Chow Yun-Fat
tou tai ren
reincarnated people
The Reincarnation
principal cast:
nbsp;nbsp;Chow Yun-Fat
nbsp;nbsp;Lau Chi-Wing
Produced in 1975, The Reincarnation was Chow Yun-Fat's
debut in feature films. Credited fifth, he was hardly the star.
At the helm of this maiden effort was veteran director Cheung Sum who had also directed such
matinee idols as Tang Kwong-Wing in romantic films, Cheung Long in martial arts
films and a wide variety of stars in films of dubious merit with titles
such as Jenny and Her Sexy Mother.
A typically lurid ghost story, this movie is so dumb and so inconsequential, and CYF is in
it for such a brief period that it really
doesn't need a review per se. Since it is relatively hard to find, I'll include a synopsis
of the movie so you can be spared the pain of actually watching it yourself should you come
across a copy on a dusty shelf somewhere.
The plot concerns the wife and daughter of
a wealthy merchant who has no time for his family. Neglecting his wife Li Hua and substituting
money for his fatherly responsibilities for Hsiao Ling, Wen Hui is a man so caught up in his business that
he does not see the designs his chauffeur, Chao Jen, has on Li Hua.
It was a dark and stormy night when Li Hua awakens to a telephone call from Wen Hui, informing
her that again, her husband will be away overnight on business. Getting up to check on
Hsiao Ling, the beautiful Li Hua isn't really all that surprised to see Chao Jen in the house. After a few
weak attempts to fend off his advances, Li Hua gives in to a night of passion in the arms
of her husband's faithless servant.
Cut to 1962, when Li Hua and Hsiao Ling are now living with Chao Jen in a small house, eeking
by on the little money Li Hua has gotten from selling her jewelry. Chao Jen, accustomed to
living off the fruits of his once-rich wife, simmers with rage as he finds out that all of
her money is spent and she has but one bauble left, a diamond ring she has held back for
Hsaio Ling's inheritance. Abusive and battering both wife and daughter, Chao Jen finally
wrests the final valuable from Li Hua and rushes off to pawn Hsiao Ling's inheritance.
While Jen is gone, Li Hua packs her things and is preparing to leave under the cover of darkness,
but before she is able to escape Jen returns, drunk. Pretending to be deeply asleep, Li
Hua fends off his inebriated advances and waits until he passes out to resume her escape.
Unfortunately Hsaio Ling makes a bit too much noise while accompanying her mother out
the door to freedom, and Jen bursts into the living room, grabbing Hsaio Ling and locking
her in a closet. He then tells Li Hua that she is free to leave, but without her daughter,
not too subtly implying that he will sell Hsiao Ling for a bit of cash the minute Li Hua is
out the door. Seeing his scheme, Li Hua begs for Hsiao Ling but Jen will only release the
girl under one condition: that Li Hua write to Wen Hui and ask for a half million dollars.
Jen sits at the dining table to write the blackmail note, chuckling to himself at his
own cleverness. Li Hua, driven to despair by the predicament she finds herself in,
lunges at Jen, smashing an earthen jug into his skull. Jen falls to the floor and Li Hua
retrieves the closet door key from his bathrobe; she frees Hsiao Ling and they are but
a few steps from freedom when Jen suddenly awakens and grabs Hsiao Ling's leg, throwing
her to the floor. Li Hua tries to fight Jen off, but is unable to overcome him and, in
a burst of drunken violence, Jen swears to beat his former sweetheart to death. While
the scene takes place in silhouette, it is extremely graphic and the cries of the child
for her dying mother make it a disturbing portrayal of domestic violence gone out of
control. Finally stabbing the mother and strangling the eight year-old girl with
the sash of his robe, Jen takes the bodies into the kitchen garden and hacks them
into pieces with a pick-axe, burying the remains.
Fast forward to 1974. Enter Chao Yu Ta, a graduate student from Canada who has come
to Hong Kong to finish work on his degree in engineering. A friend of the Hsu family,
he is engaged to the young and pretty (and slightly spoiled) Hsiang Jung, he is warmly welcomed
by the elders and by Jung's bratty brother Hsiang Hsiung (portrayed by CYF). The Hsus
have rented a house for Yu Ta, and as fate would have it, the house in which they install
Yu Ta is THE MURDER HOUSE (but of course).
The first night in the house things begin to go wrong. Hsiang Jung, showing off bride-to-be
skills to Yu Ta, comes over to cook dinner for him but is disrupted by visions of
a ghost, a small child with long silver hair, dressed in wispy rags. Screaming in
fright, she is frustrated by Yu Ta's disbelief in her experience - mainly because the
apparitions disappear every time he shows his face.
Later on, however, he in turn is horrified to see the ghostly figure of a beautiful
woman staring malevolently at him from the bedroom chair; dismissing it as a momentary
dream, he goes off uneasily to sleep.
The next day he is in his study when a rapping comes at the window, and a child's face appears
to grin at him; not a ghost, it's the happy face of a smiling young girl. When he questions
the housekeeper about the girl, he is told she is the daughter of the house's owner, who
has come to meet with him.
When Yu Ta goes into the garden, he is startled for a moment by the woman - a dead wringer
for the ghostly woman he had glimpsed in his bedroom the night before. Strangely attracted
to the woman, he is drawn in by her heavy-lidded good looks and sensuous charm. She
introduces herself as Tang Li Fang, a widow, and the little girl as her daughter Hsiao Mi. As
they converse, Yu Ta seems to fall under a spell and this is, unfortunately, when his
girlfriend Hsiang Jung chooses to drop by for a visit. Seeing the enraptured Yu Ta with
the widow Tang, Hsiang Jung stomps off in a huff.
