Gui jia (1976)

... aka: 鬼嫁
... aka: Ghost, The
... aka: Ghost Lover, The
... aka: Ghost Marriage
... aka: Marriage of Ghosts, The

Directed by:
Yao Fung Pan (Feng-Pan Yao)

It's a real shame that only a dark VHS quality print of this is currently available, because it's actually pretty good! While out camping in the mountains with some friends, college philosophy major Chi Da Cheng (Ming Lun Ku) goes to collect firewood and finds a small case filled with female belongings. He then spots a figure off in the distance and follows it through the woods until he ends up at a mansion. The sound of music leads him inside where he finds beautiful Mei Nung (Barbara Wang) playing piano. She's not only alluring and mysterious but also eloquent and well-read, easily keeping pace discussing philosophy and poetry in their brief conversation. As both are professing their fondness for the peace and quiet that comes with the dark ("I like night. Only at night do I feel like I have life"), Mei Nung's Aunt (Lai-Wan Chan) shows up to tell her it's time for bed. The aunt walks Chi Da to the door and leaves him with a stern though not impolite warning to "Leave this place soon." Day breaks by the time he makes it back to camp and all of his friends are gone.

When Chi Da returns to his apartment, his spoiled, bitchy girlfriend Ping Ping (Chuan-Chuan Chou) is there waiting on him and wanting to know where he's been all night. Chi Da doesn't help his plight any mentioning his encounter with the beautiful, graceful, piano playing girl in the mansion in the mountains. Not believing him, she demands he take her there but, when the two arrive, there's no mansion and no girl. Chi Da returns by himself the following night and has another encounter with Mei Nung, who again leads him back to the house. After Chi Da touches her shoulder, Mei Nung's aunt informs him that she now "belongs" to him and makes mention of a dowry. Mei Nung reassures him that she won't harm him before disappearing at dawn. Chi Da wakes up in a field next to two tombstones wondering if everything had been a dream. At school, he becomes the butt of jokes when rumors of his ghost sightings start getting around.

Angry and jealous Ping Ping goes to her rich daddy Lo Yeh (Sun Wang) and, get this, asks him to purchase the entire mountain and then build a mansion at the exact spot Chi Da claims to have met Mei Nung... and he agrees! Chi Da attempts to stop the construction and warns that they're digging up graves but is chased off. Later that night, Ping Ping and her father are visited by ghosts, who warn the father not to disturb the mountain any longer. But it appears the damage has already been done as both ghosts have been displaced. Meanwhile, Mei Nung's ghost aunt delivers a tablet / dowry to Chi Da's mother (Bi Hui Fu), which "settles" the marriage. Chi Da is now married to a ghost!

All hell breaks loose after Ping Ping destroys the marriage tablet. She's possessed, laughs in an echo voice, chews on a martini glass and spits up blood until they finally get the ghost to leave her body after throwing blood in her face. Then housekeeper / cook Mrs. Wang (Yin-Shang Liu) is possessed by a one-eyed black cat, which makes Ping Ping and her father have visions of her carrying a severed head around on a platter. Chi Da's roommate Hsiao Wei (Jing Fang) is driven out of their home when a hand reaches up from the toilet bowl and grabs him. Lo Yeh eventually enlists the aid of Taoist Shan-Tung Wei (Ping Ou Wei) and his cowardly assistant Hsiao Quai (Kuei Chang), who are hired to find the tombs of both Mei Hung and her aunt and drive spikes through their heads.

Having just watched DEMON'S APARTMENT (1985) from the same director, I decided to jump right into his other films as I suspected Apartment wasn't going to be indicative of the quality of the rest of his work. After all, Yao made several dozen ghost / horror films (many of which were hits in Asia) and I doubted that would be the case if all of his other movies were as poor. My suspicion was thankfully correct. You can tell from the first ten minutes that this is on another level entirely. It establishes an almost immediate deep connection between our protagonist and the ghost with minimal dialogue and makes wonderful use of light, shadow and especially sound (piano chords, a calling cat...) to eerie effect. Characters are virtually swallowed in the darkness that overwhelms each frame (often only candlelit faces are visible) and adding a slight echo effect to voices is a very clever touch to give the home a cavernous, almost tomb-like feel. It's a good reminder of how attention to small details makes such a big difference in low budget films.

