Monkey

Mischievous King Monkey is summoned to Heaven, where he steals the heavenly peaches, and eats them to gain immortality. He fights two of the Emperor's officials, and all three of them are expelled to Earth. Monkey gets imprisoned under a mountain of rocks, while the other two are transformed into a pig monster (Pigsy) and a water monster (Sandy). Buddha says that a holy man must be sent to fetch the Holy Scriptures from India, to save the world.

Buddha sends a messenger, the Bodhisattva Kuan-Yin the Compassionate, to find a holy man to make the journey from China to India to fetch the large vehicle scriptures. She chooses the boy priest Hsüan Tsang, and bestows upon him the name Tripitaka. Joined by the irrepressible Monkey - with his magic wishing staff and magic powers - and a talking horse, this could be a journey to remember...

Tripitaka and the ever-impatient Monkey begin their perilous journey. Arriving at a village terrorised by a greedy and lustful monster, Monkey thus faces the wrath of Pigsy and his deadly muck rake. To cross the Mighty River of Flowing Sands, they must first pass the cannibalistic water monster Sandy. A sandstorm, an army of tiger ghosts - will Tripitaka end up as cat food, or will Monkey save the day?

Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy, Tripitaka and the horse enter a land ruled by the demonic Golden Horn and his wife, Silver Horn. Bewitched by a beautiful lady, Pigsy discovers that all is not what it seems. An old woman proves too much to handle even for Monkey. Tripitaka and Sandy find themselves a bit tied up when left to their own devices. When a mysterious Taoist magician causes Golden Horn to lose his bottle, things start to look up.

In his mountain kingdom, the immature King of Youth dictates that everything old is useless. When the pilgrims approach, he decides to kidnap Tripitaka to gain the attention of Heaven and Earth, in an attempt to stop living in the shadow of his father, the King of Ox. When Monkey's powers prove no match for the King's fiery temper, and Pigsy and Sandy are otherwise engaged, who will save Tripitaka?

When Monkey kills a girl and her elderly parents, Tripitaka is left with no choice but to punish him and send him back home to his Mountain of Fruit and Flowers. No one believes Monkey's story that the people he killed were red, blue and yellow demons disguised as humans. When the pilgrims later discover that Monkey was telling the truth, Tripitaka finds himself in grave danger, and wishes he'd never denied the demons' existence.