Weirdhouse Rewind: Wolf Devil Woman
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb, and since we're a little bit on the topic of werewolves of late, we are going to rerun our episode from 4-5-2024. This is going to be Wolf Devil Woman from 1982, a Taiwanese fantasy film starring and directed by the amazing Pearl Chang. Let's jump right in. ♪♪

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are going to be talking about the 1982 Taiwanese fantasy wuxia film Wolf Devil Woman, a.k.a. Wolfen Queen, a.k.a. Wolfen Man.

ninja which was distributed by uh by ifd a company that apparently really enjoyed giving movies an english title with the word ninja in them whether or not the movie had anything to do with the ninja usually i think it didn't uh a bit of just slot ninja in there so wolf and ninja i guess that'll kind of work but i'm gonna call it wolf devil woman because i think that is uh

It combines all of the themes of the movie. You definitely have a woman. She is kind of a wolf woman. And there are major themes of devils, even though the wolf woman is not really a devil. I agree. I think this is the title to go with. So, Rob, I don't know if you have another contender in mind here, but I would say of all the films we have ever covered on Weird House, I think Wolf Devil Woman is one of the most shrouded in mystery. And by that, I just mean that

that we were able to turn up very little objective information in English about the production history and the people who made this movie, at least compared to most of the movies that we watch on the show. But one thing that is for certain is we know it is, of course, you know, movies are all the work of many people. There's never just one creator. But this movie, I think, is well known as a product of a singular genius, right?

by the writer, director, producer, and star Zhang Ling, known in international releases as Pearl Chang. Yeah, Pearl Chang is the moniker that I believe IFD gave her just to like, you know, to spice it up in the same way that suddenly it's a ninja movie. Call her Pearl Chang. It's just marketing.

So Zhang Ling or Pearl Chang wrote and directed four movies in around the early 80s. And now I have only seen one of them. I feel like I've got to see the other three because she has such a such a weird personality.

bizarre, pleasing and distinct style. This is a movie that Wolf Devil Woman, I mean, specifically, is a movie that has had a reputation for many years as sort of one of as like a low budget bad movie. People thought of it as bad and it was sort of circulated on on low quality VHS tapes and the kind of movie people would put on for a laugh. And it

certainly does have elements that are very funny. But I also think this movie really does have a genius and a style of its own that should be appreciated. Like, it's not just ironically good. This is an exercise in imagination, and I really love it for what it is. Oh, yeah, it's richly entertaining. It is intentionally comedic.

Yeah.

never really, never in a way that feels mean. Also, she does get to be like the complete stone-cold action woman who gets to kill multiple baddies. She gets to do that a lot. So she gets to pull those levers as well. But it's just such a captivating performance. If nothing else in the film caught your eye, she is the shining star at the center of it.

So like by the end of the movie, the wolf woman, the main character played by Pearl Chang is she's hardcore. Like she is she's a stone cold warrior who is coming in to like be the coolest and defeat the enemy. But early on in the film, there's not just early on. In fact, just different scenes in the film. It's also like she gets to do pratfalls and does like slapstick sort of self-deprecating moves.

klutz humor uh there's a scene where she accidentally eats too much chicken and gets drunk and then beats up a bunch of people in a restaurant it's great yeah um you know it's based based on you know my observations of the film and also going off some of the extras that we were looking at from justin de clu from over at golden ninja video you know it's like you have

You have a filmmaker and performer here who is who seems to be to varying degrees like like bucking the trends and the expectations of a female performer, of a female role, of a female filmmaker in a mostly male dominated world.

So it's really inspiring to watch. She really embraces the wolfiness of the wolf character. But just in general, this movie is not just the main character. The movie is a wild beast howling from the eighth dimension. It just has a lot going on, and so much of it happens so fast and with so little preparation for it. One thing that's been singled out

about the style of this movie is like the fast editing and the action scenes, but also just often quite sudden and rapid plot developments. It's all really great stuff. It's absolutely nuts and it's awesome.

One, I do want to issue one word of warning if you're going to go watch this movie because there's a kind of unusual thing in it. There were some rabbit hunting scenes that occur on screen, and it is quite clear that they are unsimulated. So...

Large warning, if that's going to bother you, you might want to, I don't know, have the fast forward button ready or just skip this one because there is unsimulated rabbit bow hunting on screen here. Yeah, an unfortunate reality of some of these older pictures.

And sometimes it's something like this that you can tell looking at it. Other times, as was often the case with a lot of horsemanship on camera, there is ultimately some animal cruelty going on there that may be lost to the average viewer because we just don't necessarily recognize what goes in to performing stunts with horses. But anyway, not to forgive it. It's there if you want to avoid it.

by all means avoid it. Now, it's worth pointing out, this is our third Taiwanese film, I believe. We previously discussed Thrilling Bloody Sword and Child of Peach. Both of those are very weird movies. I would say Thrilling Bloody Sword is more...

unrelenting psychedelic wuxia and child of peach is more intentionally goofy. Um, yeah. And it's interesting to try and sort of place where wolf devil woman is between those two, because it's not nearly as psychedelic as, as throwing bloody sword, but it has its moments. And it, on the other hand, it does have plenty of broad comedic moments as well, but certainly not to maybe the fantastic extremes of child peach. Yeah.

The commentary track on the release of this movie that we watched, the Golden Ninja release, has some sort of general thoughts on it about differences you often see between Taiwanese wuxia films and those produced in the Hong Kong film industry. And some of the things that, this is by Justin Duclue of Golden Ninja Video, and

He says several things are like, first of all, Taiwanese movies of this sort tended to be lower budget. They would be made faster and cheaper than Hong Kong films. But also they tended to kind of make up for that by being wackier and more imaginative and having more unusual fantasy elements, often more gore. You definitely see that here. In addition to what we already mentioned, there are some

unrealistic looking, but quite interesting gore effects and just more of a kind of wide ranging, fast moving, kind of fast and loose feel to them. Yeah. I remember one thing that he mentioned in some of the extras for Thrilling Bloody Sword is that, yeah, it's kind of like the underdog status of Taiwanese cinema of the time period where, yeah, they really felt like they had to do all these things. You know, Hong Kong cinema had the advantage, but

we Taiwanese cinema could be even more daring, daring and stunts, daring and, and plot elements, the magic, the wackiness, what have you. I do really love a lot of the stunts in this movie. And it is,

Stuff that you will have seen in other movies of this type, like the Wuxia star often has a kind of flying type ability or a weightlessness that they're able to manifest so they can leap up 30 feet in the air or sort of zoom across a room without their feet touching the floor. So there are similar kinds of stunts to Wuxia.

you would what you would find in other movies of this type. But I like the way they appear on screen here, often like when the wolf devil woman leaps up in the air, like, you know, up into the treetops, it will be filmed in a kind of slow motion that that gives her this this magical weight. Yeah, absolutely. It has some of these these great Wuxia moments with the floating, the flying, the

the, like, strange physical interactions occurring by two flying characters midair, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. And then some just straight-up Mortal Kombat fatalities. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of sorcery, too. So, like, the bad guys in the movie have a habit of walking up to people and just blasting these huge billowing gusts of fog out of their sleeves that somehow, like, either burn people or freeze them. Mm-hmm.

There's the lady demon minion who covers people with spiders and web. Yes, the witch. Yeah. Yeah. So there's plenty of magic to go around is what we're saying. Okay. Should we do the elevator pitch? Let's have it.

Got it.

And then when a pair of heroic adventurers meet the wolf woman, they teach her to speak human language and live like a human, at least sort of. And they inadvertently open her mind to a bloody path of revenge against the demon.

All right, Joe, what's your tagline for this one? Who are you going to call? White ginseng. Ginseng root. Yeah, white ginseng has a major role in this picture, despite the fact that, as far as I can understand, white ginseng is just a variety of ginseng that you encounter and you can buy it.

