The Ghost with Six Fingers: Part 1

Part of the 1960s trend for adapting martial arts novels into Cantonese film series, The Ghost with Six Fingers: Part One was the most successful of the bunch, before the New Wave Mandarin series started to hit the scene. The film has an unusual opening: an itinerant husband and wife couple working as bodyguards are hired by a rich man to guard and deliver an empty box. Inevitably, they find themselves sucked ever deeper into a bitter and complex dispute. The viewer, in turn, is drawn deep into a vivid imaginary world, where the sound of a lute has the power to render men unconscious and an evil martial arts master takes on the form of Yama, King of Hell. At one point, the couple rise up as candles and turn the space around them into a sea of fire; this is the kind of bold cinematic effect not seen in Cantonese wuxia films other than those by Chan Lit-ban.