Gui gou ren (1989) User Reviews

Low fever.

[OllieSuave-007 · 6/10 · 14 March 2017]

This is not one of the best Hong Kong ghost movies out there, but it is a little suspenseful. Wong Jing stars as Ling Siu-Cheong, a businessman who makes a home in a luxurious house with this wife Mrs. Ling (Pat Ha). Siu-Cheong has an affair with next door neighbor Pinky (Rosamund Kwan), but later, he discovers that she and her family were murdered by her psychotic boyfriend, now remaining in the house as vengeful ghosts.

It has a pretty intriguing plot outline, but there are the usual silly comedy, goofy gags and forced-humor acting that shadows the horror somewhat. The plot though is pretty steady-paced and you will find the film a little entertaining (***spoiler ahead*** The ending though, was a little overkill and a bit of a bummer ***spoiler ends***).

Grade C+

One for Wong Jing fans

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 22 September 2021]

GHOST FEVER (1989, original title Gui gou ren) is another wacky slice of comedy horror from Hong Kong, courtesy of Wong Jing who wrote and co-directed as well as starring. Jing plays an advertising executive who decides to play the field when his pregnant wife is hospitalised for a few weeks. Unfortunately he sets his sights on a mysterious lady in red and, when he jilts her after a one night stand, she and her ghostly family come for revenge.

As usual with Jing's movies, whatever genre they happen to be in, there's a slapdash, anything-goes feel to this one. The first half is pretty much a straight comedy focusing on the hijinks of Jing's co-workers, as played by the dependable Natalis Chan and Charlie Cho. The second half segues into traditional haunted house fare with more than a few nods to POLTERGEIST as our heroes employ a diminutive medium to help out, others are sucked into "the light" and one guy gets trapped inside a TV set. There's a great gag involving a Jackie Chan film playing on the TV which ends up with the severed head of a hopping vampire challenging our cast! The SFX are limited but the comedy works and Rosamund Kwan has never looked more alluring. Max Mok also co-stars as a Buddhist priest. One for Wong Jing fans!

The Actual Horror Here Is The Low Level Of Skill Applied To Special Effects.

[rsoonsa · 1/10 · 19 September 2005]

For this poorly made film, Wong Jing scripts and acts in the leading role as Ling Sie-Cheong, a businessman whose boss permits him to occupy a luxurious but long vacant house, rent-free, Ling not being aware that the palatial residence was where an entire family was murdered but has remained upon the premises as ghosts and, shortly after Ling and his parturient wife (Pat Ha) move into the home, she suffers serious pregnancy complications through ghostly interference and is subsequently hospitalized. Nat Chan and Charlie Cho reprise their accustomed parts as sex-obsessed and nitwitted friends of a featured player, here serving as Ling's office mates as well as a small committee urging the naïf to take advantage of his wife's absence by dallying with an attainable female and, following initial reticence he does so, selecting as lover Pinkie (Rosamund Kwan) who happens to be one of his new dwelling's resident specters, capable of materializing at will. Perceiving Pinkie as merely a short term affair, Ling soon throws her over, bringing vengeance upon himself from her protective family of phantoms, and he turns to his grandfather for aid, the latter having the acquaintance of an exorcist who assumes the task of eradicating the unpleasant band of wraiths, a procedure that seemingly takes up the largest portion of this, rather emblematic of its period, Hong Kong horror/comedy hybrid. This agonizingly lengthy section devoted to the riddance of the ghostly family as a collective is marked by extraordinarily shoddy use of makeup and awkwardly applied special effects, both shortcomings serving to furnish the only, albeit unintentional, genuine comedy for a low budget affair that suffers from, by and large, sorry production quality throughout along with the usual bemusingly inaccurate English language subtitles available with its DVD version.