So I don't know if this was ultimately something where the actual term used in the Mandarin is referring to some sort of mythical substance, because there are plenty of things like that, you know, that we've discussed in the Unstuffed to Blow Your Mind before, you know, some sort of mythical substance that grows on a sacred mountain and has to be harvested. So maybe it was something like that, somehow, you know, linked to the source material, and it's just been replaced in dubs and subtitles as white ginseng.

Hmm. Yeah, I didn't know what to make of that. All right. Normally we would hit you with some trailer audio right now. But as far as I know, there is not a theatrical trailer available for this film, either for its original market or for international markets. So instead, I thought we just might have just a quick review.

audio sample of some of the audio nuttiness of this film, because there are multiple times while I was watching it where I was just like, man, even if you weren't watching this film, if you're just listening to it, it's just absolutely bonkers. Maybe we can get some of the English dub of the demon talking. Oh, yes. Yes, he is. He is fabulous. All right, let's have it.

All right. Now, if you want to watch Wolf Devil Woman before we proceed, first of all, bear in mind, it has all these different titles. If you're searching for it, you might need to search for Wolf and Ninja. If you're searching for it,

you'll find very... Wolf and Queen. Wolf and Queen and so forth. You, of course, also, you can always, you know, get the original, like, Mandarin title and, you know, in the Mandarin characters and throw that into search and you might be able to find it as well. But I think we should

make clear that if you're like looking for versions of this on disc or on the internet and you can't find one where the picture is good, yeah, that's just sort of what you're stuck with. Apparently there, as far as I'm aware, there is really no good looking version of this movie out there. Yeah. I mean, hopefully that'll change because I believe that change with Thrilling Bloody Sword, we had the version that

that came out, the gold Ninja video put out. And if memory serves correctly, uh, some better source material for it, something that could maybe be remastered has surfaced and we can look forward to another, uh, even more magical release of throwing bloody sword. So, you know, as films like this become popular, you never know what they're going to turn up. We have, we've discussed cases of this before, such as, um, uh, Santo and the treasure of Dracula, where they thought that, you know, any, uh,

any color print of this movie was just lost and then they found it in a vault. I would really love to discover that in this case because so yeah, we both watched it on the, the disc release by golden ninja video. Um, and that disc has two different versions of the film, both of which have problems. One is, uh, one in the original aspect ratio, which is like a widescreen version of the movie that,

The picture is really pretty poor. Like the colors are kind of messed up and it's not very sharp. And it has hard baked in Greek subtitles, which I don't know, maybe that's your thing. But I guess they kind of pile up if you're also watching it with English subtitles or whatever subtitles on top of that. Yeah.

Um, but maybe that's a good one to watch with, with the dub. Uh, I, though in general, I can recommend the English dub on this movie, which is quite fun. Yes. And I think that's key. Like one of the things about dubs is you want a dub that is at least mostly accurate and you want the dub to more or less match the intended tone of the film. Like if you, if it's a serious film or it has kind of a serious tone, you don't want, you don't want the, the, the, the dub to be making fun of the picture. Um,

You don't want the dub to be completely off kilter. And I feel like the dub is wacky and fun in a way that the movie is wacky and fun. And at least to my ear, it never came off as disrespectful. But anyway, that is the widescreen version on the disc. There was also a full screen version where, from what I can tell, the

The picture is sharper, so it's a little bit better looking, but it's badly cropped. So you're missing a lot of the original film. That's the version I watched. I looked at the other one, the widescreen, and I just felt like the picture quality was overall too degraded for me to get into it as much.

So I decided to go with the other, though I will say it did probably make some of the action sequences, especially those in the last quarter of the picture, a little more confusing for sure. I think those are somewhat confusing no matter what crop you're looking at. That's the thing, right?

Um, so yeah, that, uh, golden Ninja video release was, uh, titled wolf devil director. The films of Pearl Chang was a two disc thing. Uh, it's currently out of print, but Hey, you can go to gold Ninja video.com. You sign up for their newsletter, maybe hassle them a little bit. Who knows? They might put it out again. I know they've re-released things in the past. I would get a copy if, if they put it out again. Yeah. Yeah.

And by the way, we should say that that release not only has Wolf Devil Woman, that one is sort of the main main event, but it also has some of Zhang Ling or Pearl Chang's other films in. I think it in fact, I wonder, does it have all three of the ones that she wrote and directed? I believe it does have Matching Escort and I think it does have the the one about the flower.

I think you're right. It's in the other room, so I can't pick it up and look at it right now. Okay. But it's definitely worth picking up if you're interested in these films. Again, we rented it from Videodrome here in Atlanta, as we often do. So if you are local to Atlanta or visiting Atlanta with your Blu-ray player, you can go over to Videodrome and rent it for yourself. And just a quick shout out.

Videodrome, in cooperation with a couple other parties, are trying to put together WingsFest, a film festival devoted to the magical work of WingsHouser. We've talked about WingsHouser on the show before because he was the villain in Beastmaster 2. Oh. Well...

They're trying to bring him in as a special guest for Wings Fest. So if you're interested in that at all, if you're in town or going to be in town for it, go to Videodrome's Instagram account. They are Videodrome underscore ATL. And you can find out more. It's currently in the Kickstarter phase. So, yeah, jump in and help fund it if that interests you.

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Yeah, we're going to get into it as much as we can. This one is definitely a film with the least amount of information on the available databases. So we're talking, you know, the movie database, IMDb, also the Hong Kong movie database, which often provides additional insight into films from Hong Kong, Taiwanese and mainland Chinese cinema. But in this case, really not so much. Like we said, this is one of the more mysterious films.

films that we've looked at, but we're going to walk you through what we know. So starting at the top, yeah, it's Pearl Chang Ling or Pearl Chang and so forth. The director, the writer, the producer, the star, and also she did the theme song vocals. Oh, okay. Yeah. She sang the theme song to some other projects that she was involved in before she was directing her own films as well. Yeah. I mean, she is just a tour de force here. Yeah.

So she was born in 1955. According to the Hong Kong Movie Database, she was active from 72 through 83, acting in 24 films, writing four, directing three. And I want to just add an asterisk there because I know that there are some films that...

It's thought that she did direct, but another director that may be just a pseudonym is attributed. And again, we don't have a lot of information to go on in the databases here. From what I was reading and what was in the documentary on the on the disc, it seems that it is acknowledged that she directed four films and one of them has a director's credit that is a pseudonym for her. OK, well, the three that are definitely her.

There's a romantic night in 81 matching escort in 82 and wolf devil woman in 82 as well.

So this picture would seem to appear pretty late in her film career, followed only by a trio of 1983 films in which she acted. The Three Famous Constables, General Invincible, which she also wrote. And is that the one that she also may have directed? Possibly. I'm not sure. And then Fantasy Mission Force. She didn't direct that one. That is a movie that she starred in along with Jackie Chan. That's right. Yes.

