In short: Taxi Hunter (1993)

Original title: 的士判官

Mild mannered insurance salesman Ah Kin (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang) seems to have regular run-ins with Hong Kong taxi drivers. As the film portrays them, taxi drivers are basically a gang of greedy scammers and rapists, and Ah Kin is so good-natured, he is an obvious victim for any bully. When his pregnant wife (Perrie Lai Hoi-San) dies in a brutal taxi driver caused incident, Ah Kin at first falls into a deep hole of depression and alcohol not even his best friend, hero cop Yu Kai Chung (Yu Rongguang) can get him out of.

He gets somewhat better when he throttles yet another asshole taxi driver in a spur of the moment loss of sanity. Made somewhat happier by the deed, Ah Kin starts on a new side-line as a serial killer, punishing taxi drivers with bad professional ethics whenever he encounters them. He’s rather realistically not really great at physical violence, so much so he’ll eventually buy a gun to make kills meet.

If you go into Herman Yau’s serial killer movie Taxi Hunter expecting something as dedicated to the gross-out as the director’s The Untold Story (made in the same year as this one, also starring Wong) or his later Ebola Syndrome, you might be somewhat disappointed by this one’s often consciously awkward and comparatively quiet violence. Yau actually has quite a talent for staging more awkwardly realistic action in a dramatic and exciting way, and he uses this ability to pull the serial killer thriller down on the level of the human.

In fact, Taxi Hunter’s greatest strength does not lie in its moments of suspense and mild horror – expertly as Yau works them – but in the way the film has a humanizing view on each of its main characters, showing so much – often unexpected - compassion for Ah Kin, his best friend who is of course the cop tasked with catching the taxi hunter, Kai Chung’s comic relief partner (Ng Man-Tat), and the partner’s reporter daughter (Athena Chu Yun), the whole film ends up playing like a tragedy much more than your typical serial killer or revenge movie. Unless you’re a Hong Kong cab driver, then you’re apparently just an asshole (though killing you is still wrong, as Kai Chung will explain).

This unexpected amount of humanism is packaged inside of a fast-paced Hong Kong thriller that flows so well, for once even the comedic interludes fit.

Haunted Mansion (1998)

Original title: 香港第1凶宅

Permanently low key squabbling married couple journalist Gigi (Gigi Lai Chi) and marine cop Fai (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang) have to blow off their long planned holiday in Japan when Gigi decides they’ll move into her mother’s house for a time instead. There’s good reason for the surprise move, though, for a sleazy and murderous developer really, really wants the place and will do anything to get it. Whereas Gigi’s Mom (Helena Law Lan), once clearly an imposing woman, is in the late stages of Parkinson’s and can’t even talk and hardly move anymore, and Gigi’s sister Fen (Shirley Cheung Yuk-Shan) needs to take care of her.

That developer is only a sub-plot, though, for Mom’s house is built on a gate to hell, and with the place’s protections weakening because she can’t take care of them properly anymore, some ghosts get a little rambunctious. So you can expect a mahjong game against ghosts that ends badly, some spiritual possession, a ghost rape (sigh) because this is a Wong Jing production (sigh), and so on.

Haunted Mansion is the only film Do Lai-Chi/Dickson To directed, and only one of two he has written, and watching this, it is not particularly difficult to understand why. The concept of dramatic escalation, or really, providing the film’s narrative with any kind of proper dramatic structure is clearly not something the guy is terribly interested in. Stuff happens, more stuff happens, and some of the stuff that happens in the end has some connection to stuff that happened earlier, but the storytelling, such as it is, is so loose, you never feel there are any stakes here at all even when Gigi is fighting for the soul of her husband.

That doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had with the film, you just should expect it to be even looser constructed as usual in popular Hong Kong cinema. It also looks pretty damn cheap. Making up a little for this lack of dramatic punch (or even dramatic wisps) are some joyful moments and elements - at least joyful for me. There is Anthony Wong’s full commitment to playing Fai as the kind of slouching, passive sad sack whose possession by a ghost his wife will barely notice for quite some time because in Hong Kong cinema, being possessed by a ghost can mean getting really phlegmatic and passive instead of shouty and floaty, and that’s Fai in any state. The biggest difference is really that Fai isn’t talking about his excrements anymore once he gets possessed. It’s the little things, I suppose.

I also found myself somewhat fond of To’s full commitment to the colour blue for ghostly shenanigans in a film that’s tinted blue anyway – don’t worry, he also tends to tilt the camera in important moments, if you have trouble discerning the blue tones. And if Wong Jing doesn’t give you any money for your ghostly game of mahjong (and he clearly didn’t), why, then just hang up some white sheets, put a red point light on Anthony Wong’s face, and let the magic happen.

While nothing here really plays out as crazy (or as icky) as I usually hope from Hong Kong horror of this era, the film isn’t completely without interesting imagination. Apart from the rather traditional mahjong game (what is it with Chinese ghosts and this particular game anyway?), we also get a scene of Mom’s ghost getting pushed out of her body by the application of the magic of electricity (Tesla would be so proud), so that Law can do a bit more than sit in a chair and drool, which I appreciate, as well as some creepy child ghost action.

Speaking of creepy child ghost, if you are offended by this sort of thing (and who could blame you?), please be warned that this is one of those Asian movies where one of the central ghosts belongs to an aborted foetus (grown to about eight or so, because this is only a CAT IIB movie), the plot rather heavily suggesting that abortion is a very bad thing spiritually. Though, frankly, the film uses the trope with all the honesty of a US TV preacher, and really only wants to get a few cheap tears out of the audience.


All of this doesn’t read much like a recommendation, and I certainly wouldn’t call Haunted Mansion good or successful as a movie, but I found myself enjoying the vague and brittle charms of this one, noticed myself chuckling about Wong’s sad sack portrayal, nodding companionably to the ghosts, and getting into most of the things the film presented (except for the fucking ghost rape, obviously) enough to not rue my time with it.

In short: Deadly Camp (1999)

Original title: 山狗1999

A group of young ones whose names are of no importance are dropped off on an island for a weekend of camping and partying. It’s going to be so wild, they decide to put all of their cell phones into a plastic bag and let one of them hide them in the jungle.

To nobody’s surprise, that’s a rather horrible idea, for the local chainsaw-wielding leprous serial killer and his mentally disabled son like to kill everyone who comes to the island. Because Anthony Wong needed a pay check - with the added bonus of fondling a much younger actress’ breasts – there are also a triad boss, his two odious comic relief underlings and his girlfriend hanging around to be killed.

Connoisseurs of depravity be warned: this cute little mess was only rated IIB when it came out, so don’t let Anthony Wong’s (short) presence fool you into believing this to be a CATIII schlock fest, nor should his presence confuse non-connoisseurs of depravity fond of Wong’s other acting side into getting their hopes up, either.

For the less refined viewer, Bowie Lau Bo-Yin’s backwoods (backisland?) slasher will probably include more than enough of the tasteless and the unpleasant, though there’s really not much blood and gore. However, it still features awesome moments of “what the hell are they thinking!?” filmmaking, like the scene where Wong tries to save his life by teaching a young mentally disabled man how to rape his tied-up girlfriend; and by teaching, I mean he’s laying hands on penis. I’m happy to report that the only thing this part of the film actually leads to is Wong’s well deserved demise.

Other highlights/low points include a most hilarious use of slow motion in a particularly big third act plot twist reveal, random bouts of melodrama (seriously), characters who hide from their serial killing attackers by having loud shouting matches, deeply unfunny comic relief, and often hilariously awkward direction.
So it’s perfect entertainment for the times when you feel sleazy and a bit unpleasant.