A tax collector (Leslie Cheung) travels to a rural town and ends up taking shelter in a creepy, deserted temple in the forest. Here he encounters a beautiful young woman (Joey Wong) and falls in love with her. A Taoist priest (Wu Ma), however, informs our hero that this woman is a ghost… and it is soon revealed that she is under the control of an evil Tree Demon.

Directed with kinetic panache by Ching Siu-Tung, this film is a horror-romance-martial-arts-comedy-actioner that is crammed with atmosphere, emotion, gravity defying swordplay and some goofball physical comedy.

Its mix of Asian story elements (beautiful flying ghosts, a Taoist priest-swordsman, etc) and western filming techniques (Sam Raimi-esque roving cameras and some gooey FX) make this Hong Kong production an enormously entertaining watch, with Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong and Wu Ma all perfect in the leading roles.

Joey Wong is a standout playing the sexy-yet-vulnerable ghost, flying about the stylishly-lit locations in her flowing silk robes. There is a wonderful moment where she gives Leslie Cheung’s character (who is having to hide from her evil ‘sisters’ underwater) a slow motion kiss that is also providing him with much-needed air.
(This is my all-time favourite screen kiss!)

And, of course, we shouldn’t forget the shrivelled stop-motion corpses in the temple. These undead dudes shuffle around the building in the early part of the film, trying to get hold of the hero, but thanks to a series of comedic, lucky mishaps he remains completely unaware that the zombies are there, eventually killing them with sunlight without ever noticing them!

The ancient tree spirit villain is a great antagonist, appearing as a cross-dressing dame or a gigantic human tongue. At one point the tip of the huge tongue splits, becomes a toothed maw with a face at the back of the jaws, with tentacles sprouting everywhere!

Produced by the legendary Tsui Hark, the film’s plot is loosely based on a tale from writer Pu Songling’s short story collection STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO. That ghost yarn was originally adapted for the screen in 1960 as the Shaw Brothers film THE ENCHANTING SHADOW, a movie that was an influence on Hark when he made his own version of the tale in 1987.

I was really impressed with A CHINESE GHOST STORY when I first saw it in the cinema back in 1987. With its effortless merging of genres, a haunting score and a finale featuring the heroes battling it out in the netherworld to save the heroine, the movie turned me into an avid, obsessed Hong Kong movie fan!

Awesome stuff!

(If you hunt this down to watch, make sure you see the perfectly-formed ’87 version and not the remake)

Episode 79 of MOVIESTRUCK…

MOVIESTRUCK is a New York-based podcast about movies and the people who watch them – and this episode features me, along with Eastern Heroes magazine publisher Ricky Baker, talking to host Sophia Ricciardi about the utterly amazing A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987). You can listen to it HERE!