Spooky, Spooky (1988)

 Spooky, Spooky (1988)

Chinese Title: 鬼猛腳

Translation: Ghost Kick (or Ghostly Foot)

Starring: Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting, Anthony Chan Yau, Wu Ma, Joyce Mina Godenzi, Tina Lau Tin-Lan, Chung Fat, Mars, Yuen Wah, Corey Yuen Kwai, Richard Ng Yiu-Hon, Billy Lau Nam-Kwong, Pauline Wong Yuk-Wan, Teddy Yip Wing-Cho

Director: Sammo Hung

Action Director: Sammo Hung’s Stuntman Association

Spooky, Spooky is an odd little horror-comedy coming out at a time when the Mr. Vampire films were popular and A Chinese Ghost Story was also inspiring more than its fair share of clones and rip-offs. Produced by Sammo Hung’s production company Bojon films—and distributed by Golden Harvest—the movie feels like a mixture of The Evil Dead and Mr. Vampire, with a large emphasis placed on demonic possession.

The movie starts off a century ago, where a nobleman (Heart of Dragon’s James Tien) catches his wife (Pauline Wong, of Stage Door Johnny and Return of the Evil Fox) in bed with one of his servants. The servant is placed in a sealable wicker basket and tossed into the sea. The wife tries to flee the scene, only to drown in quicksand.

Switch to the modern day. Rookie police officer Wong Siu-Ming (Alfred Cheung, of Her Fatal Ways and Pom Pom and Hot Hot) has been assigned to the West Bay area of Hong Kong, which is a rural beach community. There are two other cops working there: Old Master (Wu Ma, of any and everything Sammo made in the 80s) and Inspector (Anthony Chan, of Mr. Vampire Saga 4). Inspector is their boss, the arrogant little prick. On Wong’s first day on duty, the drowned body of a young woman is discovered on the beach. Inspector has Wong accompany the body to the morgue (in the city) and oversee the autopsy.

The coroner is a quirky dude named Queency (Chung Fat, of Yes, Madam! and The Magnificent Butcher). Queency declares the official cause of death to be drowning, but comments on the side that he thinks it was murder. Pointing to some bruises on the woman’s ankle, he suggests that she was dragged under by a water demon, which the subtitles call a “nix” (after the Germanic water spirit that acts like both a merman and a siren). When Officer Wong returns to the West Bay, he tries to shut down the beach, to the dismay of the Village Chief (The Killer’s Teddy Yip). This leads to a bizarre comic segment in which some of the village women try to accuse Officer Wong of sexual assault in order to get him in jail and stop him from closing down the beach. He is saved in the nick of time by the arrival of Sergeant Pak (Joyce Mina Godenzi, of Slickers vs Killers and Eastern Condors), who does some fast talking of her own to expel the townspeople from the police station.

At about this point, the ghost of the unfaithful wife reappears and takes a liking to Wong. This culminates in the ghost taking over the body of an old friend of Wong’s (Tina Lau, of The Spooky Bunch and Love Massacre). She tries to seduce Wong, but it ends up becoming a supernatural kung fu duel between her and Sergeant Pak. Old Master is able to defeat the ghost by shooting the body with bullets dipped in vermillion (sucks to be Tina). At about the same time, Queency arrives dressed in a brown jumpsuit and a Taoist Proton Pack…and together they all find the ghost’s skeleton in the quicksand and give it a proper burial. But then the nix (i.e. the ghost of the drowned lover), who has been the one dragging swimmers to a water doom, leaves his oceanic grave in search of vengeance…

Spooky, Spooky is one of those Hong Kong horror oddities that is not particularly scary, but is filled with all sorts of strange imagery and gross bodily fluids. I mean, this is a movie where a monster belches what looks like an octopus (made of acid) and attaches itself to a character and dissolves his flesh. In the film’s most famous scene, mentioned in Thomas Weisser’s Asian Cult Cinema, a severed hand takes on a mind of its own (Evil Dead II style) and sneaks into Richard Ng’s pants and masturbates him.

There is some action, courtesy of the Hung Ga Ban, specifically Yuen Wah, Chin Kar-Lok and Hsiao Ho. Don’t expect much drawn-out kickboxing action, but there are lots of choreographed falls and throws, with the actors (and their stunt doubles) being tossed against (and through) walls and onto furniture. And as expected in an 1980s film directed by Sammo Hung, when people fall on the ground (or a table or a couch), it is always in the most painful looking way possible. 

Fans of the Mr. Vampire franchise should enjoy this, but fight fanatics who want something more along the lines of Encounter the Spooky Kind (and its sequel), should probably stick to those films. Unless you like Hong Kong horror hijinks and WTF Cinema in general.