Ghost Eyes (1974) w/ Ian Jane

Shawgust continues and our friend Ian from Rock! Shock! Pop! and the Queens Comic Podcast joins us again for our annual discussion of a Shaw Brothers horror movie. This week we discuss Ghost Eyes, one of Kuei Chih-Hung's lesser-known horror films but the most(?) Italian of perhaps any Hong Kong horror film. Plus lots of whistling! Follow Ian/RockShockPop on Twitter: Follow Ian on IG: Be nice on https://rockshockpop.com/forums Listen to Ian's latest commentaries on two Shaw Brothers classics on the Shout Factory vol 2: https://shoutfactory.com/products/shaw-brothers-classics-vol-2 Listen to the Queens Comic Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0W8uDxXr46YCNrs9PUybcs NEXT MOVIE: https://www.effedupmovies.com/night-of-death-1980/ Join our discord! https://discord.gg/F8WsTzE9qt Follow this podcast on Instagram and Facebook @unsunghorrors. Follow Lance on Instagram and Letterboxd @lschibi Lance’s shop: https://lanceschibi.bigcartel.com/ Follow Erica on Letterboxd or Instagram @hexmassacre Logo by Cody Schibi Part of the Prescribed Films Podcast network (www.thepfpn.com)

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Prepare yourself for the terror the prisonof madness. We have few into and
nounrit Hello and welcome to another episodeof Unsung Horrors, the podcast where we

(00:32):
discuss underseen horror films, specifically thosewith fewer than one thousand views on letterboxed.
I'm Lance and I'm Erica, andthere will be three of us today
for this episode. It is Shaugust. Yes, yes, here at Unsung
Horrors, where we cover our ShawBrothers horror films during the month of August
or Brothers adjacent like last week.That's true, that wasn't a Shaw Brothers

(00:53):
but it worked. It worked,and it really wouldn't be Shaugust without having
this guest here, right, Sohe joined us are on our first ever
Shaw guest episode with Black Magic two, which he provided the audio commentary for
on the eighty eight films release,and then he also joined us last year
with Portrait of Crystal. So Iwanted to keep this tradition alive. Yeah,

(01:14):
I had to, So I reachedout to see if you're willing to
join us. He graciously accepted.So even after Portrait and Crystal, seriously,
that's just never Let's welcome me andJane and welcome. Yeah, thank
you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. Always happy to
come on. I think you guysknow that. But yeah, it is
a pretty cool tradition at this pointto do it every August. Yeah,

(01:37):
definitely. Yeah, thanks for joiningus. Yeah. So for those who
may not have listened to the previousShaw guest episodes or even the Spider episode
that you guessed that you were aguest on, right, yep. Yeah,
first off, everybody go check himout if you haven't listened to him.
But Ian runs the site Rockshockpop dotCom or RSP, which is a
review platform and a forums where hewrites about cult films primarily, but also

(02:00):
comics, music, physical media releases, all the good stuff you need to
know more about. Yeah. It'sjust a fun place for people to chat
about things that entertain them. It'sa good time. It's a good site
that you run. Ian, Butthank you. Since we last chatted,
you started a podcast. It did. It's not a movie related at all.
It's the Queen's Comic Podcast. Ido it with my friend Billy.

(02:23):
Billy runs a monthly comic book showin New York City called The Queen's Comic
party that's usually in Queens, althoughsometimes it's in Brooklyn, and so we
kind of spun it off from thatmonthly show and every two weeks or so
we sit in Billy's room full ofcomics and banter. It's literally banter.
It's never scripted. Sometimes we havea rough idea of what we want to

(02:44):
talk about, try to cover typeof stuff that the other guys don't,
so a lot of focus on undergroundsand independent stuff. But we'll cover marvel
in DC too because you have to. So, yeah, you can check
that out at Queenscomic Party dot comor on Spotify just search for Queen's Comic
Party or on iTunes are basically anywhereyou get podcasts night. Yeah, and
each episode's under an hour or two, which which I love. Typically.

(03:06):
Yeah, I think we went overan hour once, but that was probably
my mistake. So you guys areyou guys are covering like the more underground
stuff, So you're kind of likethe unsung horrors of podcasts for comics.
Oh kind of, Yeah, Ilike that comparison. Yeah, I've lost
my way out of comics the lastfew years, and I think listening to
this might you know, I missit so I think it it would help

(03:29):
me get that desire back. Igot out for a decade and got back
into it when COVID hit because Ididn't have a whole lot to do,
so I just got caught up ona lot of it and then yeah,
the bug bit and have been goingfull tilt since then. So nice.
But it's good to take a breakevery once in a while. Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like my break'sbeen long enough. So I'm gonna get

(03:52):
on the Queen's Comic Podcast, doit? Okay, So let's let's get
to the movie. Yeah, howabout it? This episode, we're talking
about the Shaw Brothers Hong Kong horrorGhost Eyes or gwey Yan from nineteen seventy
four. It currently has two hundredand thirty four views on Letterboxed and it's
available to watch on YouTube with Englishsubtitles. So we'll be obviously spoiling it

(04:15):
as as we talk about it,but here's a quick synopsis of Ghost Eyes.
Balin is a manicurist at a beautysalon and a mysterious man named mister
She comes in. He's very awareof the placement of the mirrors in the
shop, so he sits himself intoa chair where there are no double mirrors.
Balin gives him a quick manicure andimmediately tells him she lives alone in

(04:39):
a shitty apartment. When she leaveswork, she's almost hit by a car
and her glasses fall and break.She shows up and tells her, like
everybody else in the movie, thatshe looks way better without glasses, and
he offers up his services as anautometrist to get her set up with some
contacts. She gets the contacts thenext day and starts seeing dead people,

(05:00):
including people that have died in mudslides and fires. Mister. She also
starts coming over to her place atnight and his eyes glow, which which
seemed to put Balin in a hypnotizedtrance, and he has sex with her.
She wakes up having no real memoryof what happens, sometimes waking up
in random places like abandoned houses andburned down buildings. She finds out that

(05:24):
one of these buildings was an oldoptical shop that burned down three years ago,
and the optician, mister, shedied there. So Balin starts losing
her mind. Her boyfriend and Penbegins helping her, trying to figure out
what the hell's going on? Thecontacts at this point seem to have disintegrated
into her eyes, becoming a partof her. So she continues to be

(05:45):
hypnotized by mister She, who revealsthat he's immortal and wants her to bring
women to him so he can drainthem of blood, which she does,
taking a few coworkers to mister She, and Pine takes her to a Taoist
monk, Whooks blains that mister She'sactually possessed by a vampire demon. Should
I keep going or should we waitfor the ending? I mean, you

(06:06):
know, like we've established the there'sa lot going on. Yeah, there's
a lot going on, and thenalso there's a lot of time where there's
not really anything going on. That'strue. We'll talk about that too.
Yeah, I think you're good forthere. From there though, Okay,
cool. So yeah, we'll getto the end and how it all,
how it all wraps up. I'msure when we when we start discussing the

(06:27):
movie, but I'm going to listensome of the cast and crew, But
we've covered most of these folks inthe past Shaugust episodes. It'll just be
me repeating kind of film credits andhistory of crew members and actors, most
of whom are signed to the contractwith Shaw Brothers Studios. So there's there's
a lot of the same casting crewin these films that we've already covered.
This is our way of getting everyoneto listen to other Saugust episodess is like

(06:49):
you want to say, you gotto listen to the other episodes to get
it, folks. Yeah, I'mnot going to spend much time here,
Ian Eric, I feel free tojust jump in if you have something else
to say. Right, I forgetI mentioned someone, but yeah. So
Ghosts is directed by Kwai Chi Hung. He's responsible for some of the greatest
supernatural horror films that came out ofthe Shaw Brothers filmography. Of course,

(07:12):
we have The Boxer Zone and Bewitched, which we covered last year. Hex
and It's two sequels, The KillerSnakes, The Bamboo House of Dolls,
and one of my all time favorites, corpse Mania from nineteen eighty one,
which was my first Shaugus pick.Yeah, I did finally watch The Killer
Snakes. Yeah, how is that? I am? That's what I have
not seen. I am not abetter person for watching it. I'm just

(07:33):
gonna say that it's a lot ofa lot of dead snakes. It's good,
there's a lot of dead snakes.That's my problem with it too.
I like the movie a lot,but the older I get, the less
I could deal with animal violence.Yeah, and it's not even just like
Okay, there's an opening where they'rethey're cutting out the certain part of a
snake, like I don't know,the liver or something like that for potency,

(07:56):
like to put it in a drinkor something like that. I'm like,
ugh, okay, that's awful.But then the fucking end is just
like it's I mean, there's likesnakes flying, swords flying, We're just
cutting snakes in half. Then they'resetting snakes on fire, and I'm like,
oh on it's it's amazing in likea psychotronic way. But right,
yeah, I have trouble looking pastthat. I won't say I didn't enjoy

(08:18):
the movie. I also won't sayI'm a better person like you said,
like I appreciate the insanity of itall, but it really does like they
just didn't give a shit about snakes. They're just like, yeah, we're
gonna kill as many snakes as wecan for the purpose of making a movie,
and yeah, there's reason to haveobjections to that. Yeah, it
should have been called killing Snakes.Yeah yeah, I mean they do.

