A Chinese Ghost Story

A Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂, 1987) is a Hong Kong fantasy-action film you can watch online on iFILM, produced by John Woo and directed by Ching Siu-Tung, with Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong in the lead roles.

Tax collector Ling wanders into a cursed temple for the night and falls hard for Nieh Hsiao-Tsien — a beautiful ghost held captive by a tree demoness who feeds on human souls. A wandering Daoist swordsman takes pity on the pair, but saving Nieh means fighting through waves of the undead and descending into the underworld itself. The romance between a living man and a dead woman is the heart of the story; the sword fights and supernatural set pieces are its backbone.

The film became one of the defining works of 1980s Hong Kong cinema — part ghost story, part wuxia, part dark comedy, with a score that still sounds unlike anything else from the era. It also marked one of Leslie Cheung's first major screen roles before he became a Cantonese pop icon. Stream A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) on iFILM.