In 1987, wuxia film director Xu Ke decided to remake Li Hanxiang's business card "Ghost of Qiannu" directed in the 1960s.
The original version is based on a classical literary masterpiece "Liaozhai Zhiyi" in a "Nie Xiaoqian", Xu Ke made a drastic adaptation of the story, added a more grand martial arts stunt scene, the final box office sold 18 million Hong Kong dollars, and shortlisted for ten nominations for the Academy Awards that year, in the film Zhang Guorong played by the scholar Ning Caichen and Wang Zuxian played by the female ghost Nie Xiaoqian became one of the most classic imaginations in film history.
As a result, Xu Ke quickly created two sequels with the original team, which were also very successful, which brought a wave of ghost fox movie fever in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In those years, various fox demons and female ghosts appeared on the screens of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and in the mainland, there was also a boom in Liaozhai movies in the 1980s.
Different from the Liaozhai films filmed by Hong Kong filmmakers, the plot is more inclined to commercial entertainment films, and the Liaozhai films filmed in the mainland are completely filmed as classical masterpieces, and the plots are mostly faithful to the original, including many classic works, such as: "Rouge" of Zhejiang Film Studio, "Ghost Sister" and "Fox Edge" of Xiying Studio, "Blue Water Double Soul" of Shanghai Film Studio and so on.
When it comes to the artistic peak of the "Liaozhai" film filmed in the mainland, it is this "Tomb And Deserted Zhai".
Although it is an old movie from 30 years ago, the film has opened up the five stories in "Liaozhai Zhiyi" to build a "Liaozhai Fantasy Universe", in which the actors who play the female ghost fox demon are Zhou Xun, who was only 17 years old at the time, and Fu Yiwei in the "Fengshen List", and the actresses are each a beautiful screen goddess.
In this issue of "Forgotten Domestic Genre Films", let's relive this classic movie from 29 years ago!
"Tomb Desolation"
The film was filmed in 1991 and produced by North Film Studio.
Director and screenwriter Xie Tieli is the third generation of famous Chinese directors, as early as 1963, he became a master director in the mainland film industry with "Early Spring february", the film is still known as the pinnacle of seventeen years of feature films, once won the Grand Jury Prize at the 12th Figuera Da Foz International Film Festival in Portugal.
In the mid-1980s, Xie Tieli spent three years shooting the six-part film "Dream of the Red Chamber". The series's influence in that year was not lost to the 87 TV version of "Dream of the Red Chamber", not only is it the longest film ever made in China, but its unprecedented cast is a masterpiece in the history of film and television, and director Xie Tieli also won the Best Director Award at the 1990 Golden Rooster Awards.
After filming the film version of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Xie Tieli decided to put "Liaozhai Zhiyi", which is also a masterpiece of classical literature, on the screen. However, Pu Songling's original story is a short story, so Xie Dao boldly took a different path and combined the four famous stories together, ensuring loyalty to the main line of the original plot while giving the film a unique story and classical charm.
The film integrates the plot of the four stories in the original work, such as "LianZhuo", "Jiaona", "Nie Xiaoqian", and "Painted Skin", and the main character is Yang Yuwei, the male protagonist of "Lianzhuo", as the protagonist of the narrative, and this character also inherits the images of the protagonists Kong Xuejia, Ning Caichen and Wang Sheng's brother in the other three articles, in addition to involving some of the plots in "Liancheng".
The opening scene of the film, like the 66th edition of "Painted Skin", is based on Pu Songling's experience of creating "Liaozhai".
The narrator explained that Pu Songling, a native of Shandong, named his house "Liaozhai", collected folk ghost fox fantasy stories everywhere, and then compiled these stories into a book. In this work, Pu Songling borrows the story of the flower demon fox to expose the decay and darkness of feudal society.
Immediately after the title appears, the plot of the film officially begins in the eerie soundtrack.
The first story begins with "Lian Zou" in the original work, the protagonist is named Yang Yuwei, a student who is preparing for the examination.
In order to prepare for the exam, he lived alone with his bookboy in a deserted mansion in the suburbs.
How desolate is this mansion?
As long as you go out of the courtyard, the neighborhood is full of ancient tombs and deserts, which is simply a haunted holy place.
Such a strange place, Yang Yuwei has always lived here, except for the two Confucian friends Wang Mou and Xue Mou who have been friends with Yang for many years, almost no one comes here, and occasionally nearby hunters will arrange organs here.
