Original title: 猛鬼學堂
Apparently, Hong Kong has a big problem with (mostly) Western style vampires
now. Why, even a big meeting of various government suits to discuss the solution
to said vampire problem is attacked by the blood-loving fiends. The city’s best
bet is apparently to team their worst, most cartoonish police officers with the
most ridiculous nicknames as a vampire fighting force. This group does of course
include Jacky Cheung’s and Ricky Hui’s returning characters from the first
movie – these nitwits are what goes for vampire hunting experts. Kitty Chan is
back too, but for some reason, she’s playing a completely different character.
And hey, one of them gets bitten early on and from then on turns into a
one-toothed half-vampire (don’t ask) whenever the light of the moon touches him,
so he actually knows quite a bit about being a vampire.
Before the bunch of idiots can actually go to work, they’re supposed to train
on the grounds of a some sort of former military property. Said military failed
to mention the place is full of vampires and other undead, though. Supposed
hilarity ensues.
I say “supposed”, for this sequel to the actually really funny Haunted
Cop Shop, again directed by Jeff Lau Chun-Wai, is about as funny as getting
a tooth extracted by a ninety year old dentist. One of the film’s biggest
changes in comparison to the first one is that it replaces its predecessor’s
approach of having a serious horror film invaded by its comedy protagonists by
just throwing goofy shit at the audience without any coherence. Now, I’ve
nothing (well, not much) against randomness in comedy, but if a film consists of
ninety minutes of random nonsense, it damn well better be really funny
nonsense. Perhaps Wong Kar-Wai’s (who appears here in an acting cameo)
contribution to the first one’s script was more important than I had initially
believed.
What Cop Shop II delivers instead of fun is a series of tedious and
aggressively unfunny scenes full of unlikeable characters – and way too many of
them to boot – clowning around for what feels like centuries, until a finale of
running through corridors, random deaths, and vampire electrocution occurs. The
first film’s impeccable sense of timing is gone from nearly all of the
proceedings, as is Lau’s hand for atmosphere. Even the funny duo of Cheung and
Hui seems to be phoning it in. That the film seems somewhat inspired by the
dreadful Police Academy films does obviously nothing to improve
matters.
Showing posts with label ricky hui koon-ying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ricky hui koon-ying. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018
The Haunted Cop Shop (1987)
Original title: 猛鬼差館
Macky Kim (Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau) and Man Chiu (Ricky Hui Koon-Ying) are your typical Hong Kong comedy cops, which is to say, they are of dubious mental capacity, morals, and work ethics, like a couple of nasty little boys somebody thought it to be a good idea to arm. Not that anyone else we meet in their station is any better, of course.
As it happens, the titular cop shop our protagonists are based in was a Japanese officer’s club during World War II, where quite a few suicides took place once the Japanese side lost their part of the war. So clearly, there’s going to be no problem at all when the high point of ghost month comes around.
Well, except for the part where the excellently named Sneaky Ming (Billy Lau Nam-Kwong), brought to confession by our heroes by pretending to be ghosts in one of the film’s best scenes, loses a rigged Mah-jongg game against some of the place’s ghosts and is tasked with bringing Japanese general Issei (Rico Chu Tak-On) back to the world of the living. Issei, it will turn out, is a Western style vampire for no reason the film ever explains, complete with awesome/ridiculous and definitely snazzy high-collared cape, and Sneaky is going to be his first victim. When Sneaky attempts to explain the situation to our cop heroes, they don’t believe him until contact with the sun turns him to dust. Their boss is so displeased with this turn of events – and certainly doesn’t believe any of their talk about the supernatural – he calls in Chief Superintendent Fanny Ho (Kitty Chan Ga-Chai) to exclusively supervise Macky Kim and Man Chiu. Eventually, these three incompetents will team up to fight the vampires running round Hong Kong.
Jeff Lau Chun-Wai’s The Haunted Cop Shop is pretty much exactly what you assume a Hong Kong horror comedy made in 1987 to be. As in many a comedy from the city, its heroes would be absolutely vile if they weren’t as ridiculous as they are, and still the film manages to make their misadventures entertaining for other reasons than mere Schadenfreude. Having as a film’s – comedy or not – protagonists police personal that’s quite this hilariously incompetent wouldn’t fly at all in contemporary Hong Kong – not to even speak of mainland China – anymore, so viewed from today, Macky Kim’s and Man Chiu’s personalities even look a bit like social criticism. I am pretty sure it wasn’t actively meant that way in 1987. These are just standard Hong Kong comedy characters who look like something a bit different in hindsight.
