Encounter of the Spooky Kind
AKA Spooky Encounters
1/2/01
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Sammo Hung, Chung Fa, Lam Ching Ying, Peter Chan Lung

Courageous Cheung (Sammo Hung) must prove his worth by betting he can stay the night in a 'haunted' temple, which brings him horror as he is suspected of killing his own wife. He ends up in a duel with Chan Lung.

Spooky Encounters isn't your run of the mill martial arts movie. It successfully takes Taoist mysticism and blends it with a little bit of martial arts at the end to make a very interesting movie. In this review, I will cover both the martial arts and the Taoism present in this because it's such a unique mix of the two, plus I consider the magic as part of the action.

Some of the weird Taoist stuff includes Sammo peeling an apple in the candlelight in front of a mirror. It's supposed to bring a ghost into the mirror. Well it does, and it takes someone through the mirror with it. It's kind of scary too because there's no noise when it happens. But don't break the mirror or else your house will come down. Sammo dives out just in time, which is a stunt in itself I guess.



Chan Lung then is wanting to scare Sammo while he's in the temple. So, he starts off by writing the name of the person he wants to summon, I assume, after he chants a bit. Next he makes an offering to the person, who was once a Manchu officer, and sticks the name and a coin to a dummy resembling him. Then he uses the wooden sword, drinks wine, spears the man's name, spits the wine on the name, and rings a bell. The whole thing is then burnt. Chan Lung is then able to control the officer through chanting and uses his own eyes to see through the officer's eyes. There was some other stuff I couldn't understand like how he hit the alter and made it shake, but I assume it was to make the officer wake up. So Sammo has to avoid this guy he thinks is a ghost while he's in the temple. Nothing happens though because the sun comes up and he has to put the officer away.



Chan Lung then uses a chicken for some reason. First we see an actual chicken get its head cut off, and then the blood from its neck drained into a cup, which he drinks, and then spits it into the model coffin on his alter. I imagine it's to bring the officer to life another way instead of through fire, but through blood, maybe that way he can stay alive in the daytime. Fascinating!! Oh Sammo is spending the night in this place again to make some more money. Chan Lung swings a sword around and chants and is able to summon the officer. However, Sammo got advice from Chung Fa. He bought 50 chicken eggs, or so he thought, which he was instructed to throw into the coffin if the dead were coming alive, and that would make him go back down. If all else fails, throw dog's blood inside. But the guy who sells Sammo these eggs only gives him 40 chicken ones, and the others are probably duck eggs. The chicken eggs stop Chan Lung momentarily, but when he accidentally throws a non-chicken egg inside it doesn't work and the officer comes out.



Here is where some martial arts are. Sammo does some good acrobatics like jumping off walls, and the corpse uses stiff moves, more of a two beat nature, and Sammo defends using basic blocks. It's still really cool, especially with a corpse doing the fighting against Sammo. It's about 2 minutes long and Sammo finishes him off by throwing the dog blood at him, which sends Chan Lung back through the top of his roof. Funny stuff.



Sammo ends up looking for a place to sleep the next day and finds yet another corpse at a run down house, but no bedding except the lid of his broken coffin. So he sleeps there, accidentally holds the corpse's hand in his sleep, and seems to warm up his body which revives him, and he ends up copying Sammo's every move. But he isn't happy when a black cat crosses his path.



Chan Lung is then using a voodoo doll to control Sammo. This is different than Western voodoo dolls, where it's all for pain. These are for manipulation. Chan Lung gets ahold of Sammo's right arm and Sammo finds himself attacking everyone in a restaraunt with it. Not much in the way of choreography but the scene is a funny one, with Sammo making gestures like "It's ok really" and then nailing the guy behind him. He also tries to step on his hand to control it, but it sweeps him off the ground. Meanwhile, Chung Fa is having a wooden sword fight with Chan Lung trying to keep him from doing too much of this stuff. Nothing special here except a sword fight until Chan Lung touches two fingers against the Ying Yang on his forehead to make a magic finger, which Chung Fa can block if he makes the same gesture. Some good acrobatics and Chan Lung or his double does a really funny fall off a leaning piece of bamboo.



While Sammo is in the restaraunt still, the guards from the prison find him. Here Sammo does all sorts of acrobatics because each of the 3 or 4 guards has a sword, and Sammo goes over tables, under tables, does kep ups, all kinds of stuff. He ends up grabbing a bench and fights them off with that. A good minute long scene that shows Sammo's stuff pretty well. Chung Fa, using more mysticism, turns them against Lam Ching Ying after that, but Lam doesn't do a whole lot and the scene cuts out.



More cool Taoism. Chung Fa paints all sorts of stuff on Sammo's body, which makes him immune to the voodoo dolls, even on the forehead. So, out of desparation, Chan Lung summons 3 demons out of a fire to go attack him. When they attack, it's more Taoism as Sammo and Chung Fa use an I Ching mirror and Sammo's red vest. Lots of wirework basically. But at the end Chung Fa goes through the main demon and makes Sammo say where Chan Lung's alter is. Weird.



Then, Chung Fa and Sammo try to get their alter higher than Chan Lung's. This way they have a better chance of winning I suppose. Chan Lung fires more of that finger business at him, but Chung Fa rebounds it to one of the chickens hanging off his alter. Chan Lung invokes the spirit of a ring-weilding Shaolin monk, which makes his little follower perform just like a Shaolin monk with a ring. Chung Fa does the same but with a monkey stylist I think, which makes Sammo into a monkey stylist as you might imagine. So there's a fight here, and it's really good. Sammo does a good monkey style. The other guy is impressive too with the ring weapon. But Sammo is on top of the game with insane acrobatics all over the place. Good one, and it's around 2:15 in length.



Then they do the same thing again with different gods, though Sammo fights an old man with a sword this time and Sammo uses a spear and is a woman or something. Since this fight is all weaponry it didn't interest me as much, but it's still a decent fight and the old man shows some good skill. Sammo can't win, and throws up the old man's shoe, which he had had for a while (part of the story), and Chung Fa puts a needle through it and the guy becomes incapacitated. Chan Lung burns at the end.



A movie centered around Taoist mysticism isn't easy to come across these days, and this one is interesting too. The fights aren't spectacular except for the one with Sammo against the guy with the ring, but all the magic was very cool. I would have liked a little more action though, and I didn't feel totally satisfied with the lack of interesting fights, maybe one more at the end to replace the one with the old man and the sword would have made this a lot better, but otherwise it's very cool.

Oh a word of note. The Mega Star VCD version of this is cropped, and the subtitles are off the screen. Get something else, like the DVD or VHS so you can see everything.

4/5

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