Hex
Once the home of the wealthy Chan family who served as imperial court officials and worked as merchants, they fell upon harder times with their relocation to Xiguan in Guanzhou province, their fortunes dwindling and with fewer children born in each generation until 1919 when the only remaining heir was Chan Sau Ying, a sickly woman in an unhappy marriage to Yeung Chun Yu, a violent drunkard who feels he was swindled.
Yeung abusive towards their servants, despite devotion to Madame Chan they could no longer tolerate the abuse, respite coming in the form of Leung Kei Wah, daughter of a now deceased servant who has come to pay her respects who becomes an ally, helping Sau Ying stand up to her abusive husband, triggering a series of strange and mysterious tragedies which contribute to the reputation of the house as being haunted and cursed.
Starring Ni Tien as Chan Sau Ying, Jung Wang as Yeung Chun Yu and Szu-Chia Chen as Leung Kei Wah, Hex (Xie, 邪) was released in 1980, produced through the Shaw Brothers Studio, directed by Chih-Hung Kuei from a script co-written with Chin-Hua Tan, a departure from their modern Hong Kong action films to a more traditional form, a ghost story of betrayal and revenge.
With the haunted house expansive and beautifully designed and constructed and the narrative pared down to the central characters, Hex is more coherent and flowing than Black Magic or Oily Maniac, at times beautifully filmed and with the characters more rounded, though this may be in part to a storyline which leans more than a little on Les Diaboliques, though with additional twists to move it into the realm of the supernatural.
The needless comedy gurning of some of the supporting players aside, starting with the visitations of a drowned man in the darkened house the pace is continuous as the bodies pile up, but there are inconsistencies in the final reveal; if matters are being staged, how precisely were decapitated heads and severed limbs executed to add to the atmosphere?
Such nitpicking forgivable in the wake of the bizarre fetishism of the inevitable exorcism scene, blood, breasts and provocative dancing, also of interest is that despite sole credit being given to composer Eddie Wang that the soundtrack primarily consists of cues quite obviously “borrowed” from Jerry Goldsmith, from Alien, themes already partially repurposed from Goldsmith’s own Freud, and Star Trek The Motion Picture.
Hex will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 5th December