Yang Yuwei lived alone in the deserted house, and this night, when he was reading and reading his mind, he heard a seemingly innocent woman's chanting voice outside the house, and the other party seemed to be reciting a verse repeatedly:
The wind blew upside down in the night, and the grass was wet.
Yang Yuwei felt curious, and walked out of the courtyard following the song, but there was no one around.
The next morning, Yang Yuwei went out for a walk and actually picked up a red ribbon in the nearby cemetery.
Later, I saw a trap set by the hunter, and the trap was holding a wounded fox.
Yang Yu was afraid of compassion, so he rescued the fox from the trap and let it return to the mountains.
That night, Yang Yuwei was still reading at home, and suddenly heard the woman's chanting voice, or those two poems.
This time, Yang Yuwei did not hold back, so he took the initiative to echo the words and continued the last two sentences for the woman's poem:
Who sees the bitterness of humor? Green sleeves single cold moon on the time.
Unexpectedly, after Yang Yuwei finished chanting the poem, the female voice actually disappeared, and Yang Yuwei couldn't help but be a little disappointed.
In the middle of the night, the door actually opened automatically, and only the ghost of the half-cut body entered Yang Yuwei's room.
To say that this Yang Yuwei is also a big heart, seeing such a strange thing is not afraid, but asked the other party:
Since you have come to your own home, why don't you reveal your true identity?
The female ghost was immediately born, her name was Lian Zhuo, originally from Gansu, when she was seventeen years old, she came here with her father, but she fell ill and died and was buried here.
She was very lonely after she died, only intoxicated with poetry, wrote two poems but could not think of the last two sentences, did not expect to be yang Yuwei to continue out, so she admired Yang's talent.
The female ghost did not want to show her face to see each other, Yang Yuwei took out the red ribbon he had picked up, and asked if it was trivial?
Lian Zhuo nodded and said yes, so Yang Yuwei re-tied the ribbon on Lian Zhuo's body, and then removed the silk scarf used for the mask on the female ghost's face, only to find that the female ghost in front of him was actually a delicate beauty.
After all, Yang Yuwei was flesh and blood, so he wanted to have fun with the female ghost, but the female ghost said:
Once you and I are happy, we are bound to lose our lives!
Yang Yuwei didn't care, every person and a ghost like poetry, so he talked about the philosophy of life all the way from poetry and song.
For several nights in a row, even Zou came to Huang Zhai and Yang Yu to chant poems and play the piano, and feelings gradually arose between people and ghosts.
Since then, Yang Yuwei has sung with female ghosts every night.
Not long after, he was discovered by His Confucian friends Wang Mou and Xue Mou, but the two friends did not object to this, believing that Lang Cai's female appearance and talented beauty should have been a good story.
After that, the Yang family was chased for debts, and after Lian Zhuo learned about it, he took the initiative to take out the gold and silver jewelry he carried and handed it to Yang Yuwei to let him pay off the debt, which made Yang Yuwei deeply moved.
Later, the female ghost Lian Zou also encountered trouble.
It turned out that the ghost official bai wuchang in the underworld took a fancy to the beautiful female ghost LianZhuo and wanted to force her to marry herself as a concubine.
Yang Yuwei's friends Wang Mou and Xue Mou were indignant when they learned of it, and decided to help and smooth out the impermanence.
At night, Bai Wuchang found the chain of graves, shouting LianZhuo's name, and LianZhuo had nowhere to hide.
I have to say that the image of white impermanence now seems to be quite funny!
At this time, Wang Mou, who had been practicing martial arts since childhood, took out a bow and arrow, and an arrow hit Bai Impermanence, and Bai Impermanence instantly disappeared.
Solving the worries, Lian Zhuo told Yang Yuwei that she was with Yang Yuwei every day, accepted the breath on Yang's body, and already had a living intention on the white bone, and only needed to give her a little sperm blood to be reborn.
Without hesitation, Yang Yuwei immediately cut his arm and dripped blood on Lian Zhuo's abdomen.
Later, according to the trivial explanation, he dug up her coffin. Although the coffin had decayed, the miraculous thing was that Lian Zou's body did not decay in the slightest, and even had body temperature.
Sure enough, it didn't take long for Lian Zou to wake up.
