Browsed this week’s movies at ACMI (@acmionline, Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and discovered the “Spotlight on Hong Kong Horror” series. Among the 9 films featured, I have watched my fair share of hopping zombies. Also have fond memories of watching A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) and The Seventh Curse (1986) in my younger years in Taiwan.
But what draws my attention this time is Dumplings (2004), which very much reminds me of The Substance (2024). It also reminds me of the character Sun Erniang, an innkeeper in the Chinese classical novel The Water Margin. She and her husband would “knock out customers with drugged wine, take their valuables and butcher them to make filling in buns with their flesh”. That further reminds me of the Thénardiers in Les Misérables…
I also want to watch Rouge (1987), because of the two stars Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung. Both movies are adapted from Hong Kong novelist Lilian Lee‘s novels, with my favourite among them being Farewell My Concubine, whose film adaptation (1993) also features Leslie Cheung.
Mentioned these movies to a friend, who refuses to watch them again. When asked why, they explained that certain moods, certain impressions gained when they watched those movies for the very first time, could never be repeated or replaced. Worse, the visual effects in those movies that so bedazzled audiences back then would only look ridiculously silly now… I suppose it makes sense…
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 