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War God
InMovie Reviews, Podcasts

Joint Podcast – TarsTarkas.NET and 4DK discuss Taiwanese Giant Monster Films – Part 2

November 28, 2010By

And now we have Part 2 of the joint podcast from TarsTarkas.NET and 4DK about Taiwanese giant monster films. Join Tars from TarsTarkas.NET and Todd from Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! as we discuss how annoying flying Taiwanese children are a threat to the very existence of giant monsters in Taiwan, as well as Taiwanese films that don’t fit into neat categories. Only one of the films mentioned this time are impossible for you to see at the moment, the rest are just highly difficult to locate!

You can download the mp3 here (right-click, save-as) or just watch the flash version where I threw together some images to go along with what is discussed and even remembered to have an opening title card!

Movies discussed include:
Dwarf Sorcerer
Flyer of Young Prodigal
Young Flying Hero
Boy and a Magic Box
War God
Thrilling Sword – Tars Review – 4DK Review
Merciful Buddha
Monkey War
Phantom Magic Peach Blossom
Legend of Mother Goddess

The joint podcast will continue soon! It will definitely be better technically with less random noises and clearer microphones. We might even have a title for it by next time…

Part One is located here

War God

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Devil Fighter Stills
InMovie Reviews, Podcasts

Joint Podcast – TarsTarkas.NET and 4DK discuss Taiwanese Giant Monster Films – Part 1

November 19, 2010By

Yes, now you can listen to TarsTarkas.NET while you workout at the gym or play us in the background while you hose off the women you keep in the pit in your basement. TarsTarkas.NET doesn’t judge, and certainly isn’t calling the cops, we’re just ordering a pizza. Yeah, that’s it!

Join Tars from TarsTarkas.NET and Todd from Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! as they discuss giant monster movies out of Taiwan, a mysterious subgenre stooped in obscurity and discovery. In fact, much of the information is based on speculation and internet gossip! But it has giant monsters, so it is automatically awesome, even if the films are boring. And please ignore how we get Monster From the Sea and The Savior Monk mixed up!

Films discussed include:

Tsu Hong Wu
The Fairy and the Devil
Monster From The Sea
The Savior Monk
Sea Gods and Ghosts
The Silver Maid
Devil Fighter
And more!

You can download the mp3 here (right-click, save-as) or just play it with a handy dandy flash version that I threw together with a few images from the movies discussed:

Coming soon will be Part 2, where annoying Taiwanese children will fly around and slaughter every giant monster they can find.

Devil Fighter Stills

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

InMovie News

Steve Mayhem Presents Lunatic Frog Women

November 18, 2010By

My friend Todd at 4DK will be occasionally working with Steve Mayhem, who seems to love flicks about women beating people up just as much as I do. Except he has a cool radio announcer voice! Enjoy Steve Mayhem’s review of Lunatic Frog Women, about women who are lunatics but not frogs.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Mean Drunken Master (Review)

November 14, 2010By

Mean Drunken Master

aka Iron Bridge Kung-Fu aka Mang han dou lao qian

1979
Directed by Wong Fung
Mean Drunken Master
Gam Fung-Ling starred in The Ape Girl and one other film, Mean Drunken Master/Iron Bridge Kung Fu. Hey, look, we’re doing a review of Mean Drunken Master/Iron Bridge Kung Fu! I bet you didn’t see that coming! Now I bet you are wondering who the mean drunken master is. I hate to disappoint you, but there is no mean drunken master. In fact, all we have is a drunken master who doesn’t even bother to be in the last half of the film. He’s more of an absent drunken master. The evil guy isn’t drunk, but he does have a ridiculous name, as do all his goons. He must have founded the Evil Ridiculous Names Gang, and then spent his youth terrorizing the people of Taiwan who had normal names.

