1987 was a watershed year for Hong Jinbao.
At the end of the 1970s, Hong Jinbao took advantage of the boom of kung fu comedy and quickly embarked on the peak of his career. In the early 1980s, works such as "Ghost Fighting Ghosts", "Scary People", and "Beware of Small Hands" made Hong Jinbao proud at the box office and in the awards.
In 1985, Hong Jinbao ushered in the peak of his career. This year, Hong Jinbao's "Fuxing Gaozhao" and "Summer Fuxing" won the honor of the annual box office champion and runner-up with more than 30 million Hong Kong dollars and more than 28 million Hong Kong dollars respectively.
The "Heart of the Dragon" and "Mr. Zombie" launched by "Hong Jiaban" also ranked 4th and 5th in the annual box office list.
Subsequently, in 1986, works such as "Rich Train", "Thunderbolt Loudspeaker", "Best Lucky Star" and so on also allowed Hong Jinbao to enjoy a wave of market dividends "under the fame".
However, after entering 1987, Hong Jinbao's film career quickly went downhill.
In 1987, the market for "Oriental Condor" suffered a setback, which caused the development of "HongJiaban" to suffer a serious setback. In 1989, the dismal box office of "The Dragon Play phoenix" made Hong Jinbao's situation even worse.
After entering the 90s, "Hong Jiaban" has successively launched works such as "Ghost Bites Ghost", "Royal Female General", "Fat Powder Double Male", "Dragon and Phoenix Thief Catches Thief", "Thread Pillow Man" and so on. Unfortunately, the box office performance is very cold.
The market failure of several film works in succession has put "Hong Jiaban" facing a lot of financial pressure. In 1992, the situation of the "Hongjiaban" was already embattled.
In order to alleviate the severe situation, Hong Jinbao decided to make a "market-attractive" work and make the "Hong Jia Ban" desperate.
What kind of works have enough market influence? The answer is simple, that is the sequel to the classic IP.
In 1992, Hong Jinbao restarted his classic "Five Lucky Stars" series and filmed the action comedy "Five Blessings Star Colliding with Ghosts".
This "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts" is the fifth work in Hong Jinbao's "Five Blessings" series.
The previous three works of "Strange Scheme Five Lucky Stars", "Lucky Stars High Photos" and "Summer Lucky Stars" broke the box office record of "HongJiaban" again and again. 1986's "Best Lucky Star", although not as eye-catching as "Summer Lucky Star" and "Lucky Star High Photo", also won more than 23 million Hong Kong dollars in the local film market.
After "Best Lucky Star", Hong Jinbao temporarily ended the creation of the "Five Lucky Stars" series.
After 6 years, Hong Jinbao restarted the classic IP of the "Five Lucky Stars" series in 1992, and in this sequel "Five Blessings Star Collision Ghost", Hong Jinbao also came up with the top behind-the-scenes creative lineup of "Hong Jiaban".
The "Hongjia class" in the 80s rode the box office market with three trump cards. The three trump cards are: Psychic Action Comedy, Female Movie, and Police Action Comedy.
In 1980, Hong Jinbao's self-directed and self-acting "Ghost Fighting Ghosts" opened the precedent for the creation of Hong Jiaban's "spiritual action film". After that, Liu Guanwei's "Mr. Zombie", "Zombie Family", "Mr. Spirit" and other works also brought a lot of box office profits to "Hong Jiaban".
In 1985, "Royal Master Sister", directed by Yuan Kui and starring Yang Ziqiong and Lovelo, set off a wave of "playing female movies". And Lovelo, Oshima Yugali, Koryo Hong, Nishigyo Michiko and others have also taken advantage of this "Hongjiaban female boom" and embarked on the peak of their film careers.
Police action comedy, as Hong Jinbao's strength, does not need to be repeated here. The three classic works of "Five Lucky Stars of Strange Tricks", "High Photos of Lucky Stars" and "Summer Lucky Stars" are enough to highlight the achievements of "Hong Jiaban" in the field of "police action comedy".
