The Dead and the Deadly (1983) January 30, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Horror, Comedy, Supernatural, 1980s films , trackbackDirector: Wu Ma Cast: Sammo Hung; Wu Ma; Lam Ching-Ying; Cherie Chung Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Golden Harvest
A funeral director’s assistant (Sammo Hung) becomes convinced that his recently deceased friend Lu Cho (Wu Ma) has been murdered and takes steps to prove it. However, it turns out that Lu Cho, along with his accomplices, is faking his death in order to get his hands on a fortune. When Sammo starts getting too suspicious, Lu Cho “appears” to Sammo as a ghost, insisting that his death was by natural causes so that his friend will stop digging for the truth. When Lu Cho is then murdered by his co-conspirators, and the real ghost of Lu Cho appears to Sammo telling him this time that he met with foul play, Sammo doesn’t want to know. So the spirit of the dead man haunts Sammo until he agrees to help him bring the murderers to justice.
What sets Sammo Hung apart from all of his contemporaries is his work in the horror/comedy genre, a little sub-niche that he pretty much made his own and returned to regularly during the eighties and early nineties. While Jackie Chan was busy being the happy-go-lucky everyman hero, Sammo was messing about with chicken’s blood, body painting and Taoist priests. This Wu Ma vehicle is one of the odder entries in the genre, but it does have its moments.
The humour in the first hour of the film is extremely lowbrow and juvenile, something I’ve noticed in other Wu Ma films. There’s a scene where Sammo goes to a brothel and munches on some Qing equivalent of Viagra which is painfully unfunny. The only plus points are a couple of good gags involving an artificially aged Lam Ching-Ying, who needs others to help him with his dynamic showmanship. The scene with the apparent corpse of Lu Cho having his gold teeth removed is funny on first viewing but gets a little tired upon repeats.
Just when things start getting really desperate, a strange thing happens – The Dead and the Deadly actually becomes quite entertaining. Things kick off when Lu Cho gets killed for real and starts haunting Sammo in a scene that feels like a dry run for the film that would be its spiritual successor – 1986’s Where’s Officer Tuba? Things get more frantic when Sammo gets possessed and the robbers are revealed and all manor of spooky goings-on start occurring.
As with other films in this genre, some knowledge of Chinese folklore is a definite advantage to getting the most out of the film. Although the special effects are very crude by today’s standard (and even by the west’s standard for 1983, to be honest) enjoyment isn’t hampered too much. While The Dead and the Deadly isn’t anywhere near the top of my list of spooky comedies, it does have a few neat touches and, taken as a piece of superficial entertainment may give some enjoyment. Personally, though, I’d say you can’t beat the sublime Encounters of the Spooky Kind and the Sammo Hung produced Mr Vampire.
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