Director Wong Fung directed many films (including How The Ape Girl Stole The Lotus Lamp and The Blonde Monster), but did you know that many of his films have the word “white” in the title? It’s true! I know you are as shocked as I. For the record: White-Haired Madam Su is Pregnant (1959), Stone Prince Takes the Throne (Final Part to White-Haired Madam Su) (1959), The White Lady’s Reincarnation (1959), The White-snake Girl (Part 1) (1960), The White-snake Girl (Part 2) (1960), White Hair Girl of Miu Shan (Part 1) (1961), White Hair Girl of Miu Shan (Part 2) (1961), and The White Dragon (1968). That’s 8/67 films with white in the title, an 11.9% rate! He also wrote 42 of the Wong Fei-Hung movies, and directed a fair share of them.
Mean Drunken Master

Gam Fung-Ling stars in this flick along with The Ape Girl/Lady Iron Monkey. These are her only two film roles known, which is sort of a shame because she’s pretty darn charismatic in both of the films. Whatever happened to Gam Fung-Ling? Your guess is as good as mine. Unless you actually know, in which case your guess is probably better than mine. Maybe. Who knows, one day I’ll be watching some random Taiwanese flick and suddenly Gam Fung-Ling will wander by and monkey kung fu the crap out of someone. That will be a good day (unless you’re the dude getting monkey kung fu-ed!)
Mean Drunken Master

Lung San (Wong Goon-Hung) – The best student of the O Mei’s 12th Generation school. Is a good guy, too bad he’s not that interesting.
13 Points (Gam Fung-Ling) – 13 Points is the name of the cook girl who juggles eggs but is also a klutz. She’s also good at kung fu, because that’s what happens in a kung fu movie. Gam Fung-Ling was The Ape Girl.
Ho Yuen Biao (Shih Chung Tien) – Ho Yuen Biao runs O Mei’s 12th Generation school with older wife. Shih Chung Tien was in Jade Dagger Ninja.
Piggy (Simon Yuen Siu-Tin)- A lovable drunk who boozes his way around town, is a secret kung fu master, and is also part of a secret society to protect Chinese artifacts. But mostly he’s a drunk. Simon Yuen was the patriarch of the Yuen family.
White Orchid (To Gwai Fa) – At first a mysterious old lady wandering around, but eventually becomes the kung fu teacher to 13 Points and is later revealed to be her mother. Is probably best known for the Heroic Victim series which involved lots of female wrestling.

Mean Drunken Master

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Haunted House Elf (Review)

October 31, 2010By

Haunted House Elf


1990
Directed by ???

Haunted House Elf is what the title of this film translate to. There are little to no records of this hardly anywhere, especially records in English. Whoever did the subtitles decided that the vampires would be called “The Living Dead” He also decided that checking spelling was for pussies and that he was a real man. I’m here to tell you this guy is no real man and probably couldn’t spell “man” correctly if it was tattooed on his hand, much less any other word.

There was a period of time where tons of hopping vampire flicks popped up in the shadow of the Mr. Vampire films. Because hopping vampires are wacky, kids loved them, and it was inevitable that hopping vampire kid movies appeared. There was a ton of them at one point, you couldn’t shake a magic paper tract without it hitting the forehead of some hopping vampire kid. Then, like most fads, it quickly died and was replaced with Pokemon or something. Hmph…kids.

Wang Chi-Chiang aka Shiao-Chiang (???) – His mom is dead, his dad is a drunk, and Shiao-Chiang has anger at his mom for dying. But he’s too busy trying to please and comes off as a normal kid, which is good. Shiao because means little, as you should know had you seen that Karate Kid remake or speak Chinese.
Shiao-Ming (Lin Hsiao Lan) – The daughter of the family that owns the house. We never find out her full name. Not very good at being low-key that they are up to something, but mom is too busy. Lin Hsiao Lan is best known for starring in a bunch of Peach Boy films.
Lee Chung-Chiang aka Shaio-Tai (???) – Bratty son of the family that owns the haunted house. Is a big jerk, yells at people for no reason, and the rest of the kids ditch him to go on their comic book adventure. Jerks always finish last, buddy!
Tong-Tong (???) – A Hopping Vampire Kid who was trapped in a coffin for 300 years, then gets his new friends trapped in a comic book where they almost die like 50 times. A real friend. Now let’s stake him!
Tribal Chief (Wu Ma) – An evil tribal chief who is about to feast on some princess when these kids and a vampire show up in his comic book story and ruin the plot. Tribal Chief switches more costumes than an evening of Saturday Night Live trying to defeat the invaders, but eventually dies when the comic book burns up.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Magic Sword of Watari (Review)

