Sinnui yauman (A Chinese Ghost Story, 1987)

Ching Siu-Tung

Hong Kong

98 min, color, Cantonese (English subtitles)

Remember to ring the bell when you see the evil.

It's been a while since I saw A Chinese Ghost Story (ACGS) for the first time and I have hesitated writing the review forever. How do you review a classic? It would be as difficult as reviewing, say Star Wars. At this point any person remotely aware of Hong Kong cinema has seen the trilogy, and has formed his/her opinion that nothing can change. And the others... oh well. This, however, gives me an idea: I will take a look at the film through the lens of several years' worth of accumulated Hong Kong cinema viewing.

I remember my first impression of ACGS was being generally unimpressed. It was too goofy, with its relatively routine story, exaggerated camera angles, wire-fu up the wazoo, cheesy Cantopop, and nonsensical dialogue. The only thing it had going was Joey Wang, although this thing did go a very long way. I knew how genre-defining the film was, and how it revitalized Hong Kong cinema by spawning numerous imitations along with its own two sequels. But many genre-defining films are usually surpassed by their much better rip-offs, so I started hunting for ACGS-style films that would do everything the original does, but much better.

There are none, and not for lack of trying. ACGS was trend-setting but then somehow managed to remain in a category by itself. Directors cast and recast Joey Wang as the watery-eyed ghost time and again, as well as Wu Ma as the fiesty Taoist and Leslie Cheung (or Tony Leung) as some sort of generally amiable, cute, but clueless scholar. Nothing. Nada. It's as if Ching Siu-Tung and Tsui Hark discovered the well of magic and then drained it with a single attempt. Heck, even their own subsequent forays into the genre are not as good as this one.

And what is this one? You young, amiable, handsome, but generally clueless tax-collector (yeah, that's what I thought too --- who, the hell, would hire such a guy to collect taxes? Especially when the "previous one got killed," as mentioned in the film. These Chinese bureaucrats should take their clues from the IRS, with the masked gunmen and everything. Maybe that's why in 5,000 the Chinese have really gotten nowhere.) by the name of Ning Tsai-Shen (Leslie Cheung) arrives in some city to collect some taxes from a local merchant. He's penniless (Ning, not the merchant) and so ends up staying at an abandoned temple for free. There is, of course, a good reason why the temple is abandoned: it is haunted (or the Chinese facsimile of it thereof).

It is haunted by Nieh Hsiao-Tsing (Joey Wang), which is a good thing, several pretty harmless stop-animation zombies, which is a neutral thing, the Taoist hermit Yin (Wu Ma), which is a hilarious thing, and the Tree "her tongue is bigger than yours" Devil (Lau Siu-Ming), which is a bad thing. The nightly routine apparently involves Nieh seducing some random schmuck who really should have known better than staying in the temple or in the forest around it, and then the Tree Devil licking his tonsils, which is not as fun as it sounds.

Unfortunately for the Tree Devil, Ning is damn cute that Nieh abandons her ghost duties for some romantic roll in the prverbial boat with lots of strategically placed veils. It does not occur to Ning to ask himself the obvious even after several rather overt displays of otherworldliness, and when he does finally realize who he's messing around with, his initial reaction is to recite sutras. With Joey Wang opposite me dressed like that, religion would be the last thing on my mind unless it involved some sort of pagan ceremonies with plenty of ritual sex.

To the eternal credit of men everywhere, Ning quickly recovers from his bout with the sutras and begins thinking of ways to rescue the damsel in distress. And Nieh truly is distressed, not least because she has to marry some nefarious dude who can't be all that good. So Ning enlists the Taoist Yin (Wu Ma) who is unfortunately taken to rapping in cemeteries. Together, they battle a tongue of epic proportions and manage to avoid having their tonsils licked. In an unnecessarily tragic turn of events, the big future husband of unspeakable evil is also killed, and so we never get to explore his good inner side.

Nieh is rescued, which means they get to keep the jar with her ashes while she reincarnates in some baby's body. In either case, Ning gets no more supernatural dates, another unnecessarily tragic turn of events.

On subsequent viewings, ACGS began growing on me, and it has now reached the point where I enjoy this film immensely. It takes some getting used to in order to appreciate all the fine moments because everything happens so fast, it is easy to miss how well-crafted the film really is. I am not just talking about the exquisitely choreographed sequences, both fighting and otherwise. I am also talking about the dreamy, even nostalgic feel, that the film manages to convey. It surely does not hurt to have Joey floating around in all those veils either. Heck, I can't even get the main theme song out of my head!

A very unassuming fantasy, ACGS is quite pretentious cinematically and visually, but at least it succeds at both levels unlike many other pretentious films that turn out to be big snobbish bores. If there's one thing that ACGS is not, it is boring. Between the flying ghosts (and priests), giagantic tongues, bumbling tax collectors, and sword fights, it is hard to catch one's breath, let along find the time to get bored.

I was also particularly fond of the unhappy ending in the sense that the ghost could not come to life to be united with Ning (which is what happens in the story the film is based on). A wonderful adaptation of Pu Songling's The Magic Sword, ACGS is not to be missed. (If you are interested in other adaptations of Pu's work, check out Painted Skin, which also features Joey Wang but is much slower, more restrained (therefore less appealing) visually, and much more traditional in execution).

I have the Mega Star super overpriced DVD (not the remaster) and I must say that it looks quite nice even if it is a bit soft. The colors come through nicely, especially in those bluish sequences. There is some grain and the transfer shows that the print is old (by Hong Kong standards anyway), but I am content with the quality. The dolby 5.1 Cantonese remix is also pretty nice and quite evenly matched for the action. I only have one gripe. The subtitles which should have been done much better. They are full of bad English phrases, occasional spelling mistakes, and sometimes flash by too quickly for comfortable reading. Actually, make that two gripes. Apart from several trailers, the DVD does not have any extras. For a landmark film like ACGS, this is unforgivable.

There are two sequels, A Chinese Ghost Story 2, and the imaginatively titled A Chinese Ghost Story 3.

March 3, 2003