goreledgera horror film ledger, 1922 to now

known

Director: Ching Siu-tung
Year: 1987
Country: Hong Kong
Runtime: 92 min

Also released as

倩女幽魂
Sien nui yau wan
Storie di fantasmi cinesi
Histoire de fantômes chinois
Sien nui yau wan 1
천녀유혼
천녀유혼1
Verführung aus dem Reich der Toten
倩女幽魂Ⅰ
A Chinese Ghost Story Ⅰ
Sien lui yau wan
倩女幽魂：妖魔道
En spøkelseshistorie
倩女幽魂1
A.Chinese.Ghost.Story.I
チャイニーズ・ゴースト・ストーリー
Una historia china de fantasmas

Filed under

Gothic Folk Horror

A Chinese Ghost Story

Name: A Chinese Ghost Story
Director: Ching Siu-tung
Genre: Horror, Gothic, Folk Horror
Released: 1987
Duration: 92 min

A Chinese Ghost Story is a 1987 Hong Kong gothic horror film directed by Ching Siu-tung.

A tax collector shelters in a haunted temple and falls in love with a ghost enslaved by a tree demon with a very long tongue.

Produced by Tsui Hark and directed by Ching Siu-tung, it is a wuxia romance, a comedy and a horror film simultaneously, and the tonal shifts happen mid-scene without warning.

Leslie Cheung is the naive clerk, Joey Wong is the ghost, and the tree demon is a several-storey creature whose tongue pursues people across the countryside.

The wirework and the practical effects are enormously inventive and the film moves at a speed western horror of the period never attempted.

It is adapted from a Pu Songling story from 1740, and Hong Kong cinema had been mining that collection for decades.

The romance is played completely sincerely, which is why the ending lands rather than being camp.