Main cast: Jason Scott Lee (Craig Yun), Grégoriane Minot-Payer (Egzan), Robert Ito (Uncle Lee), Kenneth Welsh (Hugo Lawery), and Terence Stamp (The Host)
Director: Russell Mulcahy
God, Jason Scott Lee is so hot. It’s a crime that he isn’t in more movies, especially ones in which he wears as little clothing as possible. Fortunately for people with good taste everywhere, he shows everyone a side view of his buns here. Someone please play Hallelujah for me, thanks!
That scene makes it worth sitting through an otherwise draggy episode that is The Secret Shih Tan.
Mr Lee plays Craig Yun, a cocky hotshot chef that has transformed his Uncle Lee’s restaurant into the hottest eatery in town. He’s also somewhat bored of his day to day chef awesomeness, hence when he is offered to read the super secret and even more super taboo ancient Chinese recipe book Shih Tan—seriously, just like Shang-Chi, this name just screams “something made up by white people”—by the mysterious but clearly wealthy Hugo Lawery and his companion Egzan.
Uncle Lee warns him against looking at the Shih Tan, as he knows someone that had gone mad after doing so, but Craig believes that he knows everything, of course.
Hugo Lawery also demands a favor in exchange of letting Craig look at the Shih Tan: Craig will then prepare a banquet, based off any one recipe in the Shih Tan, for him and a few select guests.
Yup, Craig will soon regret his decision when he sees just what kind of recipes are in that thing…
I’m sure most people can correctly predict the nature of those recipes—come on, what kind of recipes would be truly taboo?—well, that or they have read Graham Masterton’s story of the same name, heh.
This episode doesn’t fully work because while the written word is a good medium to convey the intense, probably insane need of a chef devoted to the art to read the Shih Tan and attain a pinnacle of enlightenment, the visual medium is far less effective at this. Mr Lee tries, and he emotes beyond the call of duty, but for the most part, he just looks somewhat constipated.
Things finally get into high gear after Craig has read that thing and realize the kind of Faustian bargain he has made with Hugo, but even then, it’s easy to predict correctly how he’d get himself out of the mess.
Hence, this is a pretty blah episode all around, especially when compared to the much better previous episode.
Still, almost all is forgiven when Mr Lee takes his clothes off, so here’s an extra oogie for that. Look, it’s a nice side view of his butt, alright? That counts for a lot!
