Review of A Chinese Ghost Story

Ok so like the title says I am your standard Canadian born Canadian heritage white dude. A movie such as A Chinese Ghost Story is not usually the kind of movie a guy such as myself you would see going after to watch this movie. Typically, you would think that I would be interested in such a film if I was Chinese or perhaps Canadian with Chinese heritage right? I mean this is an 80's Chinese horror filmed in China, spoken entirely in Chinese with NO English dubbing. Instead the best an English guy such as I was able to find was a copy with sub-par English subtitles. Ok to answer a few questions as to why a man like me went to some deal of trouble to get my hands on this copy of an old Chinese film. I am a lover of cinema and perusing some top ten foreign film lists, I came across a top ten Chinese horror films of all time list. First of all I don't think that I have ever seen or heard of a Chinese horror film, so this list intrigued me. I came across this film as an old horror film written in traditional Chinese lore and it had a very good rating on IMDB. It was listed a fantasy horror film so I decided I was going to find this film and watch it! Just getting your hands on this film is actually easier than you think as I am pretty sure there was an old copy up on YouTube to watch for free if you felt so inclined. It was a poor picture with poor sound and it had small subtitles. It was then I decided to use some backdoor channels to get a copy to watch. It was troublesome, but I did get it in the best possible quality that is currently available for DVD at 1065 DPI. What I was expecting: I was expecting a martial arts showdown type of film, and in some respects that's what it is, but there are also a lot of comedic moments that to me almost makes it part comedy. The martial arts are 'ok' to watch, not really up to the standards of some other Chinese martial art films of the same era. This was a film with a lot of focus on horror elements as well. Compared to modern horror films that could scare my pants off, the horror in this film was undoubtedly creepy using some good old Ray Harryhousen special effects for undead zombies that was well done for the time period. Now for the meat of the film: The story itself is well written, certainly no Hollywood blockbuster of a story, but because it was written with a lot of Chinese cultural aspects into the story, then it could never be a Hollywood blockbuster because so many items of traditional Chinese lore and heritage are just so completely foreign to Americans that a lot of the story just doesn't make sense to the common layman. Lucky for me I had the time to research some of this lore as I went so that I could better understand what the heck was actually happening and what the writer was trying to achieve in each scene. The traditional Chinese festivals, haunted temples, lantern festivals and funeral ceremonies and traditions made a lot more sense to me after some research. The cinematography is great. The acting is like much Chinese acting somewhat over expressed with their emotions and actions, but overall good stuff. The sound and score was all traditional Chinese music that seemed to fit well with the time period of the film which may have been 1000 AD? It's a bit of a fantasy world so the time period is hard to nail down, but it was a time before the white man arrived in China in any numbers. No modern technology, the height of their tech being steel swords. This film has it all: horror, fantasy, comedy, love story and what could have been a big turd of a mess actually comes together quite well. I give this film a solid 7/10. Entertaining, magical and worth your time to watch it. Check it out!