Zi ye ge (1976)

... aka: 子夜歌

... aka: Midnight Song, The

... aka: Song at Midnight, The

Directed by:

"Yao Fung-Pan" (Feng-Pan Yao)

After being away at school for ten years studying what the subtitles call "dree design," Jen-Chiu Tu (Barbara Wang) returns home to visit her wealthy, ailing father (Yu-Hsin Chen) at his sprawling country estate. As luck would have it, she's home just one day before he dies. Though he's been murdered by someone who broke into his bedroom late at night and forced poison down his throat, no one suspects any wrongdoing since he was already ill. That will soon change. I did notice about half an hour into this one, as a bunch of other characters are introduced and the ole overworked "murder for an inheritance" plot is getting set up, that I couldn't stop thinking about that "dree design" degree. When she's having a conversation about it, she's standing by a tree. Did they mean "tree design"... like a landscape designer or architect? Or perhaps "dree" is supposed to be "dress" like a dress / fashion designer? Or perhaps the people who made the subs didn't know themselves? Who knows? It's about as clear as the rich father being referred to as "President" by several characters, though we never learn of what exactly.

There are a number of people / possible suspects living in and around, or making frequent visits to, Jen-Chiu's home. Most of them are shown eavesdropping, snooping and having hushed side conversations to make sure a shadow of doubt is cast upon them. The most obvious red herring of the lot is an unnamed "mad woman" lurking the grounds. Supposedly, Jen-Chiu's father took pity on her and has allowed her to stay there on the edge of their property despite the fact she's threatened to burn down their house! She creeps around spying on people, sings, cackles, attacks people (including trying to chop someone with an axe) and acts like such an over-the-top loon she's clearly not the killer, so moving right along...

A much more likely suspect is Hui Ping Ying (Ming-Lun Ku), a former employee of the father. Since he's young and handsome and was on good terms with Mr. Tu, he makes his move on Jen-Chiu and starts romancing her, which leads to two slow-motion horseback riding scenes set to a cheesy love ballad. He claims he's not interested in taking over the father's business affairs yet that's clearly exactly what he'll be doing if he manages to convince Jen-Chiu to marry him. And, of course, if the two do marry and something happens to her, then... Well you can probably work out the rest.

There's also the father's physician, Dr. Meng (Yuan Meng), who tries to coerce Jen-Chiu to marry Hui Ping and starts the ball on Jen-Chiu's paranoia by letting her know that there may have been foul play in regards to her father's death. A newspaper later reports that the doctor has been killed in an "accident." Also at the home are a stuttering groundskeeper (Yu Wang) who can grunt but can't form words, nods all the time and goes "Uh ah ah ah," his wife (Yin-Shang Liu), who's always seen whispering to people and their miserable daughter Hsiao Lan (Chuan-Chuan Tsou), who isn't too happy about her lot in life and is extremely jealous Jen-Chiu has access to so much wealth while she's the daughter of poor servants. Hsiao Lan is caught stealing Jen-Chiu's clothes and always seems to be walking around the grounds late at night.

A live-in caretaker, Nurse Chang (Juliet Chan), is also set up as a possible suspect at the beginning; the father distrusts her and refuses to take medication from her and she's clearly envious that Hui Ping is after Jen-Chiu instead of her. However, she decides to quit and becomes victim #2. While walking home, someone chases her through the woods and dismembers her with the axe. The crazy lady finds the body, puts it in a bag, drags it to some catacombs on the property and then takes Jen-Chiu to show her her "secret." But when they go back, the body has been moved so they have nothing to tell the police.

After an hour or so of average, sometimes choppily-edited, mostly talky mystery and melodrama, this finally comes through with a pretty great last 30 minutes, kicking off with a gory, blood-spurting cleaver murder. From there, we're treated to all kinds of fun stuff, like the killer doing a little human hunting in the woods, the victims all returning as vengeful ghosts to settle the score, entertainingly overwrought performances from Ku (giving a performance that would give most female "Scream Queens" a run for their money) and the actress who plays the madwoman and a bunch of absurd yet entertaining plot twists, including a finale right out of Scooby Doo! Stick around through the bumpy first half and the rewards are there.

Like most of the director's other genre films, this was not released outside of Hong Kong and Taiwan and has been allowed to slip into almost complete obscurity over the years. No one's bothered releasing this to DVD or Blu-ray and it appears to have only received a single VHS release a long, long time ago. It certainly would have been nice to have a cleaner copy to view, but what you see via my screen caps is the only print of this one currently out there. Seeing how Yao uses the periphery of the frame a lot, his films suffer more than most when presented in full screen.

★★1/2

Yue ya er (1978)

... aka: 月牙兒

... aka: Crescent Moon

... aka: New Moon, The

Directed by:

Feng-Pan Yao

Just how much misery, suffering and abuse can be heaped upon poor Barbara Wang in just an hour-and-a-half by the Lars von Trier of Asian ghost movies? Guess you'll just have to read on to find out. This one's structured like a lot of the others, with a brief "modern day" (though still period-set) framing story acting as both bookmark and intermission and the bulk of the film being in flashback form. The framework here features a young writer with an interest in supernatural tales who's on his way to the capital for an examination and seeks shelter at an abandoned home late at night. There, he spots three graves, a walking skeleton and a floating ghost girl. An elderly man shows up, takes him inside and then explains to him why the place is haunted. Cue flashbacks.

