Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: A Chinese Ghost Story
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January 27, 2025
TLDR: Rob and Joe on Weirdhouse Cinema discuss the cult classic 'A Chinese Ghost Story' (1987), covering its supernatural romance storyline, screaming skulls, seductive ghost, and evil tree demon.

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind, hosts Rob Lam and Joe McCormick discuss the cult classic film A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), a unique blend of supernatural romance, comedy, and martial arts that has captivated audiences since its release. This engaging discussion not only highlights key plot points but also delves into the film's cultural significance, major themes, and the standout performances that have contributed to its status as a beloved cult classic.
Overview of A Chinese Ghost Story
A Chinese Ghost Story centers on an impoverished scholar named Ling Choi Sun, played by Leslie Chung, who becomes entwined with a ghost named Susen, portrayed by Joey Wang. The film offers a playful yet haunting take on love, sacrifice, and the struggle against malevolent forces. Here are some of the core elements discussed by Rob and Joe:
- Romantic Horror Comedy: The film combines elements of romance, comedy, and horror, creating a unique narrative that appeals to a wide audience.
- Engaging Plot: It follows Ling's misadventures as he encounters ghostly beings and evil spirits, showcasing his growth from a timid scholar to a courageous hero.
- Cult Classic Status: Despite its initial limited release, the film has gained a significant following in both the East and West, often referenced in discussions about Hong Kong cinema and supernatural narratives.
Key Themes and Concepts
The Struggle Between Good and Evil
The film effectively illustrates the conflict between good and evil through its characters:
- Ling represents hope and compassion, embodying the idea of kindness even in terrifying circumstances.
- Susen, initially trapped in her ghostly form, represents lost love and the challenges of redemption within the confines of her cursed existence.
- The Tree Demon, a malicious entity commanding Susen, epitomizes the darker forces seeking to corrupt purity and life.
Humor in Darkness
The hosts note the film's ability to blend humor with moments of horror, creating a tonal balance that enhances its charm:
- Comedic Genius: Relatable humor emerges in absurd moments, such as Ling's misfortunes and clumsy interactions, which resonate with the audience.
- Cultural Commentary: The film uses humor to critique authority, with characters in positions of power portrayed as comically ineffective or corrupt.
Notable Performances
Leslie Chung as Ling Choi Sun
- Character Development: Leslie Chung brings depth to Ling, showcasing a transition from naivety to bravery as the story unfolds.
- Performance Highlights: His expressive reactions to the supernatural elements add significant comedic value to the film.
Joey Wang as Susen
- Haunting Beauty: Wang’s portrayal balances the sweetness of love with the chilling aspects of her ghostly existence.
- Complex Characterization: Susen's identity as both a seductive spirit and a victim is explored, demonstrating her depth beyond conventional ghost character tropes.
Wuma as Swordsman Yin
- Comic Relief and Action Hero: Wuma's character combines humor and martial prowess, providing exhilarating action scenes alongside witty dialogue.
- Memorable Musical Number: One of the highlights is Yin's unexpected rap that captures the film's quirky essence.
Cultural Impact and Legacy
- Cinematic Influence: A Chinese Ghost Story is based on 17th-century stories by Pu Songling, adapting traditional folklore into an accessible film format.
- Sequels and Adaptations: Its success led to two sequels and a lasting legacy within Hong Kong cinema, influencing films that followed.
- Cult Following: The film's unique blend of genres has allowed it to remain relevant, inspiring discussions in both film studies and pop culture.
Practical Takeaways
Viewing Recommendations
- Watch in Original Language: For the best experience, viewing the film in Cantonese with subtitles is advised, as it preserves the humor and cultural nuances that may be lost in translation.
- Engage with the Genre: Viewers interested in supernatural romance or martial arts films will find A Chinese Ghost Story to be a standout example within the genre.
Final Thoughts
In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe passionately explore the fascinating world of A Chinese Ghost Story, celebrating its blend of romance, comedy, and supernatural themes. Their discussion highlights the film's cultural significance and its enduring appeal, encouraging both old and new fans to revisit this classic gem of Hong Kong cinema. Whether you’re a seasoned viewer or a newcomer, A Chinese Ghost Story promises an entertaining journey filled with love, laughter, and thrills.
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lam. And this is Joe McCormick, and oh boy, we got a good one for you today. This was our episode on a Chinese ghost story. This one was a movie from 1987 that has, oh boy, it has romance.
It has adventure, it has monsters, screaming skulls, all that good stuff. So yeah, I think we will wait a minute. I didn't say when it aired. This was from June 17th, 2022. That's when it was. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lam. And I'm Joe McCormick. So last year around this time, we watched the highly influential Chinese supernatural horror comedy Mr. Vampire from 1985. So we're returning once more to the genre with another important 80s Hong Kong film. This time with romance thrown in amid all the martial arts, spookiness, and comedy, it's 1987s a Chinese ghost story.
This was a great movie. I was surprised how much I love this one and much like the Lorelai's grasp, this is another monster romance movie, except in this one the romance is perhaps not as tragic and doomed as usual. It basically has a happy ending.
Yeah, yeah it does. When we were looking for a film to follow up Mr. Vampire here, I was looking at this and we were also looking at encounters of the spooky kind, which is another big film in this area, ended up moving towards this one after we watched the trailer. There are a number of amazing elements to it, though we may get back to spooky encounters in the future.
Much like Mr. Vampire, this movie also has just a rad butt whipping Taoist priest. But unlike Mr. Vampire, the Taoist priest in this movie has a musical number, and it is a wrap about the Tao. I'm not kidding.
Yeah, I thought you were talking about another scene and exaggerating a bit when you texted me about this because you were watching the second half of the movie before I did. And no, it's as close to a full-on rap as you could possibly expect in an 80s period piece Chinese supernatural romance comic.
And it's the only musical number in the movie. I mean, the movie has songs in it that have lyrics, but they're not sung by the characters. This is the only song, I think, in the entire runtime that a character on screen sings. Aside from one little song that our lead character sort of sings, kind of a whistling in the dark sequences, he's running through the woods and trying to keep himself from being completely terrified by all the wolves and ghosts that are about. I carry the six classics in my heart.
Well, okay, what's the elevator pitch on this one? The elevator pitch is pretty simple. Life is tough when you're an impoverished scholar with impossible dreams and also when you have a ghost for a girlfriend. Ooh, yeah, it's rough. I like how you picked up on direct lyrics from those songs that the play in the background. That's not from the Dao rap. That's from, there's like a recurring sort of lyrical motif about how you must pursue impossible dreams passionately. Yeah.
