| VincentP | 3.5  |
A ghost movie landmark. |
| Ordell Robbie | 3.5 |
Enchanting Shadow comes as a happy surprise as it turns out to be a forerunner of the genre. It was the main inspiration source for Ching Siu-Tung's Chinese Ghost Story, and was probably in that respect a better adaptation of Pu Sung-Ling's universe in terms of faithfulness.
As you may know if you have seen the remake, the movie tells the story of a young vagrant scholar who stops and spends a few nights in a ruined palace, reportedly haunted. There, after having met a concerned veteran taoist swordsman, he discovers that a wing of the palace still shelters a young beauty and her grandmother, along with some servants. As you can imagine the rest of the story involves ghosts, and although you obviously won't expect as many incredible capers as the late 1980s version and certainly won't expect the same tone either, you'll find one or two pleasant surprises. For instance, it is striking to notice that a single sentence of the movie uttered by the grandmother when she learns of the scholar's visit already carries the whole concept of Amenabar's The Others 40 years ahead.
At the time, Li Han-Hsiang clearly wanted to comply the Chinese ghost literature tradition with the Western horror movie standards. Of course the spirit of the film is entirely faithful to the Chinese art culture, and the courting of the young lady involves traditional music-playing, poetry, and painting, which are cunningly made key elements of the plot. But in addition to that, the whole play on threatening, distorded shadows of clawed figures is obviously reminiscent of Murnau’s Nosferatu, and when the threat becomes real, and not merely a shadow, the result is not far from a classic Hollywood creature feature... (and the freak itself bears an incredible likeness to The Toxic avenger!).
At the same time, the movie inaugurates a number of enduring characteristics for the subsequent Hong Kong ghost movies, and the figure of the taoist swordsman, here portrayed by Yeung Chi hing is already a very compelling one, less farcical than Wu Ma's interpretation in the remake.