Anyway, nobody’s going to watch this because of hard hitting social criticism but for the series of often actually funny, usually weird, and plentifully absurd things our supposed heroes encounter. Lau, working from a script by himself and a young Wong Kar-Wai – who is the last guy you’d expect to have written any of this – is very good at giving a film that’s actually mostly a series of loosely connected episodes a feeling of directed movement, making the whole affair much more satisfying than you’d expect. It does of course help rather heavily that many of the episodes are really rather funny, from time to time even playing with audience expectations of its genre.
My favourite bit of this sort of business comes when our heroes, looking for the vampires randomly stumble into the convenience store of Chung Fat Pak (indeed played by Chung Fat). Chung Fat Pak, it turns out, was once a successful Taoist exorcist. So successful there wasn’t anything left for him to exorcise, therefore the convenience store. Which he at once proves by having a short yet wonderful kung fu fight against two vampires, demonstrating the most awesome staking technique ever put to celluloid. Chung Fat, the audience will probably assume, is going to be the film’s Lam Ching-Ying type character (see the Mr Vampire films), the ultra competent master to the bumbling idiot protagonists. Then the boss vampire appears, rips off one of his arms, and Chung Fat sacrifices himself so that said bumbling protagonists can get away.
As in practically all Hong Kong comedies of this style, there are scenes of inspired slapstick – the bit early on where Sneaky Ming is ghost-bullied into confession is a perfect example –, scenes of wonderful surrealism, as well a couple of scenes that bring home this isn’t a film made anywhere but in Hong Kong. How about that bit where our heroes decide their new boss is going to believe their tales about ghosts and ghoulies when they ruin her luck by getting her to eat dog meat? Or several scenes that teach the importance of wearing one’s panties on one’s head when trying to fend off ghosts? I never got any of that reading M.R. James, that much’s for sure.
Lau does some rather fine work not only with the film’s pacing but also when it comes to staging the supernatural encounters in the right – often blue as you might imagine – light. When the film’s not laugh out loud funny, it is very moody indeed, never making the mistake of turning its supernatural threats into slapstick characters too. That’s after all what the protagonists are for, so large parts of the film consist of the three idiots stumbling through sets, set pieces and situations that would be rather fine straightforward horror if The Haunted Cop Shop weren’t populated by the kind of guys who dress up like their big antagonist just to teach their friends some pithy lesson.
Macky Kim (Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau) and Man Chiu (Ricky Hui Koon-Ying) are your typical Hong Kong comedy cops, which is to say, they are of dubious mental capacity, morals, and work ethics, like a couple of nasty little boys somebody thought it to be a good idea to arm. Not that anyone else we meet in their station is any better, of course.
As it happens, the titular cop shop our protagonists are based in was a Japanese officer’s club during World War II, where quite a few suicides took place once the Japanese side lost their part of the war. So clearly, there’s going to be no problem at all when the high point of ghost month comes around.
Well, except for the part where the excellently named Sneaky Ming (Billy Lau Nam-Kwong), brought to confession by our heroes by pretending to be ghosts in one of the film’s best scenes, loses a rigged Mah-jongg game against some of the place’s ghosts and is tasked with bringing Japanese general Issei (Rico Chu Tak-On) back to the world of the living. Issei, it will turn out, is a Western style vampire for no reason the film ever explains, complete with awesome/ridiculous and definitely snazzy high-collared cape, and Sneaky is going to be his first victim. When Sneaky attempts to explain the situation to our cop heroes, they don’t believe him until contact with the sun turns him to dust. Their boss is so displeased with this turn of events – and certainly doesn’t believe any of their talk about the supernatural – he calls in Chief Superintendent Fanny Ho (Kitty Chan Ga-Chai) to exclusively supervise Macky Kim and Man Chiu. Eventually, these three incompetents will team up to fight the vampires running round Hong Kong.
Jeff Lau Chun-Wai’s The Haunted Cop Shop is pretty much exactly what you assume a Hong Kong horror comedy made in 1987 to be. As in many a comedy from the city, its heroes would be absolutely vile if they weren’t as ridiculous as they are, and still the film manages to make their misadventures entertaining for other reasons than mere Schadenfreude. Having as a film’s – comedy or not – protagonists police personal that’s quite this hilariously incompetent wouldn’t fly at all in contemporary Hong Kong – not to even speak of mainland China – anymore, so viewed from today, Macky Kim’s and Man Chiu’s personalities even look a bit like social criticism. I am pretty sure it wasn’t actively meant that way in 1987. These are just standard Hong Kong comedy characters who look like something a bit different in hindsight.
