Mortuary Blues
Director: Jeff
Lau
Year: 1990
Rating: 6.0
Comedic anarchy is a trademark of director Jeff Lau in his many films. Everything
gets thrown into the soup to see what comes out. This was still fairly early
in his career after the two Haunted Cop Shop films and the two Operation
Pink Squad films. His films to this point are about as sophisticated as asking
for a coke at a fancy French restaurant and good taste is not on the menu.
What he is a master of already though is chaos. Frantic, frenetic scenes
of a group of people running around like crazy that at hyper speed throws
one joke after another at the audience. Editing these scenes together in
your head and with the print and making them coherent and funny is a bit
of genius. He has three such set pieces in this otherwise flimsy supernatural
comedy. I would guess though that Lau had to make a few drastic cuts to bring
it to the standard 90 minute running time. There are jumps that make no sense,
things seemingly left out but most criminal is that Amy Yip who is ranked
seventh in the credits gets about two minutes of screen time and is dressed
in a Chinese Opera outfit but of course still manages to get felt up. Lau
was not in the minor leagues for long. His film after this was All for the
Winner with Steven Chow and it was a huge hit. Since then he has made a number
of classic films but maintained his style of anarchy piled on top of absurdity.
The population of a small island off of Hong Kong is in fear that they will
have to pay for the sins of their ancestors who killed a large number of
people on a boat and stole their treasure. The angry spirits of these people
have been locked up beneath the earth. A Taoist priest (Peter Chan Lung)
tells them that they need to invite Chinese Opera to perform in order to
be secure. In the meantime they kill a mother by drowning her for telling
someone (Chung Fat) off-island about their secret. Three members of the troupe
(Sandra Ng, Lowell Lo and Sheila Chan) find a treasure poem on a dead man
and decipher it and go looking for it. In the meantime, the village policeman
(Corey Yuen) suspects them of drug dealing and follows them. The three of
them figure it out only to find female vampires waiting for them and then
accidentally let out the Big Tamale. A vicious ghost seeking revenge. From
this point on it is the three of them plus the policeman and his two assistants
(Alex To and David Lo) fighting off the vampires and looking for a sword
that can kill the ghost - with a series of Indiana Jones adventures and booby-traps
waiting for them. For all that Corey Yuen has contributed to Hong Kong film
as an actor, choreographer and director, it is nice for a change to see him
as the lead in a film.
This is all played for humor - low down humor but at times quite funny. While
the troupe is giving their performance they all get hit by a case of dysentery
but the show must go on and nine men share the same toilet at the same time;
being chased by the vampires in a pit with Sandra taking off her top making
the others throw up and Lowell discovering that ass-grabbing stops them;
Lowell and Sheila having to play dead to hide while a family of rats crawl
all over them (real rats) and the big finale when they dress up in Chinese
Opera clothes to fool the ghost and we get a pretty terrific wire-fu fight.
Not to mention numerous penis jokes. It is not great but it is very Hong
Kong in tone at the time and there is consistent and unrelenting low brow
humor that catches you unaware. You may have to be in the right mood.