(08:41):
The snakes are killers. But thenit turned like the tables quickly get turned
on them and then it turns back, which you know, I can't even
be happy for the snakes vengeance.All I'm gonna say is that She Shei
from Fangs of the Cobra remains thebest snake ever. I'll probably kick the
Killer Snakes on the backgrouner for awhile. That's the one main Quichi Hung

(09:03):
I haven't watched. Yeah, Iguess one could say that Gi Hung's stronger
film started in the eighties. That'swhen he directed all the Hex films,
Corpsemania, The Boxers Omen, Bewitched, Curse of Evil, all between nineteen
eighty and eighty three, which isextraordinary to think about, but it's something
we see from a lot of theseShaw Brothers directors during that time. They
were just pumping out a ton ofmovies, really put to work. So,

(09:28):
I mean, he was an amazingdirector who just stopped making movies less
than a year after The Boxer's Omenwas released, which is like what a
way to leave the industry, right, going on a high note, Yeah,
with one of the best, ifnot the best supernatural wares of like
all time in my opinion. Yeah, he decided to immigrate to the US
and open a pizza joint, whichI talked about Corpse Mania. More details

(09:52):
there. So Ghost Eyes it's basedon a story by Chen you Win,
the writer of Ghost Guys, thoughwe talked a little about in our last
episode and pretty much every other previousepisode of August Ni Kwang. He's probably
responsible for writing your favorite Shaw Brothersmovie. Yeah, I mean list your

(10:13):
top five. He's definitely involved inprobably three of them. And you got
anything on Nikon that you want tofind? Oh? Well, first of
all, the going back to thedirector. According to the Hong Kong Movie
Database, I don't know if thisis true or not, but according to
that website, he has a sonnamed Beaver. Beaver Yeah, okay,
has a son named Beaver. Well, yeah, this man knows how to
name a child. Yeah. Sothere's that. But as far as Nikwon

(10:35):
goes, I mean, how muchdetailed you want to go into his life
is pretty insane. He I don'tknow, did you guys go into his
whole biography or anything. Yeah,I got notes, but they're long notes.
Oh do you have stuff like whenhe was like, I know,
he was imprisoned for a long time. Yeah, I don't think we talked
anything about that. No. Ionly talked briefly about like his writing career
and like the fantasy novels and stufflike that that he wrote. So it

(10:58):
was mainly his writing career. Ididn't get into like his personal life because
normally we don't get too far intothat. But Ian, if you got
it, flaun it, I gotit, because I mean I've done a
few other shop Brothers commentaries that arecoming out later this year, So I
wound up doing a deep dive onNi Kwang for one of them, and
I won't go over all of it. But yeah. So at sixteen,
he joined the People's Liberation Army andhe did security work there, but he

(11:24):
was found guilty of destruction of publicproperty and he was sent to prison for
a decade. They accused him ofbeing a counter revolutionary. His side of
the story is that what happened wasthat he and a few other soldiers actually
took planks off a wooden bridge andburned them to keep themselves warm during the
winter. So you know, inhis eyes it was justified, but in
the eyes of the Communist Party itwas definitely not. And he busted out

(11:46):
of jail basically and was then hisfamily hired human traffickers to smuggle them out
of China into Hong Kong in thefifties, which is pretty insane. Then
once he got to Hong Kong,he didn't return to the mainland after that,
from what I understand. So hehad a lot of outspoken anti communist
views. There's interviews with him online, there's articles about him on the New

(12:07):
York Times that go into a lotof detail about it, and his anti
communist sentiment comes through. And alot of his work, maybe not Ghost
Die specifically, but yeah, andbecause of this, a lot of the
books he wrote, because he wrotemore books than he did films, believe
it or not, they wound upbeing banned in China because of his political
views. So he's got an interestingbackstory. And if you do a deeper

(12:30):
dive into some of the themes thata lot of films that he worked on
deal with, if you peel backthe layers a little bit, it's there
a lot of a lot of themesdealing with like personal freedom and individuality rather
than just towing the communist party line. So can we expect like one of
these releases you mentioned to be oneof those kind of mess underlying messages I
can. I can mention two ofthe commentaries of the five that I've done

(12:52):
so far, because two of themhave been announced. So on the Shell
Factory Show Brothers Collection Volume two,I'm sorry, Brothers Classics Volume two.
I did the track for a Ladyof Steel, and then I did the
track for Delightful Forest, Nice,awesome. The other three I can't mention
yet. Okay, Show Factory,I'm sure we'll making notes of the extras

(13:13):
on the upcoming releases when they feellike it. Cool fingers crossed for ghost
Dies Ghostes is unfortunately not one ofthem. I would have jumped on the
chance to do ghost Dies. Sweet. Well this is your commentary, like
this is that we're happy? Areyes? Enough? Yeah? Thank you?
I mean, if the opportunity comesup, you can, like say,

(13:33):
I did a whole podcast about it. So I'm I've got all my
notes all ready to go, andso here you go. Yeah, so
you're you're all set for it,so no research required. Yeah, okay,
So one reason that Ghost Diyes reallystands out for me is the original
score. So the composer in thefilm credits is listed as Young Yu Chin,

(13:54):
who on Letterbox only has a handfulof credits listed other Shaw Brothers films,
including Five Fingers of Death, TheAvenging Eagle, and The Black Tavern.
On IMDb though he's listed as composingthe music for the thirty six Chamber
of Shallon the Oily Maniac Chinatown Kidover two hundred film credits, but on
Letterbox these film credits go to FrankieChan Fan k as the composer who also

(14:18):
did the music for The Five Venoms, Crippled Bingers, Masters of the Flying
Guia Team, just a ton ofShaw Brothers film and from what I can
find during a little research online isthis is one and the same person.
Ghost Ice composer U Chen is FrankieChan, but his earlier films had Young
You listed, and you actually seethis. I've seen this quite a bit.

(14:39):
And like these movie databases where thenames are different from these Hong Kong
based artists, the Hong Kong Databasemovie database tends to be a little bit
more accurate when it comes to thesemovies most of the time. I don't
want to say all the time,but yeah, I also think it's more
common than not for a lot ofthe Hong Kong filmmakers and composers and actors
to have more than one name thatthey're credited under, right, Yeah.

(15:03):
So, I mean, I lovethis music, the musical cues and the
score in this movie. I thinkit's it's one of these. It's the
star of the movie for me.It is too. I So, I
was convinced that this was lifted fromsomething Italian. You too, Oh yeah,
the whole thing has Italian vibe.Yes, But I was, you
know, and usually like I'll readif I'm convinced, I'm like, I've

(15:24):
heard the score somewhere before. I'vegot a few people on letterboxed who like,
if they've seen the movie, usuallyin their review they'll name score and
usually John can hear it too,because you know he's got his you know,
rain mambrain. Okay. So,and I went through the reviews and
nobody had mentioned another like Italian movieor an Italian composer, And I was

(15:46):
like, holy shit, is thisactually an original score that sounds like this
for a Hong Kong movie and it'snot lifted from Yeah, it's crazy.
I think it is. Yeah,I think it is. I actually pulled
out my phone and pulled Shazam upa couple of times to see if it
could find anything, because a lotof times with the Italian soundtrack stuff,
especially the bigger stuff like the Morriconeor the Resortolani, it'll find it right
away. Yeah it was. Itwasn't finding anything, so but I agree,

(16:08):
like it sounded very familiar, andit sounded like something out of an
old Italian Gothic horror film. Butright if it is lifted, I can't
figure out from where. I mean, it sounds like nothing that Shaw Brothers
has done in any other genre.I mean that's why I love it so
much, because I yeah, sameas you. I thought most of their
a lot of their stuff is liftedwell or recycled, and yeah, but

(16:32):
in this case, I couldn't trackanything down. And it's amazing because yeah,
like you said to me, andit's like inspiration for like Semonettie or
Keith Emerson or like later Argento.It's crazy. Yeah, did you guys
want to before I jump in thecast anybody else in the crew you wanted
to chat about. I mean,I know, the producers or running like
everybody's kind of we've hit on inthe past. I'll keep Mona Pong's name

(16:56):
out of my mouth this episode.Okay, so the cast, I'm going
to do my best. Every year, I cringe. Oh every year I
look forward to Shaugust. But atthe same time, I worry and cringe
about me mispronouncing these names. Noone's given us a bad review for it
yet. Okay, here we go, no disrespect. I'm a dumb American.