Now one thing we will drive home here is that the version we watched, which was as of this recording streaming on Amazon Prime, is in Cantonese with subtitles. And the subtitles were at least good enough, but there were some
obvious errors here and there as well as sort of the the traditional thing you might run into a subtitles where you might question whether this was the most elegant translation possible and also you get into the issue of okay what is this comedic line actually translating through most of the time it doesn't matter most of the comedy in this film shines right through the barrier of language
Oh yeah, I found it extremely funny. I think the comedy totally works across culturally, but yeah, so what I would say is that this, the subtitles in this movie seemed wrong in a way that had nothing to do with translation errors. Like there were a lot of errors that looked like the kind you get from scanning in a printed document into digital text where things like lowercase O's and A's being exchanged for one another. So I remember one line in the subtitle said,
Evil will never overcame God. Yeah. I'm curious what process led to this. Could it be? Could somehow there be a scanning of a paper document to create the English subtitles? I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, let's go ahead and hear at least some of the trailer. We probably won't play the entire trailer this time, but it will give you just a taste of the sonic world of this film.
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say.
All right, but of course that can only partially prepare you for the sights and the sequences, because this is a really fun film with a tremendous flair for the fantastic, some great martial arts sequences, some solid slapstick. It has just about everything you could want. So I've read that this movie actually has sort of a cult following among young people in mainland China, even though it was not released in theaters in mainland China when it first came out.
Yeah, yeah, you sent me a paper about this. I was looking at that. And it's interesting. This one, this one's one that definitely pops up in Michael Weldon's books here in the West, Psychotronic Film Guides, where he was a big fan of it and was like, yes, go out and see this film. So it sounds like it's a film that
Maybe didn't get released the way they might have wanted to release it initially in mainland China, but subsequently the seeds grew in both the east and the west with people coming to appreciate all the things this film has to offer.
I think there's a lot about it that's more subtle than you might expect. This movie is tonally weird, but in a very nice way. It walks this strange boundary between being earnest almost to the point of being sappy, but also being very ironic and making a mockery of authority and tradition at the same time.
Yeah, it is a nice balance. There's definitely slapstick, and there are definitely some outrageous comedic performances sprinkled here and there. But it's done in a way where the parts that are serious, the parts that are romantic, they're allowed room to breathe and feel authentic.
Yeah, this is, this is not a movie that is sucking up to the powerful. It's like, it's full of bosses, policemen, magistrates, basically anybody in a position of authority in this movie is viciously mocked. Yeah, so you can see how it would appeal to the young people. And we'll get into some of the examples of this in a bit, because yeah, they're, they're, they're numerous terrible mortal authorities. And, you know, I guess the, the, the supernatural authorities are pretty corrupt as well.
All right, let's talk about some of the people involved in this because it does have some interesting connections. And it is a pretty big film. A lot of the people involved in this were names at the time or certainly went on to become big names in Hong Kong cinema and or international cinema.
So, first of all, let's start with the director. This is Soutong Ching, born 1953. Also one of the martial arts directors on the film, Hong Kong action choreographer, actor, film director, and producer, probably best known for this film, but he also directed such movies as 1986's Witch from Nepal, a supernatural film starring Chaoyeon Fat, 1993's The Mad Monk starring Stephen Chow,
1998's An Empress and the Warriors starring Donnie Yin and 2011's The Sorcerer and the White Snake starring Jet Li. So clearly, he's worked with some of the biggest names in Chinese cinema at different points in their career. Wait, I thought I saw maybe did Sootong Ching also do Hero, the Jet Li movie? I think he was an action coordinator on that one, yeah.
Because the OIC. Yeah, because there are a number of credits that he has that are pretty impressive in which he didn't direct them, but he was involved in choreographing the martial arts. Because he's a guy, his father was actually a Shaw Brothers studio director. And so he kind of came up in the system, I understand.
Uh, so yeah, he, he even has just stunt directing credits are pretty, uh, pretty interesting. So you have 2002's hero and according to IMDB, he was an uncredited stunt coordinator on 2002 spider man, the Sam Raimi film. Um, I'm not sure if IMDB is 100% accurate on that count though. You're right. I, I just double checked. He did not direct hero. He did, uh, action choreography and also for, uh, also did action choreography for house of flying daggers.
Oh yeah, that's a solid one too. Big name, this guy. He has at least one American film though, or film with a notable American presence, and that is 2003's, Belly of the Bee starring Steven Seagal. It almost makes me want to scream, imagining someone of the talents of Su-Tung-Ching being wasted on a vehicle for Steven Seagal.
Yeah, you pulled up a clip of this, um, the, an action sequence from this film, which I mean, as far as action sequence goes is not bad, but it's not great, but there's the Steven Segal presence is almost too distracting because it's, uh, in this film, I think he's playing, uh, this, the basic, the basic Steven Segal character where he's, he's a CIA agent, but he's also a Buddhist master.
And he's really great with martial arts also guns. I like that's that's most Steven Seagal roles. If not all of them He's ex black ops. I'm retired now And there's a back for one more job
There's an IMDB trivia piece about that film, Belly of the Beast, which says that basically they shot everything without Steven Seagal. And then we're just going to bring him in at the very end to do his shots, a lot of close up shots and all that sort of thing, which I guess you could interpret one of two ways, right? Either A, Steven Seagal has a busy schedule or is expensive. You're only going to have him for a short amount of time.
I know sometimes it's been said that he doesn't actually work very long during a given shoot. So they're just being economic about the whole thing. Or perhaps there was a certain reputation in place, and they thought, well, we need to be prepared to use as little Stephen Seagal as necessary. And according to this bit of IMDB trivia, if it is accurate, is he showed up this last day. Everything else has been shot. They just need to shoot some scenes so that they can insert Seagal
in, you know, the rest of the stuff is done with stunt doubles. But he had ideas about how things needed to be shot that, of course, would just wreck everything else. So Ching says, okay, that's fine. You can shoot it yourself. We'll leave. And we can kind of like a standoff in a studio, put enough pressure on him that he was like, okay, I'll go along with this with this. And so the film was actually finished.
That's a heck of a bluff. You deal with somebody who you know is an egomaniac, but it's also lazy. And so you're hoping the latter will win out over the former. But to be clear, I have not seen Belly of the Beast in its entirety. So, I don't know, if you have out there, if any of you were Steven Seagal's connoisseurs, feel free to correct us on the quality of this motion picture.
You know, my feeling is, Steven Seagal is, you know, you always know what you're getting with that. So really the quality of one of his movies has to do with how Zany is whoever they cast as the main villain. And so like you can really achieve a certain peaks of greatness in like under siege to dark territory, just because because Eric Bogosian is going crazy on the computer.
Yeah, I remember enjoying that one way back in the day when I saw it on BHS or something. It's still pretty hilarious. All right. Well, let's get into the writing on this one. This is this is pretty interesting. First of all, the screenplay was written by Kai Chi Yun dates, unknown, or at least I wasn't able to pull him up, but he was seemingly active 83 through 2020. So may still be active screenwriter who went on to work.
1994's The Legend of Drunken Master in 1991's Once Upon a Time in China, and also 2020's The Enchanting Phantom, which seems to feature, like this film, a scholar who falls in love with a ghost. As we'll discuss, there have been multiple adaptations of the source material here.
