Scared Stiff

 

Director: Lau Kar-wing
Year: 1987
Rating: 7.0


This is one of those hybrid malformed Hong Kong movies which will spin your head around like a top. In the first half it is a silly comedy that might have been directed by Wong Jing and then on a dime it turns into a harrowing violent thriller that felt like Ringo Lam. It is in fact directed by Lau Kar-wing and it has a truly fabulous cast though many of the stars are not in it for very long. The first half has Eric Tsang and his roommate played by Miu Kiu-wai chasing after women in typical Hong Kong juvenile comedy manner. It begins with women wanting to seduce Eric and take away his virginity. Eric Tsang being chased by women? The film must be a fantasy or this is a dream. A dream as it turns out but what is a bit odd is that his friend who was in his dream also had the same dream. He invaded Eric's dream. In order to get Eric to see a naked woman they pretend that Eric is a robot and when Miu brings a girl home the robot spills something on her and helps her change. I expected the robot to grow an appendage. Now I felt like I had entered a Lucky Star movie - but this set up is fairly amusing and Tsang is great as the horny robot.


Then literally in the next second they are hijacked by some robbers in their car and when it crashes Miu is badly injured - in fact his heart  has stopped but his brain activity is off the charts. They bring him back to life by bringing in Eric and having him insult his friend. This manner of therapy is now known as the Tsang Fast Talking Insult Life Saving procedure and is practiced all over Asia. It turns out that Miu has gotten ESP powers and can enter into someone's dreams. The lovely Emily Chu (A Better Tomorrow I & II) is a researcher and convinces the infatuated Miu to enter into an experiment to test his power. They have him enter into the mind of Wu Ma and suddenly we are thrust into a horror comedy as the two of them try and kill vampires; not the Hopping kind but the old fashioned Dracula types. Other experiments terrify him as well (though not shown) but when he enters the dream of Emily and has sex it is a bonus.


And then literally at the halfway mark the director seems to say, ok I gave them some comedy, a little supernatural, a bit of romance - now it is time to make the movie I want to make and kick it up with terror. Eric is chased into a car park (again my warning - nothing good ever happens in a parking garage)  - by the crooks from way back. He had identified one of them. While he is hiding in a car, a dead man falls in too - a cop - murdered by someone with a knife. Another chase in the garage and Eric crashes into a woman and knocks her down - the great Anita Mui (who is a famous singer in the film). He jumps out of the building and cracks his head and becomes unconscious. Inspector Chow (Chow Yun-fat) and his Sergeant (Phillip Ko) arrive to investigate. 


Mui enters into his friend's dreams to see what happened and watches a nerve-wracking chase play out. At the end the killer removes his sunglasses and cap. It is Chow Yun-fat. Holy shit. And he knows that Mui knows. He has a lot of cleaning up to do. The film takes off into hell. Shockingly brutal and downbeat. I am sitting there thinking, this is the same movie in which Eric was trying to lose his virginity? The insane Carrie like ending is wonderful. Chow makes a terrific bad guy - lean and cruel, his hair always in place in his well-tailored suits.  He had just hit stardom the year before with A Better Tomorrow followed by The Seventh Curse and City on Fire.  But this is why he was so popular - he took on lots of different kinds of roles from cornball comedy to heroic bloodshed to being a sadistic killer. In the film also is Yuen Wah as one of Chow's men (he also does the choreography), Wu Fung as one of the doctors, Stuart Ong who is only in it for a few memorable minutes and Sandra Ng as one of the women in Eric's fantasy dream. Sit through the comedy and eat your popcorn and wait for Chow Yun-fat to show up. Put the popcorn down after that.