In 2008, the fantasy film "Painted Skin", adapted from "Liaozhai Zhiyi", sold 230 million yuan at the mainland, and four years later, "Painted Skin 2" also achieved a box office success of more than 700 million yuan.
But in contrast, "The Yin and Yang King of Painting Skin", directed by Hu Jinquan more than twenty years ago, is not so "lucky". According to the data, the film was released in Hong Kong in September 1993, but in the end it only received 1.31 million Hong Kong dollars, ranking 117th in the Box Office of Hong Kong films that year.
The director of this film, Hu Jinquan, is the "martial arts master" of the Chinese film industry in the 1960s and 1970s, his martial arts films such as "Chivalrous Girl", "The Storm of Yingchun Pavilion", "Zhonglietu", "Legend of the Mountain" and "Empty Mountain Spirit Rain" have won numerous awards in the world, and 1967's "Dragon Gate Inn" is more known as a classic in the classics, and later selected as the "seventh of the 100 Best Chinese Films", the humanistic atmosphere, aesthetic art and the way of character shaping in Hu Jinquan's films have also deeply influenced Ang Lee. Xu Ke and Hou Xiaoxian and other big directors.
However, because Hu Jinquan has his own persistence and persistence in film creation, often against the will of film investors, it is more and more difficult to find investors to shoot in the later stage.
So in the 1990s, Hu Jinquan had only directed two films, one was "Smiling Proud of the Jianghu" with Xu Ke (but only a few shots of Hu Jinquan's control were retained in the finished film), and the other was this "Yin and Yang Dharma King". It is worth mentioning that this film was also invested by Hu Jinquan's disciple Wu Mingcai (the brother of Hong Jinbao in the "Seven Little Fortunes" era). It is precisely because of him that Hu Lao's directorial resume in the 1990s does not look too bleak.
The story of "Yin and Yang Dharma King" tells the story of Prince Luodi Shusheng (Zheng Shaoqiu), who is on his way home from the provincial capital, and meets a beautiful woman, You Feng (Wang Zuxian).
She claimed to be a rich man's concubine, and because she could not bear the humiliation of the big house, she sneaked out.
The prince felt pity and let You Feng spend the night in his home. Because his wife had been unable to have children, he had the idea of taking Yu Feng as a concubine.
One day, when the prince was out, he met Zhang Daochang (Liu Xun) from the Qingfeng Temple, who told the prince that he was already plagued by evil spirits and should be more careful, but the prince did not think so.
After returning home, the prince and Zhengfang inadvertently glimpsed the shocking picture of You Feng removing his face, and the two were immediately frightened.
The panicked prince had to run to the Qingfeng Temple to ask Zhang Daochang for help. The latter gave him a magic weapon to deal with You Feng, but found that You Feng was harmless at all, and the reason why she followed the prince home was only to get rid of the control of the Yin and Yang Emperor.
After learning of What happened to You Feng, Zhang Daochang and his brother (NoonMa) tried to subdue the Yin-Yang Dharma King, but because the other party's strength was too strong, the two were defeated at the hands of the Fa Wang, and even the prince was possessed by the Fa Wang.
In desperation, Zhang Daochang's party could only invite the Daoist high-ranking tai yi shangren (Hong Jinbao) to come out of the mountain to surrender to the king.
Tai Yi, who had been living in seclusion for many years, did not want to ask about the affairs of the jianghu anymore, but the king's misdeeds finally made him intolerable and decided to rescue him.
In the end, with the concerted efforts of everyone, the Yin-Yang Dharma King was finally repelled, and the Prince and You Feng were able to return to the Yang Realm.
This "Yin and Yang Dharma King" was co-produced with beijing film studios, so the crew was able to shoot in Beijing Xiangshan, the Ming Tombs, Huairou area and Wutai Mountain in Shanxi, adding a sense of beauty like a Chinese painting to this film.
The film is also unambiguous in the choice of the main creative staff: in terms of its actors, there are Zheng Shaoqiu, Wang Zuxian, Hong Jinbao, Liu Xun, Wu Ma and Lin Zhengying, and other people to help, and in terms of script, Zhong Acheng, a novelist who has won a literary award in Italy, was also invited to participate in the writing.
Hu Jinquan, who has been wandering for decades, returned to his hometown to shoot a drama for the first time, and he could not help but feel the scene and had a stomach full of feelings that he wanted to express. Therefore, he also used the "yin and yang worlds" in the film to project his own complex state of mind of displacement for half a lifetime, hoping to make its theme reach a certain depth.
However, due to the limited budget for film production, coupled with the intervention of the producer, etc., the finished film did not satisfy Hu Jinquan and deviated from his original intention.
Under many restrictions, Hu Jinquan can only focus on the depiction of scenes and the creation of atmosphere. It is undeniable that the classical mood and eerie feeling of several scenes in the film are indeed handled very well, but after experiencing Xu Ke, the audience of Cheng Xiaodong's version of the "Ghost of Qiannu" series has been deeply aware:
A fantasy movie can not only have good pictures, but also the story and character modeling should be full and rich, which is exactly what "Yin and Yang Law King" lacks.
At the time of filming, Hu Jinquan's royal martial finger Han Yingjie had been dead for 2 years, so the film invited Xu Zhongxin, who had no experience in martial arts, to design the action, because of its lack of experience, resulting in a poor final effect, compared with many of its similar films with gorgeous stunts in the same period, it is very shabby. The above factors made this "Yin yang dharma king" lose the box office and also lose word of mouth.
After the defeat of this film, Hu Jinquan originally planned to shoot an epic film "The History of Blood and Tears of Chinese Workers" that he had carefully prepared for many years, but before the film could start shooting, he died for some reason, and a generation of film masters ended so badly in their later years that it was inevitable to teach people a long sigh.