1982 Started from Hong Kong

Chapter 32 I Spit on Your Grave

"Brother Yuan, this is the videotape you asked me to buy."

Liang Zhichao carried a black plastic bag and ran to the temporarily abandoned video room on the third floor and placed the videotapes he had bought on the table.

"Why just that little?"

"This is the most complete collection of foreign videotapes I could find after searching through several stores. Not many people buy foreign tapes, so the boss just found them from the warehouse."

He brought back six videotapes in total, and the titles on the boxes were all in English.

Zhai Yuan's English is very poor, not to mention Liang Zhichao and Chen Jiale. What's more, the film titles are often different from the dubbed titles.

For example, the movie "Leon" is translated as "Leon the Professional" in mainland China, "Léon: The Professional" in Hong Kong, and "The Pursuit" in Taiwan.

So at this moment, facing the English title of the film, the three of them stared at each other in amazement.

"Let's put it aside and take a look."

Zhai Yuan stood up, inserted a videotape into the machine, turned on the TV and started watching it carefully.

The logo of an unfamiliar production company appeared on the screen.

The movie opens with a strange car chase scene. The male protagonist who escapes death comes to a bar and has a hand-to-hand action scene with a dancer in the bathroom. Then a killer chases him, and the male protagonist escapes with the dancer...

Liang Zhichao felt so bored.

Chen Jiale also felt very bored.

Because there were no subtitles and the director used montages from time to time, they had no idea what was going on.

Zhai Yuan was slightly better than them, and could occasionally understand one sentence: Don’t eat the sour radish.

"Brother Yuan, please go in and watch the sex scene."

Liang Zhichao said this while yawning, and Chen Jiale nodded in agreement.

Zhai Yuan understood them very well. It was like no one could finish watching a Japanese love action movie, especially without subtitles.

But now three people are taking on the challenge of doing just that.

"We are working now, and work itself is a very boring thing."

Zhai Yuan thought he had said something very philosophical, but the only response he got was Liang Zhichao's soft snoring.

Zhai Yuan watched the first movie with all his might. Based on his experience, he could barely judge that it was a low-cost movie about a killer's revenge on an organization, interspersed with bloody and erotic scenes.

If all the actors were replaced with East Asian faces and spoke in local dialects, the box office should not be too bad.

"Let's see what the next one is like."

I put on the second videotape, and it turned out to be a zombie movie, about an alien spaceship flying over a cemetery, and the corpses resurrected one after another...

It sounds very gimmicky, but the plot is even more difficult to describe. Apart from the highlights at the beginning, the main film is entirely advanced by the protagonist detective investigating the reasons for the disappearance of the corpse. There are large sections of incomprehensible dialogues and the actors' awkward acting. Until the end of the film, the director may have seen that there was no way to end it, so he simply cut a missile launch shot from other documentaries to smash the alien spacecraft and end the film.

There isn't even a sex scene.

Liang Zhichao and Chen Jiale both slept soundly.

"It's like finding gold in shit. I'm afraid this is one of the reasons why film producers are reluctant to introduce foreign films."

In some exciting novels of later generations, it is often written that the protagonist travels through time and becomes a big hit in his home country by relying on well-known foreign movies.

Zhai Yuan only now realized that this was pure bullshit.

Most of the titles of foreign films were translated only during the rise of the Internet.

This means that even if Zhai Yuan now knows that the movie "HP Lovecraft's Re-Animator" is about to lead a wave of zombie movies, if he cannot say the exact English title "HP Lovecraft's Re-Animator" and knows the regions where the movie has been shown, it will be almost impossible to find the original movie, and he can only watch it one by one like he is doing now.

Zhai Yuan yawned, lit up the red candle, and continued the third round of torture.

The third movie is a black and white special effects film, the boss is an octopus monster, and the plot is brief.

The fourth movie tells the story of a transvestite man who steals his wife’s clothes to wear. The plot is brief.

"Get up! Watch with me!"

