Past Misdeeds: The Saviour (1980)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

It would be easy to confuse Hong Kong police Inspector Tom (veteran actor Pai Ying, looking a bit bored) with your run-of-the-mill cop on the edge. His boss (Chris Dryden) at least seems to take him for one, complaining that Tom never keeps any criminal alive. But what the film shows of the cop lets him look like some sort of anti-Danny Lee, killing only in self-defence, being not too fond of torture, spending his free time taking care of an orphan boy. Given these facts, our so-called loose gun acts like the least psychopathic cop in Hong Kong cinema, though, admittedly, the way police officers in HK movies usually act, that's not much to say of a cop's mental health.

Tom's newest case is a series of murders of prostitutes. While the audience knows the identity of the killer right from the start, Tom will have to spend a few scenes not moving a facial muscle, or, as the experts call it, "investigating". Fortunately, one of the killer's victims escapes with her life and is willing and able to identify him. The young man doing the deeds is one Paul Kwok (Ng Man-Hung?), who isn't quite the nice little boy he once was anymore since he witnessed his mother killing herself in front of his eyes while rambling about "sluts" and "tramps", a catastrophe caused by his Dad's very obvious cheating. Now, with a witness, it should be an easy case for Tom, and Paul should be facing a nice vacation in an institution.

Unfortunately, the young man's father (even more veteran actor Tien Feng) is a retired gangster, and the sort of gangster without any scruples to hire one of his old associates to kill the witness and later on (in utter stupidity) even try for Tom's life at that. After the inevitable death of the witness, Paul goes free again.

The only way Tom sees to still catch his man is to let a friend of one of the victims (Gigi Wong), who also doubles as his own love interest, do some undercover work in killer provocation.

Before Ronny Yu became Ronny Yu, the emperor of blue lights in neo-wuxia movies, he learned the director's trade making movies in various other genres, like this Teddy Robin Kwan-produced thriller. Even this early in his career, and confronted with a total lack of blue lights, Yu certainly knew how to stage a scene, use dynamic editing to ratchet up the tension at the right moment, and set up a nice nod in the direction of Dario Argento in a staircase sequence. Quite unlike the enthusiastic, Chor-Yuen-influenced wallowing in careful artificiality that characterizes the visual style of Yu's films of the 90s, The Saviour is aiming for the speedy edited type of tight pseudo-naturalism typical of many of Hong Kong's crime films and thrillers of the late 70s and early 80s, with only short moments of the non-realist - like the flashbacks to the death of Paul's mother, that staircase scene, and a handful of other moments - prefiguring at once Yu's later style and making that style's debt to the giallo surprisingly probable. This doesn't mean that the shots that are supposed to look spontaneous and "real" here aren't set up just as carefully as those of a film made in a more obviously artificial style; The Saviour certainly isn't a point-and-shoot affair, but a thoroughly composed picture that is meant to feel thoroughly un-composed.

Most of the time, that well-constructed pseudo-naturalism works out well for the film, that is, as long as the script plays into Yu's hands keeping things relatively low-key and reasonably believable. Unfortunately, the construction of the movie's final act leaves something to be desired. What starts out unoriginal yet casually believable (as far as such things go), turns into a classic case of an idiot plot, where the final confrontation only plays out in the supposedly exciting way it does because the female lead seems to have suddenly misplaced her brain and her once professional cop friends just as suddenly stop thinking or acting like people who know what they are doing, too. This sort of thing would rankle less in a film that never pretended to be taking place on planet Earth as we know it, but in a film that spent most of its first hour pretending not to want to be too sensationalist, this sudden turn for the preposterous is more of a problem. That the script's failure at this late stage doesn't ruin the film completely is Yu's achievement - he just pulls enough magic tricks out of the "look, I'm DIRECTING!" hat to distract from the writing problems.

