Spooky Encounters: A Gwailo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror

[Jim Fortner]

Just got this book (blind buy) from Amazon - hoping it will be good. I love hopping vampires/ghosts and other weird Hong Kong horrors.

[KH Brown]

I posted a review here back in November, unfortunately just when the site went down.

Here's what I thought:

Spooky Encounters: A Gwailo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror

A Gwailo, for the uninitiated, is the Chinese term for a white foreigner, literally translating as "ghost man" or "white ghost", thereby giving Daniel O'Brien's guide the sense of being both by and for the white outsider to Hong Kong Chinese culture.

Following some useful scene setting as to the distinctive historical and cultural contexts of Hong Kong and its cinema, O'Brien's first establishes the long history of films with borderline horror elements, such as King Hu's magisterial A Touch of Zen (1971), prior to the better-known – if hardly representative in its elcectic combination of Chinese and European vampire lores and a Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai styled approach – Hammer/Shaw Brothers collaboration The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974).

The true founding text for the Hong Kong horror film thus emerges in the form of the film that gives the book its title, the multi-talented – actor/producer/director/action choreographer – Sammo Hung's Spooky Encounters (1980) which, contrary to its Spielberg-inspired title, took a more traditional approach in showcasing such figures as the kyonsi or hopping corpse, striking a chord with domestic audiences who evidently hadn't been sure what to make of Seven Golden Vampires.

Hung was equally important in the second wave of Hong Kong horrors, spearheaded by the surprise hit Mr Vampire (1985). Directed by Hung associate Ricky Lau the film established the Chinese vampire in its own right, being followed by numerous sequels and imitations – the so-called CVK or Cute Vampire Kid subgenre – while making a star of Lam Ching Yin, its ghostbusting Taoist priest.

One of Mr Vampire's subplots saw one of Lam Ching Yin's hapless assistants fall under the spell of a female ghost or huli, thereby presaging producer-director-all-round impresario Tsui Hark's A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), starring Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong and the breakthrough film as far as reaching the more mainstream western audience was concerned. Soon thereafter Stanley Kwan's Rouge (also 1987) pitted Cheung alongside Anita Mui in a more arthouse styled tale of tragic love, again reaching beyond the traditional Chinese diasporan audience.

From these high points the trend is predominantly a downwards one, with only a few entries such as Ronny Yu's FX-driven horror-fantasy The Bride with White Hair (1992) and the Category III softcore influenced Erotic Ghost Story (1990) seemingly warranting much attention in the run up to the 1997 handover, while the most successful horror productions since, the Pang Brothers' The Eye (2002) arguably takes things full-circle in terms of its influences, being more inspired by the current new wave of Japanese horror than traditional kyonsi and huli legends.

The general impression one gets from this history, then, is that those films which are relatively easy for the gwailo to see are also the best, their respective sequels and imitators frequently not worth the effort. It's not quite a case of O'Brien saying "I've had to suffer through the likes of Mr Vampire 2 so you don't have to" however, with numerous less well known titles also emerging as warranting seeking out, such as the early Tsui Hark entries The Butterfly Murders (1979) and We're Going to Eat You (1980) – notable for their distinctly Italianate giallo-esque and cannibal influences – fellow new-waver Ann Hui's Spooky Bunch (1980), the Better Tomorrow era Chow Yun Fat entry The Seventh Curse (1986), and just about everything King Hu ever made.

Spooky Encounters: A Gwailo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror's only weak spot is a slight lack of focus implicit in its title and subtitle: While the supernatural emerges as the dominant manifestation of horror in the Hong Kong context, they are clearly not entirely commutative. Thus, while Category III productions are referred to where necessary to better contextualise a film or its personnel, the late 80s/early 90s sex and violence cycle in particular receives relatively short shrift.

The result, one feels, is perhaps somwhat akin to an account of British horror that comprehensively takes into account Hammer's gothic horror output but isn't so concerned with, say, Amicus and Tigon let alone Peter Walker. Nevertheless, even if unavoidably partial in places, with one getting the sense that the book could have been two or three times as long and still not covered everything, there is no doubt that O'Brien does know his stuff – many authors would surely have confused the three Tony Leungs he carefully distinguishes, for instance – and has spent way too much time in front of the screen, big or small.