(17:18):
It's it's well known, but herewe go. Okay. Su Chia
Chin plays Poulin, the lead character, and Ghost dies. This is her
first acting role. She went onto act in a lot of you know,
other great Shaw Brothers films, includingthirty six, Chamber, Dirty Hoe,
Hex. She played dou Shaw andportrait in Crystal, Prince t and
D's Wife. I don't remember,but Ghost Eyes being her first acting role

(17:42):
is really impressive to me because Ithink it's a pretty physical role. You
kind of see her as she liketurns into this exhausted, beaten down character
who still wants to fight it outto the very end strong performance in my
opinion, Dougart, I agree.Wei Sue plays the creepy mister she o
Cha, the vampire optometrist Baddie.I'm using I'm pulling Battye from The Nine

(18:04):
Demons he works. I've I've onlywatched one other film that he's been in,
and it's amazing. It's a ShawBrothers action fantasy called The Battle Wizard.
Have y'all seen it? I knowyou have. Yeah, it's a
wild one. I mean similar pacing. Little Wizards is mandatory viewing absolutely under

(18:25):
eighty. Yeah is that the kissmakeup one? No? No, what
am I thinking of? You're thinkingof without wings? Yeah? I know.
I started to know. This oneis just straight up kind of like
fantasy, like you know, flyingdaggers and laser swords. I'm looking okay,
Yeah, I have seen this.Oh I gave it four stars?
Yeah? Hang on, what didI review? What did I read?

(18:48):
A lot of lasers in it,A lot of lasers. The poster is
amazing too. Letox Yeah, similarcrazy pacing to Portrait in Crystal. You're
like, whoa slow down? Thisis this is amazing, but it's I'm
dying here. It's a lot butyeah, ways also has like two dozen
or so other acting credits, mainlylesser known Shaw Brothers films from the seventies

(19:10):
like The Sexy Killer, A Sliceof Death, and he is in a
few anthologies, the Fearful Interlude,which was directed by Kwai Chi Hung and
The Criminals. Oh I've seen that, Yeah, I did. Kid.
Next, we have lamb wy Tu, who plays and Peen Balin's nerdy bookworm

(19:37):
boyfriend kind of His name might havepopped up a few times in previous Shaugust
episodes. I don't remember, buthe has small roles in Bewitched, Corps
Mania and Black Magic two was thefirst one as well. I think yeah,
he's in Part one. He's alsoin The Mighty Peaking Man he has.
He has a lot of good ChawBrothers credits. Pingh plays you and
Ma, who is a coworker maybea manager at the beauty salon. I

(20:02):
couldn't really figure out her good role, but she has hundreds of film and
television credits, having started acting inthe nineteen fifties. Most of our film
credits are either a mother or awife role to an important character. Credits
include Human Lanterns, Samoe Hung's MyLucky Stars, Kwai Chi Hung's Killer Constable.

(20:22):
Then we have Bloody Parrot which couldpotentially be a shawgust Pick in the
future if we keep going. Yeah, I'd be done with that. She's
also in Battle Wizards. Yeah.Woan ching Ho plays the Daoist monk.
I kind of want to throw himout there because he was His credits are
insane. He's also in a tonof Shao Brothers, Shaw Brothers movies,

(20:44):
eight Diagram Poll Fighter, five Fingersof Death, All three thirty six Chamber
Movies, Dirty Hoe, Human Lanyards, Seeding of a Ghost, which is
another great one, Corps Mania,Another Moment, Just hundreds and hundreds of
credits. Five Deadly Venoms, fiveDeadly venoms. Yes, yeah, one
hundred and seventy two credits. Goodlord, Yeah, I mean that's what
you see with these like these actors. It's as amazing every every August.

(21:07):
I just my mind is blown withthe sheer amount of films like in such
a short period of time, becauseI think of someone who like, oh,
maybe they started acting as like achild like Kurt Russell in like and
then like all the way into youknow, like maybe up until their eighties,
like I would expect, you know, someone like that. They just

(21:29):
it's insane to me. Every timeI see it, I'm just like blown
away by it. Yea, hiscareer lasted four decades, so three hundred
and seventy two movies in forty years. That's yeah, it's almost one hundred.
I'm like, that's just everyone's likelooking at Kwaichi Hung too, like,
I mean he's directing what ten filmsand like three, I mean you
didn't and some of these directors areare are pumping out even more than that.

(21:52):
It's crazy. Yeah, it's justto me, it's just such a
testament of like such massively entertaining films, especially when we're talking about you know,
Boxer Zonemen and a bunch of theother ones that we have before that
have stood the test of time thathave a very limited budget or you know
from from Shaw Brothers and what they'reable to do with that and make something

(22:15):
so wildly inventive versus something that youknow, Blumhouse gives five million dollars to
somebody about you know, a talkinghand, and it's like my moms did,
and you know it's like come on, and you know, I think
you have to give a lot ofcredit to that to the writers because job
Brothers, I meet with the wholemovie town, city within the city deal

(22:37):
that they had set up with allof the actors living on site and all
the most of the cast and crewand directors living on site. They had
everything set up to basically work asan assembly line, and a lot of
times had them working on multiple projectsat the same time. So it wasn't
cookie cutter, because, like yousaid, there's so much originality and so
much of their stuff and so muchwackiness and insanity out there for us all
to dig our teeth into. Butit was one after the other after the

(23:00):
other. The other was very mucha commercial endeavor meant to be pumped out
fast, on time and on budget. So you got to give the script
writers and the directors of course,and the set designers a lot more credit
than just the producers who are reallyjust kind of bankrolling the next big thing.
Yeah, and then you have likeone single editor that's almost like knocking
every single one of these out.Yeah, it wasn't it. Chang Sing

(23:22):
Lung Lung. I think I'm pronouncinghis name right, but yeah, yeah,
he's like his credits are six hundredmovies or something like. It's insane.
Yeah, it's just this well oiledmachine, and not even just like
their film production, their like theirfilm town. I feel it. It's
probably in The Killer Snakes, butyeah, because he asked this girl on
a date and he's like, hey, do you want to go to a

(23:42):
movie tonight? And they go toa Shaw Brothers theater and I think that's
I've probably seen it in a ShawBrothers film before, where people go to
the movies and it's like Shaw Brotherslogo on the movie theater, like that
they owned a bunch of them.Yeah, it's like they're there. So
it's like, Okay, we makeour own movies and we put it in
our theaters and everyone fucking goes tothem. And it's just you said it

(24:03):
on repeat year after year, andit's just like I said every August when
we talk about it, it's justhow much they were able to put out
in the well oiled machine that theyhave, you know. I you know,
I look at other companies who seeminglyhave a monopoly, like I'm looking
at you Disney on it that Iwould normally complain about, and you could

(24:26):
draw a line to that, butDisney's not like doesn't have like exploding bats
and like you know, fun stuff. I mean, right, yeah,
at this point, it's it's throwinga couple of actors in a green screen
room and right, so the productiondesign again goes back like the show.
I mean, it's something that willnever happen again, obviously, and it's
so it's such an awesome piece ofhistory to think about. But yeah,

(24:51):
every August too. I love itbecause if you watched only like five Shaw
Brothers movies, your most watch actorsare probably going to be pulled from those
five QUI pop up on your letterboxstats. Yeah, yeah, So there
are a few other characters that popup at the end of the movie,
like you and Ma's great Auntie andher granddaughter. But that's all the cast
and crew I have. Do youguys have anybody I missed or anybody else

(25:11):
you want to? Got it?I got a bit? Okay, So
talking about prolific performers. The actresswho played Great Auntie is Masu Ying.
She worked from forty seven till seventysix, five hundred and fifty four credits.
Like, yeah, they had herlike chained in the studio so a
lot of them, a lot ofthem are bit parts, right and right

