film archival // 珊瑚岛上的死光 (death ray on coral island, 1980)

Aug 13, 2025
Original Poster for 珊瑚岛上的死光
Original Poster for 珊瑚岛上的死光.

TL;DR — I have managed to track down a copy of this film, translated it and published full English subtitles for free online.

珊瑚岛上的死光 (pinyin: shanhu dao shang de shi guang) — known in English as “Death Ray on Coral Island” (dir. Hongmei Zhang, 1980) was the first science fiction film made in post-1949 China, as part of a brief golden age of Chinese science fiction under the early years of Deng Xiaoping. It was adapted from a short story of the same name authored by Tong Enzheng, the first-ever science fiction story published in China’s official literary magazine “Renmin wenxue” (available here).

As far as I am aware, the only ever English translation of the film was as part of MoMA's Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction series presented in the summer of 2017, where it was screened with subtitles. MoMA speculates that this was an unofficial North American theatrical release of the film.

I have managed to procure this film and published a full translation with subtitles. I suspect that these are the first publicly available English subtitles for the film.

where can i watch it?

Here's where you can watch the film online, with English subs, along with some other links:

This work was not done alone: my own Mandarin is limited to “Ni Hao.” I would like to extend my personal thanks to 紅蓮 (Iris) for a speedy and thorough translation, and to my homegirl ZP for connecting us.

Tracking down the film proved surprisingly difficult—all of the private trackers I'm on did not host it, and I am not really sure where the present recording of the film was produced (it seems to have been recorded by hand, and I would not be surprised if it was captured via recording a projected screen). The film does not seem to have been made available on any Chinese platform such as iQIYI or Youku either. Eventually, like all hidden things on the internet, I was able to follow a (now defunct) link to a VK upload.

A full live translation was made by 紅蓮 through simply watching and transcribing the English translation directly into an SRT reader. Once this was done, I was able to watch the film and fix the various timing and presentation issues into a new SRT file through Subtitle Edit Online. Of all the various SRT editors I have tried, this one seems to be the best (despite not supporting keyboard shortcuts).

In case you choose to republish the film with subtitles, here is how I would prefer to be credited:

  1. Procurement: naman kumar
  2. Translation: 紅蓮
  3. Subtitling: 紅蓮, naman kumar
  4. And very special additional thanks to Zhanpei Fang!

There seems to have been some scattered academic and media coverage of the film, a list of which I have curated below.

  1. Inverse, China’s First Sci-Fi Movie Called Out Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Laura Sirikul, published Jan. 20, 2024.
  2. Zhang J. Death Ray on a Coral Island as China’s First Science Fiction Film. In: Fritzsche S, ed. The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film. Liverpool University Press; 2014:39-55.
  3. Corey Byrnes. Imagined Islands and the Potential Nation. In: positions 2025; 11818962. Duke University Press.
© 2026 naman kumar
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