Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man 牧野诡事之卸甲虎王
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The film's protagonist is Chen Cheng, the last surviving member of the Xieling treasure-hunter clan. His father never returned from an expedition twenty years earlier, and Chen Cheng decided not to follow in his footsteps, but his knowledge is desperately needed by the wealthy merchant Liu Jinshan. Liu is the sole survivor of that ill-fated expedition, but ever since, his body has been tormented by agonizing pain that only a return to the tomb can cure. Chen is certain that Liu is hiding something and refuses to help him, but Jinshan works through his friend, who needs to find medicine for his gravely ill mother.
The popular eight-book series Candle in the Tomb, also known as "Mojin," received an additional volume after its official conclusion, subtitled "Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man," in which their author Zhang Mu-Ye sought to answer the most frequent questions about the world of treasure hunters that readers had been asking him for many years. It was a collection of stories about various sects of tomb raiders, and when Zhang Mu-Ye's books began to be adapted for the screen, filmmakers turned their attention not only to the main series but also to "Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man," which began to be adapted under the same brand. Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man is already the sixth film in this franchise, but, unfortunately, not a very successful one.
Although Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man has no formal connection to the Candle in the Tomb franchise, it fits into it indirectly – at the end of the film, Chen Cheng changes his name to Chen Yu-Lou, and in the world of "Mojin" this is a quite well-known character, a secondary hero of several films in the series and the protagonist of the show Candle In The Tomb: The Wrath Of Time, where he was portrayed by Pan Yue-Ming. In Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man he is played by the fairly popular actor Wei Wei, but, frankly speaking, for him this is obviously far from his best role. Perhaps the reason is that the film somehow immediately betrays that for its creators this was certainly not a work of a lifetime – here everything, from the script, sets and special effects to the staging of the action and its filming, literally screams, if not of negligence, then at least of the fact that the authors, shall we say, were prepared to compromise.
Stories about relatives who disappeared in tombs, with their descendants setting off in pursuit, have long since become tiresome, but Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man with an impassive face heads straight into the same territory. Once again a missing father, once again a search for a cure for an incurable disease, behind which lurks a thirst for immortality, once again ancient curses and deadly insects that are absolutely omnipotent in Chinese online action films – specifically here they make corpses stir, so that in the tomb the heroes will be met by an army of the living dead.
Perhaps this sounds promising, but unfortunately it looks rather poor – the film's budget was obviously not high, so the authors shoot the action however they can, most often resorting to slow motion, with which one can disguise a great deal. It's one thing when slow motion emphasizes some striking shot, helping to examine it in all its glory, but in Ghost Blowing Lamp of the Popeye Man the dominance of slow motion obviously comes not from a good life and only emphasizes the greyness and drabness of the film.
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