Wrong Turn

Liu Xuehua was originally from Beijing and had moved to Hong Kong when she was five years old. After passing the audition for Great Wall's actor training class, she debuted alongside several other young women. She had filmed a few movies since then, but fame had continually eluded her. She hadn't understood before, but now she did: there was no real future with a left-wing company. Her contract was set to expire next year, and she had already decided not to renew it. Standing at 170 centimeters tall and just twenty-one years old, Liu Xuehua was pure and lovely. In truth, her features could carry tragic, tearful roles just as easily as they could project a heroic, spirited demeanor; it was only because she later starred in so many Qiong Yao dramas that she became fixed in people's minds as a stereotype. "Xuehua, over here!" Right then, outside Southern Theatre, Shi Hui waved for her to come over and smiled. "You look so pretty today. That's a lovely skirt." "I just bought it." "You should wear skirts more often. You're tall and slender, so you can pull them off—not like me. I'm too short." Today was the premiere of Wrong Turn. Though called a premiere, they hadn't been able to invite any notable guests. Fu Chi, Shi Hui, and a few others attended alongside the core production crew, making do with just a modest gathering. The director was Mou Dunfei, who had directed under a pseudonym. He was under contract with Shaw Brothers and couldn't openly show his face, so he hadn't come today. This was the same fellow who would later throw his lot in with the leftists and direct Men Behind the Sun. The group went inside and headed up to the second-floor box. After sitting for a while and seeing that the audience remained sparse and scattered, Liu Xuehua gave a quiet inward sigh. Great Wall was being suppressed, and its new releases barely made a ripple. She truly couldn't afford to stay. She looked at Shi Hui. She held deep respect for the older woman, and for now, she simply couldn't bring herself to say the words. "..." Fu Chi and Shi Hui looked at the turnout with equal helplessness. With no money for publicity, compounded by the audience's entrenched prejudice against leftists, their box office numbers over the past two years had been dismal. If a film could cross two million HKD, that was already considered a success. "Are you out of your mind? What the hell did you bring me here to watch a movie for? You planning to defect to the Communists?" "It's a horror flick! It's different!" "What kind of horror movie could Great Wall possibly make? It's just a cheap gimmick, a total waste of money!" "We're already here! Just shut up!" Down below, some young people were bickering. Between Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Lau Kar-leung, there was already more than enough to watch—who still watched left-wing cinema these days? Only old fogies with one foot in the grave who had migrated from the mainland. Watching local films, listening to Cantopop, speaking English, and eating Western food—that was what was trendy. In a grand cinema built for over a thousand people, only about thirty percent of the seats were filled. Before long, the lights dimmed, the silver screen flickered to life, and the Hong Kong special edition of Wrong Turn began! The film opened with a photographer heading to an outlying island to shoot some landscape photos. He was played by an unknown actor—good-looking and muscular was all that mattered. Small as Hong Kong might seem, it actually had plenty of countryside, farmland, and wooded hills, not to mention islands beyond count. The male lead stopped at a small gas station to ask for directions, but the people there were strange and spoke in an unintelligible tongue. Spotting a map on the wall with a small trail marked in red, he decided to follow it. Driving down the dirt track, he suddenly spotted a dead animal by the roadside that had been shot to death, the blood at its throat already dried. While he was examining it in confusion, another car sat stalled right across the middle of the road ahead, and—crash!—he slammed into it. It turned out to belong to a group of vibrant young men and women who had come to camp on the island, only to have their tires punctured by iron spikes. "Whoa, what a babe!" "She's gorgeous! Fair skin, pretty face, and legs for days!" The young audience pointed excitedly at Liu Xuehua on the screen. The other supporting cast members weren't bad-looking either. The core elements of a horror film had already been clearly laid out by a future movie called The Cabin in the Woods: a virgin female lead, a promiscuous female supporting character, a muscled jock, cannon fodder, and a babbling madman. And in a horror movie, you must always believe what the madman says! Wrong Turn followed a similar setup: Liu Xuehua as the virginal female lead, an uninhibited couple, a piece of cannon fodder, an emotionally unstable babbler, and a male lead who was a muscleman with brains. With both cars broken down, neither group could leave. They decided to leave the couple behind to watch the cars while the other four headed forward to seek help. Being lustful and unrestrained, the couple got bored waiting and soon launched into a bout of intense, repetitive physical exertion. A minute later, the woman rested in the car while the man wandered off outside. Realizing he was gone, the woman ventured into the woods to look for him, only to find a bloody severed ear on the ground. A low gasp swept through the auditorium, and before the gasp had even died away, the first mutant cannibal suddenly materialized behind her. Holding a length of wire in his hands, he slipped it over her mouth and jerked it violently backward. Just like the Slit-Mouthed Woman of Japanese legend, the corners of her mouth tore grotesquely wide toward her ears. Her tongue dripped with blood as she was dragged away, struggling in vain. With movies of this kind, the first appeal was tension: keeping the lurking killer's face hidden while the protagonists were hunted down like prey. The second appeal was the kills themselves, which required endless variety. This cannibal's face was kept off-screen, showing only shots of his hulking body. "Holy shit!" "That is brutal!" "The leftists actually made a movie like this? Damn, look at her mouth!" The gasp that had just caught in the audience's throats tumbled over itself before bursting out again, eyes wide in disbelief. Meanwhile, the remaining four discovered