Return of the Demon

                                                           
Director: Wong Ying
Year: 1987
Rating: 6.5
A loony Hong Kong film that never slows down for a cigarette break. 90-minutes of supernatural comedy on acid. The director Wong Ying keeps pushing down the accelerator and it slowly morphs from ding bat slap stick comedy to more action, becoming more serious and ending up being shockingly brutal. There is a lot of imagination in this and fine usage of special effects. It clearly seems strongly influenced by the Mr. Vampire films, but without the hopping vampires and has a Taoist who is pretty ineffective when it comes time to fight the monster. It has a number of set-pieces strung together and they get better as the film goes along. From the ridiculous to the holy shit.



A group are searching for a treasure that is supposedly buried in the hands of a Buddha statue. When they find it and uncover it, there is no treasure - instead a demon trying to reincarnate and become immortal. To do that the demon has to kill three more people to make it forty-nine- but they have to be Hoi people (I had no idea what that meant) - and perhaps not coincidentally all three of the group are Hoi. In this little group of treasure hunters is Shing Fui-on nicknamed Fierce, his sister Chui Sau-lai nicknamed Panther and To Siu-ming, the famous cross-eyed actor.



They are able to escape from the demon when a Taoist named Kin shows up with his disciple. But sadly, he isn't played by Lam Ching-ying but Charlie Cho of all people. Cho was famous for his perverted film roles in comedies. For the comedic parts of the film, he is fine but in the action scenes it sure would have been nice to have a martial artist. The disciple is played by Robert Mak who is a martial artist and acquits himself just fine. Oh, the demon is Dick Wei! One of the best action players in Hong Kong - almost always the villain - but here there isn't much real martial arts fighting - more supernatural waving of arms and flying around.



The Taoist tells the group that the demon intends to kill them and they have to hunt it down and kill it first. This is after they all mistake urine for a pop soda that Wu Ma left on his desk. Ya, that sort of humor. To track the demon down, the Taoist in a complicated ritual takes on characteristics of a dog with a good nose - and off they go with him sniffing the trail. The set-pieces begin - one with Natalis Chan being a martial artist who arrests them - really Natalis Chan? - again there were better choices. Then in the next set-piece the Taoist turns into a savage werewolf dog and tries killing the others.



Then of course there are ghosts when they stay in a deserted mansion - the head ghost played by Emily Chu (A Better Tomorrow I & II) needs a virgin to die for her in order to reincarnate. Looks like that is Cho who is actually 280 years old - a long time to be a virgin - but in a great scene she fills the room with eggs and if he kills anything he starts to age and that is a lot of eggs to step on. The final set-piece in caves with a maze of tunnels and dead people obeying the demon is pretty great - and as I mentioned earlier - just brutal - unexpected after basically being a comedy all along. This is no classic but is solid fun once it really takes off. Demons, ghosts, zombies and werewolves. And piss that looks like soda pop.  As I too often say, they don't make films like this in Hong Kong any longer.