The Seven Coffins
Directed by Ting Shan-hsi
Year: 1975
Rating: 5.0
This is a very odd and obscure period Golden Harvest production from 1975.
They had been successful so far basically with martial arts films - Bruce
Lee, Angela Mao, Nora Miao, Polly Shang-kuan, Carter Huang and others. But
this one seems an obvious attempt to imitate the Shaw Brothers and their
success with their erotic and supernatural films of this period. There
was money to be made from bare breasts. They bring in director Ting Shan-hsi
who had a few solid films to his name - Whiplash with Cheng Pei-pei and a
couple Jimmy Wang-yu films - and after this film he directed A Queen's Ransom,
800 Heroes and Magnificent 72. This is a mess though - all over the place
with too many characters and sub-plots. It has that Shaw lavish period look
- in particular the brothel setting - and it was even done in Mandarin but
it goes on for much too long at 105 minutes. There was an easy 15 minutes
that could have been trimmed.
It begins though in fine fashion. In a brothel. Where all films should begin.
This is no mere brothel though - it is a house of delights - women running
about playing games like they opened the spigots. Happy girls. If it were
not for the bedrooms upstairs you would think it was a Club Med. The tout
outside welcomes customers with the flavor of the day - "Lovely Korean girls.
The penicillin is free." Who could say no to that offer. Inside is a room
with Japanese geishas, another has Thai folks dancers, another French blondes
and the basement is full of girls in sheets pretending to be ghosts (not
familiar with that kink). It is run by Wang Lai (who played her share of
brothel owners in Shaw Brothers films) who is kindly and gentle with the
girls. This brothel gets the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval.
Next door though is a haunted house that once was an inn. And at one point
Wang Lai gives the backstory. Ten years ago a Manchu Prince and his daughter
came to the inn and were assassinated by a rebel (Carter Huang) who is then
killed. They are placed into three coffins that cannot be lifted. In trying
to do so another man dies and is placed in a fourth coffin. A Taoist priest
comes to do his thing and he dies at the hands of a beautiful ghost. Coffin
number five. Then the wife of the owner of the inn gets raped by Hung (Kwan
Shan - holy cow - once a huge romantic star for Shaw) and she hangs herself
of course and the grandfather dies trying to save her. Seven coffins. Business
was surprisingly not good with seven coffins in the lobby and the owner took
his young daughter and left. She is back. For the family home and revenge.
She tells one of the baddies "I have ordered three coffins - one for me,
one for Hung and one for you".
That is the easy part to understand - it just gets more confusing. Opium
dealers, a cripple, a ghost, a few attempted rapes, a brothel girl who won't
go with customers, a plot to scare someone to death. Among our actors not
yet mentioned are Violet Lee as the daughter, James Tin Chuen as the cripple,
Lau Wing as the rotten son of Hung and Dean Shek as the number one henchman.
What the film really needed though was way more of the supernatural and gory
violence. And bare breasts of course. It is just much too tame considering
the subject matter and compared to what was happening at Shaw. They tried
to copy it but were then afraid to go into the water.
