Rating: NR
Genre:
Action
Release Date: 03/18/2003
SubTitles: English/Japanese/KO
Dubbed: Cantonese/Mandarin/English
Sound: DD5.1
Run Time: 99 min
Distributor/Studio: Tai Seng
One of the more noteworthy Hong Kong
horror-comedies of its time, this
period thriller from
Golden Harvest and actor/director
Wu Ma (who co-stars as
Ma Lucho) is filled with both fascinating mythology and outrageous setpieces. Co-screenwriter
Sammo Hung stars as
Fatboy, who becomes suspicious when his best friend's death is listed as being due to natural causes. Adding to
Fatboy's doubts is the fact that his late friend
Ma Lucho's wife is now pregnant, and
Ma was well-known to be impotent.
Fatboy decides to conduct his own after-hours autopsy to prove that
Ma was murdered, not knowing that his friend has actually faked his own death so he could sell all of the valuable treasures bequeathed to him by his late father. Just as
Fatboy is about to hack the possum-playing
Ma open with a meat cleaver, he is interrupted by a priest, sparing his devious friend. The respite is only temporary, however, as the treasures turn out to be junk, fronts for the real fortune which
Ma's wife will inherit when she gives birth to an heir. Realizing that she is better off as a sole beneficiary,
Ma's wife conspires with the priest to have her husband killed.
Ma goes from playing dead to really being dead, but then rises from the grave as a ghost and ends up possessing
Fatboy in order to further his campaign of revenge. The ensuing confrontations and their consequences for
Fatboy's discorporated spirit result in a rousing conclusion. It's also a peculiar one -- at one point,
Fatboy's soul ends up inside the body of a beetle, which his girlfriend
Yuen (
Cherie Chung) protects from the demons sent to escort it to hell by hiding it in a feminine napkin.
Lam Ching-ying and
Chung Fat co-star.
~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
