Remake

I liked this film, though the clumsy subtitles and crummy monster effects were stumbling blocks. After I read a book by Stephen Ambrose about the making of America's trans-continental railroad, though, I saw the perfect time and place for a remake...

Our hero is a railroad engineer turned soldier once the Civil War breaks out. He glances at a skirmish through a fence one day, only to be met with a rebel bullet to the head. He recovers, and is assigned to Indian territory. But he isn't quite merciless enough in dealing with the natives, and is asked to resign. So, the Union Pacific hires him to inspect the progress of the Chinese immigrants working on the railroad in California. When he's caught in a rainstorm one night, he ignores the tales of spirits haunting a hillside, and spends the night in a flimsy shelter there. Long story short, both the Chinese-style ghostbuster and the gorgeous dead girl are in this version immigrants.

I think an American take on this story could deal with a culture clash of the real world, as well as the fantastic. The railroad man tells a Chinese cook that he much prefers the Chinese laborers' taste of home over the Irish laborers' taste of home (aka cabbage soup). The dead girl tells him that she'll rest in peace if her remains are brought back to her birthplace; he replies "You want me to haul your carcass back to China?" Our hero would be a thinly disguised version of Grenville Dodge, one of the main figures in Ambrose's book. One moment from September 1865 sums up both his haplessness and tenaciousness. While he was being chased by Indians through the Black Hills, Dodge tells his guide "If we can save our scalps, I believe we've found a pass through which the Union Pacific can go."

I picture Matt Damon as the railroad man, Sammo Hung as the ghostbuster and Zhang Ziyi as the ghost. Call it...'A Western Ghost Story'.