(25:33):
right. It's the same with allthese guys, a lot of you know,
especially when they're first starting out,they're credited as an extra or they're
credited as being you know, they'rein one scene. So they probably showed
up on set for a day andmaybe in that same day appeared in three
movies. But even still, yeah, that's insane to think. Yeah,
that's a lot. And then YungChock Lamb, who played Allway, the
husband of the woman whose name Iforgetting the work in the salon, who

(26:00):
she goes to her house at theend. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So he was pretty prolific too.He did ninety eight movies, only ninety
eight movies from sixty eight till twentyeleven, when he retired started doing a
lot of extra work in bigger films. He appears in Chang Chay's Vengeance,
and he's in Lady of Steel.I know that because, like I said,
I just did the commentary on it. He also pops up in Please

(26:21):
Story two, and he's in BattleWizard, because we need to mention Battle
Wizard as much as we can.And then sadly, I could not figure
out who played Fatty Oh the kid. Yeah, yeah, who was literally
named Fatty. Yeah, there's alot of that, and it wasn't.
It wasn't Kent Chang because he's anadult right now. We had a Fatty

(26:41):
in the last one we did too. Yeah, tradition, tradition continues,
but we don't know who it is. So cool. That's all I got
for Guess and crew. That's allI think we got. We'll get into
our thoughts about the film right afterthis promo from our network. You're listening

(27:03):
to the Prescribed Films Podcast Network,home to hundreds of hours of free podcast
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(27:30):
listening. Okay, So, somethingI really love about Ghost Eyes is to
me and most of Quashi Hung's ShawBrothers horror films, is it's kind of
straight up horror. There's not alot of what you might expect from Shaw

(27:52):
Brothers movies, you might expect themartial arts, little kung fu fighting,
some humorous moments, you know,the touches of the action that make Shaw
Brothers film so recognizable and appealing.But with like Ghost Eyes and Quai Chi
Hung horror movies, I love itwhen they gravitate more so to the horror
genre of over anything else, becauseyou know, with Bewitched, Corpse Mania,

(28:17):
s Seting of a Ghost, blackMagic. Black Magic has some humorous
moments too, you know, Yeah, but it's not like overtly like trying
to add in the comedy or likethe comic relief or anything like that.
It just has like moments that arechuckle worthy. Right. So I almost
feel like when you watch a movielike Ghost Eyes or some of the Shaw
Brothers for you kind of have toreset your Shaw Brothers' expectations, just kind

(28:40):
of take a step back enter inthis Quay Chea Hung Jam with a new
perspective. Don't compare them to otherShaw Brothers movies. I don't know,
I mean, because I've I've reada lot of letterbox reviews on Ghost Eyes,
and there's a lot of comparing toother movies, which you know,
I do a lot, but Ifeel like because it is very slow paced,

(29:03):
which I know you have note song, We all do, I think,
but you know, comparing them toyou know, people's understandable favorites.
I don't know if it's fair forthis specific movie because it is We've already
talked about the music, even someof the like the gel lighting. Because
this is nineteen seventy four. Imean, this is early in the horror

(29:26):
catalog for Shaw Brothers. There's somany inspirations that I feel like are pulled
or lifted from a movie like this. Yeah, yeah, I mean what
do you think when you think Iwhen you watch ghost Sides, do you
think it's more are you hoping foraction? Or do you are you really
you want the horror, like you'rereally pleased with how the horror is being
presented in these quai chi hung typemovies. So no bad pun intended.

(29:51):
But I went into this completely blind. It goes to I didn't even write
that down. I just threw thatone out there. I had not seen
it befo, So I went intoexpecting it to be way more over the
top because most of the show Brothersstuff is. But there's no nudity in
it. There's no real gore.There's some makeup effects, you know,
but there's no splatter, there's noicky bugs, there's no animal violence.

(30:15):
Like I said earlier, it feelsin a lot of ways, very much
like an Italian Gothic horror film tome, more than what most people associate
with more exploitative, almost trashy,insane show brothers horrors that get all the
eyeballs. I guess maybe I expecteda little bit of that and maybe a
bit more action. You guys saidyou had problems with the pacing. I
didn't really have problems with the pacingpersonally. It was a little repetitive,

(30:37):
I felt, and maybe could havetrimmed in about five minutes maybe, but
I was okay with it. Ithelped my attention throughout. I didn't have
trouble with the pacing at all.I think I was really drawn in by
the cinematography, which I thought wasreally impressive. Yeah, very You mentioned
the lighting gels, and there's alot of great use of primary color throughout
the movie. I hate to saybava esque because it's such a cliche to

(30:59):
say it, but it does.I mean, it is what it is.
Yeah, it is what it isexactly. It does kind of feel
like it could have been a Babamovie, right, or something like maybe
an old Antonio Margheriti film or somethinglike that. But I was pulled in.
I was pulled in. There's there'sit's a lot of nonsense in the
plot, but it held my attentionwithout any trouble. I mean, I
also liked how it was, howdeliberately paced it is, because it's setting

(31:19):
up and again it's it's a validargument that it's taken away too long,
but you're watching Palin losing her mindand her senses, and I think it
steps up. It really sets upher delirium and her exhaustion, Like we
the viewer her almost exhausted at thispoint too, and we're waiting for the
finale to come because we're kind offor me personally, I was kind of

(31:41):
like struggling with her, like Icould totally feel again, like I felt
like it is a physical role becauseyou know, the makeup that they apply
as the movie goes on, likeyou can tell she's she's weary, and
yeah, she should be, becausewe just watched an hour of her,
you know, waking up in abandonedhouses over and over again being sexually assaulted.
Like it's yeah, it takes andit takes a long time for people

(32:05):
to start showing concern. I mean, one thing I could I could take
a step back and be like,Okay, it took a long time for
people to show concern. It tookabout forty five minutes for Poulin to finally
ask for help, and there's youknow, instead, she's kind of doing
her own detective work, which actuallymade me think also of other Italian Italian
films. Yep, so yeah,I actually liked it. I mean I

(32:29):
do think there. I think itcould work like in a lot of these
anthologies like The Fearful Interlude or theHaunted Tales, as like a forty minute
short or a segment. I likehow it's kind of stretched out. I
yeah, the pacing is one thing. I think it's just the fact that
we're watching her kind of do thesame thing over and over again, and
it kind of suffers from the backhalf of it is like, Okay,

(32:53):
we know what the solution is here, and we're waiting for her to figure
it out, and for her tofinally figure out the smoke thing is just
like I'm not struggling along with herbecause I'm like, I know the solution,
come on, figure it out,like let's go. And like you

(33:14):
know, Ian, you said fiveminutes, I'm gonna go. Ten or
fifteen minutes could have got knocked offof this, but like I still I'm
but I'm also with you, Ian, like I was fully engaged the whole
time with it, Like I'm not. It's not losing me. I'm just
also like we didn't need that scenebecause this this event already happened just kind
of like in a different way.But I'm at I'm just I'm still captivated

(33:37):
by everything that I'm seeing on screen, you know, cinematography, the lighting,
all of those things, those horrorelements that you mentioned, Lance that
you know, I think you knowwhen we're talking about you know how much
it reminds me of how much itreminds us of Italian films. When we
see the vam goes vampire. Iknow they're interchangeable in Hong Kong, but

(34:02):
the quote unquote goes vampire optometrist,when we see his true self through the
double mirror, it reminds me ofthe zombies from Burial Ground. Yeah.
They're kind of bulky faced, yeah, yeah, like it's it's heavily applied
makeup. Yeah. Yeah. Butthere there's other shots though where he's just
kind of got like some green facepanton where I thought he looked like blu

(34:25):
frig Know's the Hulk. Yeah,that kind of reminds me of the Yamamoto's
Bloodthirsty trilogy, like la with likeGreen's funny you mentioned that. Funny you
mention that because last night, asI was watching it, I was like,
who does this guy remind me of? Who does he remind me of?
And I looked him up afterwards andI'm like, he doesn't really remind
me of anybody, But it wasit was it was the Japanese Jacula trilogy.

