Jackson Booth-Millard The title made it obvious where the movie was from, this Catonese language film is one I found listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I was glad to read positive reviews by critics, so I was looking forward to it. Basically Ling Choi San (Leslie Cheung) is a timid debt collector, his job requires him to travel to rural areas, he arrives in a town, but his inability to collect a debt as planned. He is forced to seek shelter in a deserted temple in the middle of the forest, and that night Ling meets and falls in love with beautiful and alluring young maiden Lip Siu Sin (Joey Wang). However Ling becomes fearful and superstitious, as a Taoist mystic told him there are ghosts, and when he returns to the temple, his suspicions of Lip being a spirit are confirmed. Lip tells her story, she is eternally bound to the servitude of a sinister Tree Devil (Siu-Ming Lau), she is forever enslaved, as her buried remains are at the foot of the tree. Ling attempts to free her, he seeks help from powerful Taoist priest and master swordsman Yin Chek Hsia (Wu Ma), Yin battles with the Tree Demoness, but fails to free Lip, her soul is taken to the underworld for betraying her master. Ling is determined not to give up and insists that Yin help him, Yin opens a temporary portal to the Underworld, they enter and attempt to free Lip's soul from suffering. In the midst of thousands of other spirits they are unable to find Lip, eventually she and Ling see each other as dawn is breaking, but Lip cannot be exposed to sunlight or her soul will disintegrate. Ling holds on to a curtain to shield the urn, containing Lip's cremated remains, from the sunlight, she tells him that the only way to save her is to place the urn in a more auspicious burial site. Ling follows Lip's instructions and Yin's advice, he buries the remains on the crest of a hill, with Yin watching, a lights an incense stick and prays for her soul. Also starring Wai Lam as Hsia-hou, Zhilun Xue as Ching and Jing Wong as Judge. I assumed from the title is was just going to a bog-standard ghost drama, in fact it was more than I expected, it combined fast-paced fight sequences with some massive monsters and weird sorcery, it was both exciting and darkly funny, an interesting and likable martial arts comedy horror. Very good!

Humboldt This movie is one of my favourites. It is a genre-mixture with ingredients of the Action-/Horror-/Romantic-/Comedygenre. Some of the special effects may seem outdated compared to modern standards. This minor flaw is easily ignored. There is so much to discover in this story. The romantic relation between the two main characters is so beautiful that it hurts. The visuals are beautiful too. The action is great which is no surprise, it is originating from Honkong, birthplace of the world's best action movies. The humour sometimes seems a little bit silly but in a good way. Somehow this movie is being able to balance the different moods and keeps being good. Absolutely recommended.

innocuous This film may have been the biggest let-down I've experienced in renting movies based on IMDb reviews. Overall, I simply found this to be a second-rate movie.Leslie Cheung is certainly passable as the antihero and Ma Wu handles his character with cheerful competence. On the other hand, Ma Wu's makeup (facial hair) is so obviously phony that I simply could not take him seriously. He looked like an overweight teenager dressed up for Halloween, complete with the $4.95 stick-on beard.The special effects were so-so, though the "undead" in the cellar were pretty good. The tree-tongue looked like something from a bad 1950s monster flick, though the POV shots from the tongue's view more closely resembled Sam Raimi's trademark shots in the more recent "Evil Dead" trilogy. The pyrotechnics were ho-hum and the final battle is about as dull as you can get. (In fact, it most closely reminded me of the "Lost in Space" episode where the Robinsons are caught in a sandstorm and....) The plot was not particularly original and has been told countless times in the form of European fairy tales. There was no suspense and no plot twists. In fact, you know right away as you are introduced to the characters who is good, who is bad, and who is going to survive.I just returned this film to Netflix and then I sat down to write this review. The very first thing I did was check the production date. Yep, it says 1987...not the 1967 that I thought it might be. And that pretty much sums it up: The production values and FX are typical of the 1960s. The plot and action seem much older, as Hollywood was actually producing some interesting and challenging films in the 60s.** out of *****

Bungle-9 Well now, this is one fun movie! It is basically one of those interesting romantic-horror crossovers which, I must say, works quite well, although there are a few gripes.Some of the ideas in this film are very interesting, and the way that it was filmed and put together made me think "live action anime". The acting is good, the female lead is gorgeous, the action scenes are typically frenetic and yet possess a clarity not often seen in mainstream Western films. To be honest I wasn't expecting any action scenes at all before I started watching, not that I'm complaining. The film was also quite funny in places, as well as romantic, but not necessarily scary (at least by today's standards).Something I should say is that the film is fairly fast paced yet we manage to keep track of the story, but it moves so fast that we don't really get the chance to feel for the characters and they don't really have the chance to develop. The pacing itself was often uneven, but now I'm merely splitting hairs.Worth a watch.