Anyway, nobody’s going to watch this because of hard hitting social criticism but for the series of often actually funny, usually weird, and plentifully absurd things our supposed heroes encounter. Lau, working from a script by himself and a young Wong Kar-Wai – who is the last guy you’d expect to have written any of this – is very good at giving a film that’s actually mostly a series of loosely connected episodes a feeling of directed movement, making the whole affair much more satisfying than you’d expect. It does of course help rather heavily that many of the episodes are really rather funny, from time to time even playing with audience expectations of its genre.
My favourite bit of this sort of business comes when our heroes, looking for the vampires randomly stumble into the convenience store of Chung Fat Pak (indeed played by Chung Fat). Chung Fat Pak, it turns out, was once a successful Taoist exorcist. So successful there wasn’t anything left for him to exorcise, therefore the convenience store. Which he at once proves by having a short yet wonderful kung fu fight against two vampires, demonstrating the most awesome staking technique ever put to celluloid. Chung Fat, the audience will probably assume, is going to be the film’s Lam Ching-Ying type character (see the Mr Vampire films), the ultra competent master to the bumbling idiot protagonists. Then the boss vampire appears, rips off one of his arms, and Chung Fat sacrifices himself so that said bumbling protagonists can get away.
As in practically all Hong Kong comedies of this style, there are scenes of inspired slapstick – the bit early on where Sneaky Ming is ghost-bullied into confession is a perfect example –, scenes of wonderful surrealism, as well a couple of scenes that bring home this isn’t a film made anywhere but in Hong Kong. How about that bit where our heroes decide their new boss is going to believe their tales about ghosts and ghoulies when they ruin her luck by getting her to eat dog meat? Or several scenes that teach the importance of wearing one’s panties on one’s head when trying to fend off ghosts? I never got any of that reading M.R. James, that much’s for sure.
Lau does some rather fine work not only with the film’s pacing but also when it comes to staging the supernatural encounters in the right – often blue as you might imagine – light. When the film’s not laugh out loud funny, it is very moody indeed, never making the mistake of turning its supernatural threats into slapstick characters too. That’s after all what the protagonists are for, so large parts of the film consist of the three idiots stumbling through sets, set pieces and situations that would be rather fine straightforward horror if The Haunted Cop Shop weren’t populated by the kind of guys who dress up like their big antagonist just to teach their friends some pithy lesson.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
The Trail (1983)
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
aka The Trial (which has as little to do with the movie as the other English language title)
Original title: 追鬼七雄
Revolutionary era China. A guy going by the nickname of Captain (Kent Cheng Jak-Si) and his cohorts are using a most excellent opium smuggling technique: Captain and his second Ying (Ricky Hui Koon-Ying) dress up as Buddhist monks while the rest of the gang pack the loot into belts, straps those on and dress up as jiang shi (also known as hopping vampires, or in the case of these subtitles, zombies, though they are not exactly either) the supposed monks are herding around. It’s a rather brilliant plan, truly.
However, one local evil potentate (Miao Tian) pays our heroes to take the corpse of what he tells them is his brother with them, for his brother, his main henchman explains, has died of leprosy, and getting his remains away as stealthily as possible is absolutely necessary to protect the village’s good reputation. It’s a lie, of course, and the old bastard is trying to cover up a murder. This lie and their own greed will cost our dubious heroes dearly after they have dumped the body in a sulphur pit.
For because the corpse has a score to the settle with the potentate, it returns to life right quick as a real jiang shi (not doing any hopping but all the more rotting) and starts killing animals and opium smugglers alike. Captain and his gang decide to destroy the thing (his whole-sale slaughter of the local population and one of their own is bad for business, or something), arming themselves with the urine of virgin boys and the traditional yellow charms. Things are not going to go well for them.
The style of Ronny Yu’s The Trail has much less to do with the later jiang shi classic Mr Vampire than I had expected, apart from this too being a horror comedy. The depiction of the monster is much more gruesome than the pale hopping gentlemen in traditional garb other films about its kind have made me accustomed to (and, as far as I know, it’s much closer to the depiction of the creatures in much Chinese folklore about them). It’s a rotting, shambling monstrosity that is pretty close to a zombie, just stronger, meaner, sometimes cleverer and definitely harder to kill – probably even when its enemies were more competent than our protagonists are.
