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

Daniel O'Brien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

Hopping vampires, seductive spirits and giant predatory tongues! Tsui Hark's A Chinese Ghost Story in 1987 gave many Western viewers their first taste of supernatural thrills, Oriental style. Yet the film was a comparatively late entry in a well-established genre. From Sammo Hung's Spooky Encounters to King Hu's valedictory Painted Skin, the 1980s Hong Kong ghost film cycle produced a stylish and distinctive body of work that compares with the best of Universal and Hammer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Very informative and well-researched... a breakthrough work on this underrated genre -- Bey Logan, author, HK cinema expert, film producer and writer

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of Hong Kong horror movies, filled to bursting with flying ghosts, hopping vampires, seductive spirits, tree demons, evil sorcerers, living skeletons, possessed limbs and giant predatory tongues. Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story in 1987 gave many Western viewers their first taste of supernatural thrills — Oriental style — yet the film was a comparatively late entry in a well-established genre. From Sammo Hung’s ground-breaking Spooky Encounters to King Hu’s valedictory Painted Skin, the 1980s Hong Kong ghost film cycle produced a stylish and distinctive body of work that compares with the best of Universal and Hammer. According to the standard version of events, Hong Kong cinema during the late 1970s amounted to little more than a series of tired Bruce Lee rip-offs. The posthumous release of Game of Death, which blended unused Lee footage with unconvincing ‘doubles’, merely underlined the film industry’s creative bankruptcy. Like most established movie lore, this bleak scenario doesn’t tell the full story by any means. For example, veteran stuntman, fight choreographer and supporting actor Sammo Hung had recently emerged as both a major star and a gifted, imaginative director. While most of his early work followed the standard formula of righteous kung fu vengeance, Hung was clearly a film-maker to watch. On the lookout for new material, Sammo Hung decided to blend supernatural elements with the usual high-impact martial arts and broad humour. The end result, Spooky Encounters, or Encounter of the Spooky Kind, proved a runaway success, creating a new genre: the kung fu ghost comedy. Around the same time, Hong Kong’s thriving television industry produced such notable ‘New Wave’ talents as Ann Hui and Tsui Hark, who’d both make major contributions to the ghost movie cycle. Leading action directors John Woo, Ronny Yu and Ringo Lam all worked on horror films early in their careers. Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun Fat romanced witches, fought demons and blew up monsters before he ever donned dark glasses and a trenchcoat. Five years on from Spooky Encounters, Sammo Hung produced Mr Vampire, arguably his greatest contribution to the genre. Along with Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story, another major hit, Mr Vampire’s far-reaching success kept the spooky movie alive until the early 1990s. While the Hong Kong film industry still turns out horror movies on a regular basis, the great days of the ghost genre are long gone. Shifting audience tastes, industry crises, creative exhaustion and a talent exodus to the United States all played a part in this decline. The genre rarely attracts major film-makers now, mostly operating at the extreme low budget end of the industry. The Troublesome Night series, which currently stands at eighteen entries, is more notable for its survival in the face of meagre box-office returns than for the intrinsic quality of the films. On the bright side, the critical and commercial success of Ann Hui’s Visible Secret and the Pang Brothers’ The Eye suggests that the Hong Kong ghost genre may become fashionable again.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Critical Vision (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1900486318
• ISBN-13: 978-1900486316
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,104,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Dreadful Melody here!, March 2, 2008

By 

Michael L. White "impossiblefunky" (Westland, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spooky Encounters: A Gwailo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror (Paperback)

Somehow Daniel O'Brien's book Spooky Encounters came out without me noticing. I picked this book up a few weeks back and just couldn't put it down. O'Brien gives the most comprehensive history of Hong Kong horror films during the Golden Age of HK filmmaking (roughly the '70s through 1997) I've had the pleasure of reading since the second issue of Colin Geddes's groundbreaking zine Asian Eye.

At 180 pages, Spooky Encounter is jam-packed with information, reviews, and comparisons of HK Horror. O'Brien breaks topics down into the history of HK Horror, the Mr. Vampire series, the influential films of Tsui Hark, Category III blends of sex and scares, and the last days of HK Horror films in the wake of the '97 takeover. O'Brien ties the popularity of films back to their native HK box office gross which provides an interesting insight on how these films were received at the time compared to their legacy (or lack thereof).

O'Brien's prose makes the book easy to read. Moreover, his writing is clear and concise which helps to make sense of some of the more obtuse film plots and the use of Eastern legends in others. O'Brien doesn't take the easy road of gushing over the food films and demonizing the poor ones. His tone is even-handed though he doesn't shy away from taking some laugh out loud potshots when necessary. One of my favorite lines comes from his review of JULY 13TH / QI YUE SHI SAN ZHI LONG PO he writes, "While Alan and Laura appear to be back together, the enigmatic ending hints that their happiness will be short-lived. It also suggests that Wellson Chin and Abe Kwon didn't know how to end their film."

Highly informative and well-crafted, Spooky Encounters is a must-read for genre fans and cinephiles interested in an under-appreciated movement of cinema.