(34:47):
That's exactly what it was that wasstuck in my brain for like the
last twenty four hours pulling it outof there. But yeah, like I
hit on Kuotchi Hung's camera work alittle nit and his framing when we covered
Corpse Mania, and his ability tokind of present the viewer with the layout
of the scenery before any action ordialogue happens. So again, I think

(35:07):
that's why the taking your time,taking his time in setting up a scene,
because there's you know when you goto an abandoned house, You're going
to see pretty much every angle ofevery room before anything starts to happen,
which I was totally sold on.I just fall in love with his establishing
shots, and I wanted to pulland repeat something from Laird's Corpse Mania review

(35:32):
on a letterbox where he's talking aboutKwai Chi Hung. He says, the
more of his work I see,the more I'm convinced that he's the Hong
Kong equivalent of Mario Bava. Someonevery much in control of the look of
his movies, someone able to hopgenres with ease, and someone who builds
movies with extremely graphic and exciting setpieces, which I think is prevalent in

(35:54):
Ghost Eyes. You know, CorpseMania, I think blows it out of
the water. But when I waswatching it or rewatching it again, I
kept thinking, like I could watchlike an hour of just his established establishing
shots, like just a montage ofthis stuff. Loved it. I could
watch fake Spider, that great fakeSpider. There was also is it the

(36:17):
second of the third sex scene inthe movie where you know they're lying horizontally
and it's you know they're in thewide screen taking up most of the frame,
but there's a lot of it isshot through the skull. Yeah,
oh my god, I love thath. That reminded me of like a Nakatsu
Roman porno film where they have touse weirdly placed objects to block Genitalian pubaic

(36:37):
care to get around the sensors andstuff. I don't I mean, Hong
Kong didn't have that problem, soit wasn't done for that reason, I'm
sure, but that's what I thoughtof because it's such a weird placement for
it. Yeah, but it's agreat composition. Well, yeah, this
is reminded me of the opening credits, which is one of my favorite openings
to like a horror Shaw Brothers film, which is that neon green text over

(36:58):
like the slow zoo amount of theblue skull with the like hot pink background.
It's one hundred percent my aesthetic.Yeah, well, even even like
the other I mean, and Idon't know if it was like the copy
that's on YouTube, but I'm goingto say that it's no. I'm going
to say like this was intentional,but the text of the credits being blurry,
and I'm like, it's setting,you know, setting you up for

(37:21):
like her vision being distorted, andI was like, oh, that's a
clever little touch there. Yeah,that whole set up, the whole intro
with the blurry text and what Iwas seeing, and then the music on
top of it, the very Italiansounding like just slow kind of tom beats,
drum beats. I was like,Okay, I'm going to take my
time with this, and I'm goingto I'm gonna I'm going to keep my
eyes out for this whole movie becausethe carry on the carry on the blurry

(37:44):
idea too later in the film,because after she gets look the car accident
happens and her glasses get knocked off, we see it through her POV right,
that's true worry for a while theretoo. And then of course when
she's getting fitted for the contacts andhaving her eyes tested and stuff, we
see things blurr in and out.I just got fitted for glasses a couple
of months ago, so watching thaton the movie was weirding me out in

(38:04):
the big way. I'm also completelylike phobic about having things touch my eyes,
So anytime I see somebody in themovie or TV show put a contact
lens in a completely squeamish about it. Yeah, So y'all have never worn
content. You know, you've neverworn contact either of y'all. Don't anything
touching my eyeballs, not even forlike Halloween costumes. No, not doing
well Okay, Yeah, I wasalways curious. I was curious about this
because I've been wearing I wore contacts, like at the end of high school.

(38:25):
It's when I got glasses, andI preferred context because you know,
like pile In, everybody said helooked better with context. Yeah, you
didn't want people like screaming at youlike nerd. Yeah no, no,
I'm like I'm wearing or glasses allthe time. Yeah, but I have
never had never in an experience withan eye an optometrist or eye doctor,
even when I first put in orfirst got context, nobody's ever put context

(38:50):
in my eye like like this thingand ghost eyes like I was shuddering when
that was happening. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
no, it's that that scene.Also, I mean I've born contacts,
I can wear them still, buthaving somebody put that in your eye for
that's your eye, no, no, no, no, but yeah,
to hit more on the Italian whore, I know we've we've already kind of

(39:12):
you know, talked about it quitea bit, but a few things that
also stood out other than like thesoundtrack, the gel lighting, also the
pacing, but the constant thunderous rainmade me think of like, you know,
Suspiria and you know Ourgento later movies, because this is all this all
predates most of our Gento's like neonlighting stuff. This is before deep red

(39:34):
Suspirian for and all that good stuff. But yeah, definitely feels like black
Sabbath or something, or blood andblack lace lighting and then just the supernatural
and mysterious things that you're watching onscreen, like you're unable to explain what's
happening. You're just kind of livingin this strange world and watching someone cope
with with what's happening to them.That the whole thing just I think the
first time I watched it, likeover a year ago, was like,

(39:57):
this is the most Italian sho brotherthere's movie you will ever watch, even
more so than Corpsemania. You think, well, yeah, it has like
like Giallo elements corps Mania, butI would say visually yet yeah, and
and pace wise and the run time, I mean, you're not going to
get an eighty minute, I knowItaly. There's another moment when the mudslide

(40:22):
happens, when she leaves the salonand is on her way home. Yeah,
that was that reminded me of theending of The Beyond. Oh shit,
yeah, totally. Yeah, justthe way they're all kind of trapped
and in this muddy, hazy mess, like yes, sort of coming towards
or the color scheme sort of matchesup to and there's is she dead,
isn't she dead? Is she inHell? Isn't she in Hell? Thing

(40:42):
happening? Yeah, for sure justpredates The Beyond by quite a few years.
But yeah, that's what's stuck inmy head when that scene happened.
Yeah, I kept think of thechurch too, I mean, all sorts
of things were popping up with theseimages. Yeah, and there's it's weird
that there's it's a Hong Kong horrorfilm with some actual Christian iconography in it,
which isn't common. Because he triesthe cross, doesn't work really very
well to repel the vampire, butit at least gets a hold of one

(41:05):
and try and uses it. Yeah. I do like the mix there,
like, like you mentioned, likeit's like this mix of what we're used
to with Hong Kong vampires because webring the Daoist priest in and then like
the Western vampire elements where it's likesucking blood and you know, hypnotizing and
all those sorts of those other elements. I want to go back to the
landslide thing only because like that shesees all these ghosts. She sees other

(41:30):
ghosts too. This is one ofthose like plot elements, and I'm not
normally one to like nit I don'twant to like nitpick plot elements. And
you know, a Hong Kong movieor an Italian movie. But why does
she need to see ghost if thewhole purpose of the contacts was for the
vampire to control her mind, suckher blood, get her to get other

(41:52):
women? Like what's Yeah, well, I from what I this is,
I'm going to start making up okay, just like I'm gonna try and figure
figure things out live right now.So yeah, I like the vampire take
here it's and it's some sort oflike vampire demon that hops into dying people

(42:13):
as a host. So I'm wonderingif like these magic contacts that he that
he puts in her eyes is maybewhat vampires or these these demons. Maybe
they see because they're seeking out dyingpeople and maybe I don't know, maybe
they're stuck in some weird Yeah I'mgoing to yeah, you're you're not stretch.

(42:36):
Yeah, it's I'm just putting itout there that like that, just
sort of because it's fucking cool.There, Okay, there it is.
That's it. But yeah, andalso he's a vampire, and he meant,
you know, he does want other, specifically female victims. I don't
remember him ever drinking anybody's blood orbiting anybody on the neck. He's just
they don't show. They show thebodies. They show the bodies. Yes,

(42:59):
I love that scene. The yeahthat's moving the mattress. Oh yeah
good, great practical effects there.Right. So I don't know. I
guess it leaves open to interpretation,like is he Western vampire, is the
Chinese vampire a combination of the two. Is he a sex vampire rather than
a traditional vampire? Because he makesan allusion to her being under his control

(43:19):
sexually at one point when he saysto her, you like my little favors
when she tries to get away fromhim, and suggesting that you know,
he is doing just that and controllingher sexually rather than supernaturally. But it
doesn't really establish it very well.It's a lot a lot is not established
very well in this movie, alot a lot of gray areas. Yeah,
it does. And again, likehe already noted that there's no nudity
in this, but there was noreal censorship either during that time. But

(43:45):
yeah, I was almost confused,Like I thought maybe I was watching a
cut copy when Pollin was dropping offher friends and then you know, they
enter the house and then boom,the next cut is like she's back at
work and the cops are looking forhim. Like, right, we're missing
a lot of you know what,you know, horror genre fans want most
out of these type of movies.But when you take a step back,

(44:05):
I'm like, this really works forme. So I know, Erica in
our Discord channel, you asked aboutso our Yeah, our villain here,
the vampire possessed demon character, mistershe he he whistles a lot. He
whistles a tune quite quite a lotthroughout the movie. And I love it.
I Mean, at first it remindedme of like Robert mitchm singing leaning

(44:29):
on the ever as Lasting Arms inthe Night of the Hunter. It's kind
of like this creepy vibe. Yeah, like these characters are terrorized by this
tune and you ask, you know, what's your favorite like villain or person
whistling in a film. And wehad some good answers. We did get
some some good answers, and Idid it selfishly because I wanted to give
my top five ranked whistlers films too. On top of this fun fact,

(44:52):
also, I did discover there arethese like toy vampire teeth from like the
seventies called whistling Dracula teeth. Youcan google this and find find them and
because so like one of the plasticteeth is hollow, so you can actually
be a whistling vampire if you want. Two folks ghost Eys Merchant right now.