In the creation process of this "Five Blessings Star Colliding with Ghosts", Hong Jinbao hopes to integrate the three strong themes of "Hong Jia Ban".
As a result, Yuan Kui, who is good at the creation of "playing women's films", Liu Guanwei, who is good at "spiritual action comedy", and Zeng Zhiwei, who assisted Hong Jinbao in completing the "Five Lucky Stars" trilogy, also participated in the creation of this "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts" as directors.
The screenwriting work of the film was completed by Huang Bingyao, the old partner of "Hong Jiaban", who created "Mr. Zombie", "Fuxing Gaozhao", "Royal Master Sister" and "Rich Train".
This behind-the-scenes creative team can be called the top film creation lineup of "Hong Jia Ban".
Bringing together such a strong lineup, Hong Jinbao thought that this "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts" could turn the "HongJiaban" around. However, the result was very different from his imagination.
The reason why "Five Blessings Of Stars Collide with Ghosts" has such a performance is very directly related to the content presented by the movie.
Let's start with the story. At the beginning of this "Five Blessings Star Collision Ghost", the rich businessman "Chen Xiang" (played by Chen Baixiang) was attacked by a group of gangsters and subsequently killed. Then the camera turns, and the protagonist of the story, "Five Lucky Stars", appears one after another.
Luo Hanguo (played by Zeng Zhiwei) proposes that everyone organize a team building and go out to play together. Citi Ginseng (played by Qin Xianglin) said that he had a new girlfriend and wanted to take his girlfriend with him.
In the face of the flaunting of Ginseng, the other four also said that they had made a new girlfriend. So the five of them met, took their respective girlfriends, and went out on a trip together.
In fact, none of the five have girlfriends, just for the sake of face, deliberately strong. Before leaving, the five of them showed their magic and "bubbled up" everywhere, hoping to find a "temporary girlfriend" to save face, but unfortunately they did not succeed.
After some trouble, the five bachelors embarked on a team-building journey together. Five people came to their destination. At night, on the barren mountain outside the hotel, there were ghosts screaming.
Curious about metaphysics, he "Dashengdi" (played by Wu Yaohan) and pulled "partridge vegetables" (played by Hong Jinbao) out to check it out, only to encounter a man and a woman and two "ghosts" in an abandoned villa.
After dawn, DaShengdi and Partridge came to the "police station" and told the "Overlord Flower" (played by Hu Huizhong) about the experience of "bumping into ghosts" at night.
Bawanghua did not believe in any ghost god at all, she thought that this was someone pretending to be a ghost, and the abandoned villa was probably hiding a "black rat", so she arranged 4 "female policemen" to investigate.
In the night, the ghost cries came from the mountains again. Dashengdi, rhinoceros skin, and Citi ginseng accompanied 4 "female policemen" up the mountain to check, and the result was to "hit the ghost" again. "Female policeman" Liang Zhaodi (played by Lu Shaoling) is also possessed by the "male ghost".
After arriving at the residence of the "Five Blessings Star", the "male ghost" reported to his home, saying that he was the owner of the ship company "Chen Xiang" who died unexpectedly a few days ago. Because it was accidentally killed, the body could not be buried in time, so the soul could not be exceeded, and it became a "lone ghost".
Chen Xiang hoped that the "Five Blessing Stars" would bury their bodies so that they could reincarnate as soon as possible. As a reward, Chen Xiang used his clairvoyant eyes to help Wufuxing cheat in the "casino".
On the other hand, "policewoman" Liang Zhaodi reported what she had seen and heard to Bawanghua.
Under investigation, Bawanghua found that Chen Xiang's shipping company was related to a "drug smuggling case", so Bawanghua arranged for Liang Zhaodi to closely monitor the movements of Wufuxing and Chen Xiang.
Chen Xiang accidentally met his former girlfriend "XiaoXiao" (played by Qiu Yueqing).
