Mang gwai chai goon (1987)

Mang gwai chai goon (1987). 1h 28m

“I had completely forgot about the first part of the film when I had finished the film, if so, the rating wouldu0026#39;ve been better. Like other reviews pointed out, the second half is definitely better, because thatu0026#39;s when thereu0026#39;s actually a story going on. I listen to this podcast (The Asian Action Cast) where one of the hosts once said (not about this film) that after watching many HK films from the 80s, you begin to see a pattern about the film making. Usually itu0026#39;s lots of different ideas and then they try to stitch the whole film together with these ideas, which probably results in uneven narrations like this film.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film centers around two police officers that seems to be more troublemakers than officers and their stupidity gets tiresome quickly when all they do is to make mistake after mistake and act like two goofballs, like Dumb and Dumber, usually in other films, the goofball is often the sidekick, but here the film decided to make the two leads both instead. It does change up a bit towards the second half when we get introduced to Kitty Chanu0026#39;s Madam, who is the cool/badass officer at the police station, which sadly ends up being quite useless when the evil threat starts to haunt all of them. But still, Madam was the only sane person in the film, even if she was scared about most of the things happening in the film, I wish her character couldu0026#39;ve been more developed and not just become a damsel in distress towards the end.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhat is even more sad that Kitty Chan didnu0026#39;t have a bigger career in the film industry after this film, I wouldu0026#39;ve love to see more from her. According to imdb she only starred in 11 films between 1984 to 1988 and this film is the biggest one.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBoth the title and the cover is misleading, because thereu0026#39;s not many haunted cops, nor is it that much horror, it works more as a parody, like the haunted bar scene is a direct copy of the bar scene from The Shining and towards the end of the film, the police chief (Fung Woo) tries to talk his way out of a scary encounter with the baddie, referring Sammo Hungu0026#39;s horror films and also asking where Ching-Ying Lam is. I think thatu0026#39;s what this film needed, some of that Ching-Ying Lam, the cool supernatural fighter, but we still got Fat Chung in a nice u0026quot;extended cameou0026quot; which I would have liked to have seen more of.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis was co-written by Kar-Wai Wong too, which is a big surprise, because thereu0026#39;s nothing about this film that resembles his other works, so donu0026#39;t approach this film if only for that, itu0026#39;s early in his career before he started to make films of his own. If you like slapstick humor, dumb people falling over stuff and mistaking the bad guys for their friends (cartoon-style) then I guess you could give this film a try. Or see it for Kitty Chan if nothing else, an actress that deserved more than just this film.”