Now, IMDb also lists her as an uncredited actor in 1991's Thunder Ninja Kids, The Hunt for the Devil Boxer. But this is not reflected on Hong Kong Movie Database. And I don't think it was mentioned on the extras for the Gold Ninja release. So I'm tempted to dismiss this one. Yeah. But once again, in the case of Wolf Devil Woman, we know that she wrote it, produced it, directed it and starred in it in multiple roles. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, I believe she plays her own mother, as we'll discuss. Yeah. Rob, I don't know if you got a chance to watch it, but there is a short documentary, I think it's about 10 minutes long, on the Golden Ninja release.

uh, that focuses on the life and work of Zhang Ling or Pearl Chang, uh, what we were able to, to know about her. I did watch this. Oh, okay. So yeah, this is good. So, um, the, some of the things that they talk about in there is that she starred in over 20 movies. Uh, according to their research, she wrote and directed four feature films, not three. Uh,

Uh, that there really is, I think it's not just a lack of available materials in English. This made it sound more like that. There really just is not a whole lot that is publicly known about her. Yeah. It sounds like she was, she's thought to have ultimately been kind of a private person anyway. Uh,

Um, and, uh, yeah, that certainly factors into the lack of information here. Uh, once again, the name Pearl Chang is the name is like her, her work name that appeared on international releases distributed by IFD. IFD, once again, they like specialize in, in releasing movies with the word ninja in the English title. So yeah, there's a lot of mingo. Look them up. Ninja Terminator, the Ninja Squad, Ninja Silent Assassin, Diamond Ninja Force.

Not to be confused with Lady Terminator, but it's interesting here that you would release it as Ninja Terminator, just going ahead and dipping into both buckets, you know? Yeah, I wonder how much it has to do with ninjas or Terminators. I don't think I've seen that one. But yeah, anyway, so we learn in this documentary that Pearl Chang was trained as a singer, but also in ballet, taekwondo, and in journalism. Yeah.

Uh, so she acted in some films that seem now to be lost, but her big break was around 1974 or 75, uh,

when she starred in a TV show called The Protectors, which was apparently hugely popular in Taiwan. So this was a show about, you know, sort of fantasy heroes, martial heroes, people doing martial arts and sword play. It was kind of a swashbuckler. And Pearl Chang sang the theme song to the show. She also played a wandering swordswoman named

who apparently became a breakout character. And then after being in this show, she would, she would appear in a movie where the title translates to armed escort or China armed escort, which was, it seems an unofficial movie adaptation of this TV show, the protectors, which had been her, her, her big hit.

And then after this, she would go on to write and direct her own features, which are generally wuxia revenge stories. One of them is called Miraculous Flower, released in 1981. I think basically all of these had multiple different English titles, so there can be some confusion there. But one is referred to in the documentary as Miraculous Flower. This is sort of considered notable because a lot of the characters

films of this type produced, uh, uh, around this time would be shot mostly on like, uh, indoor stage sets, but apparently miraculous flower had a lot of outdoor filming locations and it was quite lovely looking. Yeah. This extra included one clip from some sort of a waterfall that looked a lot like the waterfall from child of peach. Uh, I'm, I'm not certain, but I mean, obviously there's more than one waterfall in Taiwan, but, uh,

At any rate, very, very interesting use of outdoor filming locations for sure, as opposed to these indoor sets, which I don't know. I love a great over-the-top Taiwanese wuxia set. And we do get those in this picture. Yeah, we get a great temple set for it. They kick off the movie with a rollicking crucifixion at an indoor temple set. Mm-hmm.

Let's see. According to this documentary, this seems less well-founded, but just sort of general rumors about Zhang Ling's reputation. She was considered something of a loner and was characterized by some as maybe difficult to work with or as a perfectionist and difficult to work with.

But DeClew argues in this documentary that it's quite possible that having a reputation for being difficult to work with was just like men in a male-dominated industry reacting with alarm to a woman who is insisting on doing things her way. Yeah, we've touched on the whole difficult to work with.

Yeah.

But other times who can say, you know, it could be this just the slightest thing possible that just goes to the echo chamber and then it becomes difficult to work with, you know? Yeah, I can certainly imagine in any national context, really, that a woman making films might well just like be

have a creative vision of her own. And she's like, this is the way we need to do it. And maybe some guys around her are just freaked out by that. But anyway, in 1983, I think this is one of her final credits. She acted alongside Jackie Chan, but also Jimmy Wang Yu and Bridget Lynn in Fantasy Mission Force, which was a Hong Kong sort of martial arts fantasy horror movie.

And then she also released her final film, General Invincible, in 1983, after which she apparently just disappeared from public view. So there is not really, as far as I could tell, anything known about what she did after that. Yeah, I mean, there's been no death date for her. So one presumes that she's still alive, but doesn't seem to have been a public persona.

in any way after this last film, which is fine. We've talked about this before, like Warhawk Tanzania made basically just a very small handful of pictures and then disappeared, presumably still alive, but maybe just didn't want to be part of the limelight after that. And if so, more power to him and more power to Pearl Chang if that is the case here. Yes, retiring from a public-facing profession and just living your life, I give that my full blessing. It's a choice I support.

Now, I don't know about you, Joe, but, you know, it's we can't help but compare a performer, especially, you know, a real larger than life performer to try and find some comparison to them, either like in current or or recent or like a different nationality of cinema. And the main person that I kept thinking of was.

watching Pearl Chang on screen is Amy Sedaris. I'm a big Amy Sedaris fan. And there's just something, especially in the comedic scenes, the way that Amy Sedaris really commits to these, you know, weird and wacky moments. I felt like she had a similar energy here. Pearl Chang did. Okay. Yeah. Maybe like hopping around and falling on your face with the rabbit blood all over your chin. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, there are multiple parts in the film where I was like, this, Amy Sedaris would have totally done this. Yeah, okay. The restaurant chicken disaster scene. Yeah, exactly. So stuff like that. And I don't know, also, maybe I'm, you know, I can't help but compare and, you know, think about Amy Sedaris as someone who also has like a very...

Seems to have a very singular vision and, you know, a big personality, but also is, you know, I don't think Amy Sedaris is a loner by any means, but I've seen things where she talks about, like, you know, enjoying crafting by herself in her apartment and that sort of thing. So, you know, I can kind of line them up.

in my own imagination on that level as well yeah uh i no offense to amy sedaris at all i can see her less in some of the other aspects of this role uh that pearl chang does so wonderfully like the when she actually becomes the the like the the cold cold steel warrior at the end yes i agree when she gets into the like the stone cold killer mode uh yeah it's uh it's a different act altogether

All right. Now, one of the challenges that and a challenge we're not really going to be able to overcome here is that on all of the databases we had access to, none of the actors are matched up with a character name. And on top of that, the character names vary.

Depending on if you're doing the dub or you're doing the subtitles. So it gets very confusing and difficult to chart exactly who everyone is supposed to be. Luckily, Pearl Chang's character in this, Snowflower or Wolf Woman or Wolf and Queen, the various monikers that are attributed to her. She's the main character. She's really the only one you have to be super invested in and know what her name is.

But as far as we can tell, I believe she thing is the actor who plays Master Lee. Master Lee being the sort of he's sort of in the mold of the traditional male hero. Yeah. He's the wandering prince with the with the powerful sword arm. Yeah. Yeah.

So not a lot about this particular actor either. He was born in 1942. This may be his most well-known film internationally, but he was also in 1976's Adventure of Shaolin, 78's The Zodiac Fighters, and 1982's The Hell.

And just basically a character. I don't know who played these characters, but he has a sidekick named Wong, but also possibly Rudy, I think. But we'll probably refer to him as Wong. And then he has a master, like a Shaolin master that he studied under by the name of Master Chu. Yeah, that's right.

All right. And then Master Li's father, I'm not sure if we know his name, but he has a father that he meets with and is sent on missions by. This character is played by Si Wang.

who lived 1930 through 2016, an actor who appeared in two films that we've talked about on the show before. 1975's The Super Infra Man, in which he plays a professor at one point. And also 1976's The Oily Maniac. This was a Shaw Brothers melt monster movie. He has, I think it's a small part, but he plays a lawyer in that.

Man, those are like the two ends of the spectrum. Like with InfraMan, you've got the most beautiful, holy, pure imagination ever. And then with the Oily Maniac, just the seediest thing we've ever watched.

