Long, disheveled hair and a green dead-pan face, with a long, white robe, standing straight and stiff. This is the classic image of ghosts in Chinese-language films. Different from Western ghost movies, Chinese ghosts are not necessarily scary or evil. They are therefore not categorized as part of the genre of horror films.
The Chinese Phantom Film Festival (
PHOTO COURTESY OF SPOT
As a part of the government-sponsored POP Cinema (
Long before Japanese horror film Ring and its Hollywood remake became hit movies, there have been waves of Chinese-ghost films pulling audiences into
cinemas.
They include Tsui Hark's (
Adapted from the classic novel Liao Chai's Collection of Ghost Stories (
The story was remade into the 1987 hit movie A Chinese Ghost Story, produced by Tsui Hark and starring Leslie Cheung (
At the film festival there will be four screen versions of the same story: The 1960 original, Tsui Hark's 1987 hit and the animated version. There will also be Taiwanese director Yao Feng-pan's (
In the 1980s, kung fu films in Hong Kong declined and the new trend was action and suspense movies, with zombies, or Chinese vampires.
A Chinese vampire is more often than not, more amusing than scary. Most of them wear traditional Chinese outfits such as long gowns or cheongsams and some have funny round hats. Apart from stiff bodies and black kohl around the eyes, these vampires usually have two red, round circles on their cheeks.
In the 10 hit vampire films made in the 1980s, there were a series of weapons to subdue the vampires, such as fire, black sticky rice, Taoist symbols, monk's gowns, peach wood swords, ancestral tablets, even the urine of virgin boys.
For those who missed the recent hit movie Three (
This film has been chosen as the opening film of the festival. For more program information or for English subtitle information, go to www.spot.com.tw.
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