Ghouls Gone Wild
Directed by Lau Kar-Wing/Jeffrey Lau/Chung-Hsing Chao.
Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Shan Charng, Jacky Cheung, Wu Mah, Billy Lau, Ricky Hui, Phillip Ko, Eric Tsang, and Fung Woo.
SYNOPSIS:
Box set bringing together three cult titles from the Hong Kong/Taiwan horror boom of the 1980s.
Just in time for Halloween, Eureka Entertainment have dug deep into the tomb of Hong Kong and Taiwanese horror from the 1980s, only these movies are not just frightful but also frightfully silly and packed with the sort of madcap action and tonal changes that Hollywood couldn’t really get away with at that time (or any other time, really).
First up is Scared Stiff from 1987, and this immediately sets the vibe going forward as the main idea centres around being able to invade other people’s dreams to have erotic or wild adventures. Sounds familiar, right? And coming from the mid-1980s you could be forgiven for thinking the movie was a knock-off of A Nightmare on Elm Street but the mention of dreams is pretty much the only connection to Freddy Krueger. Instead, a young man is able to enter other people’s dreams after having a horrific accident and he uses his new found skill to catch a killer, along the way trying to pull his nurse, wind up his best friend and have lots of juvenile fun. Hong Kong legend Chow Yun-Fat features as a cop in a bizarre and very silly horror comedy that features one of the most inventive junk yard kills you will probably ever see.
Also from 1987 is The Haunted Cop Shop, and the madcap comedy continues as a police station once under Japanese occupation during WWII becomes a battle ground when a former-cop-turned-Buddhist-monk returns to make amends with his old foe and ghosts from the past are unleashed. Drawing heavily on Kubrick’s The Shining – see if you can guess which scene, as it really isn’t obvious(!) – as well as Tom Holland’s Fright Night and the Hong Kong classic Mr. Vampire, The Haunted Cop Shop features caped vampires, high-energy slapstick and glorious 1980s neon lighting to create an atmospheric and highly-charged vampire ghost story that is a little less stupid (in a good way) than Scared Stiff, but not by much.
Rounding out the set is Magic of Spell from 1988, and the tone shifts again as not only are we transported into a wuxia fantasy setting but Magic of Spell is also a children’s movie. However, don’t let that put you off as for some reason it gets away with eye gouging, a creepy evil wizard (who look uncannily like Bobby Liebling from doom metal merchants Pentagram), kung fu zombies – and they do look like Italian-style zombies from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s – and a transsexual albino witch (remember, this is a kid’s movie!), and for sheer imagination this is pretty tough to beat. Don’t worry too much about the plot as the good-versus-evil nature of the story just descends into madness as all manner of demons and fighting warriors meet up to do battle in the most colourful and manic movie in the set, and given how mad the other two movies are that is saying something.
This limited edition two-disc set comes with a collector’s booklet featuring writing by author Iain Robert Smith and each movie comes with a new audio commentary, with Scared Stiff covered by Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng, and genre expert Arne Venema and filmmaker Domting covering the other two, and all are worth listening to but probably on a second viewing after you’ve taken in the insanity that is contained in each movie so you can then have it explained in some context.
More than just three random horror comedies, the movies in Ghouls Gone Wild represent an era when filmmakers could throw all of their influences and ideas into a melting pot to see what worked, and even if something didn’t work it was usually left in anyway. There isn’t anything here that will blow you away with detailed plots, continuity and coherence, but for a shot of wacky Asian cinema that will make you laugh – and not always for the right reasons – and get weirded out by how far the filmmakers were willing to push the supernatural mayhem angle, this set is a blast.
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Scared Stiff – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
The Haunted Cop Shop – Film: ★ ★/ Movie: ★ ★ ★
Magic of Spell – Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
