As mentioned in my review of
Drunken Dragon, I review things
out of order. In keeping with the season, I’m watching horror movies, or at
least horror-tinged movies. And as much as I would love to write an overview of
the whole
Hello Dracula film series, I can neither find the movies nor
information about them in English and even the Chinese Wikipedia page is, perhaps
understandably, less than comprehensive.
The
Hello Dracula films are Taiwanese, jiang-shi (hopping
vampire) themed children’s films. Taiwan’s film industry produced a
gaggle of fantasy movies in the eighties, of which
Hello Dracula is one of the
best, in part because it is one of the oddest, and one of the least appropriate for its intended juvenile audience by
western standards.
Ling Huan Shao Nu (
灵幻少女) is the final film in the series.
The movie I
previously reviewed, I believe, is the second, although I reviewed
it under the impression that it was the first. There are six films starring Liu
Chih-Yu as Ten-Ten and Gam Tiu as her grandfather, and another film (
3-D Army)
with a different actress playing the part of Ten-Ten.
Ling Huan Shao Nu opens with Ten-Ten chasing her
grandfather, who has abruptly left, into the woods, where hopping jiang-shi
vampires accost her to the iconic theme of John Carpenter’s
Halloween (this
will not be the last time that it plays, nor the only bit of music pilfered
from a western film). Ten-Ten wakes up, suddenly, accidently punching her adopted
sister Yuan-Yuan in both eyes. Grandpa dispatched Yuan-Yuan to bring Ten-Ten to
the altar, where they, and fellow disciple Ah-Tsun, will pay homage to their
deceased elder. Cue goofy dance routine – a staple of the series – here.
Grandpa charges Ah-Tsun with clean-up duty after the
ceremony finishes, but Ah-Tsun decides that he will practice his Daoist magic instead.
He lets a spirit loose which makes a bigger mess than what he initially had to
clean. Ten-Ten helps him contain the spirit, and Yuan-Yuan tattles on them, and
then leaves them to clean the mess up themselves.
Ten-Ten and Ah-Tsun plot revenge using an out-of-body spell
that allows Ah-Tsun to possess the body of the visiting Mr. Chen to torment
Yuan-Yuan. If you are wondering if this is headed anywhere, the answer is no.
After punishing Yuan-Yuan for telling on them, it’s off to Mr. Chen’s home,
where a malign spirit haunts the Chen family. Using the same out-of-body magic
to confront the ghost, Ah-Tsun gets separated from the battle. And while Ten-Ten
and her Grandpa fight the evil ghost, Ah-Tsun meets Orchid, the ghost of a
beautiful young girl who wants to reunite with her lover in the afterlife, but
is betrothed against her will to the King of Ghosts. Ten-Ten, Ah-Tsun, and Grandpa then beat up the King of Ghosts, saving Orchid from an eternally unhappy marriage.
With the Chen family safe and the King of Ghosts out of the picture, Ten-Ten and Ah-Tsun try to help
Orchid, who, having missed her opportunity to reincarnate, is destined to wander the earth as a lonely ghost. Ten-Ten uses Daoist soul-transference to send Orchid on her way. What this means, I have no clue. But
it apparently awakens Grandpa’s old nemesis and fellow student Jomoro. Jomoro
plans to kill Grandpa and Ten-Ten, but Grandpa uses the last of his magic to teleport
Ten-Ten away before he dies, with Ah-Tsun’s soul transferred into the body of a
turtle and Yuan-Yuan killed in battle -- nobody bothered to transfer her soul into a barely sentient animal. And then the Daoist family's home explodes, and the credits start to play.
Like the other movie in the series that I have actually seen, the
goofy comedy slowly descends into bloody morbidity by the end of
Ling Huan Shao
Nu, and the worst part is that there is no resolution to the conflict. This was
the last film in the series released. But unlike the previous movies, which had
clear indicators of a temporal setting (such as the Republican army troopers
led by Boon Saam),
Ling Huan Shao Nu seems completely unconcerned with
verisimilitude or internal consistency. The jiang-shi vampires only appear in
the opening dream sequence and the ghosts and evil spirits Ten-Ten fights wear
costuming straight out of Tsui Hark at his nuttiest.
It is that lack of concern with not only believability,
but historical and mythic precedent that makes
Ling Huan Shao Nu quite fun to watch.
Rather than jiang-shi, the Daoist team has to fight horse riding ghosts in
suspiciously European armor and skull faced villains and ambiguously gendered
warlocks. Cheesy special effects fly all over the place, the young lady who
plays Orchid seems to channel Joey Wang as she flutters about on wires, and the
actor who plays Ah-Tsun wears a vest of exploding fire-crackers as punishment
for tormenting a procession of ghosts. He walks away without a scratch, much less a second degree burn.
And if the final film moves at an even more break-neck pace
than its predecessor, it’s also easier to follow. And thanks to the cast being
older, it’s also less unsettling when they handle dead bodies or flirt whilst
surrounded by dead bodies. But even so, the final scene is so bloody that I
cannot comprehend what sort of kid could watch this movie without scarring his
or her psyche. And that too is kind of what makes
Ling Huan Shao Nu fun. It presents the macabre as a joke, but that last scene is kinda horrifying.
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