The other problems Yu needs to and does distract from throughout the movie are the frankly bored and boring acting by Pai Ying and the decidedly unthreatening performance by Ng Man-Hung. It's nice that they (or Yu) decided to step back from the more typical scenery chewing found in every other film from Hong Kong ever, but they then fell into the trap of acting so low-key they might as well have been replaced by wooden puppets. I think I would have preferred the scenery-chewing here.


Still, Yu's direction is stronger than his film's flaws, and though I wouldn't recommend The Saviour as one of the director's best films, it is well worth watching for anyone interested in Yu's early career or in the move against the beautiful artificiality of the venerable Shaw productions taking place in the Hong Kong movies of that era.

The Trail (1983)

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

aka The Trial (which has as little to do with the movie as the other English language title)

Original title: 追鬼七雄

Revolutionary era China. A guy going by the nickname of Captain (Kent Cheng Jak-Si) and his cohorts are using a most excellent opium smuggling technique: Captain and his second Ying (Ricky Hui Koon-Ying) dress up as Buddhist monks while the rest of the gang pack the loot into belts, straps those on and dress up as jiang shi (also known as hopping vampires, or in the case of these subtitles, zombies, though they are not exactly either) the supposed monks are herding around. It’s a rather brilliant plan, truly.

However, one local evil potentate (Miao Tian) pays our heroes to take the corpse of what he tells them is his brother with them, for his brother, his main henchman explains, has died of leprosy, and getting his remains away as stealthily as possible is absolutely necessary to protect the village’s good reputation. It’s a lie, of course, and the old bastard is trying to cover up a murder. This lie and their own greed will cost our dubious heroes dearly after they have dumped the body in a sulphur pit.

For because the corpse has a score to the settle with the potentate, it returns to life right quick as a real jiang shi (not doing any hopping but all the more rotting) and starts killing animals and opium smugglers alike. Captain and his gang decide to destroy the thing (his whole-sale slaughter of the local population and one of their own is bad for business, or something), arming themselves with the urine of virgin boys and the traditional yellow charms. Things are not going to go well for them.

The style of Ronny Yu’s The Trail has much less to do with the later jiang shi classic Mr Vampire than I had expected, apart from this too being a horror comedy. The depiction of the monster is much more gruesome than the pale hopping gentlemen in traditional garb other films about its kind have made me accustomed to (and, as far as I know, it’s much closer to the depiction of the creatures in much Chinese folklore about them). It’s a rotting, shambling monstrosity that is pretty close to a zombie, just stronger, meaner, sometimes cleverer and definitely harder to kill – probably even when its enemies were more competent than our protagonists are.

As a comedy, this is a pretty dark one, with a group of morally suspect protagonists mostly doomed to die pretty horrible deaths and two survivors who will learn exactly nothing from what happened to them, the film’s epilogue showing them disguised as catholic priests selling fake possessions but of course stumbling into a pretty hilarious The Exorcist situation. The humour is Hong Kong standard, though pleasantly avoiding the greatest extremes of slapstick and random nonsense, keeping most of the jokes integrated into the actual plot. In a really surprising turn of events, I even found myself laughing about a lot of the funny business, certainly thanks to the chipper casts of guys we know and love from dozens of other Hong Kong films, but also because Yu as a director always was rather fantastic at the timing aspect of things, be it in comedy, action, or suspense.

The suspense scenes here in particular turn out very nicely, with many highly effective sequences of our hapless heroes trying to first catch, then avoid the jiang shi only to see things getting worse and worse with every well timed bad turn. Yu escalates their troubles with a rhythm one could probably dance to, sometimes building tension out of comedic elements (there’s some excellent business concerning the monster and frog voice imitations), at other times ending the tension with a laugh that actually does work as comic relief for once.

If that’s not enough for you, there’s also a nice underground tomb set, some adorable miniature work and the mandatory blue light to gawk at and enjoy, as well as a bit of decent kung fu and an absurdly unsubtle yet curiously effective synthesizer score.

On WTF: The Saviour (1980)

Being the kind of curious person I am when it comes to movies, I'm always happy to take a look at the lesser known films of directors whose central works I've enjoyed.