As a comedy, this is a pretty dark one, with a group of morally suspect protagonists mostly doomed to die pretty horrible deaths and two survivors who will learn exactly nothing from what happened to them, the film’s epilogue showing them disguised as catholic priests selling fake possessions but of course stumbling into a pretty hilarious The Exorcist situation. The humour is Hong Kong standard, though pleasantly avoiding the greatest extremes of slapstick and random nonsense, keeping most of the jokes integrated into the actual plot. In a really surprising turn of events, I even found myself laughing about a lot of the funny business, certainly thanks to the chipper casts of guys we know and love from dozens of other Hong Kong films, but also because Yu as a director always was rather fantastic at the timing aspect of things, be it in comedy, action, or suspense.
The suspense scenes here in particular turn out very nicely, with many highly effective sequences of our hapless heroes trying to first catch, then avoid the jiang shi only to see things getting worse and worse with every well timed bad turn. Yu escalates their troubles with a rhythm one could probably dance to, sometimes building tension out of comedic elements (there’s some excellent business concerning the monster and frog voice imitations), at other times ending the tension with a laugh that actually does work as comic relief for once.
If that’s not enough for you, there’s also a nice underground tomb set, some adorable miniature work and the mandatory blue light to gawk at and enjoy, as well as a bit of decent kung fu and an absurdly unsubtle yet curiously effective synthesizer score.
aka The Trial (which has as little to do with the movie as the other English language title)
Original title: 追鬼七雄
Revolutionary era China. A guy going by the nickname of Captain (Kent Cheng Jak-Si) and his cohorts are using a most excellent opium smuggling technique: Captain and his second Ying (Ricky Hui Koon-Ying) dress up as Buddhist monks while the rest of the gang pack the loot into belts, straps those on and dress up as jiang shi (also known as hopping vampires, or in the case of these subtitles, zombies, though they are not exactly either) the supposed monks are herding around. It’s a rather brilliant plan, truly.
However, one local evil potentate (Miao Tian) pays our heroes to take the corpse of what he tells them is his brother with them, for his brother, his main henchman explains, has died of leprosy, and getting his remains away as stealthily as possible is absolutely necessary to protect the village’s good reputation. It’s a lie, of course, and the old bastard is trying to cover up a murder. This lie and their own greed will cost our dubious heroes dearly after they have dumped the body in a sulphur pit.
For because the corpse has a score to the settle with the potentate, it returns to life right quick as a real jiang shi (not doing any hopping but all the more rotting) and starts killing animals and opium smugglers alike. Captain and his gang decide to destroy the thing (his whole-sale slaughter of the local population and one of their own is bad for business, or something), arming themselves with the urine of virgin boys and the traditional yellow charms. Things are not going to go well for them.
The style of Ronny Yu’s The Trail has much less to do with the later jiang shi classic Mr Vampire than I had expected, apart from this too being a horror comedy. The depiction of the monster is much more gruesome than the pale hopping gentlemen in traditional garb other films about its kind have made me accustomed to (and, as far as I know, it’s much closer to the depiction of the creatures in much Chinese folklore about them). It’s a rotting, shambling monstrosity that is pretty close to a zombie, just stronger, meaner, sometimes cleverer and definitely harder to kill – probably even when its enemies were more competent than our protagonists are.
As a comedy, this is a pretty dark one, with a group of morally suspect protagonists mostly doomed to die pretty horrible deaths and two survivors who will learn exactly nothing from what happened to them, the film’s epilogue showing them disguised as catholic priests selling fake possessions but of course stumbling into a pretty hilarious The Exorcist situation. The humour is Hong Kong standard, though pleasantly avoiding the greatest extremes of slapstick and random nonsense, keeping most of the jokes integrated into the actual plot. In a really surprising turn of events, I even found myself laughing about a lot of the funny business, certainly thanks to the chipper casts of guys we know and love from dozens of other Hong Kong films, but also because Yu as a director always was rather fantastic at the timing aspect of things, be it in comedy, action, or suspense.
The suspense scenes here in particular turn out very nicely, with many highly effective sequences of our hapless heroes trying to first catch, then avoid the jiang shi only to see things getting worse and worse with every well timed bad turn. Yu escalates their troubles with a rhythm one could probably dance to, sometimes building tension out of comedic elements (there’s some excellent business concerning the monster and frog voice imitations), at other times ending the tension with a laugh that actually does work as comic relief for once.
If that’s not enough for you, there’s also a nice underground tomb set, some adorable miniature work and the mandatory blue light to gawk at and enjoy, as well as a bit of decent kung fu and an absurdly unsubtle yet curiously effective synthesizer score.
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