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See A Chinese Ghost Story at all costs – it will change your life. And then there is an indescribable scene where Wu Ma starts leaping about in mid-air and bursts into a rap song that goes on about the peaceful virtues of the Buddhist lifestyle. Ching Siu-Tung also balances this out with an amusingly self-effacing sense of humour, with Leslie Cheung stumbling into situations completely oblivious to the danger about him. One amazing sequence has hero Leslie Cheung hiding under the water in Joey Wong’s bath trying to avoid detection by the androgynous, human-sniffing Matron while Joey passes air to him via kisses. Joey Wong flies through the air as a ghostly train of silk, whipping people about enwrapped in her sleeves. There are mind-boggling scenes fighting off a giant flaming slime-slavering tongue as it crashes through entire houses to try penetrate its victims’ throats and an even more visionary descent down into a Hell filled with walls of grasping hands and devouring female faces, lorded over by a metal-masked Darth Vader look-alike. The martial arts sequences are amazingly stylised, with opponents performing unbelievable gymnastic acts, twirling about in mid-air and travelling by bouncing off trees or by hanging onto thrown swords, where Ching Siu-Tung’s camera is poised with a lightning finesse to catch every sword-blow in mist-illuminated silhouette. Ching Siu-Tung’s direction is an extraordinarily dexterous blend of lightning-paced action and startlingly beautiful imagery, all directed entirely tongue-in-cheek. Tax collector Leslie Cheung and his ghostly lady love Joey WongĪ Chinese Ghost Story is a grandiosely beautiful film. Or else maybe Kwaidan (1964), as directed by Sam Raimi in full-on The Evil Dead (1981) mode. Imagine a film part Star Wars (1977) and a whole lot Shaw Brothers. Trying to pigeonhole A Chinese Ghost Story makes one’s head spin. However, it was A Chinese Ghost Story that became a landmark within the genre and an oft-imitated template for other films. This genre had grown out of various Shaw Brothers films of the 1970s and was crystallised with Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), a lunatic film in its own right.
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Hardcore Wu Xia cinema meanwhile languished unrecognised, apart from a sizeable cult audience, until the remarkable success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).Ī Chinese Ghost Story is perhaps the finest example of Hong Kong fantasy cinema. Directors like John Woo and actors like Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and Jet Li had much crossover success in the late 90s but that came more out of Hong Kong martial arts/action cinema. Attempting to explain Hong Kong fantasy films to Western audiences often ends up with people scratching their heads.