‘Erotic Ghost Story’ or — ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ for Complete Lunatics?

I had zero intention of ever watching ‘Erotic Ghost Story’ (1990). Don’t get me wrong, I have no objections to sex and nudity in my movies but any sex and nudity needs to either be in the service of generating puerile comedy or as a component of a film’s greater ambition to get as freaky on my ass as it possibly can. Yep, I was going to need quite a bit of encouragement to watch what I’d heard was, ostensibly, nothing more than a softcore fantasy flick.

And then I discovered it was made by Lam Ngai Kai, director of ‘The Seventh Curse’ (1986) and ‘Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky’ (1990), a filmmaker I now regard as a greater cinematic visionary than Renoir, Kubrick and Tarkovsky combined. This was the only encouragement I needed.

And dear god, I needed it because for the first 50 minutes or so ‘Erotic Ghost Story’ is literally nothing more than a softcore fantasy flick with some Chinese mythology and smutty humour thrown in for good measure, meaning the end result is like watching a particularly silly version of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000) meets ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’ (1974).

The story is simple: three fox spirits are on the verge of permanently attaining their human forms, human forms that just so happen to resemble incredibly beautiful women. One day, each of these three women takes it in turn to seduce a shy and humble scholar who lives by himself in the woods.

And that’s all you get for over half the movie — sexy fox spirit and humble scholar fornication.

Fortunately, it’s lush, colourful (the film is a riot of greens, lilacs and fuchsias), gorgeously shot and accompanied by some excellent music so it’s not exactly a chore to endure, but that still doesn’t prevent the thought “Where the bloody hell is all this excessive nudity going?!” from entering the head.

And then ‘Erotic Ghost Story’ answers that question by doing something entirely unexpected and unbelievably awesome — it suddenly transforms into ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ (1987). And when I say “transform” I mean FULLY transform because it doesn’t just tip the hat or slyly homage George Miller’s original but becomes a full-blown remake.

This transformation into ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ instantaneously results in two drastic P.E.R.s, or Profound Erotic Ramifications. These are as follows –

Profound Erotic Ramification #1 — It immediately explains all the excessive sex and nudity.

You see, the shy and humble scholar wasn’t a shy and humble scholar after all but rather an evil sex demon called Wutung and he’s been using his magical powers to hypnotise the three women into sleeping with him. Oh no! No wonder there was all that nudity. It makes perfect sense… now! Hopefully the women can fight back and destroy him.

Which leads me onto…

Profound Erotic Ramification # 2 — Turning into ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ immediately makes ‘Erotic Ghost Story’ utterly amazing.

It might automatically disqualify the film from scoring any points for searing originality but the concept of a softcore Wuxia version of ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ with a Chinese demon taking on the role of the Devil doesn’t just work but makes total artistic sense. What a great idea! Not only that but it allows Lam to do what he does best and that’s bombard the viewer with a bucket-load of unhinged insanity so, for the last forty minutes or so, we’re hit with everything from exploding monsters, disintegrating heads, churning cloudscapes and, my favourite, pink neon butterflies.

Yep, this is the Lam we all know and love all right and proof, once again, that there was no way on earth Renoir, Kubrick or Tarkovsky could’ve ever produced anything like this.