This one's probably best known as the film that made hopping vampires (jiangshi) popular.
Bold Cheung (Sammo Hung), a rickshaw bearer, is known in his village for his fighting prowess; So when a local rich man (Huang Ha) starts an affair with his wife (Leung Suet-mei), they decide that it would be prudent to take him out with magic. They enlist the aid of a sorcerer (Jonny Chan) from the Mao-shan sect to commit the foul deed; The sorcerer's apprentice (Chung Fat) takes exception to this misuse of magic, and sets out to protect the hapless Cheung from the dark spells arrayed against him.
It's a simple plot, but the film is all over the place; many of the spooky encounters don't even have anything to do with the evil magician, they're just isolated spooky encounters Cheung happens to wander into. And... that's fine, martial arts films aren't known for their coherence. They are known for broad humour and slapstick, and this one's no different: Sammo Hung - who directs, and co-writes along with Huang Ying - puts his own brand of tomfoolery up front and center. Cheung's episodic adventures aren't particularly funny, but there area few laughs here and there (I liked the bickering of the urned corpses at the beginning, for example).
There's a nice, folkloric feel to many of the encounters; Cheung fights a mirror ghost and cuts off her hand, has to follow specific rules to survive a night at a mortuary, and uses black magic (as well as kung fu) to battle a jiangshi. Later, it's revealed that in a wizard duel, he who has the tallest altar wins - which leads to some truly amazing stunt work.
The fights, as you'd expect from someone of Hung's caliber, are all excellent, but the film has surprisingly few of them; instead, we get more traditional horror moments, like a (pretty creepy) hopping vampire searching for a hidden victim. The horror never takes, though, as even when the movie gets nasty - such as a surprisingly gory bit when two hungry spirits bite chunks out of Cheung's legs - every other beat is played for laughs. As usual the humour was a bit too broad for me, and had precious little of the wit of, say, Knockabout - but Sammo is as likeable as ever, and that carries the film a long way.
The effects are also a mixed bag, but usually they're not trying to portray anything too complex. There's a magic battle at one point where practical effects are used to shoot out a long gout of flame instead of the more typical animated lightning - that's pretty cool. There's also an excellent scene where a house falls apart around Cheung. Mostly it's just simple makeup effects of varying quality, and at one point a canvas bag with a crude face drawn on it. Chinese Ghost Story, this ain't.
I watched this one years and years ago, and didn't think too much of it then. I enjoyed it a bit more this time around, but I can't say I've revised my opinion of it much, unfortunately. Animal lovers beware: a rooster gets killed on-screen, which is par for the course in these sort of films (I hope the caterers used the chicken), and a black dog is killed outside the frame (I hope they got the sound effect for its death humanely...).
For all the film's fucking around, it made me laugh the hardest with its typically abrupt end, which involves a brutal bit of domestic violence. Wrong-headed as hell, sure, but holy shit does it ever provide a memorable what-the-fuck! moment.
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