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The corrupt council Master Tam (Wong Ha) has an affair with the wife
(Leung Suet-Moi) of his own riokshaw driver, the mild mannered but slow
Bold Cheung (Sammo Hung), but even Cheung seems to have some suspicions
that his wife cheats on him. So Master Tam figures it would be best for
all the involved if Cheung was killer (well, all but Cheung maybe). But
how to do it since Cheung is a skilled kung fu fighter ...
So Tam has someone bet with Cheung he wouldn't be able to spend a night
in a haunted temple, then he hires evil wizard Master Chin (Chan Lung) to
raise a corpse in the temple. But Chin's colleague, good wizard Tsui
(Chung Fat) has learned of this and decides to help Cheung in giving him
pointers on how to evade the corpse ... and really, Cheung survives.
But Master Tam is not one to give up, so he has Cheung coaxed to spend another
night in the temple, and again has Master Chin raise the corpse, but
Cheung has gotten some more pointers from Master Tsui and this time
fights the corpse with an array of eggs (!), and later, when really
fighting the corpse hand-to-hand, he hospitalizes Master Chin (who of
course controls the corpse's fighting but is no match for Cheung's kung
fu.
Out of a wizard to fall back on, Master Tam falls back on cruder
methods and fakes Cheung's wife's murder, then has him accused for him, and
while promising to help him, he makes sure he lands on death row.
Of course, Cheung manages to escape though, and on the run from the
inspector (Lam Ching-Ying) and his men he bumps into Master Tsui again,
the only one who believes him he hasn't killed his wife and the only one
who can help him now ... and before very long everything culminates in a
duel Master Tsui versus Master Chin, with Cheung and Tam as their
respective helpers, in which the two wizards throw pretty much everything
but the kitchen sink at each other, and at the end of which only Cheung
survives ... and his wife, who wants to cheat her way into his heart
again ... but instead she receives a deserved beating ...
Though some may say so, Encounters of the Spooky Kind is of
course not the first kung fu horror comedy (earlier examples of this genre
include Lo Wei's rather lame Spiritual Kung Fu from 1978, starring
a young Jackie Chan), but it is the film that set the standards for the
genre, thanks to Sammo Hung's diligent direction that outbalances creepy
atmosphere, well crafted action sequences, some gory scenes and imaginative slapstick.Granted, the film might be less than impressive on a
story level, but a succession of great setpieces (my favourites were
Sammo's first night in the temple and the final duel of the wizards)
make more than up for it and make this an early laugh-out-loud horror
movie years before Evil Dead 2
or Brain Dead - and one that looks incredibly fresh even today..
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