Yu-Ching Liu (Yang Yueh), a scholar who's studying to become a public official just like his powerful Uncle Kung, is having a lot of pressure put on him by his family. They think he needs to succeed as a way to honor his late father, ancestors and his controlling widowed mother (Bi-Hui Fu), who currently runs a small shop and is desperate for the family to achieve a high social standing. The mother and another uncle (Han Hsieh) forbid Yu-Ching from getting married until he passes his exams but it appears his whole life is pretty much being laid out for him by other people. He'll study hard. He'll get a specific job. He'll marry a girl from a wealthy and reputable home. And he'll always be concerned with his wealth and have to maintain his status within the community. Late one night, a beautiful, bashful young woman named Hsiu-Niang Huo (Barbara Wang) stops by the shop for some herbs. The two have instant chemistry and Yu-Ching lends her his umbrella, less as an excuse to be kind and more as an excuse to go visit her later on.

But Hsiu-Niang is just a poor country girl who lives with her sickly, alcoholic old father (Hsiang-Ting Ko) in a shack near some peach blossom trees and someone his family would never approve of. Still, Yu-Ching is persistent. He asks Hsiu-Niang to visit him at midnight at an ancient temple he frequently studies at and it's there he asks her to spend the night with him. He promises that if she does, once he passes his exams he will marry her. And he's sincere. At least at first. However, when his mother finds out, she's irate, refuses to even meet her potential daughter-in-law and demands her son never see her again. But Yu-Ching cannot stay away and Hsiu-Niang soon becomes pregnant with his child.

Yu-Ching leaves for the long journey to the city to take his exam, with hopes of eventually returning to marry Hsiu-Niang, but his mother and uncle start conspiring against him in his absence and laying down the groundwork to destroy the relationship. They inform Hsiu-Niang that her future husband has already been betrothed to an official's daughter and thus can never marry her. And, when Hsiu-Niang visits Mrs. Liu (who's also been intercepting any mail her son sends), she berates her as disreputable and uneducated and blames her for seducing her son when it reality it was the exact opposite. When her father finds out she's pregnant, he beats her and then, descending further into his alcoholism, dies soon after. Hsiu-Niang becomes the subject of local gossip and few will even deal with her, aside from one sympathetic couple who help her give birth to a baby boy she names Han-Er.

As far as Yu-Ching is concerned, he simply never comes back to the village to fulfill his promise. After passing his exam in the city, he found out that he's expected to marry his cousin, Shu-Hsien (Wei-Ling Chen), and already been designated to take his uncle's place as Minister of Finance. Finding himself attracted to his cousin, he agrees to the coupling and just marries her instead. The two move into a guarded mansion and live in luxury, with a large staff.

Meanwhile, Hsiu-Niang is left barely eking out an existence as a poor single mother. Mrs. Liu attempts to buy the baby from her to help alleviate her burden but she refuses and insists Yu-Ching will return to them one day. More years pass and the boy, now three years old, is already becoming an outcast himself. Other kids bully him and refuse to play with him because he has no father. After finding out the asshole she's waited all this time to reunite with has since married, she packs up her belongings and travels to the city with Han-Er in tow. All of her money is stolen by a thief and then, when she finally gets access to Yu-Ching, he claims he doesn't know who she is is, slaps her in the face, pushes her down and has his guards throw her into the street. She's then forced to dig through trash for food and beg people for help.

Shu-Hsien, who doesn't believe her husband's lie that he doesn't know Hsiu-Niang, grows concerned they'll become the subject of ridicule unless they "terminate" the problem. Yu-Ching hires an assassin to kill her but the man has second thoughts and allows her to go back home. Unfortunately, Han-Er dies as soon as they arrive and then Hsiu-Niang hangs herself. Naturally, the restless spirit of our tormented heroine has to return to settle the score, with Yu-Ching, his wife and his mother the primary targets.

This is about 80% melodramatic morality tale soap opera overacted within an inch of its life (check out how many "gasp!" reactions you can count at the various revelations) and 20% below average ghost / revenge tale, which is mostly relegated to the final 15 minutes. That's not a winning percentage. Once again, Yao reuses the accidental pregnancy angle from his ALL IN THE DIM COLD NIGHT (1974) from just four years earlier, as well as the good-hearted but long-suffering female protagonist who's used, discarded and can't seem to catch any kind of break trope that's used in a zillion other Asian ghost tales. In other words, this New Moon is same as the old, only not quite up to par.

Toward the end, there are some very poor optical effects with the ghost's head detaching and a shrunken ghost getting trapped between two cymbals and popping out of a pot, as well as your standard green and red gel lighting on ghost faces. Also after about an hour and 15 minutes of grueling serious stuff, they decided to throw in some embarrassing comedy centered around a pair of bumbling, ineffectual exorcists and a mentally challenged servant called Kung Fu (played by Chen Fang), who, at one point, breaks the fourth wall and repeatedly looks directly at the camera making goofy faces.

This was the recipient of an English-subtitled VCD release at some point but that's the only home video release that I'm aware of. I could not locate a theatrical film poster* for this, nor any actual scans of a VHS or VCD cover. (* Scratch that! While it took me forever to find the theatrical poster, I obviously eventually did!)

★1/2