The original story of "Lian Zou" ends abruptly here, but the story of the film does not end.
It is said that Yang Yuwei returned to Lianzhuo's home with Lianzhuo who came back from the dead and wanted to formally propose to Lianzhuo's parents. Although the parents were very happy to see their daughter resurrected, they were not very satisfied with Yang Yuwei, the future son-in-law, because they thought that Yang Yuwei did not pass the examination.
The implication is that he thinks that this son-in-law is not worthy of his daughter at all!
Therefore, Yang Yuwei made up his mind to enter Beijing to take the exam, and vowed to take the high school examination so that Lian Father could look at him differently.
However, on the way to the Beijing examination, the trivial things that were saved with sperm and blood before finally buried the root of hidden dangers.
On this day, Yang Yuwei walked to the edge of the wilderness river, and suddenly felt that the pain in his abdomen was unbearable, and for a while he was in pain and fell unconscious.
At this moment, in the nearby wilderness, there was an extra luxurious mansion out of thin air.
The accompanying book boy did not think much of it, so he took Yang Yuwei to the family's house and knocked on the door to ask for help.
A family living in the mansion called themselves the Emperor Fu, the old lady Wasemei Shanmu, and two daughters who were like flowers and jade.
The old lady saw that Yang Yuwei was sick, so she asked her younger daughter Juana to treat him.
After the examination, it was found that Yang Yuwei had a bad sore growing on his waist.
So, Juana took out the bracelet and clamped it on the sarcoma, and then cut it off with a knife.
Immediately after, she spat out a red elixir from her mouth and placed it on Yang Yuwei's wound.
Miraculously, the wound instantly recovered as before, and Yang Yuwei no longer felt pain.
However, this can only cure the symptoms, not the root cause, and if you want to eradicate the disease, you also need a young woman's virginity as a medicine guide.
Sister Juana was already married, so she could only let Juana dedicate herself.
After one night, Yang Yuwei's body recovered as before. Jiao Na told Yang Yuwei that the reason why he was seriously ill,
It was because he had previously given sperm blood to a female ghost, so he asked, to whom did Yang Yuwei give sperm blood?
Yang Yuwei immediately told the experience of the understanding between himself and Lian Zhuo, and asked:
Why did the Jana family help themselves so much?
Jiaona told the truth, it turned out that Jiaona's father was the fox that Yang Yuwei had rescued from the trap.
Their family are all fox demons, and in order to repay the favor, Juana not only saved Yang Yuwei, but also kept him at home to review and prepare for the exam.
After recovering from his illness, Yang Yuwei returned to the road, and the story of "Juana" was temporarily over.
Yang Yuwei, who continued on the road, spent the night in a monastery on the way.
In the evening, a beautiful woman took the initiative to come to Yang Yuwei's room and tried to seduce him.
However, Yang Yuwei was not moved by the beauty of the other party, and also saw that the other party was a demon, and persuaded him to do it himself.
The woman saw that he was really a righteous gentleman who was not moved by wealth, so she revealed her life.
Her name is Nie Xiaoqian, and she is a monster transformed into a laurel tree in the temple.
The reason why people's lives are also unavoidable is that they are forced by a demon.
Nie Xiaoqian also said that he could not seduce himself, but he was afraid that the demon would personally come to harm Yang Yu's life.
If you want to save your life, it is best to stay in the next room at night.
It turned out that there was also a chivalrous guest who lived in the temple, named Yan Chixia.
He is not only highly powerful in mana, but also the best at casting demons and exorcising demons, and Yang Yuwei can naturally sit back and relax when he lives with him.
Yang Yuwei thanked Nie Xiaoqian, and in return, he began to take good care of the osmanthus tree in his temple that was about to die.
Needless to say, this story is from the original "Nie Xiaoqian".
At the same time, there was another Confucian student staying in the temple, Wang Sheng from Taiyuan.
On the way out of the city one day, Wang Sheng saw a charming woman crying on the side of the road, so he went forward to ask the other party what was difficult to say.
The woman cried that she had been sold by her greedy father to be used as a concubine, who knew that the husband's main house was too strong, and she could not bear the abuse before she sneaked out, and as a result, she was exiled here.
When Wang Sheng saw that the woman in front of him was very beautiful, he couldn't help but be moved, so he took her back to the temple and kept her in his room, and every night he was merry.