Oh, right. So yeah, I wasn't aware of this when I was first looking at the movie, but you told me this is based on a story by Pusong Ling from the original, the Tales from a Chinese studio. It is, yeah. So Pusong Ling, who we've discussed in the show before, both I think Weird House and Stuff to Blow Your Mind, was a Qing Dynasty writer
the 1640 through 1715, and he mostly worked as a tutor during his own lifetime. But along the way, he collected and wrote down a number of weird stories that he heard and he picked up. And a lot of these stories that were later published after his death.
as strange stories or strange tales from a Chinese studio in 1740. A lot of them have that air to them where he'll be writing and he'll say, so and so told me this tale. I heard this tale from such and such. So and so swore that this was the truth and the like.
Every time I've read one of these stories, I find it very exciting because they don't usually conform to the standard narrative structure that you expect from Western fairy tales. They're just full of surprises, at least to me. I don't know if you are more familiar with Chinese traditional stories if the structures are more predictable, but at least to me, everyone's just full of surprises.
Yeah, they vary tremendously. Some of them are scary. Some of them are funny. Some of them are both. There are at least a few. They're a little bit bobby. There are some that are essentially like, hey, this weird thing happened. How about that?
That's the whole story. They just abruptly end. There's one where there's this old guy that would travel around, and he had these mice in his backpack. I think they were mice. They would come out and basically do a flea circus. They would do a little circus and perform, and then he would carry on his way. There's no story. It's just a small tale of wonder or an account of something marvelous that was experienced or seen.
Now from what I gather the main elements of the Pusan Ling story are carried over into the movie, but it's probably worth discussing the differences because from what I understand, the Pusan Ling story is not quite as sweet as the movie is.
It's, well, there's, I guess there's less room for sweetness in it, but it's not an unsweet. Well, I just remember something about the scholars like already married when he meets the ghost woman and he has to wait for his wife to die or something. Yeah, well, but he's very polite about it. So yeah, the original story is sometimes titled The Magic Sword or The Magic Sword and The Magic Bag. That's the title in the, the penguin edition of Strange Tales, which is definitely worth picking up and has some nice notes on it.
But the basic bones of the movie are present in that story. A traveling scholar is too poor to stay in town, so he goes out to an old temple to sleep. And he encounters both a magical swordsman and a ghost who reveals that she haunts the temple due to improper burial and has been forced to do the bidding of a Yaksha demon that's sort of like a corrupt, in this case, a corrupt nature spirit, a malevolent nature spirit.
though I don't think all yachshas are necessarily malevolent. The magic sword in question is a miniature sword that gives the swordsman his power and he also has a bag, the magic bag, from the title.
which he gives to the scholar, and we later find out that this was the swordsman's head bag. And so, yeah, he ends up falling in love with this ghost woman. He digs up her grave, takes her remains home to his own home, buries them there, and as a way of thanking him, she says, well, why don't I be a servant here?
And he's like, yes, that would be great. So she's a servant. Then eventually his wife dies of consumption, or it's translated as consumption in the version I read. And at that point, he marries her. They have a child. He also gets a concubine and has a child through the concubine.
These are the details that are given, but then she also has another child. So it's essentially a happy ending, especially as far as tales about marrying a spirit or a fox spirit or a ghost or something. A lot of times there's a twist at the end there to get you. So as far as those sorts of stories go, I'd say it's a happy ending. Yeah, why don't you take that ribbon off your neck, kind of twists? Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, it's a fun story. Sometimes you'll think on IMDB in some places, you'll see it credited as a novel. It's not a novel. It's like a 10-minute read of that. Well, I should go read it. I have enjoyed literally every Puss on Link story I've read. Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm also a lotion, one of the new hosts of the long-running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.
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All right, let's get into the cast a little bit. At the top of this, playing our impoverished scholar with Impossible Dreams, it's Leslie Chung playing the scholar Ling Choi Sun.
So Leslie Chung was born 1956, died in 2003. He was a huge star of music and was apparently a kanto pop pioneer. So that's like Chinese Hong Kong pop music of the time. I believe his first album came out in 1978 and he started appearing in films that same year.
He was especially big in the 80s, noted for his androgynous style. After immigrating to Canada in the 1990s, he famously came out as bisexual in a time magazine interview, which was quite a move at the time, especially within the Chinese film industry.
Now, this is a fun fact. He chose the Leslie moniker. You'll often see this, especially with Hong Kong actors. You know, they'll choose sort of a Western first name. He chose Leslie as a tribute to the British actor, Leslie Howard, who's probably best remembered in general for being the star of such films as 1938's Pygmalion for appearing in Gone with the Wind. But I imagine you and I probably know him best from the, I think, in my opinion, pretty excellent 1936 film, The Petrified Forest.
Oh, who was he in that? He's the lead. Well, he's actually a traveling scholar in that. Oh, OK. Leslie Howard is the one that he's been traveling across. He's the British character. Yeah, OK. I thought I'd like to see the Pacific Ocean, perhaps. Yeah, that one. Yeah. So he's the star opposite Betty Davis. OK, as soon as you said that, it makes it. I can hear his voice. Yeah. But this is also the guy who played like Ashley Wilkes and gone with the wind and on all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah. It kind of classic looking dry, handsome dude. Yeah. Now, Leslie Chung sadly took his own life in 2003, and the 2011 remake of a Chinese ghost story was dedicated to his memory. But he left behind a pretty extensive filmography, including days of being wild, ashes of time and nomad, a lot of serious dramas.
So this one, I'm not an expert on his filmography, but I get the feeling like this is kind of more of a standout in that it's an action comedy because it seems like most of the films he's really well known for are serious dramas, including two key Chinese LGBTQ films of the era, Farewell My Concubine, and 1997's Happy Together. His co-star in that film was Tony Long, another huge name in Chinese cinema,
who many of you may know from In the Mood for Love, Internal Affairs, the Grandmaster, and most recently, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, in which he played the title character's father, which is a really great role in that movie, in my opinion, great Marvel movie. Perhaps my favorite Marvel movie that's come out.
Well, I think Leslie Chung is excellent in this movie, and I can see that he wouldn't have normally been in action or horror-related movies, because he is the hero of this film, but he's not an action hero. He doesn't do a lot of physical fighting. He really only has a few moments of physical heroism. Mostly, he's a hero by being a sort of meek nerd who finds courage by falling in love.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, you're not going to see him do huge action sequences. We have other characters to do those scenes. Yes. All right. Well, let's let's mention his romantic interest, our Lady Ghost. This is the character Sussan played by Joey Wang, born 1967. She's great too. I'd say the whole main cast, the three main characters of this movie, all three are fantastic.
Yeah, and I think one of the great things about Joey Wang in this is that you might expect a character like this who, again, is a ghost woman in a Chinese period piece, essentially. You could expect this to be very one note, very passive in many ways. And we do see some other examples of female ghosts that very much match that template. But in this, she's delightful and funny. She's being ghostly and haunting and sort of distant as needed.
