Mad Mad Ghost

Mad Mad Ghost

Lam Ching-Ying stars one more time as a Taoist priest who runs a ghost busting school with five students in this mildly amusing film. Business isn’t great and he has to move into a house that is rumored to have ghosts inside. In fact, there is a ghost couple who has been living there for 100 years. The husband though is a thoroughly nasty fellow who is guilty of ghost/spousal abuse as he constantly beats his sweet gentle though not particularly bright wife.

LC-Y being the gentleman he is boots the husband out of the house and he and his students all become good friends with the ghost wife. She is useful as well for ghost busting training exercises! The husband comes back with a few ghost buddies to take revenge. At the same time two gweilos are looking for hidden gold in the house and are willing to kill for it. They hire an evil sorcerer to kill the ghost. It turns out that having a friendly ghost around can be very useful as she does a little drunken kung-fu on them.

There are some enjoyable LC-Y sequences in the film and a nice fight with the gwielos (one who is the same gwielo that was in Yes Madam), but the best part of the film is watching the female ghost (Jacqueline Law) transform from a passive victim to a disco dancing kung fu queen.

For some strange reason the gwielos are unfortunately portrayed as racists and they spew a number of anti-Chinese comments.

For the most part this is a fairly insubstantial film – but it has a few hidden charms and Lam Ching-Ying is always worth watching in just about anything.