Hong Kong Horror

Hong Kong Horror, The Unique Fusion of East and West

Alongside the cinema o China, and the cinema of Taiwan, The cinema of Hong Kong is one of the major Chinese language cinema. In 1898, China signed over the New Territories  on a ninety-nine-year lease made Hong Kong became a former British colony. Under British rule, Hong Kong had a greater degree of political and economic freedom than mainland China and Taiwan. This allowed the ghost movie boom which would not have occurred under Chinese Communism as all horror films were banned for many years (O’Brien, 2003 p.6). In 1984, Britain agreed to relinquish all claims on Hong Kong with the condition that the territory retained its capitalist system, and the associated social and economic freedoms for at least fifty years after the new territories expired in 1997. 

In 1989, Category 3 a new rating system was introduced to classify films with graphic presentations of sex and violence. The phenomenon was an unintended side effect of this film rating system. Category 3 horror films are important artefacts allow commenting indirectly on a world of social exploitation common to both the colonial system of government and its post 1997 special administrative region SAR status (Schneider, 2005, p.203). The untold story (1993), Dr. Lamb (1992), The Underground Banker (1994), Ebola Syndrome (1996) and the Untold Story 2 (1998) are grim embodiments of a dark social reality affecting Hong Kong society. 

In term of spiritual beliefs, Hong Kong horror films are mainly based on Chinese culture with a mix of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism (O’Brien, 2003,p.7). Bringing in gender, in Chinese literary ghost tradition, unmarried female ghosts are most problematic because an unmarried woman belongs neither to her father's family nor does she have a marital family. In romantic ghost film Picture of a Nymph, a young bride becomes a restless spirit after she dies on the way to her wedding. Her mission is very clear that she has to find a husband or risk eternal damnation.

However, the supernatural film became part of the 1980s upgrading of technique since Sammo Hung came up with a mix of horror, martial arts and comedy in Encounter of the spooky kind (1980) and The Dead and the Deadly (1982) (Bordwell, 2003, p.151). One of the highlights in Encounter of the spooky kind (1980) is definitely the hopping zombies and the firefights in the air. Over 15 minutes of the final scene that features simultaneous fights between masters and disciples, is also utterly spectacular. 

Hong Kong horror is a multi-genre, sharing some similarities with Western horror but also is very unique in its own way. Besides the low budget horror film, A Chinese Ghost Story (Siu Tu Ching, 1987) stands out to be high budget and heavy production film which artfully combine all of the elements featured in the film, including the action sequences, the romance, and the comedy and the horror element.  

Unlike debonair Western vampire that we normally see in “Twilight”, “Living Dead in Dallas”, or “Darren Shan Series”, Chinese Vampires are simply rotting corpses, hopping stiff-legged after their prey which suffers from an imbalance of yin and yang and must feed on the living (Bordwell, 2003, p.151). Ricky Lau’s Mr. Vampire (1985) was a huge box office hit that yielded four sequels, a plethora of remakes, a theatrical play, a video game and even a board game. One of the highlights of the film is animated corpses who simply hop around, recognising their enemies by their breaths.

Hong Kong horror films offer an interesting and unique fusion of East and West, combining aspects of Western vampire movies, Chinese ghost stories and hong kong's own kung fu and comedy genre (Teo, 1997, p.219). Despite the political changes in hong kong's history, their films have retained much of its distinctive identity and continue to play a prominent part on the world cinema stage. (Bordwell, 2003, p.1) also confirm that "Hong kong cinema is one of the success stories of film industry".