Throughout it, you can see the charisma shining through. Oh, yeah. And the scenes where she's supposed to be scary, she is pretty creepy. Yeah. So she was active in film from 1983 through 2004, probably best known for this film, but she was also in two of its sequels. Maybe these were the only two sequels. There was Chinese Ghost Story 2 and 3. She was in God of Gamblers, which I'll mention again in a minute, and also various supernatural films, including The Beheaded 1000,
in 1992's The Painted Skin, which is also based on a story recorded by Pooh Salne. So you mentioned the Chinese ghost story has two sequels at least. Do you know anything about these or are they supposed to be good? I know that some of the same characters come back, if not all of the same characters like it. Yeah.
So beyond that, I'm not sure. But I think that at least the first sequel is also streaming on Prime, if not the third one as well. Same director, I believe as well. Yeah. All right, now it's time for to discuss our swordsman. Swordsman Yin, played by Wuma, who lived 1942 through 2014.
This is our irreverent, wise-cracking, tough, Taoist priest. Yeah. Yeah, he's amazing. The actor here, Ma, he appeared in Writing Wrongs, The Dead and The Deadly, Iron Monkey 2, Once Upon a Time in China. He was also in at least the first sequel, Chinese Ghost Story 2. And this is fun. He was the rice seller in Mr. Vampire. Do you remember this role?
Yes, there's a scene in Mr. Vampire where to repel the evil spirits, they have to use glutinous rice and apparently other types of rice will not do. So they're going to get the sticky rice and the rice seller corruptly is trying to mix in some plain rice with the sticky rice to pull one over on the kid they send to buy the stuff. And I think this has disastrous consequences.
This is fun because it reminds me of a line that swordsman yin has later on in the film where he's getting very emotional about the fact that in the spirit world, everything's black and white, you know exactly what side they stand on. But in the human realm, everything's complex, everything's potentially corrupted. So even though when you're dealing with the spirit world, you know exactly what sort of rice you need.
You know which side of ordering chaos everyone stands on. But the human realm, who knows? The rice seller might give you what you're paying for, or he might be cheating you. This is a great point and something I wanted to come back to. I would say this seems to be a major theme of the movie, like the part where
So, swordsman yin gives this speech about how he was he wants a magistrate. They said he was like a judge or a magistrate. Yeah, he was a judge or something. Yeah. And so he was a judge, but he said he became sick of that job because there was all this ambiguity and people were always lying and you could never know what's true. So instead he gave that up to go kill ghosts because there you always know what's right and wrong. You never have to wonder if you did the right thing.
No, I don't know if that's something that you can really live by because, of course, you know, we do have to make judgments all the time in situations where the facts are ambiguous. But it's interesting that this is expressed and sort of related to a couple of other things that come up in the movie, like the questions about, you know, what is scarier mortals or ghosts? This comes up a few times.
I think there's some kind of thread running through the movie about how I don't know, maybe the most treachery or danger is not always in the place you would expect it to be.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, Wuma, I should also note, he has numerous other roles. I think he has something like 294 acting credits and IMDB. So I'm probably missing something else that stands out. But he also has 43 directorial credits, including the Chinese ghostbuster and my cousin, the ghost. So I guess it goes for any film scene that once you've been a part of a successful genre film, that genre or subgenre kind of becomes a part of you, at least professionally speaking.
You know those stories about certain big Hollywood celebrities who have their own script doctors or agents who go through any script to make sure that it has lines that are tailored to their personality. I imagine that Wuma has got to have a situation like that where anytime he takes a role, they got to wrap about the Dow in there. Because once you've done that, you can't go back. It's got to be what people are looking for every time. Exactly.
Now, those are the three main actors in the film, but there are some other performances of note. I'm going to mention them a little more briefly, but we have Y Lam playing swordsman Howl, dates unknown, but this guy, I believe, is still active. This is a brash swordsman that's encountered early in the picture. Fun role. This guy's been in a lot of stuff over the years, including 1983's The Boxer's Omen. This is a Shaw Brothers picture that's often held up as a prime example of
of a psychotronic film. It has a lot of really psychedelic imagery in it. He's fun in this stern character while he lasts. He's on the original Chinese poster, so I guess he's worth mentioning here, though he doesn't really factor into the plot all that much. He dies, I think, 15 minutes into the movie, but he's very cool looking. You got to put it on the poster.
We also have Suming Lau, born 1931, who plays The Tree Demon, one of our main antagonists. He was also in a bunch of films, including other Chinese ghost story movies. I think of this in the same character role, as well as a couple of big Jackie Chan movies. He was in The Legend of Drunken Master and The Medallion.
uh... then this this last acting credit i'm gonna mention is just it's a small outrageously over the top role a crooked magistrate crooked judge uh... doesn't have a name uh... but just just so over the top played by this actor jing long born nineteen fifty five it's worth calling out because jing long himself is a huge name in hong kong cinema with over a hundred producing and directing credits across multiple genres including the gambling genre which
I've read is one of his specialty. So he's responsible for that film, God of Gamblers, that I mentioned earlier. And he was apparently especially a big deal, big money maker in the 1990s. He is funny in this, but it's not dry humor. He's like Jim carrying it up, full body, just like wet, wet acting. And basically every line in his scene is him demanding a bribe from someone.
Yeah, it's one of these roles where, yeah, it's just how, how over the top and how corrupt could we have a betrayal of a local magistrate? And let's just have him say all the quiet, quiet things out loud, just blatantly talking about being lazy and wishing that we could just get a bribe and finish this early. It's fun, but it is. It's the handiest part of the film. It's like, should I have you beaten and then demand a bribe or should I demand a bribe and then have you beaten? Exactly.
All right and finally the music on this one it's credited to Romeo Diaz and James Wong. James Wong lived 1940 through 2004 and he's a particular note here because not only did he score a bunch of films he also was a cantopop lyricist and songwriter and he acted in a bunch of films including Iron Monkey.
The music in this, I actually quite enjoyed, I would have to say, there are maybe a few cheesy parts here and there, but it has kind of this blending of a little bit of synth, but also traditional music to invoke a dramatic historical Chinese cinema feel. Yeah, I don't know what the term for this is. This might be technically like a subgenre of kanto pop, but it's a type of Chinese popular music that has kind of
Uh, like a lyrical ballad quality, uh, very, very broad, uh, themes about love and dreams and stuff and then like a flute in the background. Yeah. Uh, if there any kanto pop fans out there, feel free to write in. We'd love to hear your thoughts on these names that we've referenced regarding kanto pop. Please.
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All right. Well, shall we get into the plot of this one a bit? All right. Well, so this movie begins with our hero, a good-natured young scholar and debt collector. And I'm a little curious about the historical notes. Like, is it common for a young scholar to also be a debt collector? Or is that a strange pairing? I wasn't sure.
