Tragedy destroys the valuable things in life for people to see, comedy tears apart those worthless things for people to see, and satire is nothing more than the first-class simplicity of comedy.
Comedy films have always been a magic weapon for Hong Kong films to survive, and they are also an important genre of films with hong Kong local characteristics. From the original Xu comedy to the nonsense movies we are most familiar with, they have painted a lot of color for the film industry in this era.
Among them, the well-deserved "king of comedy" can not belong to Zhou Xingchi.
Since the 1990s, the emergence of Stephen Chow has pushed the original decline of Hong Kong comedy to an incomparably brilliant height, from the very beginning of "Gamble Saint" to the world-oriented "Kung Fu", the power of Chow's comedy is almost a household name.
However, among the many acclaimed and well-received good films, there is such a "bad film" at the bottom of the box office - "Night of the Soul"
"Night of the Ghost", also known as "Ghost Expert", was released in Hong Kong in 1995, and once it was released, it was booed, and most people entered the theater with high expectations and left with disappointment.
As a horror comedy film with fantasy overtones, the brain circuitry of "Night of the Soul" may not be normal with that of ordinary movies, so there are not many audiences who can really accept and understand it today.
Zhou Xingchi's strange shape
The film roughly tells the story of Leon, played by Stephen Chow, who helps Ah Qun, played by Karen Mok, and the security guards in the mansion to fight against the ghost born accidentally due to a murder.
After countless disasters, Leon sacrificed himself and sealed the ghost in his body, while the survivors were treated as crazy and imprisoned in a mental hospital.
In general, the volume of the movie is very small, ninety percent of the plot takes place in the building where the ghost appears, and the laugh points are easy to understand. But if you read it in detail, those deeply rooted dialogue and bridge sections will bring you a lot of surprises.
If nothing else, today, we will deeply analyze this unpopular masterpiece that subverts the concept of traditional comedy from three aspects - "Night of the Soul"
Friends who have seen this movie know that the film is ingeniously borrowed from the character image in the crime movie "This Killer Is Not Too Cold" released in 1994, which is not the director's idea, but Chow's own creation.
The ghost master played by Stephen Chow and the killer played by Jean Renault are both named leon, and they also wear the iconic round-frame black sunglasses, black hat, wearing a black trench coat, holding a pot of flowers, and coldly not saying a word.
Jean Renault taught the little girl how to kill people with a gun, and Zhou Xingchi taught everyone how to catch ghosts, and they all died with the enemy.
Similarly, Aqun, played by Karen Mok, is similar to the image of Matilda played by Natalie Portman, and both fall in love with the male protagonist and have been missing them since their deaths.
This homage to classic films can actually be seen in many of Stephen Chow's films and seems to have become synonymous with him.
Here are 9 examples that you may not have found:
"Gamblers" vs "God of Gamblers"
1. The earliest comes from the "Gambling Saint" that makes Zhou Xingchi really popular, and the shape and appearance in it are imitations of Zhou Runfa.
2. In the 92nd edition of "Happy Family", Zhou Xingchi wears a leather jacket and combs the head of the plane, riding a Harley motorcycle, which is a tribute to Schwarzenegger in "Terminator".
3. Similarly, in the 1994 film King of Destruction, the naked appearance is the same as in Terminator.
4. The "King of Comedy" released in 1999 has borrowed scenes from "Rocky" three times.
5. In "The Inquisitor", Song Shijie is treated as a mental patient, and the shape of the mouth is sealed is imitated by Hannibal in "The Silence of the Lambs".
6. The classic dance in "The Hundred Variable Stars" is the same as that in "Pulp Fiction".
7. The Celestial Flying Immortals in "The Great Inner Secret Agent Zero Zero Hair" are largely imitating the shape of the female ghost in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
8. Wong Kar-wai's "Chongqing Forest" and "The Legend of Ah Fei" also cannot escape the fate of being targeted.
9. It is well known that Stephen Chow admired Bruce Lee so much that most of his works can see bruce Lee's shadow.
For example: "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qi'er" - "Jingwu Gate", "Shanghai Beach Gambling Saint" - "Raptor Across the River", "Kung Fu" - "Dragon Fighting Tiger Fight" and so on
It can be seen that not only "Night of the Returning Soul", but also a large number of movies in which Zhou Xingchi participated were carrying such "bootleg goods", so the question arises - so many obvious imitations, is it plagiarism or tribute?
