Film Review: Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind

The Hong Kong movie industry of the 80s and 90s was one that was willing to create a bunch of action comedy horror films, with Sammo Hung serving as almost the martial arts film equivalent to Dan Ackroyd on Ghostbusters. I’ve covered one of the films of this era in the past with Mr. Vampire. Now it’s time for another, one starring Mr. Hung himself, with Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind.

In Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind, Hung plays Bold Cheung. Cheung is a rickshaw driver with a reputation for having a strong tolerance for handling ghosts (even though he’s kind of a scardy-cat), and being unwilling to turn down a bet when that reputation is on the line. When his employer, who is sleeping with Cheung’s wife, decides that Cheung has to go, he hires a sorcerer to kill Cheung using a haunted temple, jiangshi, and a bet over whether he’ll spend several nights in the temple and survive.

The secret ally in Cheung’s corner is the sorcerer’s former disciple, who objects to his master betraying his principles in order to make some quick cash with a seemingly untraceable murder, and tries to covertly, and then overly, help Cheung out. Initially, hilarity ensues, but things become more and more serious as the film goes on. This, unfortunately, leads to some of the film’s faults.

Specifically, as the film goes on, Cheung ends up framed for a different murder, and the tone grows increasingly more serious, but not in ways related to any of the horror parts of the story. Weirdly, outside of a couple scenes early in the film, the parts with jiangshi and other undead threats aren’t really threatening. The real danger in the film more often comes from sorcerous and mundane sources controlled by mortals with mortal agendas. This is particularly a bummer because the makeup effects for the various jiangshi are great. It just was weird to eventually hit a point where, as a viewer, I realized that the presence of the undead on the screen meant the main character was safe.

This also leads into some of the weird misogyny of the films. There’s only one woman in this film who is intended to be a character, and that’s Cheung’s wife. She’s also cheating on him, she’s only out for cash with no other motivation to speak of. When things go bad for her sugar daddy, she then quickly throws on some crocodile tears and tries to act like she loved him all along. This leads to the last shot of the film before a freeze frame and credits being Cheung beating the shit out of her with his kung fu. It causes you to come away from the film with the wrong kind of WTF reaction.

In all, this is a film with some fun spooky bits, and a good Taoist sorcerer fight at the end, but ultimately it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth at the end. If you want to see a Wizard Fight and don’t necessarily care about tonal consistency, this movie will be fine. If you do care about tonal whiplash, temper your expectations accordingly.

Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind is available on: