Bride from Hell, The (1972)

Vengeance comes in the form of a new bride possessed by the spirit of a spiteful murder victim in this supernatural period movie. It’s a ghost story with heaps of chilling potential but under the sometimes confusing direction of John Chow and with crude Shaw Brothers-style production design it appears horribly out of touch with quality horror conventions of the day and is outright silly by today’s standards.

I do love the English title. It is suggestive of the kind of macabre Western films from the era that starred Vincent Price or Christopher Lee and featured eerily atmospheric tales of horror that could be both unsettling and humorous. Tyrone Hsu’s script attempts to do exactly this as it draws from the same Chinese folk tales of supernatural happenings that have inspired generations of storytellers going at least as far back as Pu Song-ling’s collection of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, written during the early Qing Dynasty.

Like the helpless traveling tax collector who falls under the romantic spell of a beautiful spirit in A CHINESE GHOST STORY, Nie Yun-peng (Yang Fan) is a young traveling scholar, who accompanied only by his trusty servant Dahuozi (Kao Pao-shu), unwittingly spends the night at the home of a possessed woman and ends up romantically involved. He makes the mistake of wandering into her chambers where he gazes upon her sleeping in the nude. In the period that this story takes place, such a circumstance could ruin the reputation of an unwed woman. To save face, Yun-peng offers to marry her and bring her home to his family.

Screen beauty Margaret Hsing Hui plays Feng Anu, the woman who by day is Yun-peng’s dutiful wife and by night becomes a roaming specter in search of three men who 20 years prior had murdered and robbed her parents before killing her and violating her corpse. Thankfully, we’re spared having to witness the full act. Such is not the case for an exploitive shot of a bloodied and partially nude corpse.

The film is a little confusing in how it portrays this transformation. At times, a spirit appears to leave Anu’s body. At other times, the spirit manipulates Anu’s body and causes it to undergo a magical transformation from human to ghost and back again. The ending where the spirit is confronted by a Taoist master (Shang Feng) doesn’t bring much clarity to the situation, nor do the unrelated supernatural happenings such as when villagers call upon a deity’s advice when considering burning Anu at the stake.

Because the central character is a ghost, Western viewers might expect the movie to contain typical elements associated with ghosts, possession and haunting. There are some. The spirit is green-lit and glides around unnaturally. There is a very poorly stage scene where Anu is introduced by her husband to his family for the first time. The idea is that they are supposed to see something terrifyingly sinister about her without really knowing that she is a ghost. All Chow could come up with was to insert shots of Hsing in her ghost guise. The effect is so badly conceived that they didn’t even bother to shoot the ghost images in the same room.

The best supernatural scenes are actually the most uncharacteristic of ghost stories and more in touch with Chinese fantasy conventions from the likes of BUDDHA’s PALM (1964) and MONKEY GOES WEST (1966). There is one terrific scene where the ghost draws out the spirit of one of her victims while he is still alive and traps it within the folds of a fan. An earlier scene is not as well done but is just as creative. In it, a depiction of Zhong Kui, a famous mythical vanquisher of ghosts and evil spirits that is stitched onto a robe specially made for Yun-peng comes to life. It grows to enormous size to briefly menace the ghost.

While much of the film is tediously slow moving and unsophisticated in its use of special effects and horror elements, Chow occasionally makes a scene work in a way that still has some impact. This occurs at one point when Yun-peng, although warned by the Taoist master’s daughter not to, decides to challenge his wife openly. Up to this point he has flip-flopped on whether or not to even believe that Anu is a ghost. When he finally calls her out and begins using spells he has been taught as wards, things get interesting.

Dampening the tension throughout the movie is pudgy actor Kao Pao-shu who plays Yun-peng’s sidekick. He has a running gag of repeatedly coming to the conclusion that his new wife, as Anu’s servant, is also a ghost. When he’s not running away from her or trying to prove that she is a ghost, much to her anger, Kao is fainting at the sight of the real spirit. By watching this blend of comedy and horror from 1972, it’s easy to see how supernatural comedies in Hong Kong like MR. VAMPIRE became so prevalent a decade later.

I feel confident in saying that despite a few creative visual elements, THE BRIDE FROM HELL is not going to impress anyone. It’s too rudimentary in its presentation and handling of its main theme of supernatural possession. None of the stars are well known today, at least outside Asia. There is no kung fu fighting for genre fans to fall back on. The most telling sign that the movie doesn’t hold up is that despite being only 75 minutes long, it feels much longer. Dedicated Shaw Brothers fans may be undaunted in their curiosity but for anyone else interested in spooky Asian folk tales translated to film, I recommend the alternative of checking out the genuinely creepy KWAIDAN (1964) or ENCOUNTER OF THE SPOOKY KIND, the ultimate combination of folk tale-inspired horror, comedy and kung fu.

Related Topics: feng shui, fortune teller, ghost, grave, marriage, murder, possession, rape, revenge, spell, Taoism