AKA: Pan si dong (Mandarin); Poon shut dung (Cantonese)
Country and Year: Hong Kong (1967)
Director: Ho Meng-hua
Starring: Ho Fan, Peng Peng, Chow Lung-Cheung, Sam Tin, Angela Yu Chien. Shen Yi, Yu Ching, Helen Ma Hoi-lun, Shirley Wong Qui-lee

Review By: David Austin
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

During my junior high years, my friends and I would often have long free periods during the day so we would go over to the house of a friend who lived nearby to kill time, eat lunch and sometimes watch TV. Back then, before the cable explosion brought special channels devoted solely to Indian, Greek, Chinese, and Korean programming, there was one cheap, local Brooklyn channel devoted to international programming that did it all. In between videos of chubby, Greek dancing women and boring Korean dramas, there was one spot of gold, a wonderful Chinese show full of all the stuff we loved – guys in monkey and pig costumes, sexy girls, goofy special effects, and people flying through the air. There were no subtitles, but we could still figure out the basic outlines of the plot. There was magical Monkey who always won, there was dumb Pigsy that always lost, and then there was their friend, a monk. Every episode, they would encounter villains who would try to either marry the monk, or eat the monk (or sometimes marry and then eat the monk), and Monkey would defeat them, and usually make fun of Pigsy in the process.

It wasn’t until years later, in a college comparative religions class, that I learned about the story behind the series. The show, and the film we’re talking about today, are both based on one of the great classical works of Chinese literature, “Journey to the West.” Alternately known as “Monkey,” this massive sixteenth century work by Wu Cheng’en is divided into one hundred chapters and tells the story of the adventures of the monk Tripitaka, an actual historical figure who, in the seventh century, traveled to India to collect important Buddhist doctrines for China. However, despite its length, age and cultural/religious significance, Journey is far from ponderous. Rather, it is a series of comic set pieces and misadventures, steeped in Chinese folklore and tradition. It’s a great read, and has been mined for countless television shows, plays, operas and paintings, not to mention movies like the one we turn to today.

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