Phantom Lover (Ye ban ge sheng, 1995) is a rotten remake of the classic Chinese horror film Song at Midnight (Ye bang ge sheng, 1937).

The remake was for the '90s a big hit, & one of the most expensive Chinese films up to its time. With so much studio financing riding on it, however, it could not help but become commercial pablum with nothing of the original's beauty of tragedy & horror.

It starts out good enough, establishing that it is 1936, with a theatrical troupe taking residence in a veritable ruin of a labyrinthine theater, partially fire-damaged.

The theater provides an atmospheric, spooky setting evoking some of the power of the 1937 classic. The set design by Eddie Ma is in fact much the best part of the film. But the characters moving through these sets seem to be renegades from some tepid telefilm.

A lot more repair than expected will be needed for the building before the troupe can perform, & even when they're off the ground, their choice of propogandistic material doesn't draw the crowds.

The theater is allegedly haunted by the ghost of a famous singer, Song Danping (Leslie Cheung), who was murdered a decade earlier, locked in his dressing room that was set ablaze. But the troupe's mediocre lead singer Wei Qing (Lei Huang) encounters this phantom as a hooded hermit living secretly in the dangerously inaccessible rafters.

Danping swears the young singer to secrecy & begins his vocal training & provides him with sheet music for Danping's version of Romeo & Juliet. He says he will make Wei Qing a famous singer.

His personal intent is to refashion Wei Qing as the vocal twin of himself in his glory days, so that the young man may meet with & soothe his mad-with-grief beloved Yuyang (Chien-lien Wu aka Jacqueline Wu), who thinks him long dead, & has never fully recovered.

In flashbacks to the 1920s we follow the story of Danping's fame, his romance with a local industrialist's beautiful daughter, a government official's desire to obtain the beautiful young woman as his moronic son's wife, & the whole tragedy that resulted in Danping's disfigurement.

Yuyang, deeply depressed over her loss, succumbs to the forced marriage. But when her disgusting groom discovers on their wedding night she is not a virgin, she's beaten badly, then cast out by her husband's family, abandoned by her own family, to dwell thereafter in an abandoned mansion with one faithful servant to help her through the years of suffering & gloom.

The familiar story is not played well. The actors are not at all romantic in their roles. The Phantom lacks even moderat angst. The horror & deep emotionalism of Song at Midnight is gutted from the remake, so that suspense is lacking. Even the "reveal" of Danping's long shadowed face isn't the least horrifying. Someone or everyone involved in the production seems to have been unwilling to make the handsome young screen idol actually look the role of the hideous Phantom.

Given the tragedy of Leslie Cheung's own long-suffered depression that resulted in early death from the most dramatic of suicides, one might suppose he could've found the place within himself to make the Phantom credibly sorrowful. Like the Phantom, he had hidden himself away in his own heart, fearing that his homosexuality would become widely known, never coming to terms with who he was versus what his fans expected he must be.

Despite a loving twelve-year relationship with Daffy Tong Hok-Tak, Leslie battled depression throughout his life, & unbeknownst to the public had made previous suicide attempts. His last words, in a suicide note, closed so emotionally, & now all too famously: "In my life I did nothing bad. Why does it have to be like this?"

It's a good guess he could've infused the role of the Phantom with real passion if permitted, but as played here, an opportunity was lost. Any handsome kid just out of acting school could've done the same job.

The main failing here, alas, is due to the film hinging on some music-video style sequences of the most agregiously awful Chinese pop songs. These might have passing appeal for little girls & tweens. Leslie was a pop singer as well as a leading screen idol, but the music is very manufactured & the compositions generic.

This nauseating pop garbage supplanted a simple, hauntingly dour melody in the original film. Had Leslie sung only that, it would've been heartbreaking. Instead, trashy pop tunes drag the film down, down, down so that even its few moments of potential are sabotaged.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl