Forced Nightmare
Director:
Lau Shut-yue
Year: 1992
Rating: 7.0
I expect
you won't be seeing many films like this coming out of Hong Kong any time
soon. An absolutely insane supernatural comedy that is all over the map like
a drunk is at the wheel - poking fun at the Mainland and everything else
it can think of. Even Leon Lai gets the razz. Everything is a target of humor
- totally juvenile at times, ribald at times, slapstick and very funny. Almost
too much so. It is 90-minutes of fast-paced never stop gags and idiocy. A
lot of physical comedy and kung fu as well. I felt exhausted at times. And
it stars the wonderful Lam Ching-ying as what else - a Taoist Kung Fu kicking
priest. And to balance him out is a tour de force comic performance from
Sandra Ng. For the first ten years of her film career, Ng played the comic
foil - the virgin who wanted to get laid so badly - the ugly duckling who
made fun of herself and her breast size as did everyone else - the woman
nobody loved - the woman who gets slapped and kicked around in comedies.
And then they discovered that she was a great actress and she began getting
serious roles like 4 Faces of Eve, Portland Street Blues and the Golden Chicken
films. She is brilliant. I really have a weakness for these chaotic absurd
90's comedies. They are so stupid but I love them.
Here Ng plays Lee Ka Ling, a woman with
ESP and supernatural powers. When she returns to her small village in China,
the town turns out for her help. One woman needs her tea kettle unplugged,
another her sight has gone, they need her to read letters which she places
in her arm pits and reads, one fellow (Wong Fat-yei) tells her he is having
stomach trouble. What did you eat? A bowl of soup and a fish - and she pulls
out a bowl of soup and a whole fish from his mouth. The Communist govt needs
her help. The wrong kidney was placed into a wealthy Hong Kong businessman.
After displaying her talents of being able to walk through walls and remove
an organ with her mind, she is given the task of going to get it back.
She joins a tour to Hong Kong - Michael
Chow heads three men going to Hong Kong to rob, one has breath so bad it
nearly knocks everyone out, one guy (Yau Gin-gwok) just looks dangerous and
the sexy woman Miss Shi (Hon Poi-saan) is going to Whore University. The
bus crashes, everyone dies except Ka Ling - but they don't know it - neither
does she - and off to Hong Kong they go to stay in a nice hotel run by Wu
Fung. Ka Ling's contact in Hong Kong is Brother Ying (Lam Ching-ying) a practicing
Taoist priest and ghost hunter. First, he tries to convince the dead people
that they are dead - look you have a hole in your head and then when they
start eating the other hotel guests, he and Ka Ling have to use their powers
to stop them.
There is one funny bit after another - a
group of Gwielos are possessed by the ghosts and sing a song in praise of
Mao Tse-tung, in another bit the ghosts pull out the Little Red Book, Charlie
Cho of course hires Miss Shi for sex and then when he looks at his hidden
camera there is no one beneath him. Lots of magic, lots of action, lots and
lots of silliness. It is directed by Lau Shut-yue who seemed to specialize
in supernatural comedies - Ghost Fever, Ghost Busting, My Neighbors are Phantoms
and Look Out, Officer.
