The title of this movie is quite blatant and truly earns its MA rating. This is most definitely a movie for adults only considering the number of nudity scenes that are in it. The western mind has a conception that the naked body is not good to look at. In a way I agree and in another I disagree. Firstly, with our sinful nature, the naked body incites lust with in us and leads us into sexual sin. On the other hand God did create the naked body and it is a thing of beauty. To me the naked body is a thing of beauty, but it is not lustful, but I will not go into that.
There are a few interesting things in this movie, the main thing I wish to discuss is sex. First though I wish to outline the plot so that we know what is going on. Three vixen spirits must abstain from pointless lust for thirty-six days or else they will revert to their former vixen form and remain that way for eternity. So they go on a retreat to meditate. One of them, So So, goes into a temple of the god Wulung and lusts over him. She is then later met by a Taoist who warns her that because she is not human it is dangerous for her to do such things. She ignores his warning and later her and her two sisters, Fe Fe and Fei Fei, meet a scholar whom they fall in love with. I won't go into anything else for I might give away too much of the movie. One may think that there is no plot and this movie is just an excuse for explicit sex scenes, but it is not. There is a very interesting plot behind it.
Sex in this movie is seen as evil. The scholar cries out to So So when she begins to seduce him that she is chaste and virtuous and is not supposed to do this. This is true, yet it is not. She is not married to the guy and thus her action is not an act of love but rather one of self-satisfying lust – the thing that they are supposed to abstain from. Sex on the other hand is not evil, God created it for married couples: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and become united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." (Gen 2:24). This is before the fall of humanity (Gen 3) and thus it was given to us by God as a gift to enjoy with our husband or wife. Further, Paul commands us: "Do not deprive each other (husband and wife) except for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self control" (1 Cor 7:5,6). Of course all of this is pigs to the pearls, but through this I hope to show you that there is nothing evil with sex, just with the way it is used.
Erotic Ghost Story is a Hong Kong version of Witches of Eastwick. The plots are a little similar, though the unfolding of the story comes a little differently. In Witches, the three women are just single women who are seduced by a witch while in Erotic Ghost Story the women are spirits. The scenes are much more explicit in this movie, but this is the Americanism trying to blind us to the truth. In some ways the explicity of this movie is bad, but Hong Kong cinema is much more daring than Hollywood and that is why I like it.
