Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Honourable Mention: Magic Girl



Magic Girl, or Ling Huan Shao Nu, was released in 1992 and was directed by Wang Cheng. It’s technically Hello Dracula 6, given it is the sixth film with Chin Tu (Magic of Spell) as Grandfather and a return of Shadow Liu Chih-Yu as Tien Tien (translated to Candy in the subtitles that I saw). She played her character as a younger version in Hello Dracula 4 (King of the Children) but the character was primarily played by an older actress. The character became younger again in The 3D Army but was played by a different actress altogether. To confuse things more, the HKMDb lists this as Hello Dracula 5, ignoring 3D-Army’s place in the series. The familial background story is again changed.

However, unlike the other films, which all had a large amount of kyonsi activity, this has a single scene at the beginning, making it a fleeting visitation and an honourable mention.

held by the tree

The film starts with Tien Tien in bed; she is woken and thinks her father is moving through the house. A Taoist artefact placed by her flashes a light, and so she gets up to see a figure passing through the outside door and she decides to follow by flying. She lands in the woods and a tree sends out tendrils and grabs her. This causes some creatures to emerge (perhaps spirits, non-vampiric revenants or something else) who are going to eat her. She fights back breaking from the tree and defeating her foes.

kyonsi

They run off but it is likely that their retreat had more to do with the figure emerging from the forest. Tien Tien believes it to be her father but, when she approaches it, she realises it is a vampire and she has to fight it. She eventually punches it and actually punches her adopted older sister Yuan Yuan in the eyes, giving her black eyes. It was a dream and, as it is later implied that her father is dead, could only have been such. That is the only fleeting vampiric activity in the film.

The imdb page is here.

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