A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

[Drunk Monk]

I'm conemplating a deep dive into this classic jiangshi horror comedy romance kung fu musical fantasia. I remember seeing these whem they came out in the theaters - with some of you no less. It brought back memories of our youth - our pilgrimages to the New Varsity or Camera theaters to catch the foreign films, or even the Great Star and the Pagoda in Chinatown (although I think I saw most of these in Si valley). 

It holds up okay. The effects are weak - dated - stop motion, puppet prosthetics, some glowy effects and lots of wire work. But it's still a fascinating vision - the tree demon tongue borders on Lovecraftian with its tentacles. The root attackes recall Evil Dead although not as rude. The hills of skulls, the silly slow mo zombies, the released heads of stolen spirits, and most of all, the diaphanous silks, it's all visionary. Leslie Chung really sells the naive tax collector and I've never been so entranced by Joey Wang. And Wu Ma owns the Taoist sorcerer. It's still fun despite its dated effects. 

Magic flying sword fights. DOOM recommended for the flashback alone.

[Drunk Monk]

A Chinese Ghost Story II (1990)
I'm surprised how well I remember this. It picks up pretty much where the original left off. Leslie is still the naive innocent in a horrid world. He goes to a restaurant for cannnibals. Then he gets thrown in jail. Then he gets mistaken for an eldar by some rebels, one of which is Joey. Let the hilarity ensue. And it does with the arrival of a new demon hunter, played by Jacky Cheung (not Chan) and he's hilarious. The demon freezing scene remains one of my favorite bits of Tsui Hark wittiness. I had forgotten that it began with a Yojimbo homage (stray dog with human hand). But then it goes a lot of fun places, absurd choreo, Taoist and Buddhist sorcery, amorous nude hijinks, crazy flying sword blades and a killer centipede. 
Plenty of sword fights. DOOM recommended.

I haven't found a decent copy of ACGSIII yet. I found a Vietnamese version. Not sure if I'll go there. I'll keep searching. 

Nibbled at the animated version - maybe later. Started the 2011 remake. Also looked for Enchanted Shadow, which I found in Canto, no subs. The ACGSII version I watched had Korean subs with an auto-translate option so the subs came out pretty rough but interpretable.

[Drunk Monk]

I went on a deep dive seeking The Enchanted Shadow, which is a 1960 version of the same story. All of these have the same title in Chinese and that's the title of the short story that it's based upon, one of Pu Songling's Strange Tales of the Liaozhi. 

I only found fragments of TES. I presume that it was uprooted by copyright censors and was only able to piece together the first third or so, which is a shame because it was intriguing to see a Chinese film from the 60s, pre-cultural revolution, so in Mandarin, and since this had no subs (I was searching using the Chinese characters and date) I was please how well I understood it. 

Although I confess I got sucked into some weird opera film that I thought was TES but was something else by Betty Loh Ti (a major Chinese staret of her day). 

TES had a style to it (it was Chinas submission for Cannes and the Oscars). I knew I had the right one when I heard the therimen music. Betty was a beauty, worthy of the role of the ghost Nie Xiaoqian. The guy who played Ning was way too wimpy. The Taoist sorcerer looked a lot like Wu Ma.

Someday I'd love to see the end.

[Drunk Monk]

A Chinese Ghost Story III (1991)

The threequel is weak. Joey and Jacky are back but Leslie is not and that is sorely felt. The three demon in the first film was only banished for a century, so this takes place a century later. Instead of a tax collector, it's two Buddhist monks, the sifu (Lau Shun) who has hilarious magical earlobes, and the bumbling disciple, Tony Leung, who fails as a replacement for Leslie. Joey reprises her role as the seductress ghost who falls for Tony, but she's not nearly as alluring as before. Jacky is again a Taoist magician, but a different character, not nearly as funny as before. 

It echoes some of the previous films in weird ways. The innocent protag is again sprayed with blood while resting in a roadside lean to but someone killing a gang of others. 

The effects are better and the tongue is more vicious. We are treated to a tongue's-eye-view as it deep throats its prey, swimming down to pluck out the heart. The village is funny because it's all bounty hunters and weapons makers (our kinda place). There's some good Buddhist magic - wrapping restraining sutras, pure gold blood, flying carpet cassoks, magic malas. There's a lot of snake nests. Joey has a sister ghost, played by Nina Li (Jet's wife). Joey has entangling magic hair. Nina has telescopic red fingernails. 

The ending kaiju-esque building monster was silly. They should've just stuck with the crazy tentacle tongue. 

Swordfights. Flying CGI Taoist magic swords no less. Not DOOM recommended.

[Drunk Monk]

A Chinese Ghost Story 2011

This remake was dedicated to Leslie and it's full on CGI, answering the question 'What would ACGS look like with modern special effects?' It doesn't help. It fails to capture the charm of the original and the effects are unimaginative on the whole. 

But it has a great cast. Crystal Liu Yifei as the lovelorn ghost Nie. Louis Koo as the Taoist exorcist. Most of all, my fav, Kara Hui as the tree demon. I didn't recognise Ning - Yu Shaoqun - he was weak. Crystal couldn't quite pull off Nie either. She was cute but held little mystery. Louis was good - he brought some new depth to the role. And Kara, well, as much as I love her, she turned the tree demon into a cackling maniacal wicked witch, which was strangely unsatisfactory. 

This isn't to say that this version is totally negligible. It had some moments like the villagers getting infected by rerouting water from the tree demon's pool and starting to grow leaves. There was also an extra Taoist exorcist who had only one arm that was cool. And they had a good twist with the backstory of the first exorcist. And oe of the villagers was kinda funny. 

Sword fights including a nice one between the exorcists. Not DOOM recommended.

[Drunk Monk]

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997)
I remember when this came out. Hong Kong cinema was on fire because that was the year of the handover. I remember seeing posters for it in Chinatown but I was living in Svale then, across the street from Lam Kwoon, so I could only make it up to SF for a few HK films. I never saw it until now.

It's closest to AGCSIII with the monks Baiyun and Shifang. But this is a completely different take. Here, the Buddhists are evil, or at least in opposition to the hero's goals. Ning is a tax collector but he walks into the yaoguai world to meet Xiaoquan. It's a lot like Spirited Away, so much so that at first I assumed this was derivative, however it was earlier so maybe it was the other way around. Once in the yaoguai world, the story is very different. There's the tree demon and Butterfly, and then there's Mountain Evil, a rock star like spirit that holds a concert. And there's a dog. Man, it's killing me but that dog reminds me of another cartoon dog sidekick from a popular cartoon - I'm struggling to place it. 

At first the animation put me off. It's a mix of early CGI and conventional, and it just wasn't working. Chinese animation was crude back then, like old anime, and the color schemes were unpleasant. But then it started to grow on me because the story wemt such a different direction with a dragon reincarnation train and Red Beard, a Daoist exorcist who rode this giant transformer-like machine with temple bells for arms, a drum for a body and barrels for feet. 

More magical Daoist sword action. Not particularly DOOM recommended. It's really all about the first two films.

This deep dive was brought to you by Den of Geek, who have commissioned me to do a piece on this for Halloween.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Why are they a “den” and not a “Rumpus Room”?

[Drunk Monk]

IDK. It started in London. Do they have rumpus rooms in London. It's quite a machine. They put out about a half dozen articles a day, have 10M+ readers, and get ads from car manufacturers. 

BTW, did you see the latest vid there? They made a vid of one of my articles, the one on Cobra Kai, but it's nested in their site, not on their YouTube channel yet. Not all there vids carry over.

[Greg]

I will go look for it.