Ronnie "Bride With The White Hair" Yu's early career is especially interesting, because unlike, say, John Woo, he was already making pretty interesting films when he was just starting out. Case in point is Yu's The Saviour. My weekly column on WTF-Film will tell you more about the film and the wooden dolls acting in it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: hong kong movies,reviews,thriller,ronny yu,pai ying,gigi wong,tien feng

In short: Bless This House (1988)

After twenty years of toil for his company, an architect whom everyone calls "Uncle Bill" (Bill Tung) finally seems to have hit a lucky streak in his life. Not only does Bill's young and dynamic (yes, this does translate to "highly unsympathetic") boss promote him, he also allows him to move into a large, company-owned home.

Bill and his family - wife Sau-Lan (Dik Boh-Laai), older daughter Jane (Rachel Lee aka Loletta Lee) and little Yan-Yan (Chan Cheuk-Yan) - are at first absolutely delighted by their new home. Soon, however, the first problems with the dream home become all too apparent. The family could probably live with the fact that the house is way out in the boons, or that their closest neighbour is a mad one-eyed guy (Bruce Leung) living in a half-ruined temple who likes to sprout rather unhelpful yet dire warnings.

The family of ghosts sharing their living space is quite a different thing, though. At first, those rather unfriendly sub-tenants are only scaring away Jane's annoying boyfriend Biggie (Stephen Ho), but they are working their way up to bigger things like hoover possession and compelling Bill to sing peking opera parts in the cellar. The final goal of all the spookiness is (of course!) to let the living repeat the family tragedy that killed the ghost family.

Usually, I avoid comedies like ghosts avoid the ashes of holy men, but I just had to make an exception for Bless This House, or more precisely for its director Ronny Yu, who made a handful of my favourite Hong Kong films and is one of the few directors from there whose US films are also at least worth watching. Well, most of them, anyway.

Yu is such an exception to my (only half-real) "no comedy" rule, that I have even found myself laughing about some of his films.

And I did in fact laugh more than once while watching Bless This House. The main reason why the movie's humour worked for me is Yu's avoidance of the two least likeable elements of Hong Kong comedy - a nasty disposition (at its worst displayed in Wong Jing's conviction that rape is really funny) and an over-reliance on slapstick. This is not to say that Yu's film is completely lacking in physical comedy, he is just using it a bit more sparingly than many of his peers, which seems to me an excellent way to keep it funny instead of exhausting.

Yu also shows every symptom of actually having empathy with his protagonists, even when he puts them into highly undignified and agreeably silly situations. The film's heart seems to be in the right place.

Bless This House is also a film that shows its influences as a horror comedy (Sam Raimi, Chinese vampire movies, you know, the obvious) with pride and enthusiasm without becoming a mere copy of them.

As far as I know (and as I said, I don't know much about comedy or your strange human "humour"), though, good comedy succeeds or fails mostly by virtue of its timing and pacing, and it's these points where Yu's talent really comes through beautifully. The film escalates (and regular readers will probably know by now how big I am on escalation) nicely from harmless sillyness to the sort of sillyness that could kill its protagonists, as it well should in a horror comedy, but isn't so nasty to refuse its viewers the appropriate happy end.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,comedy,horror,in short,ronny yu

In short: The Occupant (1984)

aka The Tenant

Canadian Chinese grad student Angie (Sally Yeh) comes to Hong Kong to study Chinese superstitions. Her budget for her trip isn't much to speak of, and so she's quite happy that she's able to get a ridiculously cheap furnished apartment instead of an overpriced hotel room.

There's a good reason for her new place's low prize, though - it is haunted. What begins harmless enough with a little table moving and ghostly singing rises to threats of ghostly possession. The ghost of singer Lisa Law (Mak Git-Man) seems obsessed with repeating the murder suicide that cost her life through Angie.

