-By  Will, on October 15, 2018, 7:00 am  This week in our month-long dive into horror on the Silver Emulsion Podcast, Stephen and I are talking about the 2007 horror anthology anime series, Mononoke! It’s also Episode 100, how did that happen? Listen and enjoy! 🙂
Watch Mononoke along with us on DVD or iTunes (Split into Vol. 1 & Vol. 2)!
Also: the show is on iTunes! So if you feel like subscribing there, or rating/reviewing the show, feel free to share your thoughts!
Music Notes
Intro:
- MonoMono – Kenimania
- Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk in 1970’s Nigeria (iTunes, Amazon)
Outro:
- John Coltrane – I Hear A Rhapsody
If you’ve got feedback, throw it into the comments below or email it to me via the contact page! We’ll include it in a future show!
The podcast is embedded directly below this, or you can go directly to Podbean (or use their app) to listen. If you want to subscribe, paste http://silveremulsion.podbean.com/feed/ into whatever reader you’re using.
-By Will, on October 12, 2018, 7:00 am  The Enchanting Ghost [鬼屋麗人] (1970)
Starring Chang Mei-Yao, Yang Li-Hua, Lui Ming, Lam Ban, Lee Hung, Julie Lee Chi-Lun, Sha Lee-Man, Ko Hsiang-Ting, Tsui Fu-Sheng, Tai Leung, Ko Hsiao-Pao, Ng Ho
Directed by Chou Hsu-Chiang
Expectations: Excited, I liked Chou’s The Bride from Hell.
Like last week’s film, The Ghost Story, The Enchanting Ghost falls into the category of Hong Kong horror with only minor elements of what usually defines a horror film. The Enchanting Ghost was also based on a story from Pu Songling’s 18th century collection of ghost stories and other assorted cautionary tales, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. This particular film is based on the story The Bookworm, for those interested in seeing how differently things play out in the two versions. As with most classic Hong Kong ghost films, your enjoyment of The Enchanting Ghost will depend on having properly set expectations for a slower pace and light supernatural elements. With that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed The Enchanting Ghost from start to finish. It is a finely crafted film that definitely makes you wait for the ghostly happenings, but the journey towards them is also largely charming and entertaining.
Lang Yu Zhu (Yang Li-Hua, playing against gender as a male) is a scholar whose entire existence is consumed by his affection for learning and books. He doesn’t do much else, based in part on his particular love for a real-life poem by Emperor Zhenzong titled Quanxueshi (劝学诗). The poem is a love letter to studying, expressing that study can bring such things as fortunes, good harvests, and beautiful women. When we meet Lang, he is lovingly reciting these lines of the poem, and in a few short minutes he is given the chance to test the poem’s theories. Lang’s uncle covets his home, so he arranges with an official to seize it from Lang under the auspices of repaying the debt left by Lang’s father when he passed. Whether this debt is legitimate or not, Lang is thrown out into the street with nowhere to call home, so he decides to take up residence in the town’s derelict haunted house.
Continue reading The Enchanting Ghost (1970) →
-By Will, on October 8, 2018, 7:00 am  This week in our month-long dive into horror on the Silver Emulsion Podcast, Stephen and I are looking back at one of the biggest independent hits of the ’90s, Brett Leonard’s sci-fi horror film The Lawnmower Man! Listen and enjoy! 🙂
Watch The Lawnmower Man along with us on Blu-ray, DVD, iTunes, or Amazon Instant Video (Director’s Cut only)!
Also: the show is on iTunes! So if you feel like subscribing there, or rating/reviewing the show, feel free to share your thoughts!
Music Notes
Intro:
- MC5 – The Human Being Lawnmower (Custom Edit)
Outro:
If you’ve got feedback, throw it into the comments below or email it to me via the contact page! We’ll include it in a future show!
The podcast is embedded directly below this, or you can go directly to Podbean (or use their app) to listen. If you want to subscribe, paste http://silveremulsion.podbean.com/feed/ into whatever reader you’re using.
-By Will, on October 5, 2018, 7:00 am  The Ghost Story [鬼叫春] (1979)
Starring Yueh Hua, Woo Gam, Shirley Yu Sha-Li, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Wong Ching-Ho, Kara Hui, Lam Yeung-Yeung, Jamie Luk Kim-Ming, Lee Kwan, Ng Hong-Sang, Yeung Chi-Hing, Fung Ging-Man, Wang Han-Chen, Ku Wen-Chung, Tin Hoi-Fung
Directed by Li Han-Hsiang
Expectations: Curious, but not sure.
