Fox Legend
Director: Wu Ma
Year:
1991
Rating: 5.5
Aka - Foxy Spirits
After the two Chinese Ghost Story films,
Picture of a Nymph, Reincarnation of Golden Lotus, Demoness from Thousand
Years, all you had to do to get a film made was to go to the money men and
tell them you had Joey Wong and she was going to be a ghost or other ethereal
supernatural creature and will fall in love with a mortal man, and you would
have the money before you left the office. Joey Wong with her melting sad
eyes of the lowlands was everyone's ghost of choice in period films adorned
in silk with her long hair blowing in the wind. She was in plenty of other
contemporary films in which she was a mortal, but people remember her for
those ghostly films in which she seems unreal.
Here it is Wu Ma the director and actor
who brings her on board. The two of them were very familiar with one another
having been in the Chinese Ghost Story films and Picture of a Nymph together.
But the money men came up a little short and this is a low-budget ramshackle
film that is nearly incoherent with a cast of nobodies other than the two
stars. It is dependent entirely on the many fantasy wuxia scenes and Joey
simply looking ravishing and tragic. It's enough to get some of us through
this but I am not proud of that. It drags a bit but there is always something
going on.
It begins with a group of men crossing the
desert, on their last legs with thirst and they see a lovely house ahead
of them supplied with a few lovely women welcoming them. Life is never that
good and they are foxes in human form and eat the men. It was fun while it
lasted. Then the Fox Hunter shows up - Wu Ma - and chops up a few of them
with only the leader (Yiu Wai) escaping and a baby fox being captured by
Wu Ma. He leaves it with a family that skins foxes and boast that it took
1000 foxes to make this coat. Their little son Brother Ten allows the baby
fox to escape and wouldn't you know, she grows up to be Joey Wong and goes
by Snow Lady.
She crosses paths with Brother Ten as adults
when she poses as a prostitute on a river boat with her sister Silver (Ling
Fung) and he comes a knocking. His friend is eaten but the next thing he
knows, it is a year later and he has no memory of what happened. Fun I would
guess. Fox sex. And he is possessed and able to emit a gaseous colored wind
from his bottom. She loves him, he loves her. Sure, she is a fox but a good
fox - but mom - the leader who escaped wants him dead - his heart needs to
be pulled out. That is really giving your heart to your love. Where was Leslie
Cheung?
Viewed on a vcd with hard to read subs.
