This is either
a second tier Shaw Brothers film or one that they just acted as distributor.
Everyone involved is Taiwanese and with practically no other Shaw films to
their credit. Yet the production values and the lovely artificial indoor
sets are very much in the mode of the Shaws. It looks great and the two actresses
from Taiwan are lovely. Either way it is a frustrating film to watch because
your expectations are never met. Is it a ghost story, will it ever turn into
a ghost story and why are the supernatural aspects so poorly done with people
running around like an Abbot and Costello monster movie. At its heart is
a mushy romance and perhaps that's all it should have been.
It doesn't help that the role of the scholar
Lang Yuzhu is played by Lang Li-hua, one of those lovely actresses. I kept
waiting for him to reveal herself as a woman in disguise but that isn't the
case. She is very cute and it is distracting realizing it is a man. Not an
uncommon device in Hong Kong films - in the Chinese Operas of course and
occasionally in a kung fu film. Yuzhu spends his days studying until his
uncle arrives and kicks him out saying his dead father owed him a large amount
of money. Like scholars are so often portrayed in these films, he is useless,
refusing to fight it and moves into a decaying building that the neighbors
say is haunted. But he has nowhere else to go.
In his first night he finds two other people
also living in the house - Yan Ruyu (a beauty) and her wounded mother. When
Ruyu turns around for the first time I was like, where have you been all
my life. She is played by Chang Mei-yao and married actor Ko Chun-Hsiung.
The mother soon dies and the two of them are stuck in this house with no
money. So, they naturally fall in love and play house. They are very sweet
together.
But in our head is the thought that she
is probably a ghost - because of the title and because scholars are always
falling in love with beautiful female ghosts - and when the towns people
hear of her, they come to the same conclusion, Because who but a ghost would
love this inept passive man who cannot do anything. Ghost or no ghost, the
uncle wants to rape her and kidnaps her while Yuzhu walks around in circles
for hours calling out her name and doing nothing. The film kind of flops
around on a dock like a dying fish. The director is Chou Hsu-chiang who has
one other Shaw film to his credit, The Bride from Hell which I thought was
even worse.
