
Speaker 1 (48:26):
So these no rhyme, no reason. Thanks for leading us
on this, because this journey has quite.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
The It's so insane.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
This movie makes no sense. There's nothing like this film.
There's nothing like this film anywhere that I have ever
seen in my life.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Have you seen human lanterns? No, that has some elements
that are like this, like or is it human things
called skin? Human lanterns? It's like a but it's a
like a samurai film. Oh really, So it has these
kind of this vague like dark spiritual aspects, but not
(49:05):
like this, like well it way more like but it
makes a lot more sense versus boxer.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Zemen, which has a little more story to it.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah. Yeah, it's less convoluted because I remember being like
when the vagina thing, it was like, this is a
lot just for these things, right, just for this thing
to happen.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Even singing there, You're like, how did we get here.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Right, like, and how easily they are defeated.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, Well that's the thing is they're marching forward and
they're shooting laser beams at him, and he uses his.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Mong stuff again.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, oh, this is because this is where he's got
the ball. This is the final blows. I think this
is where he's got the bowl. He's doing the singing
bowl right, okay, and that's where they are defeated. Yes,
with the singing bowl and the chant wow, because they
flame out and then die.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Yeah, which I was thought was really anticlimactic for how
much how hard of work they did to get to this.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
They were out of budget, they were out of prop department.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
I mean it also, we got like ten minutes left
this film was wrapped this.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Up right, like this has got to be over it,
Like there is no other there's no other layer of
revenge that we could possibly try to get to with this. Yep,
let's bundle this little puppy up and call it good.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
I mean, bundling is not even the term I would
go for. Like, I feel like it left left us
on a like a note of where I remember going
to you saying, So he doesn't even get to battle.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Right, right, It's it's literally like him in the lotus position,
chanting and doing stuff, and that's you.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
You don't go back to our girlfriend. We don't go
back to our earthly plane. Brother, We don't go back
to revisit the monks. We don't go back to.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Such a kung fu film.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
There's so many kung fu films that I have watched
where like the final guy is defeated and it's like
ha ha to that and it's over it like it's
it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
That's what I'm saying is like this thing was so
like That's why I mean, if anybody deserves an MS
three k tree met, this movie does. But I don't
even think they could.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Oh it's so gloppy. Yeah, there's far too much. Like yeah,
you there would be so much you would have to
edit out of this thing. True, Like it's seriously, we're not.
I'm not kidding you anyway. When I say gloppy, like
it is literally like guts and entrails and.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Like like I think it's real. I'm like, am I'm
a sympathetic puker. I'm like that kid can stand by me.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
Well when they when they cut that homunculus out, that's
a it's it's it's a fake crocodile like, but it's
full of real guts, awful and like stuff is like
spilling out onto the floor and it's like this is
real beef internals hitting the floor here. Yeah, like they're
not messing around. It's it's intense. I have to continue
(51:58):
to tell myself. This is made in nineteen eighty three.
This was long over with before I even knew that
these films were made, let alone I ever watched it.
It was a lot to watch the first time though,
on the big screen it was like, what the fuck
am I one.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Of those old Italian films too? Like the one. Yeah,
our last episode with there's a lot of like rat
death and you know, things like that people, you know,
I mean, I'm sure those bugs weren't like take care of.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
There's a lot of the maggots and the yeah, all
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Yeah, it's it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah, but that's yeah, that's our big final boss battle.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
It's so completely.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
I can only compare to the fact like human lanterns
and I can only could say that there's I mean,
I can't only say but I mean as far as
I like a horror element to most things, or supernatural element.
I'm going to be drawn to shows in particular, or
movies in particular what they have, even if they're like
(53:03):
a comedy, but it has like a horror element or
a supernatural element, I'm going to be drawn to it.
And I think that's what. There was a bunch of
these films and this this time that the Shaw Brothers did,
I feel like. And then there was also like Golden
Harvest Died some two that were have a very like
supernatural vibe, right, yeah, like that one that's like the
(53:25):
crossover between like the Seven Golden Vampires or whatever and
the Bloodthirsty Trilogy. But those like that's a Japanese horror.
But yeah, like like, isn't black Magic one?
Speaker 3 (53:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Or Black Magic three? There wasn't there three of them?
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Well?
Speaker 3 (53:44):
And there's yeah there what's a what is the one
I'm thinking of? It's the one that.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
The Hollywood does every Halloween. I think it's, uh, the
Five Golden Brothers meet Dracula like they did a Hammer
kung Fu.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
That's the Seven Golden Vampires one, right, it might be.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I thought that one had five in it. I don't know,
but it's it is it's still they're trying to do
that same kind of supernatural crossover, totally trying to have
a horror and that and that one was very intentionally
like a Hammer. They partnered with Hammer absolutely vie.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
Yeah that vibe. Yeah it's And that one's.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
I was Renaissance the Revival, medieval revival, like a Dwardian
look kind of sixty seventies. Yeah that it's I love
this film. I mean, I love I like this film
a lot. It's a lot of fun to watch. I
wouldn't say this is something I'm gonna be like, yes,
let's watch this all the time, because yeah, it is
so messy, not just not the visceral aspects of being messy,
(54:46):
but like the story being messy. But I really like
a good like kung fu action film like this.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Yeah, yeah, I so, I love my kung fu films.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yeah, and I love to watch this one.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
It doesn't have the repeatability of some films like I
have to wait for a couple of years. Well, and
it is convoluted and it is. One of the things
that I love about kung fu films is just the
sheer audacity of the things that they do.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Oh, there's always a journey too, whereas I feel like
this one, the journey gets interrupted a lot, and like
our hero is a flawed hero and it's a that
those aspects, those tropes are being met, but the spiritual
growth is only spiritual. It's not like he doesn't actually
have much growth to him as far as like a character.