The Ghost Story is a sort of anthology film, but the way it’s told the second story is meant to represent the reincarnations of the characters from the first, and the leads are played by the same actors (Woo Gam & Yueh Hua). Some secondary actors reappear in similar roles, as well. But since there are two distinct segments and a framing story of a grandpa telling stories to a rapt audience, I suppose it’s as much of an anthology film as anything else. The stories here are adapted from Pu Songling’s ever-popular short story collection, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, first published in 1740. The bulk of the film is based on one of the most popular tales, The Painted Skin, while the first story is a bit harder to pin down.
There are 491 stories in the full version, but most English editions are whittled down to somewhere around 100 stories. The book I have has a story titled Making Animals that contains some elements present in the first segment of The Ghost Story, but other than that I was unable to identify the specific story being adapted. A six-volume, complete English translation was finished a few years ago by Sidney L. Sondergard, so perhaps one day I’ll figure it out. For now, though, we’ll have to be satisfied not knowing or assuming that Li wrote a new story around elements of Making Animals. Anyway, once he tells the kids to go to bed, our narrator begins a tale that occurred sometime during the reign of Empress Wu of the Tang dynasty. It is the story of Hua’s Inn, run by three sisters, and how a group of tired soldiers sought refuge there.
Continue reading The Ghost Story (1979) →
-By Will, on October 2, 2018, 7:00 am  Starring Brett Novek, Arthur Napiontek, Preston Davis, Maria Aceves, Nathan Parsons, Oskar Rodriguez, Lindsey Landers
Directed by David DeCoteau
Expectations: Hopeful. I like most of this series.
On the general scale:
On the B-movie scale:
After the high quality of The Brotherhood IV, I came into The Brotherhood V: Alumni with hope for another great Brotherhood film. There were four years between entries… maybe that time was spent looking for a story worthy of the renowned Brotherhood name! My hopes quickly fell when I saw the locker-lined hallway of a high school, though. In this moment, director David DeCoteau certainly inspired horror within me, but not the horror intended! 🙂 The Brotherhood V: Alumni is more like The Brotherhood III, although thankfully it’s more entertaining than that bottom-of-the-barrel film. That isn’t apparent in the film’s intro, though, where a nerdy teenager on prom night is stalked through the impossibly blue, locker-lined halls by perhaps the least urgent stalking killer in film history. The nerd is tracked into the girls’ locker room, where he undresses, showers, and is ultimately murdered. The sound of a heartbeat plays the entire time, like a meditation mantra pulling you down into a state of sweet oblivion. This all plays about as slowly as is humanly possible, taking up the first 15 minutes of the movie.
It is here that we meet the brotherhood of this film, a completely down-to-earth group without a shred of the supernatural to be found. They bond over their shared promise to never speak of what happened on prom night in the girls’ locker room, not from any altruistic ideal, but because their prank on the nerd kid went wrong and someone stole the video tape that recorded it for posterity. One year later, the friends all receive a blue envelope containing an invitation to a school reunion, or to a one-year prom reunion or something. I don’t remember exactly, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they have been called back to the school, and whoever called them there is terrorizing them with the threat of releasing the tape.
Continue reading The Brotherhood V: Alumni (2009) →
-By Will, on October 1, 2018, 7:00 am  This week begins our month-long dive into horror on the Silver Emulsion Podcast, and Stephen and I are talking about one of the most well-loved and iconic horror films of the ’80s: Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street! Listen and enjoy! 🙂
Watch A Nightmare on Elm Street along with us on Blu-ray, DVD, iTunes, or Amazon Instant Video!
Also: the show is on iTunes! So if you feel like subscribing there, or rating/reviewing the show, feel free to share your thoughts!
Music Notes
Intro:
- Black Sabbath – Supernaut
Outro:
- John Entwistle – I’m So Scared
If you’ve got feedback, throw it into the comments below or email it to me via the contact page! We’ll include it in a future show!
The podcast is embedded directly below this, or you can go directly to Podbean (or use their app) to listen. If you want to subscribe, paste http://silveremulsion.podbean.com/feed/ into whatever reader you’re using.