a small wooden cabin. Stepping inside, they found it filthy and decrepit. An iron cauldron bubbled with unidentifiable food, and jars were filled with what looked like organs soaking in brine. The female lead noticed a group photograph that appeared to depict a married couple and their children, but none of the children looked quite normal. "The people in this photo look so strange!" "What's wrong with them?" "I can't put my finger on it, but they're just bizarre!" Chen Qi had planted various details hinting that the cannibals were the descendants of Japanese soldiers—such as battered helmets and sushi-making molds inside the cabin. Indulging his own dark sense of humor, he had packed in quite a few touches. Sensing something was wrong, the four were just about to flee when the cannibal drove back in a Japanese military truck, carrying the two game animals he had caught—the promiscuous couple. The four had no choice but to hide and watch the cannibal prepare a piece of dark cuisine: human sushi! "Whoa!" Howls of shock rippled through the cinema. In this era, a film like this went far beyond anything they had ever conceived, and some people were already catching on. "Are they supposed to be Japanese?" "Must be! Who else is that perverted?" "Sushi! Holy crap!" Once the cannibal had eaten his fill, he dropped into a deep, snoring sleep. The four tried to slip away under cover of his slumber, but they ended up waking the mutants, setting off a relentless pursuit. One by one, the group was picked off until only the male and female leads remained. Inside another room, the two uncovered documents, photographs, and journals revealing that during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, this place had been established as a biological and chemical warfare experimentation facility. When the Japanese military was defeated and withdrew, they sought to destroy the evidence by wiping out the researchers along with it. As it happened, a man and a woman miraculously survived, but their bodies had already mutated. They retreated into seclusion here and had children. Their offspring had then bred incestuously, ultimately producing an eight-year-old giant of a child. "Damn, I told you they were Japanese!" "Something that sick isn't surprising at all coming from them!" Some even cursed in Mandarin and mainland dialects: "Kill those Japanese devils!" The leads in Wrong Turn were that rare breed who possessed both courage and cunning. Working together, they managed to kill two of the cannibals, leaving only the eight-year-old giant child. Shedding the frail persona of her past roles, Liu Xuehua gunned the engine and rammed the vehicle forward with brutal force, slamming the cannibal against the wall over and over. Meanwhile, the male lead picked up an antique rifle left behind by the Japanese and blew the fuel tank apart with a single shot. Boom! To save on costs, there was no massive explosion sequence, but it was passably satisfying. The two finally finished off their tormentor and escaped with their lives. At ninety minutes, the film was not long. Its pacing was tight, hitting the audience with wave after wave of suspense and giving them barely a moment to catch their breath. Only as the credits rolled did the viewers finally exhale, the visceral shock having sent their brains into a state of heightened stimulation. In common parlance: that was a blast! "What a badass movie!" "Told you it was worth coming! And you were bitching at me. Next time, I'm bringing my girlfriend!" "Too gross for me. I'm never watching that again!" "I thought it was pretty good—super thrilling! Great Wall actually delivered this time. What was that garbage they used to put out? I came to watch a movie, not to get preached at." The audience filtered out in twos and threes. Watching them from upstairs, Fu Chi felt a sudden intuition despite the modest turnout: this film was going to make money! Western-style horror had generally seen mediocre reception in Hong Kong, but it commanded a diehard base of loyal fans. And relative to its shoestring budget, the return on investment would be substantial. "Xuehua, you were fantastic!" Shi Hui took Liu Xuehua's hand and praised her warmly. "Just as they say, 'the plum blossom's fragrance comes from the bitter cold.' You're definitely going to make a splash with this film." "I..." Liu Xuehua hesitated. She had intended to say that she was planning to leave, but seeing how things had turned out, it wouldn't hurt to wait and see. Her contract didn't expire until next year anyway. ... In the second half of 1980, the left-wing faction reemerged on the front pages of Hong Kong's film scene and entertainment media in a way no one could have anticipated. The local press used sensational phrasing like "heaven and earth turned upside down; all order shattered" to describe it. "Great Wall, a company that has always loved preaching to its audience, has miraculously seen the light. The fake blood runs a yard deep, the kills are slick and seasoned, the cannibal freaks are oddly charming, and the leads actually have brains. A solid commercial flick—its future looks bright!" "Instead of churning out political propaganda, the leftists have switched to horror. It looks like the atmosphere on the mainland really is changing!" "It's the same thing deep down. In the end, they still pinned it all on the Japanese—though pinning it on them isn't wrong. Personally, I loathe the Japanese!" Huang Zhan also chimed in with his commentary: "Bolder than local productions, leaning toward an American style, and well aligned with the mainland's current climate. Judged purely as a film, outside of the rough edges born of a low budget, it stands as a quality piece of work." Though Huang Zhan had penned "My Chinese Heart," he had actually leaned right-wing in his earlier years before later turning left. He had even joined a right-wing organization once, only to quit after a short stint when he discovered that behind all their high-minded talk of freedom and democracy, the reality inside was utter nonsense! Regardless of the reasons, Wrong Turn became a minor hit. Especially after ten days in theaters, its box office gross crossed the two-million-dollar mark—already the best result the leftists had seen in recent years. They had no illusions of matching the heights of Jackie Chan's blockbusters; reaching four or five million would be more than enough to satisfy them. "That young comrade has given us quite a magnificent gift!"