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Fantastic Shin Sang Ok

Thousand Years Old Fox

Shin Sang Ok

Korea1969 89min 35mm Color

Synopsis

Thousand Years Old Fox is remembered to have raised the level of the Korean horror film genre, and also won the popularity. The film won the Director's Award at the 3rd Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia. What is special about this film is the interpretation of a love triangle between a general (a queen's favorite, his wife and the queen, in a horror film framework. His wife, who died due to the queen's persecution, comes back to life in the spirit of a thousand-year-old fox. A contrasting direction of the ghost in Thousand Years Old Fox from the Western horror films: here the ghost does not come from outside, but it rather floats into the body of a woman the general loves. In the Western horror films, the existence of monster/ghost moves into the inside of the family from outside. Out of the traditions of the Korean horror films, the film borrows a mythical structure to depict dual existences of the monster, and through this, it ultimately results in keeping viewers shuddered with horror and interested in the story, which is still relevant even in today's cinematic texture. Thousand Years Old Fox combines horror and nostalgia of melodrama so skillfully, that it effectively imparts a sentiment of "sadness in horror."

Diretor

Shin Sang Ok

He debuted as a director with The Evil Night in 1952, he had made movies throught his life and he established 'the cinematic world of Shin Sang Ok' during the 'Golden Age' of South Korean cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s. Like Howard Hocks in Hollywood, director Shin had huge influence in Koroean film history.