Fortunately two creepy stalker guys - the cop Valentino (Chow Yun-Fat) and the "funny" used car dealer Hansome Wong (Raymond Wong) - have fallen in love with Angie and are willing to help her out with her problem. Valentino even has an ex-cop friend (Lo Lieh) turned priest who can do a little exorcising.

The Occupant is an early work in the long and complicated career of director Ronny Yu. It's more a comedy than a horror film, but it doesn't succeed all that well as either horror or comedy.

The comedy bits are less inane and slapsticky than typical for Hong Kong comedies, so they should be easier to stomach for someone with as little tolerance for these things as I have, but what is on screen often just isn't all that funny. I mean, making fun of Raymond Wong's character can only get us that far.

The horror part of the film on the other hand isn't very exciting either. The usual child-friendly ghosting is present, but fails to excite or interest much.

Still, watching it isn't all that painful an experience. There's nothing really bad about the film, the problem is that there isn't anything really good about it either, leading to a film that's just somehow there to while away 90 minutes without making much of an impression.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,ronny yu,chow yun-fat,sally yeh,raymond wong,in short,horror,comedy

The Postman Strikes Back (1982)

In the early phase of the Chinese republic, when most of the country is controlled by warlords, a certain Mister Hu (Eddy Ko, who will not turn out to be an evil Japanese ninja, oh no) hires a small group of men to transport four chests containing something of utmost importance secretly to the warlord who controls the strategically valuable Laome Pass.

These men are the courier Ma (Leung Kar-Yan) whose profession is slowly becoming obsolete with the growing availability of the railroad, a young thief named Yao Jin (Yuen Yat-Choh), Ma's good friend, the alcoholic and slightly mad explosives expert Bu (Fan Mei-Sheng - and is this how you'd want your explosives expert?) and the professional gambler and cool scarf-wearer Fu Jun (a young and skinny Chow Yun-Fat - count those rips!).

As it goes in films like this, the men soon get some female company in the form of Guifa (Cherie Chung before she was too annoying), who has a crush on Ma, but nominally just wants his help to get to Shanghai and a Miss Li (Guk Ching-Suk), whom they save from bandits.

The small party will have to brave many dangers in the form of bandits, revolutionaries (which in this case means democrats), nature, and a violent past that will come to haunt Yao Jin and Fu Jun with even more people out to kill them. Would you believe there will be small buds of love growing? That the men will become friends despite all their differences? That there will be betrayal, blood, and tears?

Yes, it's one of those films, but it's a good one of its type, with a script that doesn't shy away from cruel, sometimes unfair consequences for characters' actions unlike a comparable Hollywood script would do.

Stylistically, Postman is quite different from the better known, frenetically paced supernatural wuxia that would come later in director Ronny Yu's career (or the films he has made in Hollywood, for that matter), mostly utilizing actual locations instead of beautifully artificial sets and running along at a leisurely pace instead of jumping screaming in your face. I think the film is influenced by the more historically minded Spaghetti Western of Leone and Corbucci, sharing some plot points I'm not going to spoil, certain parts of their visual style as well as a similar outlook on history, although it never gets as explicit about Yu's own politics as some of Corbucci's works do about their director.

The action is mock realistic and quite bloody, but fortunately not so realistic as not to throw things like pick-a-back fu, shawl fu, a magnetic ninja or rat grenades at the viewer when it is deemed necessary and most certainly not willing to give up on a spectacular set piece for stupid things like the laws of physics.

The actors are all game, with a young Chow Yun-Fat doing some neat cigarette acting and Eddy Ko being his typical evil and untrustworthy self, and the rest of the cast acquitting themselves with the dignified professionalism of people who simply know how to do their jobs.

Despite its stupid title, The Postman Strikes Back is a very fine film, not as spectacular and complex an historically minded martial arts adventure as Once Upon A Time In China perhaps, but still worth it.

 

Technorati-Tags: chow yun-fat,ronny yu,hong kong movies,martial arts,adventure,reviews,leung kar-yan,eddy ko,fan mei-sheng