(45:19):
Yeah, I was like, Ifound them on eBay for like twenty
bucks. I was like, Imight have to buy these twenty bucks.
I guess they're they're no longer made. No seems like money well spent though,
I think. So, I mean, I'm, i'm, I'm should
do a whole episode wearing the funBut yeah, so we did get some
great answers from folks and one ofthe ones that did get brought up was
Sea Welcome brought up Harry Powell inKnight of the Hunter, and I had

(45:43):
I couldn't remember him whistling that tune. I thought he just sang it.
I think he just sings. Okay. I was like, well I would.
It's very reminiscent of that. Right, I'm due for a rewatch anyway,
because I just got the four K, so like, i'll you know,
I can definitely confirm i'll rewatch.I don't care if he's sing and
or whistling whatever whatever, mitchen,I'm saying, I'm listening. There was
one perfect answer in the disc Therewas one perfect answer. Do you want

(46:06):
to share that one? It's BronsonOnce at a Time in the West.
No, that was was that mentioned? That was not mentioned, but that
is on my list. No,it's Alan Adell, the singing rooster from
robin Hood cartoon. Yeah, yep, medium Mbrane. She did that.

(46:37):
As soon as he said that,I was like, oh, okay,
everyone gave the thumbs up on Soyeah, I have one. Let's see
if it's on your list. Okay, well, let me go through everyone
else's picks and then I'll do mine. So Curtie mentioned Shadmock's deadly whistle in
the first story from the Monster Club. That's a good one, honestly,
that one sounds more like a cicadathan a whistle. Mm hm. And

(47:01):
I've triggered when with cicadas because thosethings leave their fucking corpses everywhere around here,
and it's yeah, they're and they'rehuge. Jim. He put Garth
whistling the enterprise theme in Wayne's Worldwhen they're sitting there on top of the
car, which I thought was fun. Adam said, Terry O'Quinn and the

(47:46):
Stepfather whistling Camptown Races h and thenOmaha John and mpls. Matt picked one
another one that was on my list, and that's Hans Beckert and m m

(48:09):
hm. And so I'm not puttingghost Eyes on the list because we're talking
about the film. So here's myother five, including so we have m
then Twisted Nerve Slash kill Bill,which we've talked about before in one of

(48:29):
our previous episodes. That's a goodpick. Yeah, any change mate,
and the best of British Lucky Youtoo, Henry Silva and Cry of a
Prostitute. Oh and of course it'sa list, so I'm gonna cheat.

(49:08):
So I have one that's not actuallya film, but it's Omar in the
Wire. Check it out right,Yo, it's happen. Fuck him on.
You're not coming back, don't okay, Omar coming Okay? So mine

(49:38):
is Emilio Estevez is Billy the KidAnd that one scene you know where he
likes you know, the ladies likehim. He likes to it's rum where
he likes to whistle, said saidballads. He just starts whistling, and
I love that scene. Yeah.Sure, you are a tested little cuff.

(50:05):
Okay, we've covered the whistling aspectof this movie. Yes, Atlanta

(50:29):
or Ian, have you pulled thetrigger on buying the whistling Dracula teeth?
No, but I have found onefor sale thinking about it, I just

(50:50):
don't want to bust out my creditcard while then do it. Yeah yeah,
okay, So Benny more, folks, let's let's now, let's just
throw out some of our favorite scenesand favorite parts of this movie or any
type of issues we might have ofit. I just want to bring out
one of my favorite turn of events, which there are a lot of.

(51:14):
There's a lot of changes within thelast like thirty minutes where you just don't
know where this is going. Myfavorite is when the like the Landlord runs
in and Balin is there. Ithink with Anne Pin and she just had
like one of her episodes and she'sbasically like, Jesus, girl, you
look like shit, your eyes looklike dead fish, you smell like ass.
You're possessed. We need to getyou a doubt with smunk asap.

(51:36):
Yeah, that turn of events.I was like, Okay, where are
we going with this now? Yeah? What are some of your guys' favorite
moments? So tying into that.I like that moment too, and I
figured it was going to go turninto a Dallas priest versus monster battle like
a lot of these movies do.It's dead the priest gets the shit kicked
out of them, right. Ididn't see that coming. Also, the

(51:57):
priest has a great line while he'spreparing for yes battle that he loses,
where he says, when you arein the cinema, you can't be sure
that the person behind you is human. Yes. I have that note too,
probably causing a lot of nervous laughter. And I wonder, Yeah,
I wondered, how you know howHong Kong cinema goers in nineteen seventy four
reacted to that, whether it wouldhave actually made people turn around and question
what was happening, or if theyjust would have laughed it off. But

(52:20):
I thought it was kind of aneat little twist. Yeah, I love
that, but yeah. One ofmy favorite scenes was when she starts just
bashing the Dallist monk with like arock and not phasing him at all because
he gets right up and then folLynn kills him. But I love it,
like, Okay, well he's justgonna get his ass fucking handed to
him, like he walked in anything. Yeah. Yeah. Then the change

(52:42):
of another change of event was whenit you know, Anne pen dies her
boyfriend and then what is her name? You and Ma like her coworker brings
her to her great Annie's house andI'm like, Okay, where the fuck
are we going? We're here,We're going from here, We're going to
hear now we're going here, andI do, and this this kind of
leads to, you know, wewe finally get to like the final fight

(53:06):
where she finally figures out that sheneeds smoke, so she buys all the
incense and uses that and that's kindof my one of my favorite ones.
One of my favorite moments is likethat final I'll call it a fire fight
or smoke fight, that disintegration,the smoking skull. I do like the

(53:27):
priest getting getting beat up as well, that's all, you know, that's
always fun. I'm not Dallas Priest. They're nice, but you know,
yeah, that fire that's classic hammerhorror and melting, you know, literally
melting into a skeleton. Huge firein the background, and then we have
a and we're I guess we're atthe end, a downbeat ending, which

(53:49):
I always love, love it todeath. Yeah, so spoiler alert,
Balan does not survive. She becomespossessed by this vampire demon, which I
fucking love, love love. Yeah, it rhymes, it's like poetry it
uh, you know, the hedied in the fire and was possessed by
the ghost. Now she has diedin the fire and now she is possessed

(54:10):
by There's a there's a great cuttowards the end of the movie where she's
screaming and then it jump cuts rightto the ambulance siren. Yeah, that
I thought was really cool. Onething I want to mention though, before
it escapes my fleeting memory. Sowhen Opine dies, right, he falls
off the ship? Yeah, wasthat a watermelon? It looked like it
didn't. Yeah, Like to me, that was like painfully obvious. Yeah,

(54:35):
it was a melon for sure,because I thought like, okay,
there's something floating in the water withhim. Yeah, and then it just
gets squished and I was like,okay, not the shop Brothers. Special
effects aren't always one hundred percent convincing, but like, this was. This
was bad. Maybe doesn't have ablu ray because they're like, oh that
special effects bad. We don't wantpeople to see that. Maybe you got
to give it the special edition treatment. Han Solo's step on job as.

(54:59):
I also want to give a shoutout to the random kitten that just shows
up and goes now and it hasnever heard from again. And the hermit
with the bad teeth who shows upand has never heard from again. Yeah,
And the guy who's in the secondsalon when she's working and I think
he's whistling the same tune. Ohyeah, yeah, and he's like,
what are you doing reading my loveletters? And then he kind of disappears,
never to be heard from again.As well. There's some randomness.

(55:22):
Yeah, I feel like that's almostthe most and maybe the only kind of
humorous scene is that guy. Anotherone that kind of stands out too is
the old lady that's telling Paulin aboutthe fire that killed the optometrist. She's
like so into it and she's like, oh, his eyes were burnt out
and his hair was gone, andhe popped up and ran into the house
and died, and these other guyscome around her and start like chiming in.

