The Mating Season
Wu Chia-Hsiang’s second film for Shaw swaps the Folk Musical of Sweet and Wild for a Rock Hudson/Doris Day-style modern rom-com. But without any rom. Or com.
Stars Peter Chen Ho and Pat Ting Hung had both been with Shaw Brothers for a long time at this point. Peter Chen Ho, in particular, was Shaw’s main “Modern” lead. And the two had worked together several times since Pat Ting Hung’s Shaw debut in 1959.
Most of those pairings were in romantic comedies. Husband’s Lover, Husband’s Secret, The Tryst all came out within 3 years, suggesting that the pairing was popular. But it appears these films are lost, so we may never know more.
I don’t think they worked together again until this 1966 effortfn1 the first of 4 movies that they made together before Peter Chen Ho’s early death and Pat Ting Hung’s departure from filmmaking.
I don’t think their chemistry is the problem here. This one really falls down at the script level. I suspect that someone figured that re-pairing these two would be enough to sell the movie. So they just kind of riffed on a script and then padded it out with a totally pointless ad for Seiko watches with an unspeaking Ivy Ling Po (both her and the watch are given prime billing on the poster)
What’s left is a comedy with a real lack of jokes. I think I noted two gags that I thought worked. And the romance is not so much romantic but an extended gaslighting sexual assault.
For the last 3rd of the movie Peter Chen Ho pretends to be Japanese, something I suspect that this was funnier to Chinese audiences in 1966. But when your ‘Japanese’ character says he knows Mandarin because he ‘grew up in Northeastern China’..that’s a pretty dark joke, right? It stood out in what is otherwise a frothy mishmash of stereotypes and goofy Japanese mustache jokes.
And it all ends with a ‘comedic’ rape while Take Me Out To the Ballgame plays and we cut to a shot of construction equipment banging a pole in to the ground. Wowza.
However, some credit where it is due. This is the first film with credits designed by Kamber Huang Chin-Ba. She’d worked in art and costume design for the studio (and would continue to do so until the early 70s). But her main role after this movie would be credit design, which she’d do until 1983.
The opening credits are great and really sell what this movie wants to be. That the movie totally fails to live up to those credits is a shame.
fn1: Peter Chen Ho was married to Betty Loh Ti from 1962 to 1967, roughly the same period of time where he did not work with Pat Ting Hung. I do not know if this is coincidence or not.
Ian Whitney
Published: 2025-02-01