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Siu (Wei Pai) is a handsome young hero who walks the countryside and
who has women falling for him wherever he goes. However, he only loves Sin
Sin (Lee Yuen-Wa), a girl from his hometown. When he returns to his
hometown though, things quickly turn ugly, because there is a killer in a
skeleton mask on the loose who kills all the girls Siu has even been
remotely involved. Even Sin Sin's sister has disappeared, and when a
corpse covered in clay is discovered, it's believed to be her. Inspector
Chiu (Eddy Ko) is quick to suspect either Siu or Sin Sin - rather
naturally, but soon other suspects show up on the scene as well, like
villain Kam (Lee Hoi Sang), who has set out to kill Siu, and crazy potter
Suen (Chung Fat), who might help the inspector free the corpse from the
clay, but he behaves increasingly erratic. Eventually, inspector Chiu
comes to the conclusion that Siu has nothing to do with the murders and
the two of them team up, but things don't get easier when Sin Sin
disappears while the phantom killer has set his eyes on Chou Wen (Nora
Tsang), another woman who has become friendly with Siu. The killer tries
every trick in the book to kill her and everyone else in her household,
including poisoning, but thanks to Siu's cunning, he doesn't succeed, and
ultimately, Siu and Chiu manage to overcome the killer and unmask him -
it's potter Suen's midget assistant Ah Kwai (Cheung Sin Ming) ... but Ah
Kwai is too good a fighter to let them catch him. Eventually, Sin Sin
returns after having been kept by the phantom killer and his men, but now
she is wearing a non-removable mask. In the meantime, master Suen has
freed Fei Fei's dead body from all the clay - which only reveals the
corpse isn't Fei Fei at all but a former victim of the phantom killer, and
when Chiu and Siu open her coffin, they find neither her (naturally) nor
Fei Fei but Sin Sin. Which means the masked woman, who's presently staying
at Chou Wen's, has to be Fei Fei, and it looks as if her intentions are
significantly less than benign. When Chiu and Siu close in on Fei Fei
and Chou Wen, they are stopped by Kam, who is actually in Fei Fei's
employ, and they have a hard time defeating and killing him, enough time
to give Fei Fei, who has done what she has done out of love to Siu, an
opportunity to escape - until she crosses paths with Ah Kwayi, her former
ally and phantom killer, but he has had a change of heart, and now he
stabs her dead. This is a fun movie that blends old school
martial arts cinema with elements of the Italian giallo cinema (~
murder mystery with horror undercurrents, often featuring a crazed
serialkiller) - and to great effect, too, the film is as stylish and
atmospheric as it is action-filled, and despite being a tad on the
over-complex side, it still makes sense for the most part. That all
said, the film is no masterpiece, as director Fung Shui-Fan seems to
pretty much lack genuine vision and inventiveness, but it's still a highly
entertaining genre flick.
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find The Phantom Killer at adultvideouniverse.com