October 17, 2010By

The Magic Sword of Watari

aka Watari and the 7 Monsters aka Golden Boy subdues Monsters

1970
Directed by Yang Moo-nwa

Mitsuteru Yokoyama created the manga Masked Ninja Akakage (Red Shadow) in 1966, which became a Toei tokustatsu series in 1967 that ran 52 episodes. The ninja Akakage and his sidekicks Aokage (played by child star Yoshinobu Kaneko) and Shirokage wander around feudal Japan fighting evil dudes, crazy wizards, and giant monsters. Several of the episodes were stitched together to make three flicks that were farmed out to various markets, titled Ninjascope: The Magic World of Ninjas, Watari the Conqueror, and Watari and the Fantastiks. The three films have recently been released on DVD. The show’s young boy star Yoshinobu Kaneko also starred in the film Watari Ninja Boy (Daininjutsu eiga Watari), which is why some of the Akakage films were renamed with Watari in the title.

Yoshinobu Kaneko then made two films in Taiwan in 1970 that were co-productions with Japan. According to Yoshinobu Kaneko’s own website, the two films were called Momotaro Young Dragon and Momotaro restrains the Seven Monsters. The second film is also known as Watari and the 7 Monsters, aka The Magic Sword of Watari, aka Golden Boy and the Seven Monsters, aka Golden Boy subdues Monsters. Which would be this very film!

Now, if this reuses some monster footage from the Akakage tv series, I have no idea. I have not seen any of these monsters in photos I saw of the Akakage series, but I haven’t watched all 52 episodes.

Peachboy! – The legend of Peachboy is a classic Japanese legend. It goes like this: Momotaro (aka Peachboy) is found inside a giant peach by a childless couple, and eventually Momotaro goes to an island to kill a bunch of demons. On the way, he makes friends with a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant. There are several films about this legend, along with a lot of cartoons and tv shows, many of which are wacky. However, The Magic Sword of Watari only follows parts of this story, and instead becomes just another Taiwanese film about a boy who flies around and kills a bunch of monsters.

We got white subs on white backgrounds most of the time! But at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles! Or even partial subtitles!

Peach (Yoshinobu Kaneko) – A boy from a giant peach who has super powers and flies around and is awesome and acts amazingly like the character from Watari that Yoshinobu Kaneko played, even down to having some of the same weapons. So they took him and shoved him into some of the Peach Boy/Momotaro mythos.
Lee Yu (???) – A Fox Spirit caught by Peach who joins him on his quest. Has the power to turn into pretty much anything. Is an orphan.
Pearl (???) – Farmer’s daughter, is to be sacrificed to the demon Frogger until Peach kicks it’s butt. Becomes Peach’s sister in name only as a result, thus spending the last half of the movie moping over Peach’s sick mom.
Frogger (???) – The frog demon guy that is either named devil or god or god-devil or whatever Subtitle Guy wanted to call him that sentence, so we’re just calling him Frogger because he’s a giant frog. Except when he’s a guy, or a guy riding a giant frog. Anyway, his career of demanding virgins comes to an end when he is killed.
Peach’s Dad/Old Guy (???) – Peach’s dad, found Peach in a giant peach in the river. His wife is sick and he spends most of the film looking after her.
Demon Master (???) – The head of the demons who guard the magic plant Peach is after. He looks like he’s inspired by the Japanese Tengu spirit masks.

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