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| From http://www.warehouseposters.com/ ebaystore/shawth/hex.jpg |
Director: Chih-Hung Kuei
Screenplay: Chih-Hung Kuei and
Chin-Hua Tan
Cast: Ni Tien (as Chan Sau Ying);
Yung Wang (as Yeung Chun Yu); Szu-Chia
Chen (as Leung Kei Wah)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #33
[WARNING: Contains spoilers but they will be individually signposted to
avoid.]
Hex, if anything, is
unpredictable, the result of which leads to a twisted array of emotions as you
react to everything that happens for the first viewing. Immediately, now that
Blu-Ray exists and that their archive has been brilliantly preserved, it's clear
just how good the in-house style was for Shaw
Brothers studio. Predominantly known for martial arts movies, their
extensions into other genres were just as distinct and stylised. The set-based
locations and aesthetic of their films is impeccable, here a period piece like
the martial arts films where a hateful husband Chun-yu (Jung Wang) is drowned by his incredibly ill wife Chan Sau-ying (Ni Tien) and the daughter of a former
servant (Szu-Chia Chen). The style of
the film, including its occasionally use distinct camera movements (crawling
along the ground through corridors, aerials shots) has a class and immense
grace to it, an elegance to the period trappings that wrong foots a viewer when
the plot twists start to throw conventions on their heads and things start to
get weird.
Hex is reminiscent of the martial art films in its tone, and not
only an escape scene for a young monk which takes on the athleticism of the
more well known films from the company, the pacey and melodramatic aspects here
as well, where a cross eyed furniture mover acts with an exaggerated sense of
mannerism closer to a choreographed style or how the acting has a generally
heightened tone to it. The mix is curious as, founder and central figure Run Run Shaw used his influence on his
own studio to create extravagantly made films with rich aesthetics, but let his
directors and t3echnical teams make films with gladly stepped in broad and
comedic moments alongside the serious scenes, such as the older Buddhist monk
that appears who gets threatened by a severed hand. The tonal shifts are prevalent
in Hong Kong cinema and Asian filmmaking in general, but here it's a very
distinct style that even when it comes to their more serious minded films is
common in Shaw Bros. movie in how
heightened and ever changing in plotting they can be. Especially here where the
first half is serious and dramatic, as the wife fears of being haunted by her
dead husband, but is punctured by comedy and exceptionally silly frights, it
has a ridiculous charm to it.
Then when Hex reaches its middle half it starts to get more gothic and morbid
as it goes along. More atmosphere as those who've reaped the benefits of the
major change in plotting get haunted themselves. The plot twists are so drastic
I have to be exceptionally careful and
give a [Spoiler Warning] as it leads
to a conspiracy to bump a person off for greed, only for the husband, still
alive, and his lover to be haunted to the point of madness by their own ghost [Spoiler ends]. What started as an
elegant, melodramatic horror tale becomes more lurid and inventively peculiar,
where the amount of frights become more frequent and a gleeful revenge haunting
starts with more comedy and more tension. This does mean unfortunately you see
a live snake get chopped in half with a cleaver, of its time, but besides this
you get more slapstick, more ghoulish frights and the in-house style becomes
even more colourful and decorative for a hyper-stylised, kinetic ghost tale,
one where the characters are constantly looking over their shoulder as they
have no idea where the ghost will appear to scare them. If there's any flaw to
this style on a first viewing, it's so quick in pacing at times that you can
actually get lost at points.
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| From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wECN2uot8u8/TJJ0Yvm6hmI/ AAAAAAAAIrY/0eiIrGmdB1I/s1600/hex_01.jpg |
Finally the film in its last
quarter gets insane. The director Chih-Hung
Kuei later made The Boxer's Omen (1983),
the most infamous of the Shaw Brothers
catalogue, and the suddenly jump in baroque style and lunacy starts to make
sense when you realise this. The style becomes even more awashed in colour and
the bold lighting style used is exceptional even next to what was done earlier
in the film, while the unique mix of sorcery and magic he has in this film and The Boxer's is an idiosyncratic and
fascinating one, its realism to exiting practices or lack of it not an issue
when it gives him carte blanche to have mind-blowing and ridiculous details and
moments as a result, such as the unexpected use of chickens blood here.
Hex after three quarters of its length as a solid horror story
turns into something else involving a very eyebrow raising exorcism, an
elaborate solo dance choreography involving a completely naked women painted in
symbols writhing around as an elderly sorceress hits her with a shoe, so
prolonged that I found myself dumbfounded by it, so much nudity onscreen that
it could cause even the most desensitised of porn viewers to blush. Then there's
[Spoiler Warning] a reinterpretation
of the most famous story from Masaki
Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1964) with
much more female nudity, and a final plot twist so unexpected and un-signposted
that it comes from the school of Teruo
Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men
(1969), i.e. able to get away with being out of nowhere by how unexpected
and baffling as a result it is. As a
result, even amongst some of the films that I've watched during the period of
writing these current reviews, this felt like getting a couple of bricks to the
head and surprisingly pleasant for that reason, emphasise that even someone
like myself who's seen a lot of bizarre films can still be taken aback by a
movie on the first viewing.
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| From http://img22.mtime.cn/up/2011/08/29/003925.60647624_o.jpg |
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