Honourable Mentions: Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2

This 1990 film, directed by Ricky Lau, was really a sequel in name only to Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind – which I reviewed under the alternative title Spooky Encounters. Rather than play Courageous Cheung, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo plays Fat Po and the presence of Lam Ching-Ying as the Taoist Master only serves to strengthen the cast. Over all there was less slapstick in this, though a humorous vein pulsed below the surface. However, there was a depressingly low appearance of kyonsi.

The vampiric element was at the head of the film, which saw Po and his fiancée Pearl, running through the town as alarms sound. They are chased by towns people but the master calls them over to a building and tells them to hide. A man, Hoi (Hoi Mang), demands to know where they are but Master says they have run on. He calls them adulterers – though Pearl’s father then suggests that she is virtuous but Po is an adulterer.

Hoi wants to check the building anyway, but the Master suggests that it is a haunted place. Hoi claims not to be afraid and opens the doors (which Pearl and Po hide behind). He steps in but his feet crunch bones and, at the end of the room, two coffins sit. He thinks better of it and the crowd continue their search. Master tells Po and Pearl to stay there and they head upstairs to sleep. There is a bed up there but Po’s suggestion that they make it their wedding night is rebuffed.

During the night, as the moon comes out, the lid of one of the coffins starts to shift and then blows off. A male kyonsi rises. It hops out of the coffin, but Pearl has heard and goes to look – she sees it, well I can only describe it as moonbathing. She gets Po, but when he look it has gone. Then they see its shadow coming up the stairs. Pearl both covers her nose and her mouth in order to hide from it.

Po pulls her into a back room but the kyonsi bursts through. Suddenly Po decides they should find out what it wants (an unusual thought in such a movie). The kyonsi looks to a pipe and Po sets it up for him, leading to the kyonsi smoking what I assume was opium. The kyonsi insists that Po has some too but when it tries to claim Pearl a fight ensues.

During the fight we see the kyonsi suck blood through Po’s fingers and the fight ends up with Pearl hanging above the coffins from a chandelier when the second one opens and a female kyonsi rises. Eventually all four are hanging from the chandelier and, bizarrely, biting each other. The female kyonsi bites Po, who bites the male, who bites Pearl, who bites the female kyonsi. Suddenly Master shakes Po, who is dreaming about eloping with Pearl (whom he was matched with as a child), And Po bites his master.

Yes, it was all a dream. However the rest of the film sees entanglements with a female ghost – who just wants to look after her still living mother – whilst the weasel like Sze tries to break up the engagement of Po and Pearl with the help of a black magician. All in all it is a satisfying movie, though perhaps not as amusing as the first film – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing dependant on the mood of the viewer.

The imdb page is here.