When his Master is put in danger, Fong hires a money-grubbing swordsman (Jacky Cheung) to help him save his Master and free Lotus. But Lotus is being watched over by her evil sister Butterfly (the sexy Nina Li), who is all too willing to betray her sister to the Tree Demon. There, Fong befriends Lotus (Joey Wang), a kind-hearted ghost who wishes to leave her indentured servitude to the evil, soul-sucking Tree Demon (Lau Siu Ming). A remake of “A Chinese Ghost Story” was made in Shanghai in 2011, this time with a substantial mainland China audience in mind.Taking place several centuries after the original A Chinese Ghost Story, A Chinese Ghost Story 3 introduces a new hero: award-winning actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai! Novice monk Fong (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and his Master (Lau Shun) are in the midst of a journey to deliver a Gold Buddha statue, when they decide to stay one evening at the Orchid Temple. China Central Television has rated him as one of the most popular actors and singers of the last century. 2003), a hugely famous male singer who helped to popularize “Cantopop”, a commercially successful yet vapid genre of pop music.
The lead protagonist was played by Leslie Cheung (d. The film was very popular in Hong Kong (under British control at that time), South Korea and Japan.
Like many of our own horror fantasy genre movies from the same decade, the narrative of the film is too busy with discombobulated action sequences and a sappy dialogue, reasonably entertaining visually but shallow for character development. The characters reflect an assortment of the usual archetypes you might expect to encounter in a Chinese fairy-tale. The style is reminiscent of a Middle Earth style fantasy quest with colorful, period decorations, costumes and artifacts. It combines romance with comedy and cheap horror scenes, which contain a variety of gaudy special effects for the spiritual manifestations, slimy monsters, and martial arts acrobatics. The plot is based on a folk-tale from the Qing Dynasty (Wikipedia). This film was made in Hong Kong in 1987, the language presumably in the Cantonese dialect. The plot continues to get more convoluted with more spirits and demons awakening on the one hand, and as the innocent tax collector gets caught up in the middle of rival families. Needless to say the tax collector falls in love with the maiden to the accompaniment of female vocalist singing a romantic ballad with western influenced musical arrangements. She tries to keep him hidden from her family, especially from her father who counts on his daughters to lure healthy young men to be sacrificed for his immortality. Meanwhile our innocent tax collector hears creepy sounds as all manner of stop-motion skeletal, half-decomposed zombie types start crawling around the house.
The old warrior finds the body and chases off some hostile spirits, cursing “Damn those Taoists!” at one point. That night the younger warrior is seduced by a beautiful girl only to be attacked and desiccated by a strange supernatural creature. He ends up finding a place a place to stay in a haunted house out of town, where he runs into two swordsmen, an old master of the martial arts and a young impetuous challenger, who have been feuding for seven years. The townsfolk refuse to pay up or to house him. A young tax collector walks a great distance through the elements to a town only to find that his records have been washed out by the rain.