In short: Troublesome Night 7 (2000)

Original title: 陰陽路七撞到正

A group of music video makers and a girl group – character names and who is playing them is really of no import given the total lack of characterisation here – come to a backwoods island belonging to Hongkong to “do an MTV”, as the subtitles call it. Because this is a Troublesome Nights movie, the island is haunted by Louis Koo, and the locals are weird and conservative. Very little happens.

Having made six Troublesome Nights movies during the course of two or three years, director Herman Yau apparently lost interest in further involvement in the series, leaving it in the hands of their producer Nam Yin. Nam apparently decided that directing lark is easy and took over the direction reigns for this entry in the series as well. He also decided to break with the anthology format of the earlier films and drag the idea for a single fifteen to twenty minute segment out to very (and I mean very) long ninety minutes. So expect a film with an improbable number of characters most of whom have really no function at all in the narrative apart from standing around during dialogue scenes and making everything take longer than it should. Which, what with the glacial tempo in which Nam drags out what little plot he has, I have to repeat is very long indeed.

Nam’s also clearly not much of a director, showing no interest in even the most minimal mood-building, and apparently believing some slow motion and sped up like the Flash scenes of Koo and his co-spirit do for a spooky time make. The humour, as far as I have been able to make out from a version with pretty poor subtitles, doesn’t exactly seem to be great, either, with badly-timed slapstick that makes the earlier films in the series look like Buster Keaton, and just a lot of rambling from the characters about little of interest or import.

Even though most of the earlier Troublesome Nights weren’t exactly masterpieces, they were clearly made with an eye on providing simple, straightforward entertainment, always at least trying their best with ghosts and jokes alike. Number seven, on the other hand, really feels like an attempt to be as boring as possible, providing none of the cheap thrills an audience must have hoped for, seemingly going out of its way to do as little that’s fun as possible.

Troublesome Night 4 (1998)

Original title: 陰陽路4與鬼同行

Various groups of Hongkong citizens who arrived on the same plane in Manila, Philippines encounter local ghosts and ghoulies in three slightly connected tales of horror.

In the first one, Alan (Timmy Hung Tin-Ming) is rather surprised when he learns the package his company has tasked him with to deliver contains human ashes; even more so when he realizes there’s a ghost haunting the ashes. On the more positive side, a friendly local from his company (Anthony Cortez) is very helpful indeed. So what when he seems to have sex with the ghost (unless Alan dreams it)?

Tale number two concerns honeymooners Wing (Louis Koo) and Apple (Pauline Suen) and what happens to them after Apple closes a hotel bible. After having heard some dire news about Wing’s fidelity from one of those random Chinese soothsayers apparently roaming Manila’s streets, and following a couple of weird omens Apple does her subconscious best to make her new ideas about Wing’s nature come true. Will he cheat on her with a really aggressive stripper with a – dumb – philosophic bent (Anna Capri)? Or will Apple learn a valuable lesson through the suffering of her husband?

Three asshats (played by Simon Lui, Wayne Lai and, umm, Cheung Tat-Ming, I believe) really want to use their vacation for, and I quote, “whoring”, but seem to have not completely surprising trouble finding anyone wanting to sleep with them even for money. Eventually, they end up in a very special nightclub, and learn a valuable lesson about the importance of having enough fingers to hack off and throw at monsters, as well as the deadly sins of Catholicism.

Clearly, having warned the public about the supernatural dangers occurring in Hongkong in the first three films of the anthology series, director Herman Yau and the recurring members of the cast needed a bit of a vacation in the Philippines, only to turn their touristy gaze of spooky comedy on the strange rituals of that most exotic of religions, Catholicism. Or rather, some aspects of the Filipino version of the same, which does put a bit more emphasis on actual bodily suffering in the here and now than most interpretations of the creed you’ll encounter in Europe.

This attempt really makes up large parts of the considerable charm of this entry into the series: there’s nothing quite as wonderful as seeing something you know pretty well yourself through the eyes of someone for whom it is not really a cultural basic, looking for exploitational value. Yau is pretty great at finding the weird, the exploitational and the interesting in this view of Filipino Catholicism (that of course will have little to do with actual Filipino Catholicism), turning out one of the most entertaining and strange films in the series (or rather, as much of the series as I’ve managed to see). He also provides practically every single ghost with its own green spot light, always at least trying to make his standard spooks actually spooky, as well as the jokes actually funny, neither of which is something you can always hope for in the Yau-less future of this series.

The first story is doing the least with the Filipino surroundings, telling a straightforward tale of love lost expressed through ghosts, but it’s a fine way to ease an audience into the film with things everyone around the world will pretty easily understand (don’t tell me about your weird culture that doesn’t know romantic love, please). There’s also the first appearance of on-screen nudity in the film – a first in the series, I believe - all of which will be provided by the Filipino actresses, some shaped like you’d expect in an exploitation movie, some doing the old “old hag-like nude woman” thing.

In the second tale, the film really starts approaching Catholic ideas of sin and fidelity, making rather a lot of peculiar bible quotes and ending up on an interpretation of Catholic sexual moral that has very little to do with actual Catholicism but works rather well as an exoticizing of Catholic morals, with quite a bit of nudity and general weirdness thrown in.

The final tale then really goes all out, featuring some traditional Filipino monsters, scenes where our protagonists throw their own hacked off fingers at their enemies to drive them away, a ghosts and ghoulies judicial sessions that explains their sins to the characters in a language they literally cannot understand, and ends up with a lot of spooky dream-like imagery as well as a handful of great bad jokes. Again, the interpretation of sin and punishment the film espouses is bizarre, but it’s bizarre in an absolutely charming and interesting manner that turns what would be a terribly – though not completely undeservedly – moralizing tale into the sort of whacked out weirdness that always makes my day. Teachable moment: if you’re a sleazy man, you really should try to find yourself actual prostitutes instead of monsters with a religious bent.