Yeah, yeah. And to be clear, we do avoid most seedy films, but this one has some seedy elements that kind of like slipped in early on in Weird House Cinema that we have we generally avoid later on. But still very cool monster. And I'm guessing a great performance by Wang here as a lawyer.

His other film credits include 1986 is a better tomorrow directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun-fat and Leslie Chung. He has 190 credits on Hong Kong movie database. So it seems like he was kind of like a workhorse performer that they brought in for this one. That's my interpretation anyway. Mm hmm.

And then as far as the music goes, the credited composer is Hwang Mao Shan, born 1940, Taiwanese film composer whose credits include 82's The Green Green Grass of Home and also 1981's The Devil. I will say the music and overall soundscape in this movie tends to direct

to rapidly move in and out of just electronic madness with demon growls, demon laughter, and howling wolves to like sort of traditional East Asian themes. There was one review I read where I couldn't confirm whether this was true or not, but it alleged that this movie also used some music from Dawn of the Dead. That would be believable. Yeah, there are a lot of these pictures that seem to play a little fast and loose here.

with their soundtrack. I mean, you find that in others as well. I was watching Ramsey Brothers' Indian horror movie just like the last week. And there's one point where it just goes straight into Friday the 13th music. Perfect. Even with the sound effect. Ch-ch-ch.

All of it. Just blatantly. There's a legend ground here. Yeah, just blatantly ripped from Friday the 13th. So, you know, that sort of thing occurs. Okay, that's good. But I'd be really impressed if it just started featuring the darkest side of night from Jason Takes Manhattan. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That was the rock number. Yeah. Fallen angels into the street. Yeah, nothing as obvious as all that here, though.

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Oh, yeah. Let's talk about this plot. OK, Rob, I've pulled in some screenshots from the first couple of minutes of the movie that you can peruse while I'm trying to describe what happens here, because it's a lot to take in really fast. Yeah. The first three minutes of this movie are incredibly weird and captivating. So if you're just on the fence, go check out the first three minutes on Tubi or wherever you find a riff of it. I think you'll be convinced. Yeah. So the film begins with lightning ripping across the sky that is covered in smoke.

We see a dead tree with barren limbs burning in the night. Then we see a golden idol in the crude shape of a man photographed in a room with violet walls. Then some kind of throne room or temple with like an elevated area above, you know, in the center of the room, a big, big old platform in the center. Um,

Hooded figures in black and white carry candles across the floor and gather in advance of an ominous ceremony. Then we get our title screen. In this version, it says, Wolfen Ninja. Yeah.

So the hooded figures begin to approach the altar at the head of the temple, and they are carrying with them a man. The man is prone and tied to a beam. But wait, it's not just a beam. It is a cross. It is a man tied to a blocky red crucifix. Yeah.

And the man on the cross is hoisted up above the gathered congregation of evil. He's tied to the cross. And then a horrible figure takes center stage. It is someone in dark clothing wearing a red and gold cape and a glittering silver conical hat with a veil that falls over the face and hangs down in front and back.

And on the front of the conical part of the hat, there is a hot pink skull and crossbones. So it is essentially a pirate glam rock caperote or like a penitence hood. Yeah, this is this is the Red Devil, which we'll find out later. And he he's just fabulous. Just just dressed to the nines here.

and conceived in a way where it does seem like multiple influences are coming together. Like this is not sort of your stereotypical like Hong Kong action picture wuxia villain. Like there are elements, like you said, of like Spanish culture

Spanish Inquisition, perhaps, and penitents, and also, I guess, pirates, and also like disco warriors. Yeah, the pink skull and crossbones, yeah.

But the sparkles, it's like glittering. Yeah. So already, just like three minutes into the picture, we have this character. We have a black magic crucifixion. There's a lot going on. So we got several observers looking on in fear, others looking on with excitement. Some of the people in the room here are like vampires and orcs. There's one guy that's just...

I don't... Is the green orc mask supposed to be a vampire? I don't know exactly what this guy's deal is. Yeah, there are two kind of spirit Halloween mask masks going on that are not convincing as actual fleshy faces. They look like Halloween masks. But I wouldn't change them for anything. No, no. They...

They ultimately work within the context of this film, but they are, I guess, if you want to get critical, some of the weakest choices in the picture. Yeah. So the glam rock demon priest who he also has, I didn't even get to this part yet. He's got knives for fingers, but they're not like Freddy Krueger knives, which are oriented towards,

Yes.

And the dub for this character's voice is terrific. It's just the right level of cheesy over-the-top villain that works perfectly with such a cheesy over-the-top villain. So again, the dub matches the context of the picture perfectly here. Yes. So the demon priest picks up a doll or an idol and then pierces its heart with a stick.

And then this, by the principle commonly associated in movies with a voodoo doll, causes an equivalent wound to explode on the chest of the man tied to the cross. So the wound here is actually rendered with cell animation, which I love. And so like a hole that looks almost like a gap blasted in rock with cracks all around it opens up over the man's heart and red blood pours out. And again, this is on a...

on a film uh like film like still film of the guy and it's animated on top of that yeah it's it's i love it it's just it's like they could have done more of just like a traditional um you know blood effect and that would have been that would have been great uh years later this would have probably been cgi blood but instead we have this uh we're between those two

And it ultimately looks really cool. Yeah, there's some really great cell animation that comes in later, too. Like in the very last scene, there's some cell animated fire that is beautiful. Also, I should say, throughout this scene, the demon or the demon priest, he keeps making a grunting sound, which then echoes back a lot. So imagine...

It's this voice that goes like, yeah, but then it echoes 30 times. Yes, there is a lot of that. Like I said, the soundscape for this picture is pretty bonkers just on its own. Then the demon priest takes the doll and turns it upside down and dunks it headfirst into this big old vat of frothy red goo. And this causes some kind of pain and suffering for the man on the cross, which

And then in the background of the room, there is a couple holding a baby wrapped in yellow swaddling. And I'm just like, this is not the kind of event you bring a baby to. And I think they're having the same realization. They're like, honey, I think it's time we fled the cult. I think I think the devil cult has gotten a little too heavy for us. And we need to think about raising this child somewhere else. Exactly. They're observing this ritual torture in horror. And they're yeah, I'm not sure what they're doing here, but they obviously don't like it.

And then we see the man on the cross, he spits blood and dies. The doll falls to the floor and shatters and

And then suddenly we just smash cut to the mother and the father we saw in the room. They're now outside on a snow-covered mountainside, surrounded by evergreen trees, fleeing for their lives with their baby in their arms. The man and the woman are frightened and exhausted. And we see them both carrying swords. So I guess this is like a married pair of warriors fighting.

And while running through the snow, the man and woman are attacked by fighters dressed in red, wielding swords and pole arms. And then the leader of the demon fighters appears. And he is one of the guys we saw at the ceremony, the guy in the goofiest of all the masks. It's like the vampire orc mask. Yeah, the other mask looked cooler. So I do wonder why they picked this one to do these scenes with.

It's good. So he said the demon leader, he, you know, goes to the he's talking to the parents and he says, traitor, you will be punished for your treachery.

And the mother says to him, we'd rather die than go back to your hell and serve under you. So did they come from hell? Possibly. Well, maybe a hell. Yeah. And then the parents, they the parents are brave fighters. So they fend off the demon henchmen. Initially, they sort of duel with them while they try to escape up the mountain. I think we do learn that the mother's name is Jade.

And then when the parents are eventually cornered by the fighters from hell, they decide to things. I was about to say things start getting weird, but they've been weird. Here's another weird thing. They decide to sacrifice themselves to protect their baby. And the way they decide to do this is they stab each other with swords and then rapidly slam their heads into the ground until the head butting of the mountain causes

causes an avalanche and the avalanche comes down and covers everything with snow. And then they bleed on their child and they say the blood will keep the baby warm and protect her from the snow. So many, so many issues with this plan. Yeah.

