Before starting the conversation, let's list a list of names for everyone, Jacky Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Leung Ka Fai, Lin Zhiying, Zhang Min, Wu Mengda...
What comes to mind?
The stars are full of stars, and in today's terms, it is full of traffic.
If I say that if you gather these people together to make a movie, the word-of-mouth box office plummets across the board, and even the top 30 of the annual box office list can't get in, do you believe it?
I don't believe it either, but that's the way it is.
In 1993, there was a movie that invited all the above stars to participate, with two commercial film directors Wang Jing and Zhu Yanping, the film actually ranked 38th in the box office list in the same year.
Holding a pair of flushes in your hand but walking alone a six, behind such a good deck of cards and a broken movie, whether it is the audience's aesthetic loss, or the corruption of the star's acting skills, let's walk into the movie below:
Nerve Knife and Flying Cat
The film tells a story of happiness and revenge between laughter and anger.
The chivalrous big flying knife Han Chong (played by Leung Ka Fai) and the small flying knife Han Lin (played by Lin Zhiying) usually make a living by catching the thieves on the bounty notice, nicknamed "Nerve Knife", they are entrusted by the rich merchant Lei Yuanwai to arrest the adulterous thief Nine-tailed Fox (played by Jacky Cheung).
On the other hand, the big and small sisters (Zhang Min and Ye Yunyi), who also covet Cao Yuanwai's bounty, constantly stumble on the "nerve knife" in an attempt to slow down their progress, but the two sides are actually in love in the process.
After some tossing, the four of them work together to capture the nine-tailed fox, but as they get along, everyone discovers that the nine-tailed fox is not an adulterous person.
The appearance of Lei Yuan's face has also been gradually revealed, his real identity is the Eunuch Cao Tiandi of Dongchang, and the evidence of his collusion with Japan was inadvertently stolen by the Nine-tailed Fox, so he chose to use large and small flying knives to remove the Nine-tailed Fox.
At the end of the story, in the nine-tailed fox wife Fei Tian Cat (played by Maggie Cheung) and the hidden innkeeper (Wu Mengda), the protagonist group and the Cao Gonggong army usher in a great war of good and evil...
From today's point of view, the picture quality of this film has been somewhat "old and yellow", and the advantages and disadvantages of the film are also very distinct.
First Gimmick: The ace lineup is star-studded, worthy of the title of "East becomes West"
The biggest selling point of this film is that there are many stars, even the supporting roles have a lot of popularity, plus some small roles appear in the stars up to 17 works, and even Chen Baolian has run a dragon set.
The official poster of the film says that seven superstars helped, in addition to Wu Mengda, the other 6 stars were pulled out of three couples by the crew "La Lang Match".
The male and female protagonists Liang Jiahui and Zhang Min are at the peak of their appearance, Zhang Min plays a jianghu heroine who loves to bravely attack, and Liang Jiahui is a sullen swordsman with a shy personality, and the performance of the two of them brings a lot of contrast in the film.
Jacky Cheung and Maggie Cheung play a couple of grand thieves, and the costume version of "Brother Black Fly" not only has a lot of funny expressions, but also takes Maggie Cheung aside, and the two work together to contribute a set of emojis.
So funny that even the actors can't stand it, and the two laugh frequently during the performance.
Lin Zhiying, who was only 19 years old at the time, was also in the film "The Beginning of Love", and he and Ye Yunyi played the golden boy and jade girl of the martial arts world, and the youthful taste of the tender water could not be covered.
The gold medal supporting role Wu Mengda also played a funny role in the film, playing a hidden innkeeper.
In addition, it also includes Chen Baolian, who plays a Japanese witch, Yuan Qiongdan, who plays an old bustard in "Everyday", and Yuan Xiangren, the "beggar" who sells treasure books when he sees people in "Kung Fu", who also participated in the film.
The cast is full of stars whether it is now or in the past, and a number of stars put down their bodies to make a lot of fun, which also made the film once known as the Taiwanese version of the East into the West.
Second Gimmick:
The collision of "two Wang Jing"
The film is directed by Taiwanese director Zhu Yanping, Wang Jing as the supervising producer, known as the "Taiwan version of Wang Jing" Zhu Yanping on the genuine Wang Jing, the result is a strong "Wang Jing taste" full of screens.
The cooperation between the two of them this time made "Wang Jingwei" very strong.
The first is the fart laugh point piled up, funny is really funny, but rotten is also really bad.
In the film, this swordsman named "Western Defeat" comes to Wu Mengda Inn every day to provoke, and each time he has to be dripped with wax and whipped before he is willing to leave, this section is full of some advanced sexual innuendo.
There are also the pair of ghost hands that directly take Liang Jiahui's key parts, and the millennium killing is frightening no matter what era it is...
There is also the strange "Dongying Poison", which will be incurable when the person who is smeared with this poisonous juice kisses it, unless he does something inappropriate for children...
Secondly, the strange plot setting, the brain hole of "Double King Jing" is indeed very large.
The setting of the NPC character "Four Great Grim Reapers" in the film is very interesting, the boss shouts a move to die, the second must die, the third dies and fights, and the fourth never dies.
As a result, they are really people like their names, the boss is like a ceramic, and the old fourth person is even more strange, born with an immortal body, he can't enter the knife, which is completely a system BUG.
But there is a fatal fate, that is, fear of meat and hemp, in the protagonists of a flesh and hemp sound, "never die" turned into a pile of bones.
The real-time video in Jacky Cheung's home is also very interesting, it turns out that a painter in the secret room is responsible for drawing a live picture.
