Perverse Permission

In this Thanksgiving episode, John and Samm are running the gauntlet through three of Wong Jing’s gambling and crime films from the late ’80s: Born to Gamble (1987), yet another tale of a gambler (Natalis Chan) deceiving his prospective love interest (the divine Joyce Godenzi) to try to win her heart; Doubles Cause Troubles (1989), where two cousins (Maggie Cheung and Carol Cheng) are forced to live together for an inheritance, but they get swept into a plot involving gangsters, a secret code, and crooked cops; and Casino Raiders (1989), where Andy Lau and Alan Tam play two professional gamblers on the wrong side of the law who are forced to contend with nefarious Japanese businessmen as one of them falls in love with a wealthy heiress (Idy Chan). While Born to Gamble and Doubles Cause Troubles are comedies, Casino Raiders is more of a melodrama, but all three represent variations on how some of Jing’s common themes developed throughout the ’80s… which we are thankfully almost finished with. Our suffering is legendary, but it is for you, dear listeners. This also isn’t really a Thanksgiving episode, but we wanted to give you something to play loudly to get your relatives out of the house. Thanks for listing and please follow Samm and John over at Patreon for more!

For this special, spooky episode of our Wong Jing series, John and Samm explore the horror comedies Wong Jing made in the late 1980s as a director, writer, and actor. We discuss films he wrote and acted in, like Lam Ngai-kai’s The Ghost Snatchers (1986), about a high rise building haunted by the ghosts of Japanese soldiers from WWII; Evil Cat (1987), about a demonic cat entity that must be defeated at all costs; and Ghost Busting (1989), about office workers who have to learn to fight off the ghosts swarming their building. We also dive into his directorial efforts like Mr. Possessed (1988), where Kenny Bee is tormented by a ghost who doesn’t want him to find a girlfriend; Ghost Fever (1989), where Wong Jing plays an asshole who cheats on his pregnant wife and is terrorized by angry ghosts as a result; and the insane Haunted Jail House (1989), part women-in-prison film, part sex comedy, and part horror movie. Thanks for listing and please follow Samm and John over at Patreon for more!  

Our Wong Jing series continues with a discussion of the last films he made for Shaw Brothers as a director, a blend of comedy, action, and fantasy. This includes: Wits of the Brats (1984), co-directed by Alexander Fu Sheng, about a spoiled brat who wants to become a martial arts master; I Love Lolanto (1984), where Natalis Chan’s reign of terror lives on in this romantic comedy about how he crosses paths with a mentally challenged woman; and The Flying Mr. B (1985), with Kenny Bee as a high school sports coach whose luck changes when he finds a potion that gives him super powers. We also discuss one of Jing’s first true bangers as a director, the action-fantasy classic The Magic Crystal (1986), where Andy Lau and Cynthia Rothrock team up against a KGB supervillain (Richard Norton) in search of an alien crystal. Thanks for listing and please follow Samm and John over at Patreon for more!

Samm and John are about to embark on a long series covering the first few decades of the career of a Hong Kong legend: Wong Jing. Producer, director, writer, actor, and professional hater, Jing helped shape Hong Kong cinema in the ’80s and ’90s. In this first episode in the series, we’re diving in to his early work as a screenwriter on martial arts classics like Magnificent Butcher (1979), Dreadnaught (1981), and The Prodigal Son (1981), and then we discuss his first few action films as a director with Shaw Brothers: his wonderful gambling comedies Challenge of the Gamesters (1981) and Winner Takes All (1982), and the explosive Mercenaries from Hong Kong (1982), an important influence on the emerging heroic bloodshed subgenre. Thanks for listing and please follow Samm and John over at Patreon for more!

For the inaugural episode of Perverse Permission, Samm and John are diving right into the deep end of Japanese pink films. This is the first of a two-part episode exploring the legendary Angel Guts series based on Takashi Ishii’s manga of the same time. All the films loosely follow a woman called Nami and various iterations of her tortured relationship with a man named Muraki. These visually stunning films are often intensely erotic, but also explore the effects of trauma and sexual violence with surprising depth. This episode covers the first four films in the series, Chusei Sone’s Angel Guts: High School Co-Ed (1978) and Angel Guts: Red Classroom (1979), Noboru Tanaka’s Angel Guts: Nami (1979), and Toshiharu Ikeda’s Angel Guts: Red Porno (1981).