And I have to say, too, in that crazy moment when this first happens, it's not entirely clear that they are stabbing themselves. I thought they were stabbing the baby. Oh, no. Yeah. I was like, oh, my God, this movie got so strange and weird and dark all of a sudden. It wasn't until the second time I was going through it with the dub and the subtitle that I was like, okay, they're clearly stabbing themselves. And then I understood this whole...

ridiculous plot of theirs to bleed all over their baby so that their warm blood will keep the baby warm as if blood is like has self-sustaining warmth or something. Yeah. But, you know, within a mythic context, fine. I criticize this plan as not realistic. I probably supposed to be more symbolic than realistic. I recognize. Yeah.

So the avalanche comes down and buries them. But the devil warriors are not satisfied. They go digging in the snow to find the three of them. And they eventually do find the two parents, but

But before they can collect the child from underneath the avalanche, they are driven away by wolves. Wolves come out howling and chase away the demon fighters. But actually, are these wolves? No, they're sweet doggies. They look like good boys. They're just straight up German shepherds. Without anything, like they're not wearing anything weird, like they didn't put extra fur on them or anything. Yeah.

But so I love these dogs. The dogs run up and they start eating the parents' bodies. Oh, yeah. They just rip the bodies to pieces and big bloody splashes in the white snow. So, yeah, they're like ripping arms off and stuff. But then when a, quote, wolf comes,

finds the baby, the wolf does not harm the baby and instead brings her back to the wolf den, which is like a cave of ice, a frosty cave where the wolves make their home. And we see the wolf carrying the baby along the way, which is, by the way, clearly just like a weightless yellow bundle of cloth. But then back at the cave, the wolf mother takes care of the baby and crouches over her to protect her. And then we see time is passing. Yeah.

This includes multiple shots, though, of the baby crying quite audibly while the wolf like growls at the baby and the baby's covered with blood. And this this feels like it goes on for about five minutes. Yes. But the wolf is that it is weird, but the wolf is protecting the baby. Yes.

Uh, so years into the future, we see that the child is growing up now that, uh, I don't know how old she's supposed to be in the scene, but she's older now. She can like walk around and stuff. She's living with the wolves and she is dressed in furs and pelts and just like tearing into a big old bloody hunk of raw meat, just like eating the raw meat, uh, getting blood everywhere. And we see her practicing hunting. She tries to hunt a rabbit like her, like her wolf family here does, uh,

but she fails and she ends up tumbling down a hill and getting injured. And then lying back in the cave,

Covered in blood from her injuries while trying to hunt, the wolf girl is nursed back to health by her wolf mother. And in fact, the wolf mother brings her some kind of medicine. The wolf, I guess, has medical knowledge and brings her strange plant matter found from outside. What could this be? I believe this is going to be the special ginseng root that we learn about later.

Yeah. Yeah. All a part of the wolf devil woman diet. Some of you may be adherents to the wolf devil woman diet. It's just raw meat and white ginseng. But you can eat as much white ginseng as you want. Oh, but when you follow the wolf devil woman diet, your hair turns white and then turns black again. But then at intermittent periods for the rest of your life will just turn white at certain times. Yeah, there are side effects. Yeah.

Time. OK, so time passes once again. And when we when we once again meet the wolf girl, she has become the wolf devil woman. So now we see Pearl Chang. Zeng Ling is out hunting. She's like better at hunting now, except so we see her hunting rabbits and she's she's dressed in the garb of the wilderness. So it's all furs, but also a wolf's head cap.

And I was just thinking, so is this, it's almost like it's supposed to be a camouflage for her hunting rabbits. So she's like camouflaged as the rabbit's natural predator. This is the reveal of this costume and of the adult wolf devil woman is just, this is one of those moments where you're watching the film and it's like you feel like you're going crazy for a moment because it's like a snowbank. And then here is this, what looks like a,

like a stuffed wolf or a stuffed fox or a stuffed German shepherd head peeking over, like muppeting up at you. And you're thinking like, what is this? Is this a puppet effect? And then you're like, no, this head is on top of Pearl Chang's head. This is a hat or a costume she is wearing, some sort of a headdress. And then she commences to hunt rabbits. Yeah, it's, it's a lot. And so, so now, um,

grown up and having learned the ways of the wolves and also benefited from the, the, the potency of the, the white ginseng root, we see that the wolf woman has extraordinary powers. So she can make herself weightless and in classic Wusha, uh, wire work style. So she dumped jumps dozens of feet into the air glides like a spirit on the wind. Uh, but,

I think it's funny that it's cool that while she is shown to have this power, she is also shown to be clumsy in a sense, like failing to capture rabbits and reacting with anger and frustration. So she'll like leap up 30 feet in the air and try to like come down and catch a rabbit and miss.

But eventually she succeeds in catching a rabbit, not with her mighty leaps, but instead by using another strange power, digging tunnels under the snow. So she like digs down and then comes up and snatches the rabbit from below. Yeah, like a wolf.

Is that maybe? That's how wolves hunt in the wild. They dig under and they come up like a sandworm. Gopher powers. Yeah. Oh, around here we get an interlude on the demon, which is what people are yelling. So we're cutting back to some other action somewhere else where the editing is so rapid, it's really hard to tell what you're looking at.

But we get like rapid shots of things happening and then people yelling the demon. So there's like something on fire and somebody yells the demon one. We see one of the vampire orcs beating somebody up. We see the guy in the conical hat and the silver glam veil blasting a guy with white smoke out of his hands saying you have betrayed me. And the guy is blasted and and shown frozen against the bark of a tree.

Yeah, I think that the only thing we're supposed to take from this scene, I assume, is just that the demon and his forces are still out in the world doing harm. And perhaps they're looking for something. That's all we know. Yeah, they're causing problems. Yeah.

But okay, we're about to meet a couple of other major characters, Master Li and Wong. And this is a kind of duo you might have seen in adventure films before. Master Li is a very typical martial hero. He's a dashing and honorable wandering swordsman. This kind of character is usually a prince or some other kind of highborn. And then he's got his comedy sidekick, often a cowardly comedy sidekick. Though with Wong...

I don't know if you got a similar kind of thing, Rob. When we first meet Wong, I interpreted him as being sort of hapless and cowardly and not very able to take care of himself. But then by the end of the movie, he's like, he's kicking butt.

Yeah, I feel like we've seen this before in Taiwanese action films. I think there was a character in Child of Peach like this who was very much there for comedic effect, but also really did get to tear it up in some of the action scenes. I guess it's just that you don't get a sense early on that this character will would be like that. Yeah.

But anyway, when we first meet them, they've been traveling for days on an important mission and Wong is tired and is complaining. He has started complaining by this point, but I don't know how early he started. So he may have been complaining for a long time. He keeps falling into holes in the ground and has to be rescued over and over. Yeah.

Wong and Master Li catch a rabbit for dinner and warning. This is this is one scene where you can quite clearly see what looks like an unsimulated killing of a rabbit with an arrow. There are other scenes with rabbits where something might be going on, but it's harder to tell. Yeah, like sometimes Wolf Woman may tear a rabbit's body in half.

And then eat its bloody pieces. I'm assuming she's not eating actual raw rabbit. But then there are also scenes where she tears humans in half and I'm...

100% positive those are not real humans being torn in half by wolf women. But if you're looking for the place where you would really want to fast forward, it's going to be right around in here when Wong starts trying to get after a rabbit. Right. Even though there is a fun gag there where he's trying to throw a knife at the rabbit and then he gets over to the rabbit and he's like, there's an arrow in this rabbit. I thought I hit the rabbit with my knife. I don't know. It's not worth watching the animal cruelty if you don't want to see it. Yeah.

