Tag: Monkey

Monkey, Series 1

Monkey, Series 1

(BBC, 1979)

DVD cover: Monkey, Series 1 (1979)

With its beguiling opening and closing themes (by Japanese band Godiego) and mystic-synth incidental music (by keyboardist Mickie Yoshino), iconic costumes and fight scenes, moody landscapes, outrageously dubbed plot-lines and lashings of cod Buddhist philosophy, Monkey truly is a one-of-a-kind cult classic.

Monkey: Journey to the West

Monkey: Journey to the West

by Wu Ch’êng-ên, trans. Arthur Waley (Allen & Unwin, 1942)

Wu Ch'eng-en_Monkey

For all its mischievousness and whimsy, this episodic sixteenth century Chinese fairy tale comes across as terribly belaboured in written form. When slogging through 350 pages it’s hard not to think that even Wu Ch’êng-ên would have preferred the cult television show.

 

Monkey Goes West

Monkey Goes West

dir. Ho Meng-Hua (Shaw Brothers, 1966)

[released with three sequels under the umbrella title: Monkey – Journey to the West, Siren DVD, 2008]

Meng-Hua_Monkey Journey to the West

Based on Wu Cheng’en’s Buddhist quest novel Journey to the West, this meandering film-cum-musical seems almost entirely without point or consequence… except to establish prototypes of nearly all those iconic visual elements featured subsequently in the 1978-1980 TV series Saiyūki (aka Monkey).

Derelict Space Sheep