The king of ghost horse comedy

Chapter 304

The Xu Brothers' "Half a Catty" was rushed, and finally finished before the Spring Festival. This is the fastest film Xu Guanwen has shot, so he is a little uneasy about the quality of the film.

However, after calling the company's senior management to watch the raw film, everyone laughed and laughed, which proved that "Half a Catty" was still very successful.

However, in order to add more novelty to the film, Xu Guanwen also forced Xu Guanwu to play a guest role in it, that is, as a small manager in the love hotel where the two brothers Xu Guanwen and Xu Guanjie caught rape.

Xu Guanwu is actually not very interested in acting, mainly because filming is too tiring. He either has to stay up late or memorize his lines. Either he wears summer clothes in winter and is shivering from the cold; or he wears winter clothes in summer and is too hot. Sweating profusely.

But he couldn't hold back the elder brother's life and death, so he finally agreed to make a guest appearance.Relying on years of training at Shaw Brothers, he went through a cutscene without any risk, showing such a small face a little.Afterwards, Xu Guanwen used the gathering of the four Wenwuyingjie brothers as a gimmick to publicize it to the outside world.

In addition to "Half a Catty" by the Xu Brothers, Cheng Long's recently filmed "One Trick and a Half Style" will also be released during the Spring Festival.

And Zeng Zhiwei's "The Thief", Mai Jia's "It's as simple as catching a thief", Zhang Jian's "Male Thief and Female Singing", Zhang Guoming's "Yin Ling", Chu Yuan's "The End of the World" and Gui Zhihong's " Several films, such as Hong Kong Mysterious Case: Corpse Hidden in a Paper Box, have been released in the past few months.

Among them, "The Knife of the End of the World" directed by Chu Yuan was the best seller, continuing the upsurge of the previous "Meteor Butterfly Sword", and was sought after by movie fans as soon as it was released.However, director Chu Yuan's strange martial arts movies do not focus on fighting scenes. The fighting in his movies is very fast, and it will end within a few strokes. The longest martial arts scene does not exceed 2 minutes.

This is not like the kung fu movies made by Hong Jingbao, Zeng Zhiwei, Cheng Long, etc. Their selling point is not only the humorous plot, but also the extremely exciting fighting scenes.And each fight takes a long time, basically an hour and a half of the scene, nearly five to ten minutes are spent fighting.And the final martial arts scenes often have more than a dozen or 10 minutes of fighting scenes, in order to make the audience enjoy watching them happily.

However, director Chu Yuan went against these traditions, and instead used the storyline and movie images as selling points.Most of the fantasy martial arts films he made are fantastic and unpredictable, or the dark clouds are thick and the sea of ​​clouds is churning, or the flowers are so beautiful, or the gloomy caves and demon lairs, etc., bring unique excitement to the audience.

The storyline lays more suspense, and the audience is led by the protagonist to uncover the mystery layer by layer.Until the last moment, I didn't know what the story was like.This also greatly satisfied the curiosity of movie fans, so the box office remained high.

Moreover, director Chu Yuan's success is actually related to the innovation of the subject matter.Before the martial arts films, apart from monster martial arts films such as "The Palm of the Tathagata", they were sword martial arts films directed by Chang Cheh, and Bruce Lee's kung fu films.

And when the martial arts films of monsters and swordsmen declined, Bruce Lee's boxing and kicking kung fu films gradually evolved into humorous kung fu films, and became very popular in the Hong Kong film industry, with more than [-] films produced every year.And the release of so many kung fu movies, although it makes fans excited and addicted to watching for a while, but shark fin will vomit after eating too much, so the unique martial arts movie directed by Chu Yuan has become the object of fans' pursuit. .

Compared with the fantastic martial arts films directed by Chu Yuan, Zhang Guoming's "Yin Ling", which was released during Halloween, really surprised the audience.Although the plot of this movie is somewhat reversed, Zhang Guoming's setting off of the horror atmosphere is quite in place.And halfway through, he also invited director Chu Yuan as a consultant, and moved his technique of filming the devil's lair in the gloomy cave to horror movies.It made the screen full of gloomy ghosts and shadows.

It's just that although this "Yin Ling" was carefully produced by Zhang Guoming, but because the plot is too overturned, and horror movies are not very popular with Hong Kong audiences, although the reputation is good after its release, the box office is still relatively average. It was released for two weeks and earned more than 50 at the box office, which is not a loss.

However, Xu Guanwu later sold the film to TVB and asked them to show it in the middle of the night, which attracted many night owls to watch, and the ratings were very good.It made a good start for TVB, and later opened a special midnight theater time, which is dedicated to showing horror movies, kung fu movies, comedies, etc., all of which are not very good at the box office, but they can still attract people when they are shown at midnight on the TV station. Many viewers tune in.

This is actually the way of survival for many film companies in Europe and the United States. After the film is made, because of its poor quality, it generally has no chance to be released on a large scale. to recover costs.

If these movies are released in theaters, basically no one will buy tickets, and it is very likely that they will not even be able to pay the rent.But if it is shown on TV for free, many people will still come to appreciate it.In fact, it is similar to the click-through rate of free movie channels such as Youku and PPTV. The top movies are generally not recognized blockbuster movies.

The director who is also funded by the new star director, Zhang Jian's filming of "The Man Thief and the Girl Sings" was unexpectedly popular. After the film was released, the box office soared, reaching an astonishing 250 million Hong Kong dollars, only higher than that of director Chu Yuan. "Tianya Mingyue Knife" was short of 20.

