How Tsui Hark made two of Hong Kong cinema’s most nihilistic films in 1980’s New Wave entries We Are Going to Eat You and Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind
- A Chinese spy stumbles on a cannibal den in We Are Going to Eat You. Farce ensues. Tsui Hark set out to make a kung fu movie, but it ended up a political satire
- Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind is a vitriolic attack on society, full of violence against animals and people. Hong Kong critics praised its audacity
Tsui Hark is best known for entertaining pop-art takes on Chinese culture like the Once Upon a Time in China series. But the filmmaker’s early movies show a very different kind of director – a young provocateur who wanted to shake up Hong Kong cinema and society.
Below we take a look at two of Tsui’s most daring works, which were both released in 1980.
We Are Going to Eat You: politics or laughs?
Ng had formed Seasonal Films as a kind of independent alternative to the big two studios, Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers, and he tried to take a hands-off approach to the films he produced.
So, as his second film for Seasonal, he allowed Tsui to make something equally unusual: the bizarre horror comedy We Are Going to Eat You.
The film is voiced as a political satire about the evils of authoritarian regimes, but its comedy is far too broad and basic to provide anything other than a hearty chuckle.