subway cinema | a chinese ghost story 2 (1990)

	ONCE UPON A TIME IN HONG KONG: A TSUI HARK RETROSPECTIVE May 25-28, 2001 at the Anthology Film Archives
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A CHINESE GHOST STORY 2 (1990)

Directed by: Ching Siu-tung
Produced by: Tsui Hark
Action choreography by: Ching Siu-tung, Yuen Bun, Ma Yuk-shing, Cheung Yiu-sing
Starring: Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong, Jacky Cheung, Michelle Reis, Wu Ma, Waise Lee, Lau Shun.

103 minutes, 35mm
in Cantonese with English subtitles

The movie begins with a frantic recap of A CHINESE GHOST STORY 1: tax collector Ning and his ghostly lady love, Sian, meeting at the haunted Orchid Monastery. They write breathless, sexy, classical poetry together. A giant tongue attacks. She is consigned to marry the demon, Lord Black. Ning and a rapping Taoist priest (Wu Ma) storm the gates of Hell and rescue her. Screaming heads fly. Tentacles grope. The heroes escape and the sun rises, evaporating Sian in the light of dawn leaving Ning holding nothing but her ashes. Red silk billows. "The Story Continues..." splashes across the screen and we're off into part 2.

For A CHINESE GHOST STORY, Tsui Hark and director Ching Siu-tung built a haunted forest on a soundstage, filled it with desiccated, blood-sucking corpses, a polysexual tree demon with a mile-long tongue, and a Lord of Hell whose cape conceals a wall of screaming, flying, biting heads. It was the first film to feel the full unleashed force of Hong Kong's first special effects house, Cinefex, and its aesthetic was shanghaied by the hundred imitators that followed.

For Tsui and Ching, an official sequel to their hexy hit was a no-brainer. Picking up mere moments after the end of A CHINESE GHOST STORY 1, Ning stumbles out of the forest and back to his home village only to find that five years have passed. Famine grips the land, corpses rot in the streets and restaurants don't serve you, they SERVE you (preferably roasted). Mistaken for a certain Bing Chow he's thrown in jail and suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Escaping, it's once more into the blue-lit forest where he bumps into Autumn, pop star Jacky Cheung playing a rowdy, Taoist monk with a spell for every occasion. The two find themselves embroiled in a revolutionary plot led by Windy, the spitting image of Sian (and, in fact, the same actress, Joey Wong) and her sister, Moon (Michelle Reis, SWORDSMAN 2). The plot is heavy with political intrigue, but once the dark forces are unleashed they can't be put back in the bottle and every second the ghosts get wilder and their slime gets stinkier.

Framed and filmed like woodcuts from a 16th century pulp novel the movie races at you like a Grimm fairy tale about NASCAR, stewing blood and grue and demons and haunted forests into a sticky soup to keep you warm on a dark night. Dawn, dusk and deepest night are the only hours of the day, and no sooner do the toxic rays of the morning sun scorch some advancing ghoul, than our heroes are casting a trepidatious glance at the setting sun as it sinks into the misty horizon, plunging the world into deepest night and unleashing a host of demon dogs, mile-long centipedes, and evil chanting.

Cinefex was stretched to its limit bringing the effects to life: a ten-foot-tall, steam-powered homunculus jetting pressurized goo, a bevy of invisible assassins, flying rebels, and Hundred Sword Formation. A hydraulic centipede was imported from the US of A for the finale' only to be deemed too stiff. Quick as a wink, a fellow was dressed up in a centipede suit, and the actors were replaced by children (to make the centipede look bigger). And if you're not a jaded literalist, it works.

Despite the cabinet of curiosities onscreen, it's really all about the story, and this one is pure Baba Yaga romance. Like the survivor of a plane crash, Ning stumbles through the burnt-out landscape looking for the lover he knows is in hell, desperately trying to replace her with her double. Love blooms only to be cut down again and again, and loyalties exist only so they can be betrayed. Professional mountebanks, Ching Siu-tung and Tsui Hark juggle slimey ghosts, aching heartbreak, bedroom farce and low comedy simultaneously without selling any of the genres short. And in the process they manage to answer the question: how do you make a ghost movie?

With gallons of high-pressure slime.

It all comes to a climax with Buddhist chanting, and a Diamond Sutra that saves the day, but not before a big bully Buddha tries to squish everyone between his bright gold sumo wrestler hands. Garnish this concoction with a displaced person, and serve fast and spooky - that's how you make a ghost movie. A rough-hewn fairy tale carved out of bleeding trees, A CHINESE GHOST STORY 2 is a touch of wonder in a cynical world.

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