Twilight Zone Cops:
Spirited Wife
Director: Victor Lai
Year: 2002
Rating: 3.0
I probably should have been seeing an analyst
some twenty-years ago when I bought all these low-budget bargain bin Hong
Kong horror films. Or maybe I should be now for finally watching them. They
are really quite dreadful, but I oddly found myself watching this all the
way through though I knew from minute zero who the serial killer had to be.
Not much suspense. Or drama. Or scares. Or comedy. Or good acting. But it
has a different take on ghosts which I liked. Lots of women are being murdered
and then raped - in that order - and a small police unit headed by a bulked-up
Michael Chow is right on top of it. When they are not ordering food or drinking
at their favorite bar or having issues with their girlfriends. 13 dead women
and they don't have a clue. They try the old bait routine, but no bites.
They put their heads together and come up with the common thread. Women.
In parks. Young. This after 13 dead.
And then the ghost shows up. The woman in
white. Only Chow can see her because they were lovers in a past life. She
wants to be reincarnated but her family took her body to England and ghosts
don't travel well. She also knows who the serial killer is and warns Chow
once that he is going to strike again. But why not just tell him who the
killer is? Is that cheating in the ghost world? He has a girlfriend Bobo
who whines throughout the movie and worries that he will fall in love with
the ghost. She has clearly seen too many movies.
She takes him to see a medium - played of
course by Helen Law Lan! Picture this scene for how bad this film is. Chow
is on the toilet taking a dump that must have come from hell because he is
screaming so much that he can't hear Bobo screaming in the next room for
what the ghost is doing to her. Finally, he stops after his business is done,
hears her, realizes he has no toilet paper but pulls up his pants anyways
and goes running out. And I will leave you with that. Except to mention that
there were actually two other Twilight Zone Cop films made in the same year
- an attempt perhaps to emulate the Troublesome Night films - but fortunately
did not get very far. And fortunately, I never came across them to buy.
