Encounters of the Spooky Kind: Sammo Hung

There's a moment of such sublime silliness in Sammo Hung's Encounters of the Spooky Kind that I suspect it would prevent many Western viewers from regarding the film as anything other than some kind of spoof. Two fighters possessed by the spirits of two different gods bicker at each other in between blows. Their speech is an unintelligible sped-up gibberish; think of a Chinese Alvin and the Chipmunks. Of course, such a thing would probably only seem funny to Western viewers. I suspect that the original Hong Kong audiences would have reacted much differently. And therein lies the appeal of the wuxia and jiangshi genres in the West: they let us experience the cultural values and expectations of a society much different than our own. For my money Encounters of the Spooky Kind is the best jiangshi film that I've ever seen and the one that I would recommend to people new to the genre. The comedy is entertaining and not over-bearing as in many of Jackie Chan's Hong Kong films. The special effects and monster designs seem to predict Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead franchise (in fact, two scenes involving possessed hands may have been a direct influence). And the last twenty minutes or so are a martial-arts-battle/Taoist-wizard duel extravaganza!

9/10