After the somber and haunting opening this becomes a bit louder and bloodier as it goes along but mostly continues to hit the right buttons. The primary plot thread of the doomed romance (there's a short flashback that explains the link between the college student and ghost) comes off well thanks to melancholic scoring and likable leads and the horror scenes are often surprisingly potent thanks to good use of lighting, some clever effects and stylish / colorful presentation. The attempts at levity with the Taoist and roommate characters don't work too well but thankfully they're only a minor annoyance and this mostly plays out seriously. The fact it still manages to impress in many areas despite the subpar quality of the print and the fact a lot of the poorly-translated subtitles get cut off on the sides is really to the film's credit. This is a good enough effort to merit rescue.

What perhaps surprised me most is how often this reminded me of Argento's SUSPIRIA (released the following year). Not only is it filled with bold and heavily stylized lighting (most prominently green with some red, blue and yellow) but the busy music score (alternating between ethereal and jarring / noisy) often sounds very similar to Goblin's bombastic score and there's even some nearly identical imagery, most notably the female corpse laid out in a white nightgown with pins sticking in both eyes.

The English title used on the subbed version distributed by Ocean Shores (and by Daiei Video out of Japan) is The Ghost, which is so generic it probably ended any potential interest in this title on the home video market back then. This is also not to be confused with at least a dozen other Asian films from the 70s and 80s with some combination of ghost or spirit and love or lover in the title, including the previous Golden Eagle production The Ghost (1972) and The Ghost Lovers (1974) from Shaw Brothers.

★★★

San geng ban ye gui nao fang (1985)

... aka: 三更半夜鬼闹房 (on-screen title)
... aka: 半夜三更鬼闹房 (what most websites list)
... aka: Ban ye san geng gui nao fang
... aka: Demon's Apartment
... aka: Ghost Rapist

... aka: In the Middle of the Night: The Ghost Room
... aka: Three More Midnight Ghosts
... aka: Three Nights in the Ghost Room

Directed by:
Yao Fung Pan (Feng-Pan Yao)

I reviewed the IFD cut n' paste mash-up DIAMOND NINJA FORCE (1988) here a few years back. That release basically just added ninjas and new subplots to a preexisting horror film and changed the plot via dubbing. At the time, I didn't know where the bulk of the original footage came from... but now I do! And I was surprised to discover the original non-IFD'd version had also been released with English subtitles on VHS. Where we run into a bit of trouble is trying to come up with an accurate release year and original release title as no two websites seem to have the same information! Let's start with what we do know. The on-screen title for the VHS release (which differs from the IMDb listing and poster art I found) is 三更半夜鬼闹房, which a translator tells me means San geng ban ye gui nao fang, or (loosely) "Three More Midnight Ghosts." The director was Feng-Pan Yao, who's virtually unknown here in America, even to genre buffs, despite making around 20 horror films and being one of the Top 10 most prolific genre filmmakers of the 70s and 80s. According to the Hong Kong Movie Database, his final film as director was a 1983 schlock action film called Golden Doll. As of this writing, the database doesn't even list this particular title on his filmography.

