Ghost Meets You
Director: Cheung Kwok-kuen
Year: 2000
Rating:
4.5
Somehow,
I managed to miss this back at the turn of the century when I used to pick
up any HK vcd that looked to be horror. Like all of Asia, Hong Kong caught
the horror bug from Japan and they knocked off one low budget film after
another. Most really bad, but I kept hoping to find a good one and there
were some - Last Ghost Standing, Erotic Nightmare, Horror Hotline and the
Horoscope films to mention a few - but they were vastly outnumbered by the
dreck. But coming across this one on the Internet brought back a wave of
nostalgia. Thankfully, it is just as bad as I expected. Very low budget,
some silly special effects and a lot of truly bad acting. But it is so weirdly
bizarre that I had to keep watching. Will he and the severed head find happiness
together? I had to find out. A sweet romance underneath the black magic and
murder.
Surprisingly and yet not surprisingly, two
big name actors are in this. They sort of come and go as the film progresses
- mainly go but still some solid time. Anthony Wong and Carrie Ng. In a lot
of classic films between them but Hong Kong cinema was in a downward spiral
at the time for a few reasons and the number of films being produced had
dropped dramatically. So, any port in a storm and actors took what jobs they
could get. Wong in particular took anything that resembled a paycheck and
was in some real stinkers - but at the same time began his films in Milkyway
and was in many other quality films - but still X-Girls? Really? This has
more laughs than scares - whether intentional or not is hard to say - but
still a good bet since there are no scares.
It begins with Anthony, his mistress and
two henchmen running down a female in the woods and cutting off her head.
Then throwing it into the sea with her bag. His wife as it turns out. Poor
Winnie. And poor Ivy Tsui who plays her. She retired right after this - maybe
playing a head in a bag didn't seem like a great career move. The police
find the body and inspector Ting is put in charge - portrayed by Carrie.
But this isn't really the focus of the film for most of the middle part.
It switches to two losers - Lui (Mok Cheong-shing - who also retired after
this film) and his friend Chan (Jameson Lam) who are both being chased by
triad loan sharks - for much of the film. You know you have a low budget
film when ten minutes is used up just running after these two - and a female
extra in white shows up in four different locations.
Eventually, it gets back to the murder.
Lui is fishing and finds the wallet of the dead woman and spends her money.
Oh, oh. Apparently, spending the money of the dead without permission is
a bad omen. The ghost shows up - possessing another woman - and tells Lui
that he must help her. Find her head and reattach it to her body. Well, ok.
How? Buy four watermelons, write my name on them, call my name and toss them
into the water. Good to know. Just in case. The head shows up and he puts
it into a bag - from where it speaks to him. Now the body. He steals that from the morgue,
but Carrie catches him and demands to know what is in the bag. The jig is
up. Oh, it has turned into a bowling ball and she rolls it for a strike.
Like any man with a beautiful ghost, he falls in love with her head - they
have a nice rapport - if only. To be reincarnated they have to defeat the
black magic of Wong and of course they turn to none other than Helen Law
Lan who by Hong Kong law had to appear in every low budget horror film. She
tells him that they can only defeat him and his crystal dildo by injecting
the blood from a woman's period into him. Hey, anyone having their period?
Anyone?