But this is master Ling choice on. And I would, I think I already said this, but I would describe Ling as in many ways kind of your classic film nerd hero. He is initially timid. He's meek, frail, unlucky, but he's also kind-hearted. And through falling in love, he discovers an inner courage that he never knew he possessed before. And that's sort of the arc of his heroism, but he acquires friends along the way who will sort of compliment his abilities when they
when they face the big demons at the end.
fictional tales about lonely scholars being seduced by invisible lovers and so forth. So anyway, at the outside of the story, Master Ling is roaming through the countryside. He's on a journey. He seems to be headed for a particular town on a mission to collect debts for his boss. I've also seen him described in some sources as a tax collector, though the movie makes it seem more like he's
supposed to be working from a ledger of private debts. Maybe there's some overlap of these things within the historical setting, I'm not sure.
Yeah, like there's that one scene where, I guess we'll probably describe it in a bit here, where something happens to the tax ledger and the individual he's visiting is like, oh, why don't owe you anything now then? Get out of here. And granted, this is a broad comedy. But one wonders if that is the response you would have towards the state debt versus private debt at this time.
Right. So anyway, we watch young master Ling, he's sort of traveling around the forests and the byways, and the movie's weird sense of humor immediately comes through, even in this opening montage, because there's a part where we see Ling sit down to eat lunch, I think, and when he tries to bite into something, is this a piece of bread, it's some kind of food, it might be a roll or something?
I'm guessing yeah, and he bites into it and it's too hard for his teeth to pierce like he almost cracks a tooth on it
and then he bashes the bread against a rock, and the rock cracks in half, and then he kicks the bread in frustration, and it punches a hole in his shoe, and we see his toe poking out. All of this stuff here, it has this kind of almost silent era, like Buster Keaton, or Charlie Chaplin kind of vibe to it. Totally, yeah, like modern times with the kids. Oh, and the whole time there is this sentimental song playing about how you must pursue beautiful and possible dreams.
though clearly he's just having problems with this mundane aspirations like can i have shoes without holes in them can i have an umbrella that's not already shredded this sort of thing
Yeah, he's collecting debts in rural townships, his impossible dream. I don't think so. But Ling, he gets lost because he reads a sign that's like, the town is three miles south. But then he's like, which way is south? And his compass needle is just spinning wildly all over the place. And he gets caught in a storm and he tries to open his umbrella and it's driven with holes. So he's just having a bad, bad day.
and eventually take shelter under an abandoned pavilion and let's see at this point suddenly this is a swordsman runs up. You hear somebody saying don't run away and i think this is the first instance of a theme repeated for comedy throughout the movie which is people shouting don't run or don't go.
which is later, well, we can save the Keystone cops thing until we get to the town, but yeah, it'll be a common thing that the police respond to once we get into town.
And so if there's a swordsman chasing down a bunch of thieves and he chases them to right in front of the little hut where Master Ling is hanging out and he and then Master Ling just stands there so he catches them he beats them up and then the last thief there says to the swordsman please sir forgive us I'll return your money to you and Ling is just standing there frozen in fear watching the swordsman execute the thieves who stole from him and
Yeah, their heads toppling through the air. It's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, heads are rolling. And then when the swordsman slashes the very last guy, it squirts blood directly into Ling's mouth. Yeah. He's like, he's just, yeah, just horrified.
So he's standing there terrified and and then there's a moment where the swordsman seems to take pity on laying he tosses him a bun soft bun this time. And he kind of makes this face that i took a screen grab of free to see rob because the swordsman face here is really good it's it's almost like it could be the new robert redford nodding me.
Yeah, yeah, I can see it. Yeah, I mean, this guy has made a fabulous and violent introduction. He looks really cool. I have to say, he's dressed all in black with some gold and a little bit of red, so he looks fierce. And now he's just sitting down casually having a bun, and he's like, hey, you're all right. Here, have a bun, too. He has a profound jaw. It's possible because he has part of a bun in his mouth in this shot.
But as soon as the swordsman walks away, Ling spits out his bun all over the place and he scrambles in fear and gets stuck in the mud as he's strangively. But next we come to Ling's arrival in town and there are a number of things to discuss here because he'll return to town several times and
and there are these running jokes. I think one is sort of the keystone cops. So there are police or soldiers in town who are, they are trying to catch criminals. I think because there are bounties for criminals.
But what this turns into is anytime they hear somebody say, like, don't go or don't run or don't leave, they immediately start chasing and just grabbing people because they say anytime someone says, don't go, that's because they're saying it to a thief who has stolen something.
Yeah, and then here they come running in. They're like, who said that? Who said that? They're chasing after them. And so one of the things that happens is these, uh, these incompetent policemen like grab poor, poor Ling and they, they like shove him up against a wall and then they're looking at all of these, uh, drawings of criminals on wanted posters. And they're like, uh, he's not any of them, uh, get rid of him. But as they shove him up against a wall, they press him against the, the front of a stall of
I'm not sure what this profession would be, like an undertaker or a funeral arts master. Anyway, somehow Ling gets pressed against a wall covered in joss paper or money for the dead, some kind of funerary printed material.
Yeah, paper talismans, ceiling spells, that sort of thing. These, of course, were also featured in, or very similar talismans were featured in Mr. Vampire as being something that you could use to sort of deactivate a vampire, to deactivate a junky. Right, yeah, you'd put the kind of like yellow receipt on their forehead and then they would power down.
But yeah, he's been pressed up against them. So initially he has them stuck to his back. And later on, once they've been peeled away, they've still stained the text onto the back of his shirt. So his back now has warding magic power that he's completely unaware of. Yeah.
But like you mentioned earlier, when he goes to collect his debts, oh, so he shows up like a tavern and he's talking to the tavern owner and he's like, hey, you know, it's time to pay up. And the tavern owner says, why a different debt collector every time? And Ling is like, ah, the last one was murdered. And then the by the way, this movie is just it takes place in a world where everybody is constantly getting murdered, like basically half the characters that are encountered or mentioned at some point are murdered.
Yeah. It's a lawless land. So the tavern owner then says to Ling, he says, well, since you're going to be murdered anyway, why don't you do me a favor and not collect the debt? And Ling's like, don't make jokes. But then when he opens up his account books, they're ruined because they got soaked, I think, in the rain or maybe when he got stuck in the mud. Somehow they're all wet.
And now the records are destroyed. And when the tavern owner discovers this, he is overjoyed. He's like, as there's no record in the accounts, that means I don't owe any money, which Ling has no comeback to this. He's just like, oh, man, yeah, that's, I've got nothing. That's how fight club ended, right? Think about that. That's good.
Um, so the poor scholar, he gets thrown out on the street. He can't do his debt collection. He has no money and not a friend in this world. So what's he going to do? Well, he starts asking around. Is there anywhere I can sleep for free tonight? And one of the locals tells him, yeah, there's only one place around here where you can have free shelter. And that is the land yuk temple.
And as soon as that word is uttered, as soon as that name is uttered, all the locals are like, oh, and they all turn and lean in. They're telling them, you're like, yeah, go through the woods with the killer wolves until you see a creepy-looking temple, and that'll be where you should sleep.
