And since Category III movies were mostly exploitative, many representative titles were essentially horror movies. Category III movies stoked Hongkongers' manifold pre-handover anxieties: job insecurity, foreign neighbors, unaffordable or slum-like apartments, and promiscuity. Trends begat new or mutated trends, with or without auteur-related assistance; some other formative black magic titles include Shaw Brothers productions like Black Magic (1975) and Seeding of a Ghost (1983), the latter of which was retroactively graded Category III. (6)Category III expert Mike Leeder emphasizes the well-publicized triad gang-related violence that captured the imagination of both news readers and Category III audiences. Ghosts and black magic still occasionally cropped up in 21st-century Hong Kong productions, like the grim throwback Gong Tau: An Oriental Black Magic (2007) or the broad ghost comedy Coffin Homes (2021).

Source: Los Angeles Times September 16, 2022 18:06 UTC