If Spooky Encounters is the only game in town for as far as English-language guides to its subject are concerned, thankfully it's also a damn good one.

[Jim Fortner]

I agree - I'm about 20 percent through the book and I really like it - lots of info and background stuff on the making of some of the movies, but he has a much higher standard (or at least different!) than mine! I've seen some of the movies he sort of criticizes, and I like them very much. Maybe writing a "serious" book makes one overly critical of the thing that one liked enough to cause you to write a book about it in the first place?

[Linn Haynes]

a while back a rather long follow up that review. And here it is:

The main problem with that book is the problem with most, there's very little "off the beaten path" film research being done. The book is very much by the numbers i.e. a smattering (and I mean it in this case) of well know Shaw Brothers films and the Golden Harvest productions followed by the more recent productions. The lack of Shaw Brothers coverage is criminal IMO, and the short shrift shown by the author makes it appear he has little knowledge on that section of Hong Kong film history, which is required for this subject, as the Shaw Brothers produced FAR more horror films than the Golden Harvest or Cinema City combined.

The book has a subheading of "A Gwailo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror." Now this is implying that the author is talking about Hong Kong horror as a whole, which he's not. The bulk of the book about Hong Kong horror of the '80s till today, specifically the horror/comedy cycle started in the wake of Sammo Hung's Spooky Encounters (the title of the book itself) AKA Encounters of the Spooky Kind. He honestly doesn't talk much about straight horror films at all, but focuses on the horror comedy hybrids. The writer seems to start with the idea the bulk of HK Horror was the HK Horror 'cycle', a term he comes up with to seemingly fit all of HK horror into. If the book had been called 'HK Horror of the 80s, it would have been fine, the book couldn’t possibly cover all HK Horror ever, but didn't define properly what the book wanted to do in the first place. In the process, he neglects the slasher, ghost, and general horror films being made before or during this period, or gives them about a sentence or two of notice. Is there a mention of the HK giallo films of the 70s and 80s? Nope. New wave horror? Nope. Swordplay horror films? Nope. And so on. This is a fatal flaw in a book that reports to be about Hong Kong horror. It would be akin to if a book on kung fu films skipped over Bruce Lee, i.e. you can't do it and get a correct view of the subject.

The author begins the book by spending roughly 17 pages supposedly summing up what led to the film Spooky Encounters, but in the course of this intro, it also appears he's smoothing over the events and films he knows little about that had more than a little to do with it. He completely dismisses Spiritual Boxer, which if he knew anything about it, he would have seen it is part of the backbone of his entire book. To really get the idea of what I'm talking about, simply look at page 32.The first bit after "Spooks and Huis" states that the Shaw Brothers had just realized the popularity of horror films in 1983 with Seeding of a Ghost?!! What the hell? The Shaw Brothers had been making horror movies 35 years before this and had been making them all through the '70s and driving the genre. The Shaw Brothers were the only studio that was doing serious horror. This hurt them at the box-office, but they were more horror oriented than the Hong Kong "horror" created in their wake. The next two paragraphs continue to blunder with statements like Attack of the God of Joy was a Shaw Brothers film (it wasn't) and that had the Shaws not closed down in the mid '80s, perhaps they could have carved a distinctive niche in the genre, which they did of course. I'm not going to go through the whole book in this post, but lets say that it's in no way flawless and I made corrections quite a few times during my reading.

Considering the obvious amount of research that went into this book, it blows my mind that the author would make such frankly ridiculous mistakes. And just the idea that the book has no coverage of Boxer's Omen, one of the best horror films produced by the Shaw Brothers (and fairly easy to find) just speaks of someone who really didn't bother to find out about these films. The book also doesn't mention the first and most important New Wave era horror film Blood Reincarnation, nor even a slight mention of the Lovecraftian swordplay Green-eyed Swordswoman series that set up much of the color schemes (blue and green gel lighting) and directing style that we associate with Hong Kong horror of the very period the book focuses on! Now if you're looking for a book on Cinema City, Golden Harvest, and more modern horror fare, look no further. I know I'll be keeping it for this info, as it is well written, and largely correct. And I never said it didn't tell me anything I didn't know, as it is impressive in the areas I mentioned. BUT if you're really looking for the real story of horror in Hong Kong and how the horror film really evolved, hope for another book.