Uh, but so anyway, they, they cook it up for dinner and then master Lee plays his flute. And unfortunately here they have an ill fated encounter with the wolf woman. She sneaks up on them in their camp and attacks Wong and in reaction, Oh no, they shoot her with an arrow. That's not what we wanted. Uh,

But once they realize she is a human woman and not a wolf, they tried to treat her with medicine. But then the rest of the wolves attack their camp. They jump over the fire repeatedly. There is whiplash editing until finally Master Li manages to kill one of the wolves in the fighting.

And oh no, it seems that the wolf he killed may have been the woman's wolf mother, but the wolf woman is unconscious with her wound. She doesn't know that this happens initially.

So they they track the they fall unconscious also for a bit, I think. And I forget exactly the sequence here, but they eventually track the wolf and the wolf woman back to their cave. The woman attacks them again at first, revealing that she has great powers like she's flying around on wires and stuff. And Wong wants to fight back with lethal force. But Master Li restrains him again.

Clearly, Master Li takes pity on the wolf woman, and when she passes out from her injuries, they treat her with medicine that they have among their supplies. And Master Li is like, I know what's going on here. She is a creature of the wilderness. She is a human raised by wolves, and thus, she does not know any human language and does not understand what death is, so she goes on trying to feed the mother wolf even though it has died. Hmm.

And then there is some time that passes. So we see Wolf Lady Li and Wong hanging out in the cave. There's some scene, I don't remember how this starts, but where the Wolf Lady is biting him. Yeah. Is biting Li on the hand. And we see Wong lying to her and telling her that the Wolf Mother is still alive somewhere. Like he sort of has to act this out in charades, but says she's off getting food somewhere. Mm-hmm.

And then meanwhile, we get another cut back to civilization. We see in a palace somewhere there is a king being attended by servants and subjects. This king is named Master Yu. And they say, Master, the blue devil commanded us to give him the amulet or he'll kill us all. We have to hurry up and find a way to stop him. Another says, Master, terror is everywhere. Too many people have died already. Already.

And then the subjects all say in unison, Master Yu, we implore you to help us in this time of horror and death. And Master Yu, he's an older man with a stern face, angry eyebrows, and very solid beard. And he says that he understands the devil must be stopped, but he cannot do it without the aid of terrible magic. And there is only one thing on earth that possesses enough power to defeat this plague of demons, and that is the White Ginseng Root.

Then like smash cut before he even finishes saying the last word of his speech back to the cave. Now is master you Lee's dad? Yes. Okay. Yes. He has sent Lee on a journey to retrieve the great white ginseng root because it is the only thing that can, that they think can stop the demon from attacking them.

Now, here's something I wasn't sure about is like which devil is the blue devil? Because there's another devil they call the red devil. I think the one in the conical hat is the red devil. So is the blue devil a different one? I don't quite know. I was wondering if it was just a mistake that like blue devil and red devil are the same devil. Hmm. Yeah.

Because otherwise, who would Blue Devil be? One of the Spirit Halloween guys? Possibly the witch, but they're saying he, so I think not her. So it could be one of the two orc guys. I don't know. Either way, Team Devil, Team Demon is what they're up against. And the only way to do it, the only way to defeat them is white ginseng root. Not red ginseng. It's got to be white ginseng. Right. Right.

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Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal. So back at the Cave of Wolves, how long have Lee and Wong been here now? Unclear, but they're kind of settled in. And Lee wakes Wong up telling him, OK, it's time to move on.

Uh, so, you know, we learned that Lee's father sent them on the quest for the great, the ginseng root. They've been looking for it. They can't find it. Uh, we, we find out it's also a thousand year ginseng root. Maybe it only appears once every thousand years and they've been digging holes for it everywhere. So I think these are the holes that Wong was falling into earlier with the holes they were digging, looking for the root. Yeah.

that makes more sense i had i thought originally he was falling into a wolf woman holes that she was digging out to catch rabbits but that could be the case also actually i don't know for sure

But so they go out digging again. They get attacked by wolves again. But they're just cute little doggies, like sniffing around at their feet. And they are saved by the wolf woman who calls off the pack. So the wolves obey her. And around here, it starts to be quite obvious that Master Li and the wolf lady are interested in each other. They stare at each other. They got like laser beams of love coming out of their eyes.

Yeah. I mean, how could they not fall in love? Yeah. And then there's this weird scene where...

I don't know what's going on here. It's, um, Master Li starts adjusting the Wolf Woman's bones. Like, he sees that she's walking around with a hunched posture and a strange gait. Like, there's something wrong with her spine. So he grabs her suddenly and we see an animation of her bones, like her vertebrae realigning. And then she starts biting him and Wong says, oh no, she's biting him again. Ha ha ha.

Uh, but after her bones are fixed and she seems grateful, uh, she's kind of sheepish about the biting. Like her mouth is covered in blood, but she, I think realizes that her bones have been fixed. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I just took the bite, the bite. It's like, I thought of my cat a lot. It's like, oh, she's biting me again. Like, yeah, it's like my relationship with the cat, a wild animal that lives in my house.

But they, yeah, they, they mend, uh, they mend this. Like she, the wolf woman puts moss on Lee's hand, wraps it in a leather strap and it's just clearly true love. Um,

Lee and Wong start trying to teach her how to talk and how to have manners. So they say, you have a heart of gold, a spirit like spring mist, a face like a flower. Snowflower. Yes, Snowflower will be your name. And this name only half sticks for the rest of the movie. Yeah, yeah. But it is used again. I think I can't remember the dub. Subtitles also call her Winter Hibiscus or Snow Hibiscus or something. But Snowflower is what sticks.

Right after they call her Snowflower, they're trying to teach her. They're trying to teach her grammar, basically. And so she learns to say her own name and everybody else's. And there's this scene where she's arguing with Wong, where she's like talking to Wong saying, you're Wolf Woman. And he's saying, no, you're Wolf Woman.

I have forgotten any elemental Mandarin that I attempted to learn, but I have a feeling there might be a little bit more to this exchange in the original language. You know, like maybe it's a little more clever and I mean, it's still hokey. It's still played for laughs, but it might be it might play out a little bit differently in the native language. That seems quite likely. Yeah.

We also get an education montage here. So, you know, Wolf Woman is learning how to be a human. And one day Wolf Woman and Master Lee get to talking. She asks him if he's sad. And he says, yeah, in the place he comes from, things are very dire. There is a wicked devil who rules over everything with extraordinary magic, killing many people, terrifying others. And he says, yeah, I'm going to kill you.

And Lee explains that he came to the mountain because he needs to find the great white ginseng root, the only thing in the world powerful enough to defeat the demon. But of course, the ginseng is too strong for a mortal human to consume. It would just wreck them. And then the wolf lady gets curious. She's like, what is this white ginseng like? And he describes it. And she's like, oh,

Oh yeah. I ate that years ago and there won't be another for a thousand years. Whoops. Yep. So Wong is mad, but Lee says perhaps it's for the best. And so he's got to go home and tell his father that the root will not be found and

And they sort of they convince Wolf Woman to come with them. But first, they have to admit to her that her wolf mother is dead. I think they've been lying to her about this the whole time so far, which is weird, messed up.

And then the wolf woman is greatly saddened by this. And the grief over her dead wolf mother causes her to turn blonde suddenly. And like, I think hair grows down over the front of her face. And this is not the last time she will she will like activate her ginseng powers through profound emotion and turn blonde.

Yes. Yeah, it will happen again. And it's not permanent when it happens here. I thought maybe she was going to look like this the rest of the picture, but she does not. So Master Li and Wong go down the mountain and arrive at the home of Li's master, his own teacher. And this is Master Chu. Master Chu is your classic sage. He's dressed in all white, long white hair, gigantic eyebrows like a mint hat, long flowing mustache and facial hair.

