This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick.

And today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the 1983 Hong Kong action horror film, The Boxers Omen, directed by Quay Chi Hung.

This movie is a lot of things.

First of all, it is just a lot.

Through one lens, it is an action-packed martial arts revenge film.

Through another, it is magical insanity, just an overwhelming storm of rituals and magical items being combined, magical recipes, necromancy, you've got creaky bat skeletons,

needle-nosed tarantulas, red devils, skin balloons, crocodile skulls, rotten guts, bikini mummies,

just all kinds of stuff. Basically, more unhinged sorcery, slop, gore, and wizard battles than you could imagine being crammed into a single film.

That's right.

It's pretty wall-to-wall.

And the connective tissue in there is...

No pun intended. When the film isn't being just absolutely crazy,

there's some very well-crafted connective tissue

that I think also adds to the weird feeling you get watching this picture.

Yeah, well, I was going to say,

I wonder if this is what you're alluding to,

through yet another lens.

It's a kind of interesting exploration of like Buddhist monastic piety and the quest for immortality.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think, now, to be clear, you're not going to learn much about Buddhism watching this picture.

But as we'll point out, there's some very nice locations here.

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