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Lady Ghost. Lady Ghost was created by the Chinese creator Wang Fuqing (Spirit of the Broom) and appeared in the films Nu Sheqinggui (1939) and Xu Nu Sheqinggui (1939).

Lady Ghost is Superhuman Killer Vigilante. A man and his daughter are murdered, leaving the wife and mother to mourn. She vows vengeance, but knows that she cannot achieve it as she is, so she goes to a cemetery of unmarked graves and lies in a coffin for 49 days to achieve the powers of a ghost. This achieved, she uses her new powers to find and kill the man who murdered her daughter and her husband, and then she gives herself up to the police. In the sequel, an adulterous wife and her lover attempt to gaslight the wife’s husband. Her lover even attempts to rape the husband’s daughter (by a previous marriage). To save the husband and daughter, the man’s servant summons Lady Ghost, who promptly kills both the wife and her lover.

* I'm including the Lady Ghost films in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because they are a lot of fun to watch and because they are historically important. Wang Fuqing had a firm grasp on what made a horror film in the 1930s--take a look at his filmography--and the two Lady Ghost films are triumphs of the late-1930s version of horror. (Which has aged only a little, for non-Chinese viewers). They're fun, not least because Lady Ghost's campaign of vengeance is as bloodily cathartic as any such in 20th century film. The Lady Ghost films are also historically important because they are the first horror series in Chinese film history, and provided a model for later Chinese--and Japanese--horror series. There were horror series before the two Lady Ghost films, but they perfected the form. 

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