Who is this "handsome young man" who was "destined to climb the heights of filmdom" (according to an article in the July, 1961 issue of Southern Screen)? Why it's Ho Fan... um... you know... that guy who played the monk in the Shaw Brothers' four-film adaptation of Journey to the West. Like poor Mark Hammill and his career-defining role as Luke Skywalker, Ho Fan's closest claim to movie star fame was this stint playing straight man to the Monkey King. The role didn't exactly lead to more acting opportunities. In fact, his career slowly petered out after the last Monkey film, The Land of Many Perfumes (1968). Ho did eventually break free of his monk role, not as an actor but as a director... of erotic films. Maybe the seed of lust was planted in him by one of the sexy temptresses that appeared with increasing frequency in the Monkey series. Whatever the cause, Ho eventually found his way back to Shaw Brothers, where he made the artsy Girl with the Long Hair (1975).
However, my reason for posting about Ho Fan is not to plant in your pure minds an image of the venerable monk Xuan Zang shooting soft-core porn. Rather, I want to draw your attention to Ho Fan's career as a photographer. His images of Hong Kong are a stunning testament to his true calling. And it seems that he was also making films long before he played a monk or directed erotic movies. His newest book of photographs, The Living Theater, includes a DVD of a short film he made in 1963.
Further Reading
Review of Monkey Goes West (1966)
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