And they meet him, and he's like, I know everything that happened. Don't tell your father about the wolf lady, because he will just accuse you of wasting your time chasing women instead of accomplishing your quest. And then he also gives him a gift. He gives him a little box, and he says, the thing in this box, it will protect you as soon as you open it. And then Master Chu flies away. The other thing I like about Master Chu is that he, like, you encounter this sort of

performance um characterization a lot in uh like hong kong action films wuxia films and so forth where it's clearly a much younger actor who's been dressed up to look like an old sagely individual um so on one level like it's obvious but on the other level it kind of works because it's like this concept of like a taoist immortal like yeah it's like an old young and

or young, oldie, whichever way you want to look at it. Like, yeah, he's an old man, but he also, there's something unnaturally young about him too. And I don't know how much of that was ultimately like accident of filmmaking because you need this older individual to also do death-defying stunts. However it comes together, it's kind of a staple of the genre that I like. Would you agree that there's almost something kind of

impish or mischievous about Master Chu in the way that he just pops up to, to,

with ease deliver information that other people had been struggling to learn or whatever. He just pops up and is like, hey, I know everything. Or he just wanders into a scene and says, here's the real truth. Here's who the devil is. Yeah, yeah, there is an infish quality to it. We also see inside the gift, the box that Lee is given, there is some kind of highly reflective mirror in there. Is it kind of an amulet?

Yeah. Yeah. Some sort of an amulet in there. So we're like, okay, magic item for later. Okay. So next we get a homecoming. Li and Wong returned to Li's father and they admit that they were unable to find the ginseng. So there's gotta be another way to stop the demon. Next thing is they commence a mission. There's like, they're going to go raid the, the demon hideout, I guess. So like Li, his father and a group of warriors all dressed in different colors, uh,

trek into this lush green forest, which I get. Did you understand this to be the demon's camp? Yeah.

I guess so. Yeah. Going into demon country. This was a very cool looking and dangerous feeling scene. We hear strange bird calls echoing through the trees and at the camp there are the bodies of warriors hanging from the trees. But then it's a fake out because they think these are the demons victims. But actually the bodies hanging there are the devils pretending to be corpses and they attack.

And from this, we get into the first of many action sequences here where one of the core objectives is to nail demons to trees with arrows and or swords. This happens a lot and it never gets old.

Yeah, it's good stuff. And it's frenzied editing. The demons appear and disappear. They use trickery and magic. We see the witch from the opening scene using this. She's wearing like a jeweled veil and she uses magic to knock Lee unconscious.

And then later, Lee awakes in the temple-slash-throne room from the beginning of the movie, and he now is the one affixed to the Red Cross. Uh-oh, this doesn't look good for him. They mock him, and the gist is basically, you're a student of Master Chu, so you think you're really hot, but are you strong enough to defeat my fingernails? Yeah.

And the demon priest really likes laughing at nothing and then spraying people with dust from his sleeves. Yeah, he's constantly like, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. So the demon priest also wants to know what happened to the white ginseng root. And after torture, Lee tells him it was eaten by the wolf woman. And the demon is mad about this. He does not like this information. This exchange is great because he's like, somebody ate it. And he's like, somebody ate it? Who ate it? Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Okay, well, anyway, we got to get back to the wolf woman. What's she been up to? I miss the wolf woman. She finally comes down out of the mountain and she is now using a fraying knotted rope like Indiana Jones uses a whip. Rob, did you think that maybe this rope slash whip was made out of rabbit pelts? That was the sense I got, that this is like some sort of a super elaborate...

ninja whip weapon made out of rabbit pelt stitched together, but then with some sort of a four pronged animal claw situation going on at either end of said weapon. Oh yeah. She also has like bird claw feet, bird feet claws that she uses as weapons. Yes. But she's using this whip to swing around through tree branches and fly through the forest. Yeah.

Uh, and, uh, and then the wolf woman, she, she walks into the kingdom of the demon. Now, uh, first she, she goes into a barn, finds a chicken, rips its head off and starts eating it raw. And the farmers catch her stealing the chicken and they attack her with weapons and she violently defends herself. So it was another action scene. Um, we get a brainwashing scene with master Lee. So the demon priest uses the golden needle, uh,

to essentially brainwash Lee into making him one of them, to making him loyal to the demon. And now Lee goes around doing, he's an enforcer for the demon priest, basically. He's like going up to people's houses, telling them to surrender to the devil power. Yeah, he's decked out in red now, like a red veil covering half his face. So, oh no, Lee has become a bad guy. We even see him like, he goes to people's houses and like beats them up. Yeah.

There's one house he goes to and the demon priest shows up there when the guy won't submit. And he's like, you worm, you have the guts to stand up to me. And we get a sleeve blast, of course. You know, he loves to shoot the smoke out of his sleeve. Elsewhere, we get a scene of the wolf woman going to a restaurant. This is one we've alluded to, I think, a couple of times now. So she's wandering. She's in civilization now and she's wandering through a city.

And she discovers that she likes the smell of food. So she goes into this restaurant. She doesn't know what to order, but she listens to what others at the table next to her say. And this is a large group of people. And they end up ordering boiled eggs, half of a roasted chicken and five jugs of wine. And so she just orders the same thing. She's like, I'll have what they're having.

And yeah. And the guy's like, that's too much wine, but they bring it to her and she doesn't know how to use chopsticks and she gets drunk and drunken Wolf woman is a problem. Um,

She freaks out, rips out her own hair, and turns into the ginseng blonde. And then the ginseng blonde is a violent, drunken mess and wrecks the restaurant and beats up all the guys who try to stop her. Yeah, she's a mess. And this whole sequence is wonderful. It's played for laughs. It's ridiculous. And I loved every minute of it. The comedic sections of some of these older movies...

They don't necessarily always stand the test of time or translate all that well, but this is all perfect.

Yes. But unfortunately, she is eventually overpowered, I think, because she's she's sort of on she's not at her full potential because of the five jugs of wine. Right. So the townspeople capture her. They beat her with rods. They tie her in a sack and then they dunk her up and down in the well and a sad song plays. This this one. This was another just outrageous moment for me, though, because at least in wine.

This is a dub or the or the subtitles. They were like, throw her in the well. And I'm like, is this standard operating procedure? Like there is a magical monster that has been arrested in your town. Let us throw her into the town's primary water source. Yeah, that just doesn't seem like the best use of your well water. I mean, I'm assuming you're drinking that water or you're using it for for a purpose.

purposes around town. Let's not, let's not drain, drown supernatural beings in that water just to be on the safe side. Yeah. I, I'm confused about the strategy of the townspeople here. Uh, but then we get an intervention by a familiar face. Wong shows up. He just happens to be walking by. Yeah.

That's right. So he like goes and tries to help her, but ultimately they are both thrown down into the well. And then something, there was a disconnect here. I didn't understand what happened. Somehow Wong and the Wolf Woman are both washed out of the well into a fishing hole where Master Chu is there fishing. Yeah.

Did you understand what that was? It kind of felt like a scene was missing there, but I guess basically it's like down the well, in water, flushed out to another body of water. I guess it's just, it's all connected. So here is the scene where she meets with Master Chu and Master Chu tells her about her history. She says, long ago, about 20 years ago, your father, the warrior of Steel Sparrow...

