1995 ‘回魂夜’ Directed by Jeffrey Lau
Stephen Chow plays an "insane" person who is not afraid of anything. He also appears to be parodying Leon (the professional). Carrying his trusty plant and bag of cling wrap and chocolates he helps a young girl to rid her building of a couple mean ghosts.
กึ๋ยเฉพาะชั้น 9, Wui wan yeh
The Maltesers professional. Scaffold biting. Though there are splatter, slasher and haunted house slapsticks to be found, these have a range of genuine absurd hilarity to trying too hard to be funny to low-brow and tasteless. There's barely any timing for the jokes, like pies thrown on top of the already pie-splattered faces. The chance for being tired is high, but it's never boring.
whooaaahhhh
i mean the jokes are total hit and miss (and some are dicey as youd exxpect from HK cinema) but this is a legit 90s horror comedy classic? Both Bio-Zombie and Out of the Dark which straps itself together as some mix of Evil Dead, Ghostbusters, Evil Dead, Poltergiest 3 and LEON(??) are total watchlist rockets.
also the special FX are wonderfully zany and electro-plasma wacky. But the way this film is shot and pieced together? its like an overly stylized UFO-Sci-fi-Xfiles mid-90s future Raimi-thon with angled zooms and Three Stooges type physical comedy being literally thrown and nimbly bounced off walls.
to begin with it was shaky but the further and deeper it goes into insane non-reality horror comedy and contemporizing ghost tale folklore, the more i loved it!!!!!!!!!
those dynamite gags had me shouting. hard recommend.
Falloween makes me miss Hong Kong cinema so I was really looking forward to this, but there was no point in the movie that I managed to get on its wavelength. Stephen Chow comedies seem to be extremely not for me, and I couldn't help but think back on how Lam Nai-choi's Ghost Snatchers did the exact same thing but in a far more convincing, equally insane, but more coherent way. Heck, even Jeff Lau's Mortuary Blues was a blast compared to this so maybe it really is just my lack of appreciation for Stephen Chow's rambling shtick.
Léon: the Professional has gone from hitman to ghostbuster in this comedy horror. The supporting cast is very entertaining, led by Karen Mok, and they do well to carry the film in scenes that Stephen Chow is not present in.
Some parts could have been made more comedic, but others less (I didn’t need to see Chow with those fake teeth for 20 minutes).
Horror/comedy pastiche with Stephen Chow playing an escaped mental patient (named Leon, and he spends the whole film dressed similarly to Jean Reno in The Professional, with comedy mvp Karen Mok dressed vaguely like Natalie Portman) trying to exorcise ghosts in a large apartment complex.
Two of the ghosts he carelessly killed himself trying to exorcise the first ghost, which perhaps gives some indication of just how gleefully this film dispenses grievous bodily harm as a punchline. Nearly every supporting character here is despicable, and the film deals in a kind of off-handed cruelty that's a little startling even for Chow.
Jeff Lau directs with more shot for shot commitment than was probably necessary, managing to really sell the horror element in aesthetic terms at least and slipping in a handful of Wong Kar-Wai parodies, seemingly out of habit at this point. Definitely a disappointment between the peaks of A Chinese Odyssey and God of Cookery, though not without interest.
Karen Mok with orange hair dancing with her television, Faye Wong in Chungking Express staring back at her. Later she's cosplayed as Mathilda from Leon, until a ghost wind knocks her wig off. Stephen Chow's character is even named Leon, not a riff but an autodidact ghost-killer, whipping the security team from Mok's (Kwan's) building into shape, coaching with dynamite bundles, handfuls of human shit, cow tears, banana peels and sympathetic houseplants. Black, bloody; shooting, stabbing, bludgeoning and otherwise disfiguring and killing its players for laughs, mostly. Real saturated, brilliant vivid greens and pinks, uniform blues streaked with clouds of pink, bright blood.
Barely a core to hang on, not a romance or a redemption, just a breakneck contest, a battle of attrition when broken out/blocked. HK comedy so usual confounding admixture of tastelessness and inclusivity/intersection. Folks had fun, as the blooper reel bears out, cuties Chow and Mok, irresistible smiles of embarrassment and impish joy.
Weird even by the absurdist standards of mid 90s Chow vehicles. Jeffrey Lau direction is very commited as is the cast, things are both a bit more dour than usual and lacking a strong structure. It is certainly memorable.
This is juvenile, it's vulgar and it really hasn't aged well as we look at it with 2020 vision, but sometimes, just sometimes, that's OK, because whilst it is all of the above it is also brilliant.
Stephen Chow knows you know the punchline even before he delivers it, but he delivers it anyway... and it's still funny. He then delivers it again, sometimes even a third time, but each time with precision and intent, however, it also manages to go far beyond your expectations or will lead you one way, only to then whiplash you in another, because watching Stephen Chow is like listening to Jazz, just when you think you got the rhythm, it changes tempo and throws…
Out of the Dark ist verrückt... ohne Mist. Ich dachte schon, dass Jeffrey Laus Frühwerk "Haunted Cop Shop" durchgedreht ist aber das hier ist eine ganze Stufe wahnsinniger.
Stephen Chow spielt in seiner Leon-Kluft einen professionellen Geisterjäger, der vor ABSOLUT nichts Angst hat und bildet eine Truppe Wachleute dazu aus Geister zu verbannen. All das in einer wahnsinnigen Gag-Tempo, die von einem Punchline zur nächsten ohne Pause überleitet. So ein Nonsens-Humor ist sicherlich nicht für jeden und könnte für einige too much sein... mich hat die Dynamit-Szene gekillt. :'D
Also ja. Absolut nichts erwartet und dann kommt sowas um die Ecke. Ich mag positive Überraschungen. :D
There's some funny stuff here but at the beginning of the film and Chow seemed to be doing different things. By the midpoint, the movie hit its stride but quickly runs out of steam during the final third of the film.
A silly romp. Some jokes hit while others fall flat on their faces.
Trivia - The first film to reference Chungking Express and Leon: The Professional!
