Troublesome Night 9

                                         
Director: Ivan Lai
Year: 2001
Rating: 4.0
The Troublesome Night films was the series that could not be killed. It lived well-past its natural expiration date. From 1997 to 2003 there were nineteen of them produced. Right through some of the worst days for Hong Kong films, they were still pumping out these "horror" films. Low budget with a few regulars but mainly little-known actors. Especially after the first few. Herman Yau was involved in the first six but after he left, the quality took a nosedive. By this one, they don't even try to scare the audience. It is just a weak comedy with some supernatural elements. Not even one jump scare. Nothing. Surprising in that the director is Ivan Lai who had been behind Blue Jean Monster and daughter of Darkness.  But here he seems satisfied to just get something up on the screen in a hurry. The HKMDB credits it for having a theatrical run of one week and bringing in the whopping amount of 31,000 Hong Kong dollars. Then straight to VCD I imagine.



This wasn't a total loss. Our favorite lady of horror Helena Law Lan has a large part in it. That was practically tradition. She was in sixteen of the nineteen Troublesome films. And when she wasn't appearing in those, she was in loads of other horror films. Her first film mind you was in 1939 and she was just in the big hit in 2024, Table for Six. She is an institution. Simon Lui is also in this - he showed up in the first nine of them and then three of the final four. The early films were anthologies of usually three stories and he often was the narrator or connecting actor. They didn't have the energy or resources for three scripts now, so they take one story that would have been fine as a 30-minute segment and stretch it to 80-minutes. And basically nothing happens. A little bit cute admittedly.



Many of the same characters from TN 8 are back though in different circumstances. Simon has a job as a waiter on a gambling ship with bedrooms for hanky-panky. He tells his girlfriend Moon (Halina Tam) that he is a gold trader. Ms. Liu who had a cameo in TN 8 - is one of the regular gamblers - in fact she has become addicted since her boyfriend dumped her for a wealthy woman. But she always loses and borrows more money from her grandmother. She is played by Maggie Cheung - not, not that one - Maggie Cheung Hoh-yee - plays Connie Chan in Those Were the Days. Simon tells her that to change her luck she must go to her parent's graveyard and pray for them. She does it all wrong - no pork or chicken or incense - so the next time he goes along and does it right but throws weeds on a little boy's grave. And gets possessed by him. Now he just wants ice cream. Not scary. The only good part is that Helena as Simon's mother has powers and tells Ms. Liu to go gamble one more time and she will help her five times. She does this by implanting the spirit of Ko Chun in her son. Ko Chun was Chow Yun-fat in God of Gamblers. And that's about it, folks.  Showing up for a small paycheck are Wayne Lai as one of the gamblers and Sherming Yiu as an available woman - both regulars in the world of low-budget horror.