A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

directed by Tony Ching Siu-Tung

Hong Kong

98 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I love Hong Kong horror movies, but I always come up at a loss when I try to review them because usually the "complexity of plot" to "comprehensibility of subtitles" ratio is so imbalanced that I have no idea what's going on. But as it turns out (and as I probably should have known from the start), this is really a very different animal from the type of movie I was thinking of. It's absolutely nothing like your average Shaw Bros outing; with far higher production value and a more mature humor, this is more along the lines of a historical romance than a goofy schlocky horror movie*.

Our main character (played by Leslie Cheung!) is a tax collector who's very poor, with no worldly possessions except the pack he carries around for much of the movie. In classic horror movie fashion, when he asks around for a place he can stay the night with no money involved, he gets the old "Well... there's that weird old temple that's supposed to be horrifically haunted..." and, having no real choice, ends up staying at said temple. This is a gross oversimplification of a movie that already has a surprisingly simple plot. Most of the appeal comes from how well an old story is executed, visually. The cinematography is beautiful and much more relaxed and subtle than I was expecting - for example, I liked the visual tricks employed to make the protagonist stick out of the faceless crowds that he is often in, like how even with no knowledge of the film we would be able to tell immediately who the main character was just from the fact that he's carrying around that huge bindle all the time. The running joke where everyone talks about him behind his back and shuts up as soon as he turns around to look at them was very funny. He also ends up shoved against a shop display selling hell money and gets the ink, and the inscriptions, smeared all over his back, which later is our first tip-off that the girl he falls for might not be entirely human. This is another example of the subtle visual clues this movie is good at deploying.

Once he gets to the temple, the protagonist - whose name I have not been using because I've seen it Romanized in many ways and I don't know which one is the right one - finds that the rumors of it being haunted are true, but the nature of the haunting is more faceted than the townspeople seem to think, and hey, who's this really pretty but kind of weird girl who lives at the temple, who's very pale and freezing cold all the time?

The character who I am tentatively calling Nieh Hsiao-Tsing (and please forgive me if this is a mangled spelling) was a bit of a surprise to me because, honestly, I'm sorry that I keep comparing this to movies that it has nothing to do with, but I've been watching a lot of Shaw Bros lately and I'm used to women having a status lower than furniture in these films. Generally a woman in a bad HK horror movie is not allowed to have desire except as a joke; bawdy old women and prostitutes are typically the only time a woman is seem expressing her own wants and needs. But the first time we see Nieh Hsiao-Tsing, she's falling all over our protagonist, begging for him, oblivious, to warm her up. It is clearly in line with her character as a lonely being who hasn't felt normal human touch for a long time, but to me it was notable to see a woman who so clearly knows what she wants and in fact makes the first move. He doesn't have to woo her, or convince her of anything. The romance is two-sided and entirely consensual.

Another character who stood out to me was Hsiao-Tsing's captor, who the subtitles called "The Old Dame". From what I could tell, she was a kind of ancient, malevolent tree spirit who fed off of energy from living humans. What I liked about this character was that she (I'm relying on mangled subtitles here - the other characters could very well have been avoiding pronouns altogether when talking about the Old Dame) has aspects of male and female and this is not presented entirely as a joke. Crossdressing is another thing I run into frequently in HK horror and it is always strictly for a cheap laugh, some guy in garish makeup and women's dress acting lewd and we're all supposed to think it's the funniest thing ever. This character is a man in makeup, but she is not treated as inherently funny. Her voice is dubbed to very interesting effect where at random it switches between a higher and deeper register. This character's gender is never explicitly brought up, but I understand there are many beings in Chinese mythology who have aspects of more than one gender or do not have a gender at all. It's just not very often that I see that depicted in what is almost approaching a respectful manner.

Moving on. Like I said, this is primarily a love story, but it's one done in a way that feels genuine, not rushed, and has that element of star-crossed love that does usually get to me regardless of my pretensions. It's not that original - I think most people could name, or at least are familiar with, a story or two where a couple is in love but one is unaware that the other is a ghost. That A Chinese Ghost Story takes place in a Daoist setting makes this more complicated and, in my opinion, more tragic, because it means that the kindest act our protagonist can do for the girl he's fallen in love with is make sure her remains are properly interred so that she can finally reincarnate - whereupon he'll never see her again, because her soul will now be in the body of someone who could be anywhere in the world. It's a twist on the typical ending to these stories of just having to accept that you can't be with someone, and I don't know if it's comforting or even more sad.

There are still action scenes in this, and some zombie skeletons and various ghouls, you know, that kind of thing, and they're all great. Most of the comedy relief not delivered by our protagonist himself being so good-hearted and innocent comes from a somewhat rowdy monk who also hangs out at the temple. Midway through the movie he bursts into what I can only describe as a hip-hop song and dance number about Daoism for no apparent reason. Also, whenever he does some epic action move, the transformation sound effect from the original 1966 Ultraman would play, which was driving me absolutely crazy. I think my favorite thing about this film was the cinematography, but it's got everything, rolled into one: A good love story, a little spookiness here and there, awesome practical effects, nice soundtrack, and humor that never feels like it's hitting you over the head. I wonder if the sequels manage to maintain this level of quality.

*please note that I deeply love goofy, schlocky Shaw Bros movies as well.