I believe that those post-80s and post-70s friends must be familiar with the zombie movies of Hong Kong and Taiwan, such as "Mr. Zombie", "Mr. Spirit", "Zombie Supreme", "Zombie Family" and a series of classic zombie movies, which are deeply imprinted in the depths of everyone's memory.
In that era of zombie movies, there was a person who made everyone remember him with a "Mr. Zombie", and this "Mr. Zombie" also set a box office record for zombie movies in the same period, this person is Lin Zhengying, who we know but has left us - our beloved uncle Ying.
But how much do you know about Lin Zhengying and "Mr. Zombie"?
Lin Zhengying was born into poverty, and can even be said to be a low-level person in society. The meagre income of the parents, coupled with the fact that they have six siblings, make the already poor family even worse. Therefore, reading and learning has also become Lin Zhengying's luxury.
Lin Zhengying, who had studied in primary school for two years, could only choose to drop out of school. After dropping out of school, Lin Zhengying joined a Hong Kong Peking Opera troupe at that time, and became friends with Hong Jinbao, Jackie Chan and others. Later, he entered the Spring and Autumn Drama Academy, and people like Zun Long and Meng Hai were all alumni of Lin Zhengying.
Lin Zhengying's Peking Opera career was actually not very long, only three or four years, and later entered the film industry after many efforts. When he first entered the film industry, Lin Zhengying worked as a stand-in for many actresses, and Zheng Peipei was one of them, mainly because Lin Zhengying's height was too small, and the hardships of the family led to Lin Zhengying's lack of nutrition from childhood.
When Lin Zhengying was nineteen years old, he began to work as a martial arts instructor. The film "Big Brother Tangshan" is Lin Zhengying's first film as a martial arts director, and this movie is a film that Bruce Lee personally invited Lin Zhengying to participate in. Later, in the process of working with Bruce Lee, it quickly heated up, and even happened that Lin Zhengying did not come to the set and bruce Lee refused to start the camera. Later, Bruce Lee died young, and Lin Zhengying's film career began to decline, and then Lin Zhengying joined the Hong family class.
Liu Guanwei, a photographer in 1984, had the idea of making his own film, so he told this idea to his good brother Hong Jinbao.
"Prepare for it yourself," Hong Jinbao agreed.
But once the preparation is a whole year, the preparation time is so long, in fact, there is a reason. In the preparation of the script, Liu Guanwei largely referred to the opinions of his uncle, who was a professional Taoist. Some strange things in my childhood were connected by my uncle, and finally I wrote the script of "Mr. Zombie" a year later, which can be described as exquisitely crafted.
In fact, the entire film budget of "Mr. Zombie" is 4.5 million. Since the script is carefully crafted, of course, the shooting must also take effort, and it is really excellent, so the budget of 4.5 million is only half completed. Hong Jinbao was very righteous to Liu Guanwei and privately gave Liu Guanwei a sponsorship of 3 million yuan, so that the film could continue to be filmed. The shoot took more than four months in total. In fact, Liu Guanwei, who is a director for the first time, is not even optimistic about himself.
However, in the end, the reputation of "Mr. Zombie" was unexpectedly good, and the consequent box office was more than 20 million in Hong Kong alone, and even the box office of horror movies was among the best.