So at this point in the film, and I have to say it's very well paced, like there's not really a dull moment in the entire film, but at this point you know you're after the races, because he's gonna have to travel through haunted woods, get to inevitably haunted temple, and it's just gonna be fireworks from there on out. So he goes through the haunted woods, he gets ministered by wolves with yellow eyes, and then when he arrives at the temple, he happens to stumble into the middle of a brutal fight between two master swordsmen.
Now is one of them the guy who got the blood in Ling's mouth earlier? Yes, one of them is the strong jawed bun eating swordsman from earlier. The other one is a new character who will turn out to be our dallas superstar swordsman slash sorcerer swordsman yin. Right swordsman yin chick hah.
who is again also a former lawman, but this is an awesome fight scene. It's like dark and foggy and windy, and they're like flying around and flipping in and out of buildings and onto balconies. And at one point, it seems pretty evenly matched, but then at one point, the swordsman we saw earlier sort of loses track of where the new guy is, and then the new guy explodes out of a wall at him and seems to get the better of him.
Oh, but right when he does this, they're both standing, they're holding their swords out, and then right between them is Master Lang, like his head is between their two sword tips. And the new swordsman, swordsman Yin says, Brother Ha Ha, you've been fighting me for seven years and lost for seven years.
and then we learn in their exchange that swordsman yin has been living for six months at the land yuk temple and they taunt each other but swordsman yin tells brother ha-ha that by being overly concerned with worldly titles with fame and glory as a swordsman he actually let his skills go to seed and that is why he is always beaten he's too concerned with being seen as the best rather than actually being the best and he's too hot-tempered
So they both got their swords pointed at each other. Master Ling's throat is right between them. And then Master Ling is like, hey, why not be nice to each other? I think it really says that. And then he says, you have to know that the universe is infinite and true love lasts forever.
So he's got a good heart. And eventually I think the other swordsman gets so annoyed that he just leaves and Ling is accidentally he's like standing on the swordsman's cloak as he's leaving and it rips part of it off. He tries to hand it to him and the swordsman just yells at Ling. He says, go love it.
So that guy, Brother Ha Ha splits swordsman Yin, Warren's master Ling, not to stay at the temple. But he warns him in a bunch of kind of rebulled ways. Like he says, if a tiger appears, you'll probably want to hide in my trousers. At one point, Ling's like, why do you keep yelling at me? And he says, it's because I have bad breath and I want you to go away. Yeah, that's a great line too.
But Ling doesn't listen. He has nowhere else to go. And so he picks a room in the temple to put down his things. Now, this goes into a sequence that is, I guess, it's followed up on it multiple points, but this is master laying in the bark zombies. And I loved this whole thing. Rob, do you want to describe what's going on here?
Yeah, so we start getting these shots of what seems to be the attic of the temple or part of the temple complex here, and it has these desiccated corpses up there, you know, perhaps past victims, because I believe that the film opens up even with a sequence where somebody is attacked.
whilst being loved up and on grounds that look like this temple. And so eventually we see these remains start to move around. And so yeah, they are partially rendered with stop motion effects that definitely have a 90s tool video vibe to them. You know, like it's
It's not quite, you know, Harryhausen level, but it still looks really cool. And I loved every bit of it. Later on, they're also played, they created via puppetry and also costumes. And at times, legitimately creepy, but it's a great, there's a great thing about this sequence is that Ling is completely unaware of them.
They start off in the attic, they end up falling through into the basement. At one point, Ling partially falls through the basement, and his rear end is down there, and they're trying to grab his butt, and they tear off part of his clothing. And then he winds up in the basement later on, and they're creeping up on him. You think they're going to get him, but then he opens some shutters, and the sunlight just melts them away, and he never knows they were there at all.
Yeah, it's very much the baby Herman cartoon at the beginning of Roger Rabbit. He's bumbling about and constantly in peril, but just evading them by accident.
Yeah, so it's really fun. And again, the bark zombies look incredible. I thought they were a lot of fun. Excellent bark zombies. But meanwhile, while he's doing all that, we learn about something that's going on at this temple, the plot of the seductive ghost ladies. So the forest around this temple is swarming with these beautiful ghost ladies, who one of our main characters will be one of them.
That seduce men and then suck out their life force and turn them into these screaming husks. And this happens to the other swordsmen, the brother Ha-hao. He's like made a campfire and then a beautiful woman like shows up and she's like, oh, hey, and they start kissing. Oh, but she unfortunately sucks out his life force and leaves him a shriveled dry, dry corpse.
When I watched this part with Rachel, she said that oo, she, she diatomaceous earth dim.
Yeah, in the original story by Poisson Ling, the ghost woman will do one of two things. Either she will come up to you and ask if you want to make love. And then when you do so, she will eventually poke a hole into your heel, I believe, with some sort of a spike so that your essence can be drained out of the hole. Or if you say, no, thank you to the lovemaking, she'll offer you what seems to be like a golden coin.
And if you accept that, then you'll be overcome by the magic as well. So like one of the two vices will get you. It's a great time to eschew lust and greed in favor of gluttony. Oh, but we do see some like magical implements of this kind in the scene because like in the scene where the ghost woman is seducing the swordsman, we see that she has a sort of a magical ankle bracelet on. It seems to have charms hanging off of it. And then also when swordsman Ha Ha
is lying there, shriveled. He is discovered by swordsman Yin, who's like, oh, look what they did to you. But then he wakes up as a corpse and starts attacking him. And swordsman Yin is like, oh, even in death, you attack me again. And so he has to pull out a holy needle and plunge the needle into the corpse's eye. And that shuts him down. These needles frequently are used against unholy spirits.
Yeah, I love swordsman yin's arsenal here because of course he has his sword, his magic sword. But yeah, he has these needles that can also be thrown as projectiles. And I understand basically throwing implements like this are used in different martial arts. But not as effectively, clearly a swordsman yin is using them here. He also has several magical spells that he uses. He's able to, he does this wonderful bit later on where
He cuts into his palm, does some sort of a symbol there, and then is able to shoot out essentially like magic missiles and fireballs and the like, but in a way that is super cool, especially within the confines of a martial arts sequence.
He also has a Sanskrit phrase that he says that's the opening line of a book, like a holy Sanskrit book. Though it's interesting because there's a scene later in the movie where he's finally, he's sort of teaming up with the scholar and he's like, if you need to save yourself, say a line from this book and the scholar's like, but I can't read Sanskrit. And he says, well, just open your heart to the Buddha and the Buddha will tell you what to say.
Yeah, yeah, just be relaxed and and you'll be able to do it and also ring this belt like you basically hands up the whole plot ends up being like I need to get this this big bad that's responsible for all this I need to get these ghosts you're gonna be the bait but that's later on so before we get there we have to actually get the love story which is so masterling Being afraid out in the forest eventually encounters
the ghost woman nips us in and susan is a vampire ghost so she's she's not just like holy innocent she is draining people's energy she's seducing you know hapless dudes in the forest they end up turned into a bark zombie it's no good. And it seems like she's going to do the same thing to link when they first meet.