(55:45):
Like that one was pretty humorous too, but that that that character was
really there's so many just little sidecharacters that stand up. Well, there's
so many men just lurking in thegrass ready to pop out. Yeah,
well I don't know if most ofthose are dead, Like is she's seeing
dead people now? Yeah, there'sthere's a lot to love in this,
Like that foggy, overgrown cemetery.I love look. And the guy pops

(56:07):
out there too. Yeah that's whatdoesn't get away with it, thankfully,
but he tries. I love howmister she opens locked doors, you know,
the nails pop out of the boards. Yeah, that was a cool
touch. It's kind of kind ofcreepy and my one of my favorite scenes
too, is him just casually droppingas he's getting a manicure the second time
that he's immortal, He's like,shut out, don't tell anybody or dead

(56:30):
in three days, you know,like she fixes my cuticles. I like
the scene where Berlin is actually givinga ghost a manicure. Yeah, yeah,
that was neat. That was anet touch. She's just kind of
there putting a manicure on. Well, we can't see anything. She's supposed
to be able to see it,but we're seeing it from the same point
of view as the other people inthe salange, like what the hell is
wrong with her? But it's likeyou said earlier, no one really.

(56:51):
I mean, somebody who's up toher is like what are you doing?
And she's like, I'm giving amanicure, but nobody at that point he's
like you need help. They're justlike oh okay, Yeah. There's a
lot of like you know, yeah, just kind of ignoring and her not
asking, and I like that.Did I do appreciate that, but I
could I could see it, youknow, bothering people like, Okay,
she's going to relive this whole youknow, traumatic events over and over again

(57:13):
until she figures it out. Yeah, yep. And like you said,
Erica, I do like how theythrow it out in different areas of the
movie, mainly probably within the lasttwenty minutes where she just remembers him with
you know, on peen talking aboutthe ensigns or when the cigarette the guy
with a cigarette in the salon.Yeah, it works. Yeah, I

(57:35):
like it. I love it.Well, me too, I like it.
Anything else you wanted to bring upabout it, Ian, Erica,
I got all my notes. Idid think it was interesting that it portrays
Hong Kong as a complete shithole.It's not glitzy or glamorous really at all.
Like even the back room of thesalon, which you would think would
be like nice and clean and tidy, is kind of a hell hole full

(57:55):
of rats. Yeah. And theneverybody's place seems real, everybody's Yeah,
her her apartment is literally falling apartthe first time when he comes to visit
her at night. Every step hetakes is creaky and loud because it's old
and decrepit. That was kind ofIt's kind of atypical for a Show Brothers
movie to do that. Yeah.Yeah, leaning hard into the horror movie

(58:19):
aspect of like everything being sort oflike scared, run down, rotting.
Yeah, exactly. Cool. Well, let's it's let's pick a double feature
for ghost guys. You guys ready, Let's let's start with you Carnival Souls.
Oh ah, there it is verygood night. As we were watching
it, my wife kind of likepoked me and said, this has a
Carnival Souls vibe. Do you thinkshe died at the car accident at the

(58:42):
beginning? And I was immediately convincedthat yes, that's exactly where it was
going, and we had this allfigured out. It didn't quite work out
that way, but yeah, Ifeel like it does feel like Carnival Souls
a lot, especially in the firsthalf. Less so in the second half,
but in the first half for sure, it's really similar. Obviously,
black and white versus color. There'scultural differences and stuff, but even the
performance of the two lead actresses Ithink is fairly close, and how they

(59:06):
bring their characters to life, andhow they kind of portray their crumbling sanity
based on these strange predicaments that they'veput in. So I think Cardival Souls
and Ghost Eyes would be an excellentdouble feature. I like it. I
need to what about you, Erica, I actually have one very similar to
Ian's. Oh but before I getto that, let me let me go
through. My train is not here, Okay. So I think obviously,

(59:28):
like there's a handful of Dracula adaptationsyou could you could go with. John
mentioned The night Stalker, the colTak movie Darren McGavin, Yeah, and
I was like, I don't seeit, like it's a vampire movie.
But he had sent something else aboutit, and I was like, I
don't see it. So anyway,I'm just putting that out there because you
know what, John's not always right. I mean, yeah, I like

(59:49):
it because it's so fucking weird andrandom. John's wrong. So I think
there's plenty of like Hong Kong vampiremovies. You know, there's a Mister
Vampire series. I wouldn't go therebecause, like the comedy aspect to me,
wouldn't really work because this one hasmore of like a blend of an
East and West element for the vampire. It's got traits kind of from each

(01:00:12):
I think something like Vampire's Breakfast fromnineteen eighty seven could work. The vampire
ghosts look like they have like Donnathe Dead Zombie makeup in that one.
It's fun. This one might balancethat out a little bit, just because
it's got the same kind of vampire, like a little bit of East and
West mixed in. But obviously that'snot my ultimate. Oh it does have
a Kent cheng Is in it asFatty, so there's a Fatty. But

(01:00:37):
let me get to my actual pick. And like Ian, I am going
with a sixties black and white film, William Castle's Thirteen Ghosts, Okay,
And I'm doing that because Okay,so first of all, I think everyone
knows a film a family inherits ahome with ghosts, they have to stay
there, et cetera, et cetera. But why I think this would make

(01:00:57):
a fun double feature is because ofCastle's gimmick for the audience watching this film,
Illusiono, which allowed the audience tochoose whether or not they would see
the ghosts based on the red orthe blue lenses. So you know,
and there are releases which are editedto replicate that effect. So if you
watch it at home, kind ofget it. It's not the same as
watching it in the theater. Andlike, you know, William Castle giving

(01:01:19):
you your glasses, but I think, yeah, exactly, your ghost Eyes,
so I would go William Castle's ThirteenGhosts, not the fucking remaketh straight
away from that. God, Ihave not seen the remake. Okay,
so my turn. Yes, Igot hell Raiser vibes for a minute when

(01:01:39):
mister She turns into almost this uncleFrank Roll asking Palin to bring him victims.
So it felt like this Julia andFrank relationship for a bit to me.
You've we've picked hel Razor. Ithink you picked it for a double
feature. I've picked it for adouble feature before, and Abraham has actually
picked the second one that's right forhell Yeah. So yeah, hell Raiser

(01:02:01):
has been done here, it's offthe table, off the table, okay.
So I focused more on the youknow, the we've already talked about,
like the otherworldly feel of Ghost Eyes. How it turns kind of into
these regular, kind of boring characterstrying to figure out the supernatural elements of
this mysterious man that pops onto thescene. And this made me think of

(01:02:22):
Phantasm. Also smoke bothers mister She, and like the tall Man, he
has an aversion to the cold.I was I was reminded of that scene,
you know in Phantasm when the tallMan walks by Reggie's ice cream truck
and he has that reaction to thecold coming off the truck, not nearly
as violent as a reaction mister Shehas with the smoke, but nonetheless there's
like these aversions to these ordinary mixturesor elements. So I'm going to go

(01:02:45):
with Don Cascarelli's phantasm. We havethe immortal tall Man and the immortal mister
She, and he's causing the maincharacters and the viewers to wonder what the
hell he's up to and what makeshim so powerful. So also phantasms under
ninety minutes, And I wanted somethingshort to pair with ghost guys, so
mysterious tall men that have supernatural powersthat you're trying to guess until the end,

(01:03:09):
what the fuck's going on? Doublefeature? I like it. I
like it too, And Erica,your pick kind of ties into that comment
the priest makes about the people behindyou in the theater too. Oh yes,
right, oh my god? Yeaheven better. Yeah, that quote
should be like on T shirts fromthat. I love that, that Dallas
smart quote. It's so good.Yeah right yeah, Ian, thanks again

(01:03:30):
for joining us. It's always abit black ray. Yeah, can you
remind folks where they can find you. Follow you your podcast RSP Yeah,
Rockshockpop dot com is the website withall the reviews and the really old school
forum. So if like some ofus, you're tired of social media and
you just want to talk about moviessomewhere else, so you could do that

(01:03:51):
there. It's ninety nine percent assholefree. On socials, you can follow
me at rock Shock Pop on Twitter. If you look for Rock Shock Pop
on Facebook, you'll find it there. I'm on Instagram at Ian Jane seven
to five. That's mostly comic bookstuff. And if you want more comic
book stuff, you can go toQueenscomic Party dot com download episodes of the
podcast, or you can search forQueen's Comic Podcast on Spotify or whatever other

(01:04:15):
platform you get your podcasts on.Nice and on your Instagram? Will you
be sharing any future commentaries that you'redoing like beforehand? Not beforehand, but
when announcements for me, do youshare that stuff on your Instagram? I
should? You should, That's whatI'm saying. People follow ye and wait
for those to be posted. Ishould, Yeah, I should. I've
posted on my personal Facebook page.But obviously people who don't know me,

(01:04:39):
aren't on there and don't see it. I'm I kind of suck at self
promotion. Yeah, well I dotoo, I get it. Yeah,
we all do, and we canall. Do you know when the Shout
Collection two is coming out? Anyday now? I think it's already shipping
from the website, so I don'tknow that it's at other retailers yet,
but Shout usually ships their stuff earlyif you order it direct from them.

