Gu jing you hun

A scholar falling for a beautiful young woman who turns out to be a ghost is a common theme in Chinese storytelling: it was used to great effect in one of my favourite Hong Kong movies, A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which boasted stylish direction, excellent cinematography, and loads of impressive '80s special effects. Ghost of the Mirror also employs this familiar basic plot, but lacking A Chinese Ghost Story's visual splendour and practical effects, the film is something of a dull affair. The charms of a young Brigitte Lin only gets you so far...

Chun Shih plays a young noble tasked with making copies of the Buddhist scriptures; to ensure the peace and quiet necessary for such an undertaking, he moves into a deserted old house that has a sinister history - several people have fallen to their death in the well, although their bodies have never been found. While carrying out his work, the scholar encounters a young woman, Su-su (Lin), who turns out to be a ghost under the control of an evil dragon.

Unfortunately, said dragon only turns up at the very end of the film and is glimpsed in very brief shots; the majority of the film is as laborious as writing out scriptures one hundred times - slow, meandering and devoid of interest, the young noble diligently performing his duty while Su-su tries to convince him to help her escape from the dragon. After an hour and a half of tedium, the dragon attacks and whisks away Su-su, leaving the scholar on his lonesome... a pointless ending to an unremarkable film.

3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for the very cute Lin.

It starts with a guy passing through a deserted area and strangely falls into a well. Cut to Shih Chun on a long walk. He stops at a Buddhist temple. He is a scholar who chooses a haunted house to copy scriptures. The house has a well that we saw in the first scene. It is haunted by Brigitte Lin. Others are frightened off but Shih Chun stays. Rather than doing ghostly things she spends the first half of the movie doing cooking and cleaning. Finally the dragon responsible for Brigitte being a ghost shows up (if you are still awake.)

My copy is a digital file that's plays on a HDTV as wide screen. The dialog is Chinese. I do not speak Chinese and there are no subtitles. I have watched many of these movies without the dialog. Often it is easy to discern the story. This time it would have been impossible had I not already known the plot.

Brigitte Lin went on to star as a ghost again almost 20 years later in "The Bride with White Hair". Fans of wuxia, fantasy, martial arts, or whatever label fits, hail that movie as one of the best. Today, anyone who comes across this movie and watches it most likely watches it for that reason. That includes me.

Ultimately watching the movie gave me no satisfaction. Whether you chose to watch it as a fan of the genre, a student of film history, or a Brigitte Lin completist, I think you will feel the same. I cannot recommend it and rate it below average.

GHOST OF THE MIRROR is a cheap little collaboration between Hong Kong and Taiwan whose plot involves a scholar travelling to an abandoned villa in order to transcribe some Buddhist writings. While there, he becomes involved with a young ghost, who is surprisingly played by a 19-year-old Brigitte Lin, over a decade before she became a big presence in Hong Kong cinema. What plays out is a slow-moving romance with only minor touches of horror along the way. Too much of the screen time is taken up of dull chats involving the scholar protagonist and his servant sidekick, although there's some creepy stuff involving a RINGU-style well. Things randomly become very kaiju-flavoured at the climax, but it's not enough to lift the overall subdued mood.