Why are we often nostalgic for the 1980s? It is because it was similar to our adolescence.

In the Prime of Youth

After the Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB)-inspired The House of 72 Tenants (1973), a remake of a 1963 film of the same title, unexpectedly grossed HK$5.6 million and broke the then box office record set by Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1972), Cantonese cinema seemed to bounce back from rock bottom low in a market dominated by English and Mandarin films – there were no Cantonese film productions in Hong Kong in 1972. As this was the only Cantonese production out of the ninety-four Hong Kong films released in 1973, it was indeed a pleasant surprise for Cantonese pop culture. It also successfully brought Cantonese films back to Hong Kong cinema. In 1974, out of a total of 101 Hong Kong films, twenty-one were Cantonese productions. The highest-grossing films were Cantonese productions, including the monumental Games Gamblers Play (1974) by the Hui Brothers – Michael Hui and Sam Hui. Even with the success of some Cantonese films, ‘Hong Kong's film industry was still regarded as somewhat depressed’ in the mid-1970s, ‘particularly by young filmmakers who had just returned to the territory after graduating from film schools overseas’. Besides the Hui Brothers’ Cantonese comedies and kind of language-neutral wave of kung fu films triggered by Bruce Lee (his films were dubbed into Mandarin when they premiered in Hong Kong in the early 1970s), Hong Kong cinema had still yet to find new impetus in terms of talents and film genres. It was therefore believed that the Hong Kong film industry had reached a stage of shortage, and a new crop was yet to come.