(55:33):
He's not very redeem right.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
Yeah, this thing is this is kind of a shock
value film.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
Yeah, yeah, And I wonder I want to know, like
what would what was the behind the scenes of this too,
Like yeah, like what was their intention? Like who wrote this? This?
This grande best.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Well, and this is another one of those where this
guy made a lot of films, most of them pretty
much unknown and never really being acknowledged by anything. However,
his son went on to be a big time producer
and was a producer for Jet Lee's films. Like you
go back and look at all the big jet Lye stuff,
his son was the producer.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
For all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Yeah, so Hero, any of that stuff this guy's son
was producing his hero. Yeah, yeah, Hero, And then he
was doing a lot of that the American films that
Jet Lee.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Was doing, like Romeo is Bleeding and things like that.
Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
He was a producer on that one. What was the
one where Jet Lee was the fighter with the caller
on him? One?
Speaker 3 (56:35):
The one?
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Yes, this guy was a producer on all of that stuff. Yeah,
it's crazy. Yeah, well that's an odd one.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
I mean, isn't that Morgan Freeman?
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Yeah, and he's like he has a twin?
Speaker 3 (56:50):
Yeah? Is that the one? No, that's not the one
with the twin?
Speaker 1 (56:54):
What's the one? What's there is one with a twin
but he twin?
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, there is one.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
That's that one.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
That's not the one.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
No, the one is like he's like a he's a
kind of a bad guy?
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Is it? But there I'm there's there's one where he's
kind of being like bought and sold and traded back
and forth. I think Morgan Freeman is blind. He has
a collar on him and it's the color. Because that's
not the one.
Speaker 1 (57:16):
The one is the twin one that's the one where
he's like kind of a bad guy and the way
twin the one.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
I know one with Bob Hoskins and because Hoskins buys him, yeah,
owns him and he's and he puts him in cage
fights and gladiator, the cage off or you flip the
collar off of him, it triggers him and that's when
he fights. Yeah, and then you have to put the
collar back on him.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah, that guy was producing though.
Speaker 3 (57:41):
So yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
A crazy film, Gretchen. Yeah, and I'm glad we got
to watch and talk about it, because this is a
film that not a lot of people watch, and so
I don't get to talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:51):
No, I think that's what we're trying to do here
as far as our show.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Yeah, talk about the stuff that you don't always get
to talk about people.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
That are not as common are. That is not that
we're gonna be just focusing on like obscure, but I
mean that's kind of fun about talking about films. And
there are some elements of really strong filmmaking, like the
special effects in this are special effects I do do
a good job of, like creating gore and creating group
(58:22):
and things like that, like cuts and wounds. Everybody looks
disgusting and injured and things like that, like THEO but
they're they're over the top, don't get me wrong. But
we do get to see those elements at least. And
I love a good practical effect.
Speaker 3 (58:38):
Yeah, and that is. This film is full of practical effects.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
Lots of puppets, lots of wires, lots of lighting.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
And lots of mirrors.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
And they do a lot of that kind of upositing, compositing,
rotoscoping stuff and all of that with like the laser
bolts and the lightning and uh and the monk chants,
oh yeah, that are permeating his body and then yeah, totally, totally, yeah,
it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (59:08):
It's there.
Speaker 2 (59:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (59:09):
They there's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
They were doing it like they were making a film.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
They were going for it. It's so crazy.
Speaker 2 (59:14):
So well, thank you so much for watching this one,
yes and talking about it. What are we going to
watch next?
Speaker 1 (59:20):
We're going to watch Ken Russell's Altered States.
Speaker 2 (59:22):
I am so excited to watch this film again. I
watched it for the first time about two years ago,
remembering and we talked about this. I was remembering as
a little kid. I was freaked out by that film
from the trailer.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Everything from the that like the Aha music video to
that kind of harkened to it. Oh man. I remember
every time I'd see the trailer, I would be like
like I'd have to run into the other room because
It scared me so bad because it just the way
it was so ominous.
Speaker 3 (59:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy and it's and it's crazy to watch.
Speaker 1 (59:56):
It the Bonkers films.
Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yeah, I'm a excited to watch this one again and
talk about it. So yeah, until next time, Gretchen, thanks
so much.
Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Thank you, Martin.
Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
All Right, we'll see you see.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
The Check the Gate podcast is hosted by Martin Vavra
and Gretchen Brooks.
Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
The show is directed, produced, and edited by Martin Vavra.
Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Produced by Galaxy Sailor Productions twenty twenty five. The show
is filmed and recorded a special thanks to Adam Carpinelli
and Aleandro Barragon
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