This is sometimes listed as a 1985 or 1986 release, but just as often a 1977 or 1978 release. Some sites give the alternate title of 13号鬼屋 (Haunted House #13), but that appears to be another film from 1975. I then stumbled upon another site that gives the alternate title of Can Deng You Hun San Geng Tian and release year of 1977, which IS listed under Yao's filmography on HKMD. However, we run into some more problems here. For starters, that seems to be the alternate title for another Yao film called The Old Lock, or it may be another film entirely. Two other things make me doubt this is the same film: 1. It has some plot similarities to Poltergeist, and 2. It uses stolen music from Grammy-winning composer Harold Faltermeyer and several other 80s sources. In other words, this really couldn't be from the late 70s because the swiped music was released as late as 1984 (some is from the film Thief of Hearts) and, of course, Poltergeist was released in 1982. Going by what I've uncovered, I'd say this was filmed around 1984-85 and released in 1985 or 1986.

A construction crew unearths human remains on a burial ground with a bulldozer, but the boss pays them off to keep quiet and keep working. On top of the burial ground, some luxury condos are built. Soon after, the boss is visited by a green-faced ghost in his limo and dies of a heart attack. 

Just moving back to Taiwan from the U.S., a young yuppie couple; architect Shang-Chih Yuan (Chi-Chung Yiu) and his emotionally-fragile wife Man Chun, plus their little son Hsiao Pao, end up being shown one of the homes by a realtor. In lieu of outright buying it, he allows them to rent it, which is a good thing since this is one mortgage nobody's going to want to own. The wife immediately has bad vibes and finds the home "very grim" but hubby talks her into it. Their first night there many strange things happen. A black cat seems to materialize out of thin air, newly-purchased flowers wilt and turn black, chicken bones from dinner end up scattered all over the floor and Man Chun has visions of a decapitated head in a laundry basket and a ghostly face in the mirror. The son has his own visions of ghosts, including an old woman he starts calling "Grandma." Typical first night in a haunted house, I'd say.

Shang-Chih has to go to work the following day, leaving his constantly-shrieking wife alone with the son. While trying to prepare dinner, she has "illusions" of mice, a dead frog leaping out of the refrigerator, snakes in her hands and cracked eggs filled with blood. The son starts seeing another, younger female ghost around the house, who also scares off a plumber by making him envision maggots pouring out of the faucet. Despite the many weird things happening and the son growing ill / anemic due to a blue-faced old ghost drinking his blood while he sleeps, Shang-Chih takes Man Chun to see a doctor. Naturally he tells her it's all in her head and prescribes medication that keeps her zonked out most of the time.

In her human life, Huei Chuan (the younger female ghost / succubus) was abandoned by her lover after he knocked her up and died in a bloodbath after attempting to give herself a clothes hanger abortion. Now she has her sights set on Shang-Chih. She watches the couple have sex and then, due to the wife's drug-induced low energy, lends a helping hoo-ha by possessing her and using her body to have sex with Shang-Chih. The horny ghost then lures him outside for more sex near the ocean. The next day, Man Chun finds him drained of energy and passed out on some rocks. Will he finally believe their new home is haunted? And will they take up the plumber's offer to let his priest friend come exorcise the house?

Here's a sentence I thought I'd never have to type: If you must watch, watch the IFD version instead. At least it had some action and chopped out most of the worst parts. This original is a derivative, unscary, low-budget bore missing most of what usually makes Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema so much fun. There's next to no plot, nearly all of the characters (especially the wife and son) are highly annoying, there's little in the way of visual style, lame ghost makeup, no notable fx and dreadful forced comedy. On top of that, there are a number of overlong bits that will really try your patience, especially a scene where the husband, his brother "Fatty" and two other guys are playing Mahjong and their game keeps getting interrupted by a ghost. It's not the least bit funny and goes on for TEN excruciating minutes.

I was actually looking forward to seeing this due to finding the footage used in the Diamond cut somewhat amusing. Boy was I mistaken. While it certainly didn't help matters that the only available version is in poor shape this wouldn't have sucked any less in remastered form. And I certainly hope this isn't typical of the director's other films since I have about twenty more to view! The soundtrack of stolen music also includes Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene Part 4" (1976) and Pino Donaggio music from Dressed to Kill (1980).

★