The film that saved Hong Kong’s Cantonese cinema, Chor Yuen’s House of 72 Tenants recalled

Chor Yuen’s House of 72 Tenants beat Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon at the box office, and not making it in Mandarin proved a turning point

Reading Time:4 minutes

A still from The House of 72 Tenants (1973). Chor Yuen’s film took in more money in Hong Kong than Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, and the decision to make it in Cantonese and not Mandarin was a pivotal one for the city’s film industry. Photo: Celestial Pictures

Published: 6:15pm, 14 Jul 2024Updated: 11:07am, 15 Jul 2024

Chor Yuen is best known today for the imaginative martial arts films he began making in the late 1970s, such as The Sentimental Swordsman. But the late Hong Kong director had a long and distinguished career that covered all genres and stretched back to the 1950s.

His biggest – and perhaps most unexpected – hit came in 1973, with The House of 72 Tenants, a Cantonese-language update of a Shanghainese stage comedy from China’s Republican era (1912-49).

The film, a witty and comedic social drama about a group of tenants taking on a vicious landlady and her shady husband, topped Hong Kong film charts in 1973, taking in more money in the city than any of Bruce Lee’s releases.

It also revived the fortunes of Cantonese-language films in Hong Kong, which audiences had abandoned in the late 1960s in favour of the slick Mandarin-language productions made by Shaw Brothers, which also co-produced Chor’s film.

“The film broke the Hong Kong box-office record of the time,” Chor recalled in the Hong Kong Film Archive’s Oral History Series. “Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon [1972] made HK$5.3 million, whereas my film grossed HK$5.6 million. [Studio boss] Mr [Run Run] Shaw was so happy he got drunk.”

Chor’s film also kept Lee’s 1973 release Enter the Dragon, which only took HK$3.3 million, from the top spot.