Under some follow-up, Chen Xiang found that Xiao Xiao turned out to be a "female drug lord", and xiao Xiao had interacted with himself before in order to use his own shipping company to smuggle "drugs". The gangsters who attacked them were actually small subordinates.
An indignant Chen Xiang told the "Five Blessings Star" of his experience. In order to avenge Chen Xiang, WuFuxing decided to find small evidence of the crime and report it.
Rhino Skin lied that he was Chen Xiang's lawyer and tried to get close to Xiao Xiao, but unfortunately he was discovered and kidnapped by a "drug trafficking organization".
At the critical moment, Partridge Cai and others, with the help of Chen Xiang, found the nest of the "drug lord" and launched a rescue for rhinoceros skin.
And Liang Zhaodi, who monitored the Five Fortune Stars, followed all the way and also came to the lair of the "drug lord".
Here, the crowd engaged in a fist-and-kick battle. As the villain is defeated, the story of "Five Blessings Star Collision ghost" also came to an end.
This "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts" can be described as an extremely typical "Hong JiaBan" film work. The film not only inherits the consistent advantages of "Hongjiaban Film", but also inherits the consistent shortcomings of "Hongjiaban Film".
Advantages: Under the control of Hong Jinbao and Yuankui, this "Five Lucky Stars Colliding Ghosts" has brought the characteristics of the small scene fights of the Hongjiaban class to the extreme.
In the film, whether it is the strong duel between Lu Shaoling and Qiu Yueqing, or the one-to-many fight scene of Hong Jinbao, it is extremely well designed and shocks the eyes of many action fans.
It is worth mentioning that Zeng Zhiwei, who starred in "Luo Han Guo", was also a martial artist in the "Hongjia Class" in his early years.
However, after becoming famous, Zeng Zhiwei has always appeared in various comedy roles, and rarely showed his fist and foot kung fu on the big screen.
In this "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts", Zeng Zhiwei also regained his boxing script collar that he had lost for many years and staged a wonderful action scene.
Secondly, the excellent comedy bridge design also adds a lot of fun to this "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts".
At the beginning of the film, the "Five Lucky Stars" spoofed jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Li Ming, and Zhou Xingchi's bridge section, which poked at the laughter of many fans.
In the second half, after the appearance of the "male ghost" played by Chen Baixiang, the contrast between the identity of "man and ghost" also makes the bridge sections such as stealing cards and watching color in the film seem very joyful.
Of course, the shortcomings of this "Five Lucky Stars Colliding with Ghosts" are also very obvious, that is, the story rhythm is too slow and messy.
At the beginning of the movie, the "five lucky stars" meet to travel, and then through the scene of the five people looking for a "temporary girlfriend", the characters of the five characters are initially established.
After the end of this design, in fact, the movie can enter the main topic to show the role of "Chen Xiang" and the story line of "female drug lord".
However, "Five Blessings of the Stars Colliding with Ghosts" does not choose a compact and bright narrative method. This 90-minute movie, the first 40 minutes, has been showing the "Five Lucky Stars" on the way to travel "bubble girls", "oil", gags.
After an hour of the movie, the small story line of "female drug lords" slowly unfolded. In the remaining 30 minutes, it is obviously very difficult to show a rich fight scene and take into account the extension of the plot line.
The loss of control of the rhythm also caused the story in the first half of the film to be too boring, and the second half of the story to be too crowded.
This action fight is wonderful, but the story rhythm is out of control, "Five Lucky Stars Collide with Ghosts", in the 1992 Hong Kong film market, did not achieve too good results, only won more than 8.2 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office.
The film failed to alleviate the severe situation of the "HongJiaban", but instead increased the financial pressure of Hong Jinbao.
Under the pressure of wave after wave of box office, Hong Jinbao's "Baohe Film" went out of business in 1992. And Hong Jinbao's film road also officially fell into the bottom at this time.