And

And Master Chu also tells her that it is her destiny to fight back because the Red Devil has wronged her, has killed her parents, and he is the Wolf Woman's enemy. So she must get revenge against the devil. It is her destiny. And then there is some double-take editing here. Suddenly we go straight from the scene where she's being told this

into combat scenes, just action where the Wolf Woman is riding on horseback and whipping devil warriors heads off with the knotted rope. And they're like on a beach and then a desert and she's whipping the rope. Their heads are going everywhere. She's also flying off of city walls and attacking the devil soldiers again with the whip and

And we also see her wearing a different outfit, a very cool costume change where it almost suggests she is now fulfilling some kind of religious function. Yeah, it's like some sort of divine warrior garb all in white. So now she is like Wolf Devil Woman the White, come back to avenge everyone. Ah, yes. So Wolf Devil Woman, not Devil, Wolf Woman and Wong, they attack the devil's hideout in the woods, the one that Master Li and his father and all their men attacked earlier.

And there are, whoa, what to say about this scene? There's like flaming bats flying all around. Suddenly Wong does seem like a competent fighter here. We see Wolf Woman versus the vampire orc that was chasing her parents and she pins him to a tree with swords. Just general crazy wuxia action. And then we cut from there to Wolf Woman and Wong trekking through the desert and there are more fight scenes. Here's one that's a great payoff where we see Wolf Woman's

Wolf hunting skills that she used against rabbits used against the devil warriors where she's like digging tunnels and popping up from under the sand to yank them down and destroy them. Mm hmm.

Also, there's just the gore effects here. I think fans of the show will know I'm not typically a gore hound. You know, having a lot of blood and guts and stuff in a movie is not something I usually get excited about. But in this case, it is because it's like the way the wolf woman will like hit one of the devil fighters. She'll hit them. And then we just see like bloody severed limbs falling to the ground. Yeah.

Yeah, there's almost just the right level of slightly over the top, but unbelievable practical bloody violence in a picture can take on its own reality. Like this isn't in the story of Ricky territory, but like story of Ricky is a film that I haven't seen in a long time. So I don't know if it would still hold up this way for me, but I remember enjoying it on that level and that it's like.

Everyone but the hero's body is made out of just paper mache and jello and just comes apart immediately and nothing can withstand our hero. And it's the same with Wolf Devil Woman. It's like those action figure. I don't remember what they were called, but there were these action figures that had like a button you could press and all of their limbs would just fall off of them at once. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like with anyone who dares stand up against our snow flower.

So now Wolf Woman and Wong are suddenly in the Devil's Temple. How'd they get there? I'm not sure. But they see Lee dressed in the garb of the Red Devil. He's got the, you know, the red veil on and they're like, Lee, what happened to you? They want him back. But the witches and the devils say, no, you can't have him. He's with us now. There's more fighting, just general great fight scenes. I can't recount every every point here, but I love them.

Somewhere in here, somebody says, huh? She fights like a wolf. But this seems to mean using a whip and jumping a lot. And the demon, the demon comes and tries to spray them with his sleeve dust, which of course is very, very dangerous, potent magic. And they beg Lee for help.

And this suddenly snaps Lee out of his trance or something. And he jumps in to save them. And then he flies away carrying Wolf, Wolf woman and Wong. Uh, and Wong has been sleeve sprayed real bad, but he's not dead. And then suddenly they're just somewhere else being treated by master Chu. Uh, it, it all happens. There's a very loose spatial logic to what's going on here. And it happens so fast with so little explanation, uh,

But I think, Rob, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Lee explains that he was never actually hypnotized by the devil. He was just a spy learning how the devil's palace works. That's right, because Master Chu's amulet protected him from being brainwashed by the demon cult, so he's just been in deep cover the whole time, which...

as you pointed out, includes beating the crap out of innocence in earlier scenes. Yeah. But I guess he thinks it was worth it because he learned the secret of the demon, which is that there's this golden needle, which has this great power. We saw it at the beginning being inserted into a doll to cause pain and it can be used on the demons too, I guess. Yeah.

So we get a final showdown scene where Lee Wong and the Wolf Woman team up. They go back to the Red Devil Temple and they're like, there's some exchange. I'm afraid I'm getting this wrong, but they're like, we're here to kill you. And the devil's like, you can't be serious. And they're like, no, that is correct. We're here to kill you.

There's a great scene where they're, you know, they're attacking the mnemonic temple here. And in comes the lead demon priest. And he said, or at least the subtitles say, and I think maybe the dub did this too. He says, look at me, fools. I am. I am doing it. Does this huge intro number. And then, yeah, it's just crazy fighting from there on out. There was this, it was established earlier that our lead demon here has, you know,

like frozen would be heroes in a state of undeath. Yes. The temple and they can be brought back to life by removing their needles. And when they come back to life, they are essentially Jiangshi. They are the hopping vampire. Yes. Without all the rules of hopping vampires, but they are moving like hopping vampires in these sequences.

Right. So there's that going on. There's just a lot of tremendous fighting in this final showdown. There's the witch who's using her spider and cobweb powers. And then there's also a big,

identity reveal that is then double twisted and undermined if i understood correctly yeah sort of uh so like the red devil they get his mask off and he reveals his identity and oh no it is master lee's father bum bum bum bum bum bum and he's like i wanted the white ginseng root

So that we could rule over the world. And, you know, you and I as father and son, we could rule the galaxy as father and son. But then I think Master Chu walks in and is like, no, he's not actually your father. He's just a shapeshifter who can look like anyone. Bum, bum, bum. But yeah, Chu just like strolls out from behind a pillar and tells everybody this. Oh, it's so good. Yeah. And of course, the good guys win in the end. And yeah, it's...

I loved Wolf Devil Woman. It kind of comes to an abrupt end, though, after that. It's just kind of like, OK, forces of evil are defeated and that's it. Everybody can go home. Yeah, it's not clear what's happening to Wolf Woman at the end. Like they defeat the devil. Oh, and Master Chu reveals that he was his evil brother, I think, and that he killed Lee's father and then killed.

turn to look like him. But anyway, they defeat the devil devil turns to ash, but we were told earlier by master Chu that it would take all of snow flowers, magical ginseng strength to defeat the devil. And then after the conflict, she would wither and die. And now here we are after the conflicts, they have defeated the devil and,

And Wolf Woman is shown to be woozy and reeling. And Lee goes to kind of steady her. And I guess we're supposed to be in suspense like, oh, is she going to be OK? But we don't find out. They just cut to the end.

So no resolution on what happens to Wolf Woman. I do wish there was a happy epilogue. I wanted to see them going to restaurants again. All four of the heroes going to restaurants together. That would have been good. Like, see if she has really learned how to use chopsticks yet, or if she's just going to, you know, end up eating the fish with her hands again. More Wolf Woman eating too many boiled eggs and drinking too much wine. Yeah.

So, yeah, that is Wolf Devil Woman. Quite a picture. Never a dull moment. This is this is not one that is a slog to watch by any stretch of the imagination. Hats off to Pearl Chang. I love it. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to go and close up this episode of Weird House Cinema. But we would love to hear from everyone out there.

Are you a fan of Wolf Devil Woman? Do you have additional context to share regarding Wolf Devil Woman and Taiwanese cinema? Do you have a personal history with this film or did you watch it for the first time after hearing us bringing it, bring it up?

up. If so, maybe you have some thoughts as well. Anything's fair game. You know, if you want to talk about, write into us, talk about past episodes of Weird House Cinema, movies we covered ages back, movies we just covered, as well as movies we might potentially cover in the future. We're always open for suggestions, and those suggestions can sometimes, you know, push things up on our possible list of future episodes. So, yeah, keep it coming. We'd love to hear from you. And if you do want to

see what we've covered in the past on the show well you can go over to letterboxd.com that's l-e-t-t-e-r-b-o-x-d.com which is in general just a really cool sort of social media site for reviewing films and tracking films and putting films on lists and to watch lists and all well we are on there our username is weird house and we have a singular list there of all the movies we've covered so far and sometimes there's a peek ahead at what we're covering in the next week or two

Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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