When Lang (Li-Hua Yang) a likeable but ineffectual scholar is swindled out of his home and forced to take refuge inside a notoriously haunted house, he’s surprised to discover that the ‘apparitions’ are actually a wounded old woman and her beautiful young daughter Ruyu (Mei-Yao Chang). When the old woman dies, it paves the way for Lang and Ruyu to fall in love and set up their own weaving business (I’m not kidding) but fate and a pair of lecherous villains are intent on ruining everything. When Ruyu is raped and murdered, her spirit returns to seek revenge… and she does not return alone.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Shaw Brothers were among China’s most prolific filmmakers and horror-themed stories formed a large part of their output. Unfortunately, despite having been filmed in ‘Shaw-Scope’ (not that anyone would notice) The Enchanting Ghost isn’t one of their finest examples. In fact, although it starts out with vague echoes of Masaki Kobayashi’s wondrous Kwaidan (right down to replicating parts of that film’s musical fx score) and briefly promises to be an inspiration for Tsui Hark’s masterpiece A Chinese Ghost Story, it’s not really a horror film at all. It’s a meandering romance that looks extremely pretty and blemish-free in 88 Films new Blu-ray presentation, but it’s not long before we realise that the audio-visuals are more solid than the movie itself. The ghost(s) don’t even make an appearance until the final act and, apart from a bit of giggling and taloned-finger waving it’s hard to see what the pantomime baddies are so afraid of.
Tonally, The Enchanting Ghost is all over the place. First off is the very strange casting of obviously female Li-Hua Yang as the male lead, which feels like a wasted opportunity given what the filmmakers could have done if they’d thought things through properly (surely there must have been a reason for casting a woman as a man but the film never goes there.) And then there are the aforementioned pantomime villains, who sashay evilly around like kimono-wearing keystone kops and actually get up to some pretty vile and reprehensible shenanigans – exhibit a: the rape and subsequent poisoning of Ruyu – but we don’t actually feel the jeopardy of what they’ve done because it all seems to be uncomfortably played for laughs. As for scholar Lang, he’s about as wet as you’ll ever get (and there are plenty of truly wet heroes in HK fantasy), moping around and waiting for something to happen to her… err… him. And I’m still not sure what the ending was all about.
This Hong Kong horror is for completists only, which is rather a shame because the disc itself looks and sounds quite gorgeous.
THE ENCHANTING GHOST (1970) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: HSU CHIANG CHOU / STARRING: MEI-YAO CHANG, LI HAU YANG, HSIANG TING KO, HSIAO PAO KO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
