A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

What can I say, another classic of Chinese folk movies. Beautiful music, expressive landscapes and atmospheres, lovable characters, humorous and tragic at the same time. Of course it may have its faults but, they are irrelevant stuff. I like a lot how humour and tragedy are mixed and also find all the amosphere very well achived, even with the technology they had in those years, its even better than some of the new CGI effects used nowadays. Also the music is a mix of traditional chinese music and some modern sythethizer pos stuff, so the sound environment is also very well chosen. I hope directors these days get more influence of how you can make a beautiful movie with few money, relying in good acting, good moral and philosofical folk story, good music and landscape.

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"Love is the strongest weapon of all"

Love is a twisted path when one person is a fraidy cat scholar and the other is a tantalizing ghost. 1987’s A Chinese Ghost Story set the bar for Hong Kong haunted offerings that would follow.

Newly anointed tax collector, Ling Choi San, travels in tattered shoes with no money for food or shelter. The town he enters refuses to put him up for the night and sends him to the Orchid Temple. What Ling doesn’t know is that the monks there are no longer living and other creepy creatures have set up housekeeping, along with a virtuous Taoist swordsman. At the temple he meets a beautiful young woman who hides a deadly darkness.

Leslie Cheung made a great bumbling scholar who inadvertently saved himself and others through his clumsiness. The schtick only caused me to want his character to be eaten a couple of times with the rest of his screen time resulting in a more endearing response. Joey Wong’s ethereal Lip Siu Sin was believable as both the seductive and vulnerable ghost. Wu Ma stole the show with his bearded ghost hunting swordsman. Always confident and under control he looked out for the good-hearted, if not very bright, tax collector.

Tony Ching Siu Tung both directed the film and worked as one of the martial arts directors (there were five). Much of the martial arts was sword work (often magical) and/or wire-fu with Wu Ma carrying the load on the fights.

A Chinese Ghost Story offered ghosts, zombies, a powerful life-sucking tree demon, and the lord of the Black Mountain with his underworld army. Nothing an old swordsman, an inept hero, and a lovely ghost couldn’t handle. The special effects and storytelling may have been dated but the film certainly had its charms. As always, I rate older films in these niche genres on a curve.

4 October 2025
Trigger warnings: Snake, a tree with an enormous tongue, implied wolf killings, zombies, decapitations, and a brief sexual encounter.

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