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The China Connection
By Henry P. Raleigh
ART
TIMES November 2005
TWO OF MY daughters married Englishmen – international fellows in law
and finance. Each daughter
spends a portion of her married life in faraway lands – one in Hong
Kong, the other in Shanghai. From
these places have flowed back to me the history and the products of Far
Eastern film and a fascinating business this is, too. We are familiar
enough with those imported works as the chop-socky, martial arts films
from Hong Kong, Taiwan’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon”, Mainland China’s “Red Sorghum” and “Raise the Red Lantern”. These
are only a tiny portion of the films produced, the imports those that
distributors imagine will appeal to Western audiences.
In some ways Shanghai seems to be a film buff’s paradise.
Once the center of Asian filmmaking, World War II and the occupation bumped
film over to Hong Kong. Shanghai has emerged however as the film pirating
center of the world, Hong Kong a close second. There is little ever put
on film in the East or West, past or present, that doesn’t wind up on
the flourishing DVD markets of these cities. And at a mere dollar or two
a pop. American first-run features are quickly followed by their DVD copies
offering multiple language choices.
West-East film influences work both ways. There are
the unblushingly obvious rip-offs: our low-budget teen films “Porky’s”
and “Meatballs” has emerged as “Porky’s Meatballs”, “Splash” enjoys an
Asian rebirth as “Mermaid Got Married”, “The Dirty Dozen” is turned into
“Eastern Condors”. Even “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” spins off “Flying
Dragon, Leaping Tiger” and “Roaring Dragon, Bluffing Tiger”. On the other
hand, Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” owes a good deal to “City of
Fire”. Jackie Chan, trained in the Chinese opera tradition of acrobatic
dancing and fighting skills sets the Western fad for Kung-Fu. Filmmaker,
John Woo, in a film that gave Chan his first featured role, established
the by-now de rigueur clichés of Western action films – slow
motion dives accompanied by double gun, across the chest shootings, movements
much favored by Bruce Willis and Antonio Banderas.
The melding of Eastern and Western tastes and styles
in film can produce results that are a mixture of the bizarre and the
familiar. Take these story outlines of popular films:
“The Story of Qiu Ju” (Mainland 1992). An extremely
pregnant woman seeks revenge for her husband who has been kicked in his
privates.
“The Hole” (Taiwan 1998). Billed as a romance, the
citizens of Taipei are infected by a strange virus that makes them behave
as cockroaches.
“Spaced Out” (Hong Kong 2001). A story of alienated
youth, uncaring parents, brutal teachers, drugs and wild sex.
“Beijing Bastards” (Mainland 1993). Examination of
the underworld of starving artists and drugged out rock stars.
“Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead” (Hong Kong 1991).
A teacher and his five female students are attacked by a monster with
neon-green eyes. The teacher escapes but his students are completely dismembered.
He soon discovers the monster is worshipped by a cult whose ambition is
to rule the world and tear the clothes off young girls.
“Dangerous Encounter-1st.Kind” (Hong Kong
1980). A young woman who is a sadist tires of torturing animals recruits
a gang of teenagers and they embark on a career of bloody savagery.
“The River” (Taiwan 1997). A story of a dysfunctional
family – mother has an affair with a porno producer, father seeks
liaisons with young men, their son, employed as a corpse floating in polluted
water for a film, has a chronic neck ache that nothing can cure.
“Eternal Evil of Asia” (Hong Kong 1995). Four friends
vacation in Thailand, encounter a strange shaman who turns one of their
heads into something unmentionable. After a few orgies, poisonings and
accidental deaths the friends return to Hong Kong where two die in horrible
manners – one falling off a building and becoming impaled on a light
fixture, another turning cannibal and eats himself. The friend with the
unmentionable head keeps it. Critics hailed the film as inspired demented
sleaze.
Well sir, it’s easy to see here the value of cultural
exchange and for just a few dollars anyone can own the proof – all
guaranteed to be coded either Region I (for American DVD systems) or VCDs
(Region code free).