#A CHINESE GHOST STORY (2003) SERIES#

When he tries to collect taxes from one tavern keeper, he finds that rain has rendered all of the entries in his record book illegible. Ning is beset by multiple humiliations as a callow youth playing the one official everyone wants to avoid, without horse or funds to buy him a dry place to sleep for the night. Law and order there are kept by an incompetent, overeager gendarmerie who assume everyone running must be a wanted criminal. Destined to encounter these supernatural emissaries is a young tax collector, Ning Choi Sin (the lamented, ever-charming Leslie Cheung), who passes through a regional city. The bells on the anklet of Tsiao-Tsing Nieh (Joey Tsu-hsien Wang) ring when locked in the folds of love, summoning an awful thing from the woods to launch itself upon the man she pretends to embrace but, in fact, holds as prey. The intensely rhythmic opening evokes fetishistic, erotic qualities, a swooning succession of wind-driven autumnal leaves, drenched moonlight, dangling silks, burning candles, hazy nocturnal light, breathily suggested sensuality, and exposed flesh, as a young taxman is seduced by a spectral woman. ChingвЂ™s cleverest tweaks to the old mythos was to transform the ghostly female figure from agent of death to pawn struggling for freedom, and uncover an element of dreamy longing and rebellion against the oppressive nature of social norms. But there is a delicate, but fervent romantic streak counterpointing the ebullience in ChingвЂ™s first two terrific films (the third is generally regarded as a flat retread of the first and lacks two important actors) helps to mark out A Chinese Ghost Story I & II as gems of 1980s Hong Kong cinema and that distinguishes ChingвЂ™s sensibility, even in later, blander work like The Empress and the Warriors (2008) and The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011). The first episode of ChingвЂ™s take was produced by Hark, and the imprint of that masterвЂ™s rocket-paced, breathless sensibility is all over ChingвЂ™s work. The grandmaster of Hong Kong cinemaвЂ™s international emergence in the 1960s, King Hu, had experimented with melding spirituality and action and had filmed another Songling Pu story as the epic A Touch of Zen (1972).

#A CHINESE GHOST STORY (2003) SERIES#

Ching is one of Hong Kong cinemaвЂ™s most employed stunt and action choreographers, but he has maintained a directing career as well, with the three entries in his A Chinese Ghost Story series the most famous. Vampire (1985) did it before Ching, as the Bride with White Hair diptych would afterwards. Tsui HarkвЂ™s canonical fantasy action work Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1982) and Lau Kun WaiвЂ™s nutty Mr. Blends of supernatural and mythical drama with swashbuckling exploits are fairly common in wu xia, and in the annals of Hong Kong action film. Tony Siu-Tung ChingвЂ™s variation, based on a novel by Songling Pu, is something different-a crossbreed of this Gothic-flavoured nightmare scenario with the high-flying, reality-bending action of wu xia, the meat-and-potato genre of Chinese cinema. Mario BavaвЂ™s La Maschera del Demonio (1960) and Terence FisherвЂ™s The Gorgon (1964) are some Western film variations Eastern takes include episodes in Masaki KobayashiвЂ™s Kaidan (1964) and Kaneto ShindoвЂ™s Kuroneko (1968). ItвЂ™s a simple narrative that exploits a kind of idle masculine fantasy, charging it with warning and delineating the boundaries of taboo through the image of the death-dealing temptress and the evocation of evil in a place cordoned off by legend to commemorate some forgotten travesty of history and invested over time with fetid psychological symbolism. You know where this is going, because itвЂ™s the basic outline of dozens upon dozens of ghost stories. She approaches with seductive, otherworldly tenderness, and the traveller, stunned and smitten, can only submit, but at the peril of their soul, as they graze the boundaries of the liminal and fall in love with an emanation from beyond.

But in the glow of moonlight, a mysterious and beautiful female emerges from the shadows. The Days of High Adventure: A Journey through Adventure FilmДeep within the tangled growth of a dark forest lies an ancient ruin, a place where lost or weary travellers might find a place to rest for the night.

A chinese ghost story (2003)