An Ode to Fish Sauce

Fish sauce, fish sauce
You are so boss.

Fermented Fish
Should not be so delish.

No one can ever hate
the taste of glutamate.


Use it liberally
and your tongue will sing with glee.

It's truly the swami
of umami. 

Mad Monkey Kung Fu (1979)

This ridiculously fun Shaw Brothers movie features the perfect mix of action, comedy and kung fu. Just about the only kung fu movie I've seen that comes close to this one in terms of pure fun is Iron Monkey (1993).

When the local gangster Tuan finds the beautiful young actress, Miss Chen, he must have her in his brothel. The only problem is that her brother Chen (played by martial arts choreographer Lau Kar-leung) is a Kung Fu master known for his monkey style and his powerful Monkey Fist. This problem is easily dealt with, as Tuan tricks Chen leading to his disgrace and Miss Chen volunteering to work in Tuan's brothel. Before letting Chen go, Tuan breaks Chen's hands so that he ca
n never use his Monkey Fist again.

When we next see Chen, he is a broken man working with his trained monkey as a street performer. To add insult to injury, street thugs shake him down every night and take all his earnings. Chen is befriended only by the orphan and petty thief, Monkey (Hsiao Ho). When the street thugs kill Chen's monkey, Monkey seeks revenge against them, only to get beaten up by them. Monkey convinces Chen to teach him his monkey style to him and if you've seen only a few examples of the "master teaches a protegee" sub-genre of kung fu movies you can get a pretty good feel for how that goes.

After a good deal of physical training Monkey returns to town and solidly humiliates the street thugs in a hilarious fight in the streets. Forcing them to take him to their boss, the street thug leads him to Tuan's brothel where he is attacked by the army of hired muscle he finds their and barely escapes with his life (thanks to the aid of Miss Chen). He returns to Chen for even more kung fu training. In the end Chen and Monkey return to Tuan's brothel for the final confrontation, but if you want to find out how that goes, you'll have to watch the movie for your self.

This is why he's called Monkey.

As I said at the beginning of this article this movie is pure fun. While it lacks the layers of intrigue of The Five Deadly Venoms, or the eccentric cast of exotic characters of Master of the Flying Guillotine, and sticks to the formula of it's own particular sub-genre, this movie is an excellent example of the 70s Kung Fu genre. If you have an interest in the genre, you should definitely add this one to your must watch list.

Mad Monkey Kung Fu

Gardening Fun Time!

It's the middle of July now and my garden is in full swing. (Though I did get started later than I wanted to since we had a snowstorm once a week from mid-March to the end of April. That's not typical of my climate.)

The first of my sunflowers are starting to bloom and I like the deep orange color of the petals. I seeded a number of different varieties of sunflower in that bed, along with marigolds for a ground cover. I hope to end up with a wall of sunflowers of a variety of different heights and colors.  As a nice plus, the ground cover of marigolds I planted are not only very pretty, but they give this corner of the yard a very nice smell.

Watched tomatoes never ripen. Apparently.

The San Marzano seedlings I started last winter all died (I think they didn't get enough light), so I'm growing the Big Boy tomatoes that I bought from the grocery store instead. 

I planted three vines, and have plenty of tomatoes growing, but nothing ripe yet. I have a feeling that in a couple of weeks, I'll have more tomatoes than I know what to do with.

In the bed...

Out of the bed...

... and in the yard. And still growing.

And squash ate my yard! This monster vine is a volunteer. I've got a few little squashes (squish?) growing on it so far, but I've gotten lots of squash blossoms off of it; they are very tasty stuffed with cream cheese and fried.

Other than some chilies in pots and some basil, that's pretty much it for this year. I've discovered from all of this that I really like gardening. Next year, I think I'll be nice to my friendly neighbourhood pollinators and plant a lot more flowers (and between my vegetables).  Also planting climbing plants such as peas or cucumbers would be a good way to get more use out of my available space. Finally I'm not ready to give up on starting heirlooms from seeds and next year I want to try growing Cherokee Purple tomatoes and more San Marzanoes.

The finished stuffed toad and Nikita (not stuffed).

After being inspired by a stuffed frog I saw on Pinterest, I  made this toad.

First I drew a frog shaped template and traced that onto scraps of fabric left from my cat-bat project. I cut out two frog shaped pieces out, sewed them together and filled with rice. Add some buttons for eyes and stitch on some warts from left over fleece and it's all done.

 And as you can see,  it's been given the cat seal of approval!

Super Inframan (1975)

What would you get if Ultraman was redone by in Hong Kong by the Shaw Brothers? You'd get Super Inframan of course!

When the evil Demon Princess breaks free from the center of the Earth where she had been imprisoned since the ice age, she immediately declares to the world her intention to conquer the Earth.

When she sends her demons and her army of Skeleton Men to attack the Science Headquarters (Yes, you read that right. It's a big metal dome with lots of blinking lights, exactly the kind of place you'd expect Kirk, Spock and McCoy to beam into along with an ill-fated red shirted ensign- in other words, it's a Science Headquarters), it falls to Rayma (played by Danny Lee) and the science patrol to stop them.

The Evil Demon Princess and her blond wig. 

Now the Science Patrol may be motorcycle riding kung fu experts dressed in silver jumpsuits that would make Evel Knievel jealous, but these monster are just too much for them to handle. That's when their boss, Professor Liu Ying De breaks out his secret weapon: he transforms Rayma into the kung fu cyborg superhero, Inframan. As Inframan, Rayma wastes no time battling the Demon Princess's minions, starting with the Plant Monster and the Spider Monster.

The Professor goes boating with Drill Mutant and a skeleton man.

For a while Inframan seems to have the demons on the run. That is until they steal Inframan's blue prints  and kidnap the Professor and his daughter in order to lure Inframan into a trap. Inframan and the Science patrol go the Demon Princess's lair for the final battle with her and her minions, but will they survive?

If you love Shaw Brothers movies and Superhero movies, find a copy of this movie and watch it.  This movie is pure fun and has surprisingly good special effects for a low budget movie from the mid 70s that looks like a power ranger episode.  If you need more convincing watch one of these clips:

Imdb

Hello there internet people! It looks like I've fallen behind on my movie reviews...

So keep an eye out and in the next few weeks I'll post reviews of:

The House by the Cemetary
Exorcist Master
Super Inframan
Mad Monkey Kung Fu
Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
and
Four of the Apocalypse