In terms of the reasons, there are actually just a few points. One is that the theme was well chosen. In [-], North Vietnam annexed South Vietnam. A large number of South Vietnamese refugees became refugees due to the war, but not many countries were willing to accept refugees.At that time, Hong Kong was one of the colonies ruled by the British. Its geographical location was very superior and it was also a free trade port. Therefore, a large number of ships carrying Vietnamese refugees arrived in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was originally used as a transit point to move refugees to other countries one after another, but because there are too many refugees, it is easy to cause vicious security cases and bring anxiety to the local people, so in the end no country is willing to take them in. .

That makes Hong Kong, which was originally intended to be a transit point, helplessly become the terminal.However, during the Sino-British negotiations in the 80s, seeing the tough attitude of the Chinese government, the UK even outrageously announced that Hong Kong would become the first port of asylum, accepting a large number of refugees from South Vietnam.

As of the 90s, Hong Kong had received more than 20 South Vietnamese refugees, and the government would spend 1 Hong Kong dollars per year for each resettled South Vietnamese refugee, so it was a huge burden for the British Hong Kong government.Moreover, until the last refugee camp was closed in [-], the UNHCR still owed the Hong Kong government more than one billion Hong Kong dollars, which has not yet been repaid.

The influx of South Vietnamese refugees into Hong Kong has also brought huge security risks to Hong Kong.South Vietnamese refugees lived in refugee camps. Because they had no jobs and no sources of income, they often took risks, X-trafficking, robbery, rape, etc., which brought huge security risks.

In Hong Kong, there are many films that reflect this social problem, such as the film "The Royal Lady" starring Hong Jingbao and Carina Lau, "The Story of Hu Yue" directed by Zhang Jianting, "Running into the Raging Sea" directed by Xu Anhua, and so on.

The large-scale arrival of South Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong has created many vicious security incidents, which can not help but make the people of Hong Kong panic.In fact, in the 70s and [-]s, despite the rampant corruption in the police force and the lawlessness of the four major families, the Hong Kong market was actually relatively calm, and there were not too many violent incidents.

Moreover, as the makers of the underground rules, the four major families actually hate those criminals who act recklessly and undermine social stability.Because the society is unstable, people's hearts will be flustered, and their business will be affected when people's hearts are flustered.

Therefore, whenever there are vicious incidents such as robbery, rape, and murder, the four major families are often more nervous than the police, and if criminals fall into the hands of the police, at most they will be beaten up and sent to the court.But if he is caught by the four major families first, there will only be a dead end.So there will be no bad incidents easily.

This is also the reason why the carton corpse case and the three wolves case caused a sensation in Hong Kong. It is because Hong Kong has been at peace for a long time, and the citizens rarely see more strange things.

But the Vietnamese are newcomers, and many of them are soldiers. They have just come down from the battlefield, and they are like dragons crossing the river.Treat the rules they set up before as a pile of waste paper, if you have no money, you will grab them, if you have no territory, you will fight, and whoever dares to disobey will gang up and get rid of him.So there was a lot of chaos in the market, and people panicked.

And Zhang Jian's "Male Robber and Female Singer" happened to be filmed on this subject, which immediately attracted the attention of Hong Kong citizens.It can be said that it is really touched by the light of popular topics.

Another reason for the big box office success is that this time Zhang Jian added a lot of violent and nudity scenes, the gangsters fighting the police with AKs on the streets, driving cars in the downtown area, etc., and the scene when the heroine picks up customers. The exposure shots and so on, everything seems so crazy and over the top, showing the violence and femininity naked in front of the audience.

The Hong Kong film industry rarely had such extremely hot scenes before, such as street fights, car explosions, etc. The audience was so hooked that they thought it was no different from Hollywood blockbusters.In fact, the investment in this film is very small. The so-called car explosion scene was all shot by Zhang Jian who bought a garbage truck from a scrap yard, stuffed it with black powder and poured gasoline to detonate it, but the scene was edited quickly at that time, so there was no Show flaws.

It's just that when filming this film, I also encountered a lot of troubles, that is, I couldn't apply for the right of way at all, and the police refused to approve it at all.It is not even allowed to take a camera to the street to shoot, so the filmmakers had to find another way.

For example, Zhang Jian used a portable video recorder to shoot the street race, and he didn't tell the people around us that we were filming, everything was written according to the script.The driving stuntman drove the car on the road, and the photographer behind him was sitting in the car with a camcorder.In the end, although the scene of the hurricane on the street was successfully photographed, it also caused a traffic chaos. In the end, the producer had to be handed over to the police.

And it was even more thrilling when shooting the scene of street fights. The passing citizens didn't know that they were filming, so they were so scared that they screamed and ran away.Zhang Jian did not stop immediately, but immediately ordered the actors to act accordingly, and also reminded the camera to record the real reflections of the people. As a result, this segment was very exciting after it was filmed. The audience especially liked those who played tricks around them. The expression on his face is so real, he is really dedicated.

Another reason is that Zhang Jian also caught up with the audience's aesthetic fatigue and was in need of new movies.And the reality-themed movies created by Wu Siyuan before were just in the ascendant at this time, and immediately attracted the attention of these audiences.

Reality-themed movies have the advantage that other movies do not have, that is, the sense of substitution. Whether it is kung fu movies, martial arts movies, or science fiction movies, they rarely give people a sense of substitution, because they are too far away from ordinary life.However, movies with realistic themes are based on popular topics around them, so the public is very familiar with them, and the sense of substitution is very strong.

But just because the audience is familiar with the surrounding things, the director needs to be more cautious and not divorced from reality.Martial arts films and science fiction films can be edited however you want, and audiences will choose to believe them.However, if a reality-themed movie does not conform to reality, the audience will notice it, and feel that the filming of the film was careless, and the evaluation will drop.

(End of this chapter)