How Tsui Hark and Tony Ching followed up on the classic fantasy film A Chinese Ghost Story
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The story, set in a mythical China, featured
Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing as a naive debt collector who falls in love with a beautiful ghost played by
Joey Wong Cho-yee.
Here we look at two very different sequels Tsui produced.
A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997)
Animations have never been a favourite of Hong Kong producers, despite the popularity of Japanese anime in the city. This 1997
Tsui Hark -produced production, coming a few years before
the McDull films , was the first local animated film.
It keeps the bare bones of the original storyline, but makes it more appealing to younger teens by focusing on a virginal romance, with lots of anime-style ghosts and monsters.
The main theme of a female ghost (voiced by
Anita Yuen Wing-yee ) seeking to lay her spirit to rest with the help of her mortal lover (
Jan Lamb Hoi-fung ) is the same. But the similarity stops there.
Tsui's main concern is whizz-bang cartoon action with characters and style in the vein of the Japanese Dragonball Z anime series, which was popular on local television at the time.
A still from A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997). Photo: Film Workshop
'The animated version sees Tsui remould the story for a young 1990s audience,' this writer wrote in the Post in 1997. 'It is action-packed, mixing the ghostly atmosphere of the original with some anime style characters and wild computer-generated effects.
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