Welcome
Director: Leung Po-chi
Year: 1985
Rating: 6.5
This somewhat endearing
fantasy film mixes elements of The Terminator with a typical HK ghost story.
Of course Sally Yeh isn’t exactly as believable as Arnold Schwarzenegger
as a merciless killer, but she certainly is a lot more attractive. On a
budget that was probably less than Arnold’s lunch money, this film depends
a lot more on heart than on special effects to create an entertaining ditty
of a film. My only real complaint
about this film is that it takes much too long to get going and Sally Yeh
doesn’t make her appearance until the thirty-seventh minute. By then
I had concluded that I had ended up with the wrong film, but once she does
show up the film becomes very enjoyable.
Construction is going on at a new building site, but a ghost has been awakened
and is causing a number of delays. So a new foreman – Lin Wei - is brought
in to finish the job. He is able to talk the ghost into believing that he
is the ghost’s great grandson and gets the ghost to stop causing trouble.
Eventually, there is a flash in the sky
and Sally materializes. She carries a talking doll that has all these powers
– even against ghosts! Her mission – to kill Lam Fong. As she is waiting
outside of his house, two young girls pass by singing. Sally gets that patented
wide eyed look of hers and pulls out a photograph – pictured is one of the
girls with her father – the young girl it turns out is Sally twenty years
previously. In a Terminator like flashback we see that Sally is from the future
where the world has nearly destroyed itself in WWIII. To save it from this
fate, Sally has come back in time to kill Lam Fong.
Of course things get a bit complicated when Lam saves Sally as a little
girl from death and when the ghost constantly intervenes to save Lam from
Sally’s death ray. Slowly it is revealed how Lam’s future actions will set
off a chain of events that will lead to the destruction of the world. Can
Sally kill the man she is beginning to love to save the world? Stay tuned!
I just love time travel films – even ones
as uncomplicated as this one. They always set off questions in my mind – can
the same person exist in the same place in the same time along with their
other self- and could I go back in time and tell my much younger persona to
buy as much Microsoft stock as possible!
Rating: 6.5