The official did not give a clear answer to this, but in my opinion, this is just a means of making people laugh, and before the gods were sealed, we jokingly called it a harmless prank. After ascending to the altar, we call it a tribute.
As far as the movie "Night of the Soul" is concerned, the imitation of "This Killer Is Not Too Cold" is just right, and the audience who has seen the original film will smile, and those who have not seen it can also fully feel the horror and depression atmosphere, so enough.
Zhou Xingchi's success lies in this, he can perfectly reproduce these classics in his own works, even if he becomes the object of nonsense spoofs, there is no sense of violation.
On the other hand, Zhou Xingchi only borrows the fur of the characters, and spends a lot of effort on this to design the dialogue and story details between the characters.
There is no plagiarism in this, in the style of Zhou's comedy, many times it is for the sake of being funny, and deliberately interpreting the flaws behind the work will only bring trouble to yourself.
Back to the movie itself, the humor of "Night of the Soul" is unique, it deviates from Stephen Chow's usual nonsense laughs, and more is black humor with mockery and irony.
"Black humor" as an aesthetic form belongs to the category of comedy, but it is also a perverted comedy with tragic overtones. "Black" represents death, a terrible and comical reality, and "humor" is the mocking attitude of the willed individual to this reality. Humor combined with blackness becomes desperate humor. "Black humor" writers often portray some well-behaved "anti-hero" characters, using their ridiculous words and deeds to innuendo social reality and express writers' views on social issues.
At the beginning of the film, the atmosphere is extremely depressing, which mistakenly makes many people feel that it is an old-fashioned and rough Hong Kong ghost film. The dim corridors, the flickering yellow lights, and the blue-gray cold moonlight outside the building are very uncomfortable for the old audience who are accustomed to Zhou's comedy.
Such an environment was deliberately created by director Liu Zhenwei, and the purpose was to satirize the oppressive and closed atmosphere of society at that time.
The leon played by Xingye is also very different from the male protagonist image in various previous works, this role does not have a very clear positioning or personality characteristics, the only thing known is that he comes from the Heavy Light Mental Hospital, and can catch ghosts.
Leon hovered between genius and madman, he said inconsistencies while no one pointed out the crowd to catch ghosts, so to the security guards, he was more like an idiot than a master.
Many people will wonder, why not make an image of a traditional ghost exorcism master like Lin Zhengying?
No, the director's purpose is to portray Leon as an antisocial psychopath, who is different from ordinary people in everything he says and does, and is regarded as a madman.
Here is a satire on the paranoid and stubborn concept of the public: as long as you are different from us, you are crazy and sick.
There are several extraordinary scenes in the film, when facing the pursuit and killing of the Li couple who murdered their mother, Zhou Xingchi accidentally shot Li Tai from the roof with a gun.
Li Tai, who was bound to die, was beaten alive by Leon with a hammer and a folded stool, and Li Tai, who was bent on dying in order to become a ghost to avenge everyone, committed suicide with a gun.
And Leon used ice, blood transfusion, and high-voltage electricity to save her, and a person who fell from dozens of floors and was shot several times was rescued again and again in this groundless repeated toss.
And the murder bloody case that should have been horrifying and horrible was inexplicably and easily resolved under such humor.
There are also many such clips behind it, which make people laugh and at the same time have a chill in their backs due to sudden fear, and the piercing brought by black humor is incomparably profound.
Such a setting is very rare in Stephen Chow's previous films, and many previous works, even if they are nonsensical to the extreme, will temporarily slow down the pace and make the audience laugh for a while to adapt.
And the cleverness of "Night of the Soul" is here, it doesn't care what you think at all, and it is immediately followed by breathless horror after the sharp black humor, such a style is indeed too advanced, but it is not bad.
From the beginning to the end of the film, the importance of imagination is constantly emphasized, from the dialogue between Ah Qun and Leon at the beginning to the end when everyone uses imagination to fly out of the building, and the important concept of "imagination" runs through the film.