Within just a few hours of meeting, Yu Ta and Ya Fang come to an understanding;
with an odd sense of timing, Yu Ta crashes the Hsu birthday party to announce he is
breaking his engagement with Hsiang Jung so that he may be with the widow Lin Ya
Fang, his landlady. Shocked and then worried, the elder Hsus
contact Yu Ta's father in Canada and ask him to come talk some sense into his boy.
When Mr. Chao, Yu Ta's father, shows up at the airport we see none other than the
nefarious Chao Jen - Yu Ta is the son of the man who murdered the lovely Li Hua and her
daughter many years before, in the same house where his son is now living. What a
coincidence! Dad is none too happy about finding his boy living in THE MURDER HOUSE and
tells Yu Ta to leave immediately. Yu Ta says he can't, that he must stay until the end of
the month. While Mr. Chao stews over that, Yu Ta then drops the other shoe: he and
Lin Ya Fang are going to hold an engagement ceremony in three days. Mr. Chao continues
to stress that Yu Ta needs to get out of the house as quickly as possible and Yu Ta
continues to resist until that evening over dinner Dad finally gives his reason for
wanting Yu Ta to leave - he knows that a murder was committed in the house. Yu Ta
innocently asks how could his Dad know that? Dad freezes for a second, thinking up
a plausible one, then says that he used to live in the neighborhood, that's how.
Of course this is the point where, hallucinating that his steak and fries has turned
into a writing black hand dripping blood, he starts to savagely stab at his dinner plate,
hacking at it under the unbelieving gaze of his son (who doesn't seem able to put 2 and
2 together, for all of his college degrees). When Dad starts screaming "Hsiao Ling!" and
stabs at what he says is a disembodied green head writhing about in the the Caesar salad,
Yu Ta figures Dad must be a wee overtired and prescribes a little rest.
Things aren't getting any better for Chao Jen after he pulls on his PJs. After he gets
into bed the lights begin to flicker and ominous wooo-wooo sounds begin, which is a sure-fire
way to tell that a ticked-off spirit is about to make an appearance and sure enough, one does.
The decaying ghost of Li Hua chases Jen around the house until finally he passes out on the
sofa from nervous exhaustion.
The next morning things are still not looking up because when he wakes up in THE MURDER HOUSE,
he finds that his son's new lady-love has arrived and whaddaya know! She's the spitting image
of Li Hua and her little girl looks just like - you guessed it! - Hsiao Ling!
Meanwhile back at the Hsu ranch, Hsiang Hsiung drops his own little bombshell at the
dinner table. He has found an old newspaper clipping from 20 years ago which recounts
the story of a double murder which was never solved by police, a murder which happened
at the address of the house rented by Yu Ta. Now the Hsu family also knows about THE
MURDER HOUSE and poor Hsiang Jung is torn between her annoyance at being dumped by
Yu Ta, and her concern for the man she still loves. When Chao Jen drags Yu Ta over to the
Hsu house, most of the family deduces from the newspaper clipping and the description of
the previous evening's entertainment at THE MUR-, oh, you know where, that Yu Ta's buxom
ladyfriend is a vengeful ghost. This does mollify Hsiang Jung a little, since her
ex got himself in a heap o' trouble when he dumped her, but her brother Hsiao Hsiung
remains skeptical and makes little "hmph!" noises at each mention of ghosts, evil spirits
and severed heads disguised as tomatoes in the salad bowl. A champion of the scientific
method, Hsiang Hsiung suggests hiring a local monk to determine if Yu Ta is about to be
hitched to a rich woman or a blood-drinking, flesh-eating dispenser of eternal justice.
Unfortunately the only monk available is the goofball Wu An, who makes a mess of things
and almost gets thrown into the local pokey for annoying Mrs. Tang and her daughter
by performing an impromptu exorcism on them. People tend to take that the wrong way, I guess.
Though Wu An's tests seem to indicate that Mrs. Tang and daughter are not ghosts, Chao
Jen isn't convinced and resolves to pack up his son and scoot back to Canada post haste.
While Chao is arranging tickets to Vancouver for himself and his son, Hsiang Hsiung
manages to come up with another newspaper clipping, this time of the murdered woman and
her daughter from years ago. Though the Hsu family is shocked to see they look just like
Mrs. Tang and daughter, a family friend who just happened to drop by to discuss
Beethoven's belief in reincarnation (yes, Beethoven) reveals that the woman in the picture
looks just like a woman he had done a past-life regression on a while ago. Another coincidence!
Convinced now that Mrs. Tang and her daughter aren't ghosts but are still up to no good,
Hsiang Jung grabs her brother and they rush off to THE MU-, uh, Yu Ta's place.
Good thing, too, since they get there just in time to see Li Hua or Mrs. Tang or whatever
she's calling herself today retriving the pick-axe that somehow or another managed to lodge
itself in Chao Jen's chest. After refusing Chao's last request to spare his son (fair's
fair, he throttled her kid, after all) the wispy nightgown-clad beauty retrives
said pick-axe and goes to find Yu Ta.
Though she has the strength of ten men, Li Hua immediately stops her assault on poor Yu Ta when
Hsiang Hsiung yells "Stop!". After getting a tongue-lashing from Hsiang Jung about not being
cruel to Yu Ta (I guess it was okay to gore a four-inch hole in Chao Jen), Li Hua and her
daughter glide off down the sidewalk and disappear into the fog. The end.
Well, no, not quite the end. There is a little footnote splashed across the screen:
THIS STORY IS FICTITIOUS
Whew. That's a load off my mind.
The only copy I have of this film is poor; it is a throw-away teen date movie from 1976
Hong Kong, after all. The screen captures in the image gallery for this film are probably
as good as I will be able to provide unless Gouw Assets lives up to its threat/promise to
re-release some of these moldy oldies on VCD.
The Reincarnation image gallery
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