(01:05:00):
Okay, so it's on there.It's a big set. It's I think
thirteen discs, thirteen movies something likethat. So yeah, it's pretty huge.
Wow. I've got the first one, but I didn't buy because I
saw that and I was like,I don't have money for that right now.
But well, you know, I'llsuck it up now because you've got
commentaries on there. Yeah, I'llsupport that. Yeah. I wait to
hear what you have coming next toYeah. Yeah, we want to hear

(01:05:23):
about the other three. I can'tI know, not now, but when
you can. I want to know. When I can, I will,
I will message you guys. Allright, excellent? Yeah, so everyone
please follow Ian. He does greatwork. I can attest to rock shot
pop being ninety nine percent asshole free. I don't get I don't chat there
much, but I do lurk andeveryone there is very nice, so it's

(01:05:45):
a great place to communicate with folks. If you're a comic book fan,
check out his podcast. Pick upthe new shout Factory collection of Shaw Brothers
films, check out his commentaries,check out his other work. Just do
all the things because Ian's great andwe love him, and listen to the
other episodes that he's been on herewith us, and he'll be back next

(01:06:06):
year for again. Hell, yes, I hope you know I'm not.
I'm not. We can make thetiming work. I'll absolutely do it.
And if you want to have meback for a nonsh August Spider type film
or whatever, you know how youget a hold of me, of course.
Yes, all right, thanks Ian, We will talk to you soon.
All right, Thanks guys, thankyou bye. You know how to

(01:06:28):
whistle, you just put your lipstogether and blow erica. We have wrapped
up another season of Shaugust. Oh, happy August everyone. Yeah, good
work, two good picks. Juststuff. We'll see what will happen next
year, because last year we wereworried that there wouldn't be anything available this

(01:06:51):
year, and I mean, Ialready broke the rules, so fuck it.
You know, we'll figure it out. We will figure it out there.
There are some that are out there, but just harder to find,
I think. Okay, So Augustis over, we are going into September.
Yes, we're getting close to October, which means that very soon we'll

(01:07:12):
be sharing our list of Horror GivesBack categories. And I'm just going to
say it right now. You knowwhat, Discord folks, you're going to
get first peak at those. Ilike that. Yea, yeah, I
think that's smart. They could startputting their lists together and everyone who's not
in there yet, maybe they'll giveyou a reason to finally join. We
miss you. We don't know whoyou are, but we miss you.
I know exactly who you are,so please jump in Discord. But before

(01:07:39):
that, we have September, andwe have some movies to cover in September.
So my next pick, we're goingto the other side of the world.
We are going to be going tofronts oh and we are going to
be covering Night of Death exclamation Pointfrom nineteen eighty or La Nuit de la

(01:08:00):
Morte directed by Raphael del Pard.This film is about a woman named Martine.
She gets a new job at aconvalescent hospital in the French countryside,
where recent and former employees seem togo missing quite often, even the woman
who has trained her. So shesoon discovers something sinister going on. But
who would suspect the geriatric residence tohave anything to do with it? I

(01:08:24):
mean I probably would. I wenttoo old people. Yeah, fucking trust
him scary So yeah, Night ofDeath nineteen eighty. Night of Death with
an exclamation point, which we willfind out if it deserves the exclamation point
with our guest. Oh, we'regonna have another guest. We're on a
role here. This is someone Ihave wanted to have on the show for
a really long time. I'm ahuge fan of everything that he does,

(01:08:45):
and that is Bill Ackerman. Heis the host of the Supporting Characters podcast,
which is one of my favorite podcastsand is extremely re listenable. I
don't know if that's a word,but I do re listen it Works also
had another podcast called from the Neighborhood, which is a series of conversations with
people involved in the making of DavidLynch's nineteen eighty six film Blue Velvet.

(01:09:09):
So Lance, maybe you guys cangeek out about twin Peaks. Yeah,
where we are going to be coveringBlue Velvet on the next episode. He
also frequently co hosts the Director's Clubpodcast and I can't even begin to list
off all of the contributions that hehas made to physical media releases, but
just to name a few of myfavorites. He provided the commentary track for

(01:09:30):
Fun City Editions release of Natural Enemies, starring Hal Holbrook and Louise Fletcher.
He has a booklet essay in theupcoming release of Messiah of Evil from Radiance.
I haven't even read it yet,it's already a favorite. That's I
love this movie and I love Bill. He has a commentary with our previous
guest, Amanda rey Is on thesecond site release of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre

(01:09:53):
that they recorded at the Texas ChainsawMasaker House, the one that's a restaurant
now. John and I went therea couple of years ago. It's barbecue,
right. Oh no, no,no, that's the gas station down
in bass Drop, right barbecue.There is not good the food at the
restaurant. When we went a coupleof years ago is fine. It was
you know, you're not there forthe food. I'm there because it's right

(01:10:13):
right now. Yeah, anyway,so I could go on forever. But
I do not do nearly as muchresearch as Bill does for his episodes.
If you listen to him on sportingcharacters, you know what I'm talking about.
Suffice to say, a lot ofthe work Bill does is academically conversational.
He is extremely knowledgeable, and sothis will be a great episode and

(01:10:34):
conversation. So Bill Ackerman next episode, Night of Death. This is on
a very weird website called fed upmoviesdot com. I did check. It's
not a weird like, it's notlike, it's not Russian porn or anything
like that. I'll put a linkto that in show notes. I'll also

(01:10:55):
put a link in our discord fornext episode. I did check it.
It's got subtitles and everything. Itworks. I don't know why it's not
on someone didn't just put it onYouTube. But so yeah, Night of
Death next episode. Before we getinto our plugs, we have another former
guest, Josh Hurtado, who willbe in Austin in September and hosting a

(01:11:15):
Weird Wednesday presentation of an Indian film. Yeah, I got my tickets.
He did. Okay, sweet,it's right before Fantastic Fest, right before
Fantastic Fest, which I am notgoing to this year. I'm not either,
okay, unless I'm somebody gives mea badge or something. I definitely
entered a few contents. I didtoo bad. I'm going to comment on
every Instagram giveaway. I don't wantto go. I just want to go

(01:11:38):
to like five movies. I wantto think. No. Yeah, I'm
excited to see Josh again and seethis introductions be super fun. Yeah.
So if you are in Austin,it's selling out quickly if it's not sold
out already, so definitely get aticket. If it is already sold out
and you're in Austin, just keepan eye on it because usually someone will

(01:11:59):
dump tickets like the day of ifthey can't make it, So just keep
an eye out. On September twentiethWednesday, Yes, Wednesday, September twentieth
at Alamo South Lamar. If youare not already, you can follow our
podcast on Instagram, Twitter, andFacebook all at Unsunghores and you can follow
me on Letterboxed, Instagram and Twitterat hex Massacre. You can follow me
on letterboxed Instagram at el Shidy Happysh August. Once again, folks,

(01:12:23):
and we'll see you back next month. Hie. Thanks for listening, bysus
seeing you, by us, seeyou by S show this, show us,

(01:12:45):
show us bus seeing you, bysussee you bysus s you to this
step. Thanks about ourselves, ofourselves, but outselves don't know. Mis

(01:13:30):
a senior, lis a senior,mis seing you free from the skuys getting
on the City of the ten Evasions, guys bavasive guys a basis guys se

(01:13:59):
Let's see. Hey, it's deefby Video. I'm Phil and I'm Graham,

(01:14:40):
saying, welcome to our podcast fullof merry movie mayhem. Ever,
wonder what an Irish kung fu movielooks like. It's called Fatal Deviation and
we covered it. Ever, wonderwhat a movie about a thousand cats would
look like. It's called Night ofa Thousand Cats and we covered it and
it stars Go Stiglitz. Listen todeath by Video to hear us discuss and
dissect some of the weird, justthe wildest and wackiest films ever made.

(01:15:01):
All this and more on Death byVideo