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Ning Tsai-Shen, a humble tax collector, arrives in a small town to carry out his work. Unsurprisingly, no-one is willing to give him shelter for the night, so he ends up spending the night in the haunted Lan Ro temple. There, he meets Taoist Swordsman Yen Che-Hsia, who warns him to stay out of trouble, and the beautiful Nieh Hsiao-Tsing, with whom he falls in love. Unfortunately, Hsiao-Tsing is a ghost, bound for all eternity by a hideous tree spirit with an incredibly long tongue that wraps itself round its victims and sucks out their life essence (or ‘yang element’)…

“Ground-breaking fantasy based on the ghost stories of the popular Ming Dynasty writer Pu Song-ling. Leslie Cheung plays a naive young tax collector who takes shelter in a haunted temple and falls in love with a beautiful ghost (Joey Wong), herself the captive of a thousand-year-old tree demon with a life-sapping tongue. Coming to the couple’s aid is a Taoist monk who battles the evil spirits with sword and scripture.” – Fredric Dannen, Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider’s Guide to the Hollywood of the East

“The quintessential merger of the traditional Chinese ghost story with the Hong Kong pop sensibility.” – Barbara Scharres