Chinese Horror Explained Ep 01 - MARIONETTE TEACHER

Welcome our series on Chinese Horror Movies Explained. In this series I am going to explore the wacky, silly and crazy world of C-Horror movies and explain to you how the filmmakers get around the strict regulations and censorship imposed upon them by the Chinese government.

For the first episode I am going to introduce you to two big players in the Chinese horror movie industry. First is the production house Filmoon, who are responsible for most of the horror movies we will explore in the series. The second is a director by the name of Shilei Lu, a man who helmed 6 remarkably wild, crazy and downright ridiculous horror films. Throughout this series, we will eventually look at all of them.

This episode is about a film called “Haunted Dormitory: Marionette Teacher”. This is the second movie in the Haunted Dormitory franchise, which unfortunately only consists of two movies.

Marionette Teacher tells the story of a ghost woman in a white dress with a burnt and disfigured face. She hunts after the pretty girls on the campus for their skin, hoping to make it her own.

When she kidnaps Xiao Cha, her friends go on a mission to find her. They stumble across a forbidden house on campus grounds where the cries of the ghost woman can be heard at night. They know they must save Xiao Cha before its too late, and with the help of their art teacher Gu Yuan, they piece together the mystery of the Marionette Teacher.

Is it a horror? Is it a thriller? Is it any good? The answer to those three questions, plus about a dozen more you haven’t considered asking yet, will be answered in this video below. Enjoy.

If you liked the video and want to see more, check out my weekly column here on All Horror for new episodes or subscribe to my YouTube channel to watch the episodes as they are released, as well as checking out some more of my Asian horror movie reviews and subtitle trailers. Thanks for watching!

The Arty Dans

I've decided to dedicate my horror movie knowledge to Chinese horror movies - from the mainland, not Hong Kong or Taiwan. These are the stranger than strange, the weirder than weird and the badder than bad! Can they even be classed as horror films?