But Ling ultimately just turns out to be too nice a guy. Did you read it that way also? He's like so sweet to her that she can't really do it.
Yeah, it's kind of a fun twist from the original, because in the original story, she basically is like, hey, do you want to make love? And he's like, no, I would never. And she's like, well, do you want this gold coin? And he's like, I'm not taking that kind of money from someone hanging out in the temple ruins. And she's like, OK. But in this one, part of it is that he's moral and of good moral fiber. But the other part, yeah, he's just a sweet guy. And as she is not
herself completely a creature of evil. Like she herself is, uh, insorceled by another force that we'll discuss here. Like part of her, like recognizes that. And so we do have room for like this legitimate, believable love story to, to, to blossom here.
I think it is funny, one of the things that first indicates to her how kind he is, is that he says to her, he's like, wow, you don't look so good. Do you need to go to a doctor? I think we're heard of the fact that she's pale because she's dead. Yeah, it's like you're really pale and he's talking about her skin being cold and all this. We need to get you some medical attention. Yeah, the script really feels punched out. Like they really got in a lot of comedic jabs here in sequences like this.
Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvylosian, one of the new hosts of the long-running podcast TechStuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued. And I'm Cara Price, the other new host. And I'm ready to adopt early and often.
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The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and better than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect podcast network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffins. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the wife said it was OK. Problem.
My oldest daughter, her first day of the ninth grade, and I called to ask how it was going. She was like, oh, dad, all I was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my first day of high school. And slum flower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moist job between my legs and a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my god, it's go time. You actually sent it?
Listen to the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect podcast network. The iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Hey y'all, this is Reed from the God's Country podcast. We had the one and only Bobby Bones in the studio this week, and we cover everything from his upbringing to his outdoor experiences with the stepdad Arkansas Keith to the state of country music. We may even end the episode with a little jam session led by Bobby himself.
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But of course, at first, I think when when you send likes master Ling, you know, she understands it as like a love that cannot be, right? She's not like, oh, stay here and be with me forever. She's like, oh, you know, this is bad for him.
Yeah, and so a lot of it ends up being a situation where she's like, look, you don't need to be here when my master shows up, when the others come. You need to get out of here. You need to leave these grounds. You're a good dude. You don't need to be here. But she doesn't seem to think that she has any kind of a future with him.
Now we should be clear, though, that when Ling first meets her, he has no idea she's a ghost. He doesn't understand. He's not picking up on the clues. Yes. This is something he has to be convinced of. I think swordsman Yin tells him, he's like, no, no, no. Everybody at this temple is a ghost, except me. They're all just ghosts.
Yeah, yeah, because there's a scene where one of the other ghosts gets cut in half by Master Yin, and he's like, you killed that woman, right? I mean, that's the long and short of it. And he's like, no, no, that was a ghost. I didn't kill anybody. So eventually he learns the whole plot, and we do too. So what is the whole magical hierarchy here? What's the org chart for the ghosts and demons at this temple?
So basically we have this malicious nature spirit, this tree demon or this Yaksa demon as it's described in the original story. Is this the figure they're calling the old Dame? Yes, yeah, which is this
You know, this kind of royally dressed individual who shows up and they kind of speak simultaneously with like a like a gravelly masculine voice, but also a feminine voice. They're kind of one superimposed over the other.
And this character is ordering around both Suzanne, our ghost love interest, but also some other female ghosts that are being used as agents of seduction by this demon. So the demon's the one harvesting life energies and life forces
but he's using these ghosts to do it, or at least to lure them in to get them in a position to where the tree demon can creep up on them in vine or tongue form as we later find out as the case and sap their life for us.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of creepy tree demon morphology later on, especially when the all tongue emerges. But yeah, so we learn a lot of this in a great sort of comedy scene where Master Ling is visiting to sin when like the boss shows up and he has to hide underneath the water in a wash basin.
while while the while the demon is there and while the other ghosts are there and they're all like talking about how that susan has been pledged in marriage to this horrible monster the monster of black mountain and i guess their marriage is coming up soon it's like a week away or something and so she's just trying to get him out of there so they don't catch laying in there and kill him and there's a bunch of a bunch of this is played for comedy.
Yeah. And also for the romantic angle, it's like, oh, we're both hiding in the same place at the same time. And we're almost kissing that sort of thing. Well, she does kiss him. At one point, she like hides him by leaning into the wash base and then kisses him under the water. And he's like, wow, geez. Yeah, that's a key scene that is that we revisit later on with like a musical motif. Yeah.
So she is falling hard for this lonely scholar mortal. And he is falling hard for this female ghost, even though he doesn't know she's a ghost at this point. Right. But he eventually discovers basically what's going on. There are a bunch of different things. Well, he doesn't discover it at this point, I think. But I remember there's one point where I think he does some kind of harm to her by accidentally showing her his back, which is where all of the warding magic was printed.
Yeah, yeah, which she recoils from, you know, because these are holy scriptures and she cannot look upon them.
But there's also a conflict because he's been kind of friendly-ish with swordsman Yin. And swordsman Yin, he's like, no, no, no, ghosts are to be beheaded and destroyed. And this lady is no good. But then Ling also becomes convinced that swordsman Yin is a murderer. So he's getting bounced back and forth between alliances. And at one point,
he ends up taking before a magistrate in this really funny scene where he's, I think he's trying to be like, yeah, he's a murderer. You've got to stop him and the magistrate is just totally uninterested. Yeah, there's a great bet where he calls in the guards and they're like, what's he talking about? They're like, no, no, we already captured the guy on the warning poster. We already caught that guy. And then they're like, but of course we do catch the wrong guy like most of the times. So they're like, all right, let's hear it out.
But then there's a lot of discussion about, yeah, should we beat him first or accept a bribe first? And then eventually it's like when they find out the ghosts are involved in it, they're like, oh, well, that's good. We don't have to weigh in on this. We can just leave early because we're tired of even pretending to work. Oh, before it's okay. So we're barreling towards the end. But before we get to like some of the final confrontations, we need to take a moment to discuss the Dow wrap.
Oh my goodness, it's so good. I almost want to include a sample from it here because whatever you're imagining can't quite equal what you get. There's one part where the subtitle, at least of what he's wrapping is, I spit, I spit, I spit, I spit. Yes.
Oh, it's so good. And the whole time he's going through these different martial arts routines too. So it's like he's really getting revved up for battle. Oh, you have to see it to believe it. And of course, we could play part of the audio, but you wouldn't have the subtitles. So you wouldn't get the full experience and you wouldn't get to see him moving around. So it has to be seen.
Okay, but eventually, so we're skipping lightly about over much that happens in the middle of the film, but eventually it's going to progress toward a big showdown with the demons because we learn the backstory of Susen. What is going on with her? Why has she been trapped in this cycle of seducing men in the forest or at the temple so that their life force can be sucked out? And basically what we discover is that Susen was murdered.
many years ago while traveling, when she was in mortal. And her father gave her a temporary burial under an old tree in the forest. But then he was murdered before he could move her bones to holier ground. So now nobody else knows she's there, so she's stuck there. And her spirit is trapped in servitude to the demon that lives within the tree. I think this is the old dame.