Yan Chixia, who lived next door, was carrying a demon-catching magic weapon and was aware of the demon qi in the temple.
The next day, he saw Wang Sheng's face haggard, obviously entangled by ghosts, and he kindly instructed:
You have to go on like this, I'm afraid you won't live long!"
But Wang Sheng did not take it seriously, still hiding in the golden house, night and night, but his body was getting more and more overwhelmed.
On this day, Wang Sheng went out, and Yang Yuwei heard a noise in Wang Sheng's room, so he quietly approached the window to peek.
As a result, I saw a scene of horror -
A red-haired, blue-faced, fanged demon is depicting a human skin depicting a beautiful woman.
The woman in the painting is the beautiful woman that Wang Sheng brought back.
Yang Yuwei was startled and quickly ran to tell Yan Chixia.
But Yan Yan was not moved, and just put a brocade box on the window.
At night, Wang Sheng next door slept soundly, but he did not know that the evil ghost next to him had revealed his original form.
With a knife on his head, the evil ghost cut open Wang Sheng's chest and took out his heart, and Wang Sheng cried out for his life.
After the evil ghost killed Wang Sheng, he walked towards the next room, obviously staring at Yang Yuwei again.
Unexpectedly, just after arriving at the door, a golden light actually flew out of the window, which turned out to be a flying sword.
The flying sword instantly killed the painting skin demon, and the evil ghost instantly turned into blood after hitting the sword, leaving only a painting skin.
It turned out that Yan Chixia had long been on guard, and there was a flying sword hidden in his jin box, and once he sniffed out the demon qi, he could automatically fly out to kill the demon.
And Yan Chixia has been living here in order to catch this ghost wearing a painted skin, but unfortunately Wang Sheng did not listen to his advice and lost his life because of lust. Then Yan Chixia and Yang Yuwei said goodbye, and the plot of "Painted Skin" ended here.
In the blink of an eye, Yang Yuwei also arrived at the time of formal scientific expedition.
When he came to the examination room, Yang Yuwei made a gorgeous article of splendid flowers, but he understood——
Your own articles will not be appreciated by the examiner, otherwise you will not be repeatedly tried.
At this time, Nie Xiaoqian, the osmanthus essence who had been hiding on the side, came to Yang Yuwei's side, and she quietly replaced Yang Yuwei's article with a piece of bullshit.
Yang Yuwei did not understand why Nie Xiaoqian did this, but Nie Xiaoqian told him:
Nowadays, the scientific expedition is corrupt, and the court is full of incompetent and faint-hearted people, and the examiner will not appreciate Yang Yuwei's good articles at all.
Yang Yu did not expect it, he did not expect to be a high school champion, he said with a bitter smile:
Splendid articles have repeatedly fallen behind the sun mountain, but bullshit articles can be the top of the high school gold list!
This plot undoubtedly reflects the original author Pu Songling's satire and criticism of the Eight Strands Scientific Expedition System in the Qing Dynasty.
On the way back to his hometown, Yang Yuwei came to Jiaona's house again, wanting to thank Jiaona's family for helping him.
However, at this time, TheOna family encountered a crisis, and it turned out that the Family of Theona, as a fox demon, was now about to suffer the Thunder Heavenly Disaster.
In order to repay Jiaona's kindness, Yang Yuwei decided to sacrifice his life to take the risk and use his own flesh to resist the thunder robbery.
In the end, Yang Yuwei stabbed the monster in the cloud with his sword in hand, and defused the thunder robbery of the Juana family, but he was knocked unconscious by the heavenly thunder.
In order to repay Yang Yuwei's life-saving grace, Jiaona spit the Neidan Red Pill that she had worked so hard to condense into his mouth to save him from danger.
Bidding farewell to the Jiaona family, Yang Yuwei finally rushed back to Lianfu, but only saw a desolate and abandoned grass.
After inquiring, I learned that Miss LianZhuo had actually died, and that all the people in the house had moved away after Miss Lian's death.
It turned out that after Yang Yu was afraid to enter Beijing to take the exam, Lian's father, who was poor and loved the rich, thought that Yang could not go to high school at all, so he wanted to marry his daughter to another rich man's son, and even if he did not obey the order, and did not get the news of his sweetheart, he committed suicide.
