''Painted Skin'' () is a

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

supernatural horror Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A ...

film starring

Adam Cheng Adam Cheng Siu-chow (born 24 February 1947) is a Hong Kong TVB actor and Cantopop singer. Career Cheng started his career in the 1970s, where he gained a reputation for playing the lead roles in TVB ''Wuxia'' drama series based on the works of ...

Joey Wong use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinate ...

Sammo Hung Sammo Hung Kam-bo ( zh, t=洪金寶, j=Hung4 Gam1-bou2; born 7 January 1952) is a Hong Kong actor, martial artist, film producer and Film director, director, known for his work in martial arts films, Hong Kong action cinema, and as a fight choreog ...

Lam Ching Ying Lam Ching-ying (; born Lam Gun-bo (); 27 December 1947 – 8 November 1997) was a Hong Kong stuntman, actor, and action director. As a practitioner of martial arts Lam starred in a number of notable films that found recognition outside Hong Kong ...

, and

Wu Ma Fung Wang-yuen (22 September 1942 – 4 February 2014), better known by his stage name Wu Ma, was a Hong Kong actor, director, producer and writer. Wu Ma made his screen debut in 1963, and with over 240 appearances to his name (plus 49 directoria ...

. It was directed by

King Hu Hu Jinquan (29 April 1932 – 14 January 1997), better known as King Hu, was a Chinese film director and actor based in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is best known for directing various ''wuxia'' films in the 1960s and 1970s, which brought Hong Kong ...

. It is based, very loosely, on a famous story in

Pu Songling Pu Songling (, 5 June 1640 – 25 February 1715) was a Chinese writer during the Qing dynasty, best known as the author of '' Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio'' (''Liaozhai zhiyi''). Biography Pu was born into a poor merchant family from Z ...

's classic short story collection ''

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio ''Liaozhai zhiyi'', sometimes shortened to ''Liaozhai'', known in English as ''Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio'' or ''Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio'', is a collection of Classical Chinese stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling, ...

''.

Story

A scholar encounters a beautiful maiden in an alley on his way home and leads her to his house, where he tries to marry her as a

concubine Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. Concubi ...

. By chance, his wife and he discover that she is in fact a ghost, who must "paint" and graft a facial skin mask over her face to look human. Terrified, the scholar enlists the help of two

Taoist Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the ''Tao'' ...

priests, who give him a magic whisk to keep the ghost at bay. However, it appears that the ghost is benign – she merely wants to escape the clutches of an evil Yin-Yang King, a faceless, powerful spirit-king who shuttles at ease between the mortal world and the spirit, and who seems to be controlling the destinies of some recently deceased souls. The two Taoist priests battle the King to release the ghost, but realize their magical prowess is not sufficient. Instead, they use the ghost to track down a highly skilled Taoist Master in the countryside. Meanwhile, the Yin-Yang King has possessed the scholar and is wreaking havoc in the mortal plane. The priests finally discover and convince the Taoist Master, who decides to destroy the evil spirit-king so as to guide the ghost back to Hades.

Cast

Lam Ching-ying Lam Ching-ying (; born Lam Gun-bo (); 27 December 1947 – 8 November 1997) was a Hong Kong stuntman, actor, and action director. As a practitioner of martial arts Lam starred in a number of notable films that found recognition outside Hong Kong ...

* Lau Shun

Production

''Painted Skin'' was the last film directed by

. Its filming locations included

Mount Wutai Mount Wutai, also known by its Chinese name Wutaishan and as is a sacred Buddhist site at the headwaters of the Qingshui in Shanxi Province, China. Its central area is surrounded by a cluster of flat-topped peaks roughly corresponding to the c ...

Ming tombs The Ming tombs are a collection of mausoleums built by the emperors of the Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led ...

, and

Huairou Huairou District () is situated in northern Beijing about from the city center (about a 1½ to 2 hour drive). History In 1995 during the United Nation's 4th World's Women Conference in Beijing, the Civil Society community was forced to meet in t ...

Reception

The film was released in the

Tokyo International Film Festival The is a film festival established in 1985. The event was held biennially from 1985 to 1991 and annually thereafter. Along with the Shanghai International Film Festival, it is one of Asia's competitive film festivals, and is considered to be the ...

in September 1992, and in Hong Kong in September 1993, and the box office was HK $1,315,857. It received generally mixed to negative reviews when it was released in Hong Kong, and also received some positive reviews in 2020.

References

External links

*
''Painted Skin'' Homepage
at

Sohu.com Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other se ...

1992 horror films 1990s supernatural horror films Hong Kong supernatural horror films Films directed by King Hu Films set in the Western Han dynasty Films shot in Beijing Films shot in Shanxi Films with screenplays by Ah Cheng Painted Skin films 1990s Hong Kong films {{1990s-HongKong-film-stub