And now the old dame is her boss. The old dame makes her seduce men so that she can kill them, steal their energy, and Susan has been pledged to marry against her will the old monster of Black Mountain. And the only way she can escape from being a ghost and finally be reincarnated again is if someone digs up her ashes and her bones and takes them to her village to be reburied there.
And it's interesting how this is a recurring theme in a lot of the Chinese horror comedy martial arts movies we've watched because a proper and improper burial was also a major theme of Mr. Vampire. Yeah, yeah, the idea and really tied up with the idea of the Chinese vampire, the Jiangxi, is the idea that this person was not properly buried. Their spirit is not at rest.
And the only way to really defeat them is to make sure they are moved to a place of proper rest. And that's the case here as well. But of course, you can't just dig up her bones and get away with it because there's a demon involved here. Oh, man. And so you get in the movie version here, you get a big throw down between the demon and our heroes. And I was totally surprised by the form. I was expecting it's a tree demon, right? So it's going to be some sort of
like creature, but no, the true form, or at least one of the true forms is revealed as being this endless tongue, this all tongue as you described it. Yeah, I was thinking about the doors that ride the tongue. The tongue is long, seven miles. It's just like this gigantic tongue that wraps all the way around the temple.
and can like wrap around peoples. So it's like a giant octopus arm basically. And it has like multiple tongues within the tongue. Yeah, and it's kind of like it has a beginning because it does shoot out of the human form of the of the Dame's mouth at one point. But then in another scene, the Dame just becomes the tongue. So it's it's almost like there is no beginning to the tongue. And it's just this endless tongue that's just lashing about throughout this entire action sequence.
And there's like a tongue versus mouth mechanic, because the tongue will try to grab people and then go into their mouths. And like swordsman Jin is yelling at Ling. He's like, be careful. Don't let her tongue enter your mouth. So they're trying to fight it off. And Yin eventually ends up like chopping off pieces of the tongue to prevent them from getting in people's mouths.
Yeah, there are a number of sequences in which people get wrapped up in tongue or later on wrapped up in tentacles. And then usually swordsmanian has to jump in with his sword and slash through those tentacles and splash goo all over the place.
Oh, there's so much goo later on. Well, there's so much goo in general, but there's there's goo, there's slime. And then we get to see sort of been yin's arsenal again. So he uses his holy needles. In fact, Ling has to come through in the pinch because yin gets grabbed up and Ling has to get the needle and come save him. And at one point, he accidentally stabs him in the butt. Right in the butt. Yeah. And then yin has to has to pull the needle out of his own butt and then use it to stab the team. And it's great.
Yeah, but they do eventually defeat the old dame. Yeah, we see some sort of a final form that's just this monstrous amalgam of light tentacles and planned and, I don't know, alligator and human face. It's a real monstrosity, but they are able to defeat it.
Unfortunately, Seussin is dragged away into the underworld. And so in the very last act, the Coda, the final confrontation, it's not our world anymore, buddy. You got to go into the underworld to save the princess.
That's right. And I really like the way they created this underworld sequence because it's a lot what you might expect. In a dark realm, there's mist and smoke. There are like hands grasping out of nowhere. There are disembodied heads, there are mountains of skulls. And of course, we encounter the dark individual who Susanne is betrothed to. Right. This is the monster of Black Mountain.
Oh, man, how this guy's really cool. How would you describe him? Just kind of like imagine a gloomy dark lord in armor. And that's basically what you've got here. I could say maybe a point of reference for the young folks these days, Elden Ring Boss. He's got Elden Ring Boss vibes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like the outline of an armored individual, right? But then they're increasingly more monstrous elements, the deeper you dig into that.
In fact, one of my favorite images or effects in the entire movie was when his cloak is peeled open and his entire form is made of faces. It's like a pile of disembodied heads or faces in there.
and they're all screaming. Yeah, really good. Their arms coming out of the walls, like the underworld sequence is just great. And they're great heroic moments for our characters. There's a wonderful part where Susan is flying through the air with a sword in her hand. Yeah, it's really cool.
And we get a nice climax where like tentacles are lashing out. The dark lord here is wrapped everyone up. The tentacles are holding our hero up and they're starting to rip his clothes apart and will probably soon start ripping his flesh apart. But then we remember what does he have underneath his cloak underneath his robes? He has that holy sutra, which immediately its mere presence starts incinerating the villain here.
It's red hot. It's so good. And there's a detail I forgot that I really liked, though, that when swordsman Yin and Master Ling first arrive in the underworld, they're sort of able to walk amongst the dead without being disturbed at first because swordsman Yin says, when ghosts are in the mortal world, they're invisible to us. But when mortals are in the ghost world, we're invisible to them.
Yeah. Oh, but in the end, we do get a happy ending. They are able to all make it out of the underworld, and they do, and they are able to relocate the mortal remains of CSIN. And so it's pretty much a happy ending, and it makes you think, like, are there more adventures to come?
Well, they basically say, like, let's go on adventures now. And clearly, they do. There are two more films in the series, at least. So yeah, I'm interested to eventually check out the next one. And there's, again, I have to drive out. There's so many sequences we didn't even mention here that are so well executed. There's not really a dull moment in the film. It's a very well paced. So it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.
totally agree that this one's really a highlight. Chinese ghost story, it's beautiful, it's truly weird, it's up there with the best.
And again, this is a big picture. This has been a very successful film. It's generated a cult following around the world. It's been remade, as I mentioned earlier, but also the story about the magic sword or the magic sword in the magic bag. This was adapted at least a couple of other times. 1969's The Magic Sword and 1960's The Enchanting Shadow, which I've read was also kind of an inspiration for this film.
There are probably some other movies out there that you'll find that have some of the basic elements. You know, traveling scholar, spin in the night in a temple, fallen in love with a ghost. It's a winning formula. Now, since this is a major motion picture, yeah, it's been out in various formats over the years. So you want to watch it on VHS? You can find a copy somewhere. DVD, it's out there. There are blue rays. I can't really speak for the various regions and so forth. Laser disc?
Probably, probably on a laser disc, go for it. But we watched it streaming on Prime, and as of this recording, it is streaming on Prime in the States, and it may be streaming some other places as well. Two tongues up.
Yeah, this one was a lot of fun. We'd love to hear from anyone out there who was also a fan of this film or if you have experiences with this film or if there are any other films in the same genre that you think we should be aware of or should cover in the future, let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We are primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a strange film.
Let's see if you want to follow everything that we're doing here. Let's say they're over at some music calm I do blog posts about each film and if there's additional Information additional media I'll embed that there. We also have a letterbox page if you just look up Weird house on there. You'll find us you can follow there We just have all the movies listed that we've covered
So if you just want a single visual layout of the films we've covered on, we're now cinema, you will find them there.
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