Gothic horror in a Chinese setting: The Phantom Lover with Leslie Cheung, inspired by the Lon Chaney classic and a movie by ‘China’s Horror Master’

Ronny Yu’s The Phantom Lover, starring Leslie Cheung, was inspired by Maxu Weibang’s 1937 masterpiece Song at Midnight and by The Phantom of the Opera

Maxu, dubbed ‘China’s Horror Master’, brought the Gothic flair of Western horror films to his movie and its 1941 sequel and Yu’s film added a decadent grandeur

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Leslie Cheung as Song Danping in a still from The Phantom Lover (1995). It was based on a 1930s film by ‘China’s Horror Master’’ Maxu Weibang, and inspired by The Phantom of the Opera.

Published: 5:15am, 30 Oct 2022Updated: 11:21am, 30 Oct 2022

The Gothic flair of classic Western horror films like James Whale’s Frankenstein and those from Britain’s Hammer studios has rarely turned up in Hong Kong cinema – whose filmmakers have preferred to reference their own Chinese traditions and folklore.

But director Ronny Yu Yan-tai, who explored his fascination for grand guignol in the martial arts drama The Bride With White Hair, made a big splash in 1995 with the magnificently staged The Phantom Lover, a Chinese take on The Phantom of the Opera.

Although The Phantom Lover drew heavily on The Phantom of the Opera – and traded on the publicity surrounding the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which was performed in Hong Kong that year – Yu’s film was actually based on two macabre Chinese films from the 1930s and 1940s, Song at Midnight and its sequel Song at Midnight, Part II.

Here we look at how the originals, directed by eccentric Shanghai-based filmmaker Maxu Weibang, played into Yu’s atmospheric version.

Song at Midnight

Maxu Weibang’s 1937 masterpiece Song at Midnight, also known as Midnight Song in English, earned him the title of “China’s Horror Master” and started a mini wave of horror films in mainland China.

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