Director Ching Siu Tung throws everything but his kitchen sink into this epic (and almost indescribable) adventure, creating not only the definitive Hong Kong movie experience but also perhaps the world's first musical-romance-martial arts-action-comedy. Key ingredients include a pack of spectral wolves; some animated rotting corpses, a ghost-busting Zen swordsman, a transvestite vampire with a voracious tongue the length of the Great Wall, a beautiful spirit under a terrible curse, and an all-too human pilgrim whose bumbling innocence is the perfect defense against every supernatural peril. The film is an ideal antidote for the post-summer blockbuster doldrums: it's fast, furious, totally ridiculous and, despite some oddly translated subtitles ('scary' becoming 'scareful', and so forth), one heck of a lot of fun.
Review of A Chinese Ghost Story