-By Will, on September 28, 2018, 7:00 am 1976 and 1977 were wonderful years for the Shaw Brothers studio, filled with an abundance of great films that made narrowing this list to 10 a challenging proposition. Wuxias, largely following the patterns set by the films of King Hu and Chang Cheh, had fallen out of favor by the early ’70s, but Chor Yuen’s 1976 film Killer Clans — and the many that followed it — injected new life and new ideas into a faded genre. Chor’s unique re-focusing of the genre towards literary adaptations and tales showcasing mental fortitude over purely physical abilities made him a driving force in the industry, and the next monumental figure in the history of the wuxia genre. Meanwhile, Lau Kar-Leung released his next two films during these years, pushing the realistic kung fu seen in Chang Cheh’s Shaolin Cycle films to new heights. During this period, Chang Cheh was also forced to reckon with the fact that he was no longer the driving force of Hong Kong action filmmaking, as his time in Taiwan came to a close.
These years also saw the rise of other Hong Kong cinema luminaries outside of the Shaw system. Sammo Hung’s first directorial effort, The Iron-Fisted Monk, was a huge hit, Richard Ng became a star with both the #1 & #2 film of 1977 (John Woo’s The Pilferer’s Progress & Karl Maka’s Winner Takes All!), and the Hui Brothers continued their blockbuster dominance with 1976’s The Private Eyes. Jackie Chan was also on the verge of superstardom with the looming release of Yuen Woo-Ping’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow a few months into 1978, but during 1976–1977 he was still making a string of films for Lo Wei. Other non-Shaw fan favorites released during these years include: The 18 Bronzemen, One-Armed Boxer Vs The Flying Guillotine (Master of the Flying Guillotine), The Secret Rivals, The Hot, the Cool and the Vicious, The Invincible Armour, Snuff-Bottle Connection, Broken Oath, and many, many more. With this introduction, I hope to paint a brief picture of these years in Hong Kong cinema, both to refresh memories or to spur new fans to dive deeper. 🙂
As usual, I’ve included links to iTunes/Amazon/DDDHouse for easy access if you’re looking to get the films. The availability is current as of the posting of this list. eBay is always a good option, as well, if my links don’t turn up any results. If you’re interested in what’s below the cut and you don’t want to troll through my review archive, I have ranked lists on Letterboxd for every year I’ve finished in the Shaw Brothers Chronological review series. You can find 1976 here and 1977 here.
OK, OK, let’s get to the list!
#10 Judgement of an Assassin (1977)
Directed by Sun Chung
Reviewed August 10, 2018
Judgement of an Assassin was Sun Chung’s first wuxia since 1972’s The Devil’s Mirror, a film I absolutely adore. Sun’s return exists in a middle ground between the brooding darkness of Chor Yuen and the comic book sensibilities of Chang Cheh’s The Brave Archer, delivering fun and exciting choreography in a wonderful package. It feels like an underseen film, and that should definitely not be the case. With its near-perfect combo of entertaining action and a beautifully structured story, this is a movie that all Shaw Brothers fans should see.
Judgement of an Assassin is currently only available on an out-of-print Region 3 DVD or VCD. Check Amazon or eBay, and keep your fingers crossed that Celestial may release the film digitally sometime in the future.
#9 The Shaolin Avengers (1976)
Directed by Chang Cheh (with Wu Ma)
Reviewed December 8, 2017
The Shaolin Avengers is top-notch Shaolin Cycle; a fantastic movie that cohesively combines the stories of Fang Shih-Yu and Hu Huei-Chien into one thrilling, entertaining package. Its greatness lies in its structure; the film opens with its finale, fading in and out into flashbacks that show how our heroes and villains all came to this particular battle. The structure removes a lot of the tension inherent in a traditional revenge story, but this is the point. Instead, I pondered the nature of life, how small moments remind you of people or places, and how important preparation is to success. The Shaolin Avengers is a film of pure entertainment that builds up more of the Shaolin mythology of the earlier films, or in other words, it’s every thing I could want out of a Shaolin Cycle film.
On disc, The Shaolin Avengers is currently only available on an out-of-print Region 3 DVD or VCD. Check Amazon or eBay. Digitally it is available for rental/purchase at iTunes, Amazon Prime, and other top digital platforms.
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