Possessed II (1984)

Original title: 艷鬼發狂

Full-time misogynist asshole and police inspector Siu (Siu Yuk-Lung) is moving into a new apartment with his pregnant wife Li Chun and their little daughter. It’s clearly a better place for threatening to leave her if the new child isn’t a boy, and berate her for whatever crap comes into his head. Is anyone surprised he’s also cheating on Li Chun with a colleague (Pauline Wong Siu-Fung) at the moment, and that she’s not his first mistress? Ladies and gentlemen, our protagonist, and not even at his worst.

Adding insult to injury, the new apartment is also haunted by the ghost of a former starlet and prostitute (and various co-ghosts). The lady ghost begins possessing Li Chun to violently get back at people for sins decades past. There’s quite a bit of seduction followed by her turning into a hairy lady and killing the seduced involved. The ghost is also causing Li Chun to miscarry, for which Siu of course berates his wife, while also threatening to arrest her for “murdering his child”.

That he’s beginning to suffer from various ghost related troubles really does not trouble this viewer much. Our protagonist being a walking-talking human rights violation notwithstanding, something has to be done against the ghosts before more people die. Two colleagues of his who moonlight as feng shui experts and Buddhist exorcists are not as useful as you’d hope. Fortunately, there’s a magical white guy in form of a Hare Krishna dude (Jayson Case) with an actual reason to care for the affair hanging around the edges of the plot. While the film’s at it, it also provides Siu with an opportunity to better his behaviour.

Where I was complaining that David Lai’s first Possessed was a bit too normal and sensible for my tastes, this second movie triples down on the weirdness much beloved of Hong Kong horror. It’s also a bit confusing: is Siu supposed to be the same cop who didn’t survive the horror movie bullshit ending of the first film? If so, why is he alive? What happened to his sister? When did he have the time for daughter and marriage? If not, why doesn’t the film give him a different name? I’m sure actor Siu Yuk-Lung could have managed being called by a different character name.

Of course, questions like this get lost once the film at hand really gets going. There’s scene after incredible scene: See Possessed Li Chun seduce an overweight butcher and roll around with him in a dark meat wagon! Then watch her turn into the pretty incredible hairy lady monster (surely a Chinese creature I should know)!

Be astonished at racism so bizarre, it’s impossible not to laugh, particularly when our possessed heroine seduces an “African warrior” (or so he tells her), who reacts in ways as embarrassing as they are crack-brained to that situation! All of that happens in between melted faces, crap attempts by Siu to do policework, general spookery of the blue-lit kind, some very mild sex, and a comedic scene in which the feng shui cops attempt to secretly take down a mirror and move a shelf in the apartment while Li Chun is standing right in front of them, and which involves a fake mah-jong session as well as strategically thrown mah-jong stones.

Adding further joy is the perfectly bizarre Hare Krishna business - which will also stick its Hare Krishna theme tune into your brain in ways to never let it leave – featuring said Hare Krishna ghost fighter using all the best hi-tech equipment of ‘84 (absolutely what these guys are known for), as well as a lot of gloopy effects work and general mayhem.

Really, the only way not to enjoy Possessed II is when you work yourself into an offended snit watching it, which I can understand but simply not feel.

In short: Possessed (1983)

Original title: 猛鬼出籠

Following an eventful time with a guy who tries to hack Hong Kong cops Siu (Siu Yuk-Lung) and Kong (Lau Siu-Ming) into pieces while his own head appears to do some rather funky transformation stuff, Siu finds himself haunted by increasingly weird occurrences. At the beginning, he appears to be possessed into bouts of violence not unlike what the man from the initial event was doing, but the supernatural force threatening him quickly begins to move into his apartment like a rather unwanted house guest, ruining Siu’s teenage sister’s (Irene Wan Pik-Ha) attempts at having sex with her boyfriend even worse than Siu’s tendency to threaten said boyfriend with physical violence does. Then there’s the very unpleasant time when an invisible force tortures and rapes Siu’s girlfriend Sue (Chan Chi-Shui).

Eventually, the possession and haunting will turn out to be not quite as random as they at first appear, pointing back to some unresolved family business. Obviously, Siu and his family will end up trying to solve it, with the help of Buddhist practitioner Auntie San (Chan Fung-Bing).

Unlike its sequel (at least in name), David Lai’s Possessed does not belong into the exalted realm of the weirder Hong Kong ghost horror movies of its era. It does contain the nearly mandatory – and really unpleasant – rape scene, but for most of the running time, the haunting is very much of the bread and butter style seen in many a Hong Kong or Taiwanese or Chinese movie. It’s not exactly boring, but it certainly has neither the heightened weirdness of the best films of its genre, nor is it quite satisfying as a more standard horror film. Lai’s direction is more solid than remarkable, as well.

Possessed does become rather more exciting – and excitable – in the climactic exorcism sequence, where everything suddenly goes as crazy and tense as you’d have hoped for the whole of the movie: assistant priests die horribly, people and things fly, grabby demon hands come out of a glowing hole in the ceiling, and a four-faced buddha shoots beams of light at the main creature, which goes up in flames, falls out of a window and explodes two cars. All of which sounds rather more like what you’d expect from a Buddhist exorcism if you’ve seen enough of these movies. The film also has a fantastic horror movie bullshit ending so pointlessly cruel and absurd, it’s hard not to love it.