While changing the tape, Zhai Yuan kicked Liang Zhichao and Chen Jiale respectively. He felt like he was going to smash the TV if he didn't vent his anger.

Then came the fifth movie. As soon as the movie started, the bright city scene made Zhai Yuan's heart move.

It looks familiar.

The camera pans and shows a woman in a red dress loading her luggage into the trunk of her car with the help of a hotel waiter.

Then there is a road scene where the car drives into a gas station in the countryside, and several men at the gas station stare at the woman with ill intentions.

"Damn! I finally struck gold!"

Zhai Yuan only watched the first few minutes, slammed the table excitedly, stood up and waved his fist vigorously.

Liang Zhichao and Chen Jiale were horrified. They thought Zhai Yuan was driven insane by this rubbish Western movie.

Liang Zhichao quickly distanced himself from the matter: "It's none of my business. He was the one who insisted that I buy it."

Zhai Yuan was too lazy to pay attention to the two of them and quickly took out the videotape that had just started from the VCR.

He took a piece of white paper, wrote a few Chinese characters on it, and then pasted it on the original English title of the videotape.

Liang Zhichao came forward and read: "I abandon your grave..."

That’s right, the film in this videotape is a classic cult movie that was released in the United States in 1978 and later remade in many countries and spawned various sequels:

I Spit on Your Grave

The plot of this movie is actually very simple. It tells the story of a female writer, Jennifer, who was raped by four men while on vacation in a cabin by the river. She then embarked on the road of revenge and cruelly killed all four scums.

If it is released in the future, it will be a complete heroine revenge movie, comparable to "Kill Bill" directed by a foot fetishist.

But after the film was released in 1978, it was rated as the worst film in history by mainstream Europe and the United States due to violence, swearing, nudity and other reasons.

Zhai Yuan felt that even if he dug out his eyeballs and stepped on them, he would not say such blind words.

If I Spit on Your Grave is the worst movie ever made, then what are the first four movies I just watched?
"Take this to the Walled City to inform Lawyer Shen that you can start what I asked you to do."

Write down the movie title in Chinese and English, as well as the distribution company, on a piece of paper.

Zhai Yuan handed the note to Liang Zhichao and asked him to rush to the walled city with Chen Jiale.

"Brother Yuan, aren't you coming with us?" Liang Zhichao asked.

"I have other things to do, so I may not be able to get back tonight. You don't have to wait for me."

As Zhai Yuan spoke, he stuffed the videotape of "Grave" into his arms, and the three of them walked out of the housing estate together.

……

Half an hour later, Zhai Yuan took a car to the Qingshui Bay TV City of TVB, commonly known as the Zhao Studio.

"Sir, how can I help you?"

As we approached the TV city, two security guards approached immediately.

Although the security guard's tone was polite, his eyes were somewhat alert. He looked Zhai Yuan up and down, obviously thinking he was a young star-chaser.

"I'm here to see Uncle Zhong, Li Zhongqiang."

Zhai Yuan said a name, and then said, "I have an appointment."

The two security guards relaxed a little after hearing this: "So you are looking for Uncle Zhong. Wait a moment, I will call the dubbing department."

The security guard dialed the internal number and briefly explained the situation to the person on the other end.

Not long after, a middle-aged man in his forties quickly came to the gate of the studio, looked around, and his eyes fell on Zhai Yuan who was standing at the door.

"Hello, Uncle Zhong. I'm Zhai Yuan, who saw your ad in the newspaper and called to make an appointment with you."

Zhai Yuanchong waved to Li Zhongqiang, the foreman of Zhao's dubbing department, and took the initiative to introduce himself.

Li Zhongqiang's face changed when he heard this. He took Zhai Yuan in his arms and walked a few steps away, then looked back at the entrance of the studio.

Seeing that no one noticed him, the man in his forties actually showed a hint of fear:
"Handsome, didn't I tell you to come after dark? Are you trying to kill me by coming here so early? If Manager Fang knew that I was taking private jobs without the company's knowledge, she would definitely deduct all my salary this month!"

(End of this chapter)