When I mentioned these two directors at the same time, I was not trying to compare them, but when I watched "The Corpse Played the Boundary", the first thing I thought of was Lan Naicai's "The King of Power".
"The King of Power" was probably watched by me in the summer of 1999. At that time, my family just bought a 29-inch color TV and a VCD player, so I spent the whole summer vacation searching for DVDs and watching movies in addition to swimming in the river. At that time, there was never the concept of genuine pirated copies in our minds, and the rough images of pirated CDs that cost two yuan a piece were still shocking to us when we were young. Of course, when I mention the era of video players, I can't help but think of the degenerate history of the mind and body in that flourishing adolescence. Don't mention it, or you won't be able to come back if you stray from the topic.
One afternoon, a classmate brought a CD called "Power King", the protagonist is Fan Shaohuang, and the rest are a group of unknown actors. For Fan Shaohuang's impression at that time, almost only Xuzhu in "The Eight Parts of Tianlong", who was arrogant but bright and blessed. It's hard to imagine what a wonderful story he can play. Bored, put on the disc, click to start playing.
So the ignorant teenagers began to tremble under the brutal violence. Those young people who are watching "Slam Dunk" and indulging in Jackie Chan's comedy action movies! Shooting out the eyeballs with one palm, cutting into the head with a knife, smashing bones with one punch, as well as the battle of the intestines, the ferocious runaway, the human flesh mixer, etc... Finally, King Li smashed the prison wall with the only remaining head of the villain. When the subtitles appeared amid the cheers, the boys remained motionless.
For a long time, I don't know who said something: "Fuck it, it's too dick!"
This is probably the voice of our group of young people.
It is impossible to use high-sounding words to describe the feelings of the teenagers in the current situation, such as the sudden black wind and evil water in the sun and the warm, the shock is really like a knife cut into the flesh, a stone is thrown on the body, can only use the most Only the most vulgar and vulgar language can vent.
But can it really be vented? Even if we watched an island love action movie and a Stephen Chow comedy that afternoon, it still didn't stop the nightmare of the night: the overwhelming red blood wave rushed towards the face with a broken arm and a stump, with nowhere to hide, nowhere to hide. Can be hidden anywhere.
Since then, I have also gained an intuitive and profound understanding of the "violence" in "Stay away from violence, obscene publications, and videos" in the "Code for Middle School Students".
Having said so much, it is to explain why, after many years, when I watched "The Zombies", I would first think of "The King of Power". By the way, I have watched "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "The Chainsaw", "Skinless Love", "One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom" and even "The Sewer Mermaid" over the years. "The King of Power" is even more bloody and disgusting, but it no longer has the hysterical shock of the first exposure to violent images. Just like how much Bai Fumei I have experienced as an adult, it is not as good as the jumping ponytail and green smile in my first love.
As mentioned above, there is almost no analogy between "Group Corpse" and "Power King" except that they were released in the same year and are bloody and disgusting. "The King of Power" is adapted from the manga of the same name by Tetsuya Saruto, and it also well inherits the chilling atmosphere of Japanese fighting manga in the 1980s and 1990s. In the indomitable struggle, the audience only has a heart-wrenching share, as if a giant hand squeezed his throat from beginning to end, and then suddenly released it at the last moment, and then heaved a sigh of relief. As for "Group Corpse Playing the Boundary", there is only one word to describe it: unscrupulous. Peter Jackson, who was just 30 years old, was completely holding a ticket-playing mentality when he made this movie. He was not bound by the so-called sense of social responsibility whether his values were positive or his outlook on life was upward. He just shouted: open the door, let it go. Zombies!
So a banquet with human flesh as the dish and blood as the wine was grandly opened. Although there has been a qualitative leap in the level of realism of violence, there are few films that sway blood to such a state. Jackson's extraordinary talent in heavy taste is vividly displayed, the ribs stand out from the chest, the electric corpse human skin glows like a lantern, zombies and zombies give birth to strange babies, etc., the coherent film plot is separated. It is the flash of inspiration of the director's genius.
The 1970s and 1980s to the early 1990s were called the golden age of horror films, but as a rookie director's debut, "The Corpse Played the Boundary" was able to stand out and be regarded as a classic, in addition to benefiting from Jackson's genius imagination, It's also about the movie's new entertainment experience: scary, bloody, but funny.
The classic horror films of that era, such as "Nightmare Street", "Ghosts and Cannibals", "Living Corpse", etc., all devoted themselves to exploring how to make the horror more terrifying. If it is vaguely classified, "The King of Power" can also be grouped with them. It's even common for audiences to be scared to pee in theaters. "The Group of Corpses" has turned a corner on the road of horror, and turned to a sticky spoof in a cold and dark way. From the very beginning, the plot of the scientist catching the mouse monkey has established the overall tone of the film. Laney's imprisoning four zombies in the basement is a small climax (the zombie priest and the zombie nurse actually made a small zombie at first sight, and the bad taste is home) , to the dance of the demons at the final banquet, which kept the audience laughing while vomiting.
The advantage of this is that everyone knows that such film directors are very kind and will eventually let the hero and heroine defeat the zombies and have the last laugh, so there is no need to worry about when the protagonist will be hacked by the devil's claws. Among the blood plasma stumps of the brain, with the little details of the director shining with wisdom all the time, I look forward to the final reunion.
However, to say that it is simple and mindless is also an insult to the film. We can feel Jackson's criticism and reflection from the bad taste. The priest with a righteous face turned into a zombie and flirted with the nurse in public, while the hated villain, the uncle, was able to kill countless zombies at a critical moment, which can be regarded as a challenge to worldly values. And the big boss turned out to be the mother of the protagonist Lenny. This old witch eventually turned into a monster with a dog face, big breasts, buttocks and belly, intending to summon her son back to her womb. At the last moment, Lenny burst out from the belly of the monster who was no longer a mother, which symbolized the resistance to the social power represented by motherhood.
In fact, in Hong Kong in the 1980s, there were a number of classic funny horror movies, but this horror is not as bloody as "The Dead Play", but combined with the inherent ghosts and monsters of the East, mixed into the nonsense of Hong Kong movies element. This type of film is represented by Lin Zhengying's "Mr. Zombie" series, which was very popular at the time, and I believe that most of the post-70s and post-80s have seen it. Unfortunately, after the 1990s, Lin Zhengying gradually faded out of the film industry and died of liver cancer in 1997. This type of film has almost disappeared.
Go back to the summer of 1999. After watching "The King of Power" for a while, another friend brought a disc, "Liao Zhai Yan Tan". There are a few lively men and women on the cover, and that's my favorite, I thought. When there was no one at home, he locked the door and peeked out. Sure enough, the happy life of one man and three women made my heart blush and my heart pounded with excitement. But in the second half of the movie, the style suddenly changed drastically, and the handsome boy turned into a slimy monster, taking yin and replenishing yang from the beauties. The initial physiological response quickly cooled to fear, and I couldn't help but eject the disc in disgust before I even finished it. Originally, I wanted to use the third-level film to make up for the psychological trauma caused by "The King of Power", but I didn't expect it to get worse.
It was only after a few years that I learned that I was writing the Tao of the same person, and the director of "Liao Zhai Yan Tan" was also Lan Naicai.
Obviously, as 1997 approaches, Hong Kong's film system will become less and less suitable for a director like Lan Naicai to survive. Fortunately, he returned to the mountain in 1992. At this time, Peter Jackson, who was on the other side of the ocean, opened the "Lord of the Rings" countless times, and began to have endless fantasies about Middle-earth in his mind.
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