At the beginning of the film, Ah Qun is attracted to Leon's handsomeness and goes to the mental hospital to find him. Leon then asked her if she believed there were aliens and the Loch Ness Monster, and Aqun said: I believe, Leon immediately took her hand and said: Can communicate.
Many people interpret this as "different ways are not conspiratorial", and they want to make friends with people who have the same concepts as themselves. But in my opinion, it is the director who deliberately leads to the "imagination" here in the first clue in this film.
In the following sections, the importance of imagination is gradually revealed, and leon, in his practice of guiding people on how to catch ghosts, proposes the idea that you should abandon your preconceived ideas and establish a new idea.
Leon said: You think you are highly educated, and you are in and out of high society. Using your self-righteous knowledge to think that is boring and filthy is the same as your mother or aunt telling you that ghosts are terrible from childhood to adulthood. Even if this doesn't stink, you still look down on it, and if the ghost doesn't bite you, you will be just as afraid, if everyone can reverse this concept, then it will be OK!
This sentence is also what director Liu Zhenwei wants to say to the audience most after the box office failure of "Journey to the West": Why does everyone subjectively think that Sun Wukong cannot fall in love? Stephen Chow can only act in comedy?
We grew up in compulsory education and built up our young worldview little by little from books and teachers. But as we grow up and learn more and more knowledge, our imagination gets worse and worse.
The only knowledge that we have constitutes our value-oriented framework and becomes a birdcage that binds our minds, making us feel disgusted and unwilling to accept the products that have betrayed their ideas.
As said in the movie, everyone tells you that ghosts are terrible, they are terrible, and you must hide when you encounter them. Never told you that people can also scare ghosts, why ghosts are not afraid, is the ghost great?
There is also a clip where Li Sheng's ghost appears and bleeds Leon's seven tricks, and when everyone thinks he is dead, Leon gets up from the ground and runs away.
He later explained: The seven tricks of blood ≠ death, yes, no one told you that the seven tricks of blood will definitely die, which is also a criticism of the fixed concept.
Similarly, when Lin Zhengying's ghost films swept the Hong Kong film industry, everyone thought that peach wood, yellow paper and glutinous rice could drive away ghosts, as long as they violated this law, it was wrong.
But Leon catches ghosts with plastic wrap and chocolate beans, locates ghosts with flower pots, and drives ghosts away with trumpets and hammers. These are all beyond common sense neuroticism, but they do work, do you think it's not, it's just that you don't have enough imagination?
I inadvertently remembered a word zhang Lixian said in "Round Table School": functional illiteracy
The general meaning is that when an educated person gets older, he will begin to orient himself and cannot accept things that are different from his own position. Statements that do not correspond to one's own views are wrong. Therefore, when learning, only choose and identify with those contents that are consistent with his or her values, resulting in learning becoming a tool for repeatedly confirming existing knowledge.
Just like the meaning of the movie, those who criticize the movie as a bad film, the audience who can't understand it is unwilling to believe that there is such a way of exorcising ghosts, and the mentally ill can also be a master of ghost hunting.
Their views have solidified and they have lost their imagination and curiosity about the world.
As long as a person is bound by his own thoughts, then he can never jump out of the circle of prejudice and narrowness. In the new era of rapid development, countless new things are born every day, and many things that were unimaginable in the past may appear overnight.
No one can predict the future, and all we can do is keep our imaginations and uncertainty.
The unknown is the source of fear, and only by constantly thinking and enriching yourself can you be invincible.
And at the end of the movie, there is also a satirical passage in which Leon is possessed by a ghost and says that I will not go to hell who died after going to hell, while the people who escaped from the ascension were imprisoned in a mental hospital as murderers.
Here is also the director's helpless spit: a group of imaginative, full of heart people are locked up in a mental hospital, while those who have lost their imagination and have outmoded ideas are wandering in the outside world.
Although the box office and word-of-mouth of "Night of the Soul" are not very good, at least let us see another Zhou Xingchi, and his acting skills and performance style have also changed to a deeper level.
In my opinion, this work, which has been the lowest box office in Stephen Chow's film career, is a masterpiece with cross-era significance, and it continues this combination of black humor and horror film style.
This is undoubtedly great, just like the phrase "I don't go to hell who goes to hell", the completion of "Night of the Soul" has dispensably awakened a group of rigid dogmatists, which is also a great thing.