When Yang Yuwei learned that his lover was dead, he was naturally heartbroken and speechless, and that night he stayed in the embroidery building where Lian Zhuo lived before his death.
At midnight, I saw the ghost of Lian Zou.
The two relive their old dreams, but Lian Zhuo is reluctant to show his face, afraid that the face of his hanging ghost will frighten his lover.
At night, the two slept together, and Yang Yuwei couldn't help but unveil Lianzhuo, and was sure enough to be frightened by Lianzhuo's terrifying face.
Lian Zou knew that people and ghosts were on their own way, and they were sad to leave.
At this time, Yang Yuwei suddenly remembered the Neidan that the fox xian Jiaona had given him.
It is said that Neidan had a life-saving effect, so he spit out the red pill in his abdomen and fed it to Lianzhuo.
After Lian Zou took the red pill, although he did not come back from the dead, his appearance was restored.
Yang Yuwei looked at the lianzhuo in front of him and couldn't help but sigh:
I used to turn you from a ghost into a human being, and we were separated, but now you have turned yourself into a ghost, and we are together instead!
The story of the film ends here.
The script of "Tomb and Wasteland" is very exquisite, the screenwriter cleverly grafted the four stories in "Liaozhai", the film is based on "Lianzhuo", and also extracts the story elements and narrative plots of Liaozhai novels such as "Juana", "Nie Xiaoqian", "Painted Skin", "Lian cheng" and so on, and combines the aesthetic elements of multiple novels in the same film text.
The rare thing is that the story is not only not chaotic at all, but the plot is compact, the narrative is relaxed, and the screenwriter adds, deletes, and combines the twists and turns in the original novels, so that the stories of the ghost, the demon fox and the flower spirit are effectively organized into a unified story framework to be displayed, creating a deep and gorgeous fantasy visual feast.
In order to restore the ghostly atmosphere in Pu Songling's original work, the film adopts the shooting method of studio shooting, although it is limited by age and technology, it is slightly rough in special effects and props, but it shows an elegant and elegant classical aesthetic style.
The rendering of the horror atmosphere and the portrayal of ghost scenes, this film is also quite imaginative. The white impermanence of stilts, the monsters who eat people's hearts and drink human blood, and the bald tomb robbers who suddenly crawl out of the grave in the opening scene are all childhood shadows.
Of course, for today's audiences, the biggest attraction of this film is the star-studded lineup.
The male protagonist Xing Minshan himself is a Kunqu opera actor, later admitted to the Beijing Film Academy, starred in this film fashion and is a newcomer in the film industry, and then became popular because of his participation in the martial arts drama "The Great Hero with White Eyebrows", another actor who played soy sauce in the film, playing the martial arts of Rusheng Wang Mou is the actor Shao Feng, who was also a student of the film academy at that time.
And the actresses in the film are even more beautiful, playing the heroine Fu Yiwei is the national goddess of the eighties, the most well-known is the role of Dai Ji in the 1990 version of the "Fengshen List", and now many people praise it as the most beautiful Daji, and in this film, the heroine she plays Lian Zhuo is also the peak of her appearance.
In addition, Hu Tiange, who played "Nie Xiaoqian" in the film, Chen Shasha, who played the "ghost of the painted skin", and Zhu Na, who was the "fox demon sister", were also the goddesses of the film world at that time.
However, the most stealable scene in the film is Still Zhou Xun, who plays the fox demon Jiaona, when Zhou Gongzi was only 17 years old, and this film is also her screen debut.
It is said that director Xie Tieli accidentally saw a photo of Zhou Xun from a wall calendar when filming, and director Xie Tieli found her who was still in school and invited her to play the second female number in the film. The "Juana" in the original work is a little girl of about thirteen or fourteen years old, with a slender figure, graceful and colorful, a pair of bright eyes, Gu Panshenghui, flowing with spiritual wisdom, zhou Xun at that time is undoubtedly very much in line with this role.
This film has a profound influence on Zhou Xun, and he regards director Xie Tieli as his mentor. Until 17 years later, Zhou Xun also played the role of fox demon again in the movie "Painted Skin".
This version of "Tomb Wastes" was so successful after its release that in 2000, director Xie Tieli filmed another series of "Liaozhai Xi Fangping", which starred Sha Yi, who was still a newcomer actor at the time.
The next issue of "Chatting with the Movie Grand View" will talk about this movie, please look forward to it!