Before writing, I checked some information on Hong Kong movies and found that in the glorious period of Hong Kong movies in the 1980s, two words appeared frequently, one was "" Art City", one is the "best partner".
Cinema City, the film company, was in the limelight in the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s, and the "Best Partner" series of films produced by Cinema City repeatedly achieved box office success in the 1980s.
Why should I talk about Xinyicheng and the best partner first, because it is they who gave birth to the Five Lucky Stars series. This series continued from the 1980s to the 1990s, and produced a total of seven episodes.
The first part of the series, "Five Lucky Stars," was released in the summer of 1983, a year later than "Best Partner".
This film can be said to provide a production model for the subsequent Five Lucky Stars series of films. First, there are superstars gathered. Sammo Hung, Feng Cuifan, Wu Yaohan, Qin Xianglin, Cen Jianxun, Jackie Chan and Zhong Chuhong all starred in the film.
The second is funny + action, but the boundary between the two is relatively clear. Five lucky stars are responsible for funny. For example, Wu Yaohan studies invisibility, and he will study a weird technique in every episode after that.
Kung fu scenes like car chase scenes and hard bridges and hard horses are completed by kung fu stars like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung.
Among them, the car chase scene is said to be to show that Jiahe is also capable of making big scenes, so it took more than a minute to smash into dozens of cars.
And the gun will inevitably run out of bullets before the fighting scene starts, and the police will come to the end after a big fight, which has become the standard of this series of movies.
Finally, there is the appearance of a beauty. In the first part, Zhong Chuhong, who was 23 years old, was wearing a bikini and took a bath. The scene where the five lucky stars molested the beauty also appeared in this part.
Combining these elements, the box office of "Five Lucky Stars" has reached 21.97 million Hong Kong dollars, which is a little worse than the box office of "Best Partner 2 Shows Magical Powers" of 23.27 million Hong Kong dollars.
According to the movie ticket of 15 yuan at that time, it is equivalent to 1.46 million people who watched "Fantastic Strategies" at that time, while the total population of Hong Kong in 1982 was 5.06 million.
Therefore, "Five Lucky Stars" also became the only film in that era that could compete with the best partner.
With such a good momentum, Jiahe will naturally not give up this IP. The second part of the Five Lucky Stars series, "Fu Xing Gao Zhao", was released in the Spring Festival in 1985, and it set a new Hong Kong box office record with HK$30.75 million, which was higher than the box office of the best partner's third film released the previous year.
"Fu Xing Gao Zhao" basically follows the routine of the first episode, but the characters are reshaped, and the main character settings have not changed since this episode, which has continued until the end of the series.
It is worth mentioning that this movie not only won the best partner at the box office, but also dug the opponent's corner. From this episode, Zeng Zhiwei, who was originally a member of the 7-member creative team of Xinyicheng, and also the director of the first two films of the best partner, began to play the role of Luo Han Guo and acted as the planner of the film. He also teased himself in the film.
In this episode, Jackie Chan's role has also begun to increase, not only in the beginning of the fight, but also in the boss battle that follows.
There is also an increase in the scene of the No. 1 Five Lucky Star Wiping Girl. Compared with the point-to-point stop in the first episode, the No. 1 Five Lucky Star Wiping Girl has become more blatant at the beginning of this episode.
In this episode, the 26-year-old Hu Huizhong played the female lead. She was bound by the Five Lucky Stars for many times in the name of robbery.
The improvements made in the second episode were also retained in "Summer Lucky Star", which was released in the summer of 1985. "Summer Lucky Star" won the box office of 28.91 million Hong Kong dollars in the summer vacation of that year, becoming the highest-grossing movie in the summer of that year.
While retaining the routines of the first and second episodes, the creators of this episode began to give benefits to the audience-letting female stars get wet.
And the first to do so was Rosamund Kwan, who was only 22 years old.
The routine of getting wet with bumps is also used in the following "Fu Xing Chuang Jiang Hu" and "Five Lucky Stars Crash Ghosts". Carina Lau, who was 24 years old at the time, was wet and dewy in "Fu Xing Chuang Jiang Hu".
"Lucky Star Crosses the Rivers and Lakes" is the fifth part of this series. It was released in 1989. Sammo Hung and Hong Jiaban did not participate in this film, so there were fewer fights with hard bridges and horses. The box office is a bit bleak compared to the previous ones, only more than 6 million Hong Kong dollars.
The screenwriter of "Fu Xing Chuang Jiang Hu" is Wang Jing, so from this film, you can also glimpse the prototype of some of his future routines. Like spoofing other movies.
But starting from this episode, the Five Lucky Stars series began to go downhill. In the 1990s, Five Lucky Stars made two more films, namely "Five Lucky Stars Hit Ghosts" in 1992 and "Five Lucky Stars" in 1996. It belongs to the fantasy kung fu and gambling films that were popular at the time.
In fact, a "Best Lucky Star" was also released in 1986, which is the fourth episode of this series, but all the five lucky stars in it have been replaced, which is more like a rumor, so I will talk about it at the end.
This film was also directed by Sammo Hung, and the final box office was 23.11 million, which was not as good as "The Best Partner 4 Thousand Miles to Save the Poor Woman" released in the same year.
But this film is a combination of the best partners of the two popular IPs and the five lucky stars. Although it is produced by Jiahe, Sammo Hung can still pull the backbone actors of "Best Partner" Mai Jia and Zhang Aijia as leading roles.
Mai Jia's participation in this film also became a turning point in Xinyicheng. Although he returned to Xinyicheng later, he became filthy with Shi Tian and Huang Baiming because of this betrayal.
However, the cracks in Xinyi City did not make the Five Lucky Stars series continue to sell well. As mentioned above, the box office of "Fortune Stars" after "Best Lucky Star" was very bleak, and Carina Lau's wet body couldn't be saved.
However, the series of Five Lucky Stars can still become the representative works of commercial and entertainment blockbusters in the history of Hong Kong films and even Chinese films. This series can be summed up in 20 words-stars gather, tacit understanding in group dramas, exciting dramas, witty and funny, and lots of benefits.
It's just that the film industry has developed rapidly in the past 20 to 30 years, but it seems that the Chinese film industry can no longer make such films. Those so-called big productions can only make a few or a dozen of the above 20 words.
Why it is like this?
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