For example, the pair of "perpetual hands" of "never die", the appearance of this hand has some cult meaning, but with the interesting interaction with the protagonist, it seems to be less terrifying, and the impression of this pair of hands in the comment area so far tends to be polarized.
The film also spoofs various modern names and vocabulary, and popular movie stars such as Zhang Guorong and Mei Yanfang are ridiculed in the film.
And Jacky Cheung's appearance of being wrapped up as a rice dumpling also spoofed the appearance of "mummy".
The frequency of laughter in the film is super high, and the spoof has a rotten tacky taste, which is a bit funny, but in terms of perception, after all... With a little flavor.
Third, the biggest failure: the plot is seriously routine, and the final box office of the flowing water works is dismal
The film has a lot of laughs, but after laughing, what does it say?
Sorry, as if forgetting.
This is also the biggest drawback of the film, the film has a serious routine, which makes the film in addition to the funny bridge, there is no point for people to remember.
The film is nothing more than a story about several pairs of jianghu children and the evil forces of the East Factory, and then fall in love by the way, and most of the plot direction is extremely easy to guess.
This also directly led to the film only grossing 9.7 million at the time of its release, ranking 38th in hong Kong at the annual box office.
The film may be able to fight with stars in other years, but it appeared in 1993, the year that was hailed as the peak of Hong Kong films.
More than 380 Hong Kong movies were released that year, and there were more than 30 martial arts films that were the same as "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat".
Than the spoof is not "Tang Bohu Dian Qiu Xiang", than the martial arts IP is not better than "Fang Shiyu", "Huang Feihong", the heap of stars is also worse than "East into the West", and even more than the connotation is not "Green Snake", surrounded by a number of strong films, just by star and straightforward funny is not enough to make the film break out of the siege in 1993.
Film executive Wang Jing participated in the shooting of 13 films in the same year, including "City Hunter", "Truant Weilong 3", "Yitian Slaughter dragon record of the Demon Sect Leader" and other films, for this "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat" that does not have much plot content, Wang Jing, who is too busy, is too busy to take care of herself.
This eventually led to such a funny movie with film emperors and film queens finally being forgotten by the torrent of the times.
The story outside the play is even more shocking:
In the past, the speed of light of the jade girl declined, and once fell to the position of a sales lady?
In the film, Lin Zhiying and Ye Yunyi's golden boy and jade girl are quite eye-catching, and two rising stars in the entertainment industry are already in sight.
But compared with Lin Zhiying, who still maintains a high reputation today, Ye Yunyi can be said to be cool, and the situation of the two can be said to be "one in the east, one in the west", looking back at Ye Yunyi's career, it can be said that it has attracted a sigh.
Born in 1973, she entered the entertainment industry as an advertising model at the age of 13, and has always been known as a young jade girl, and is recognized as the first jade girl leader of the Hong Kong entertainment industry before Chow Wai Man.
In 1990, her stunning appearance in the Sino-Japanese co-production "The Peacock Prince" was even more famous in East Asia, and she was rated as the most popular foreign actress of the year by a Japanese magazine.
It is rumored that when participating in "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat", Lin Zhiying was deeply attracted by Ye Yunyi's youthful temperament, and then launched a crazy pursuit of her and invited her to participate in his own MV, but was rejected by Ye Yunyi.
Two years later, Ye Yunyi married a wealthy businessman Chen Baihao at the age of 22, and announced her retirement from the entertainment industry at her peak, and her life ushered in an inflection point.
5 years later, the news of Ye Yunyi's divorce came, in order to compete for the custody of her children, Ye Yunyi and her ex-husband did not hesitate to go to court, and Ye Yunwen, who won the lawsuit, was rumored to be embarrassed for a while.
There are even anecdotal rumors that Ye Yunyi once went to work in a real estate company in Shenzhen on the recommendation of Zhang Min as a sales lady, and it was rumored that her basic salary was 1500 yuan, and her income was all dependent on commissions.
The news was denied by Ye Yunyi herself, but the impact of her early withdrawal from the entertainment industry on her own star path was obvious.
Around 2000, Ye Yunyi returned to the entertainment circle in a low-key manner, but she could only take over the drama tepidly, and in the 2014 Hong Kong drama "Women's Club", the 41-year-old Ye Yunyi was invited to star, at this time she was quite old, compared to Li Ruotong, who was 7 years younger than herself.
Compared with the other members of "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat", Ye Yunyi's name has been forgotten, from a generation of jade girls to the return to the entertainment industry to now there is almost no splash, Ye Yunyi's career trajectory is undoubtedly lamentable.
Back to the point, in 1993, the peak year of Hong Kong films, "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat" was a cannon fodder work in the standard sense.
Although the film invited Leung Ka Fai, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Zhang Min, Lin Zhiying and other stars to star, and there are two major comedy directors Wang Jing and Zhu Yanping to control the laughter, the film's overly routine defects eventually sink in the prosperity of Hong Kong films.
"All overheated, all crazy", "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat" is a portrayal of the golden age of Hong Kong films, in the case of the accumulation of the same type of theme, there is no over-imitation of novelty, even if there are more stars, they can't save the scene.
However, in today's era, perhaps we can re-examine this movie from another perspective, enjoy the style of the peak of the Hong Kong stars, and feel the simple happiness that we got from Hong Kong films in our childhood.
Reminiscent of the classics, not necessarily a blockbuster film, this relatively unpopular "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat" may also make you "Grandpa Qinghui".
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