LAST GHOST STANDING (1999, original title Gwai ching le tai hei) is Hong Kong's answer to EVIL DEAD II and by that I mean it's pretty much an open copy of the Sam Raimi classic. This time around the setting is a cinema - shades of DEMONS - where Satan unleashes a bunch of minions to take down anyone unlucky enough to be caught inside. What follows is a mix of senseless action and puerile comedy, with characters riding 'excrement monsters' through the corridors and lots of other silly stuff going on. EVIL DEAD bits include a woman's severed head flying around and attacking her loved one and a guy's hand getting possessed forcing him to chop it off. Chin Kar Lok has a small role spoofing Jackie Chan, complete with a massive prosthetic nose. It's too low budget to be much cop, with non-existent horror and way over the top comedy.
5 Reviews
Low budget....and it shows
vonboise15 January 2002
This is a millennium, New Years Eve spoof, whose only value may be in offering insomniacs some relief. The special effects may have started out as a kindergarten project......possibly the worst I've even seen in a movie. There were a few funny (for those still awake) scenes, but were milked from a smile into a yawn. Guess this was necessary to come up with 85 minutes of film.
Oh, the horror in this movie!
OllieSuave-00711 March 2017
This is a Hong Kong horror flick with an A-list cast. However, even the popularity in the cast of characters couldn't redeem for this low budget, cheesy and horrible of a film.
The premises on this flick is set on New Years Eve at a cinema where the forces of the ghost world wreck havoc, causing untold gore, bloodbath and nastiness.
There is really no plot to the film - just nasty stuff after nasty stuff that is supposedly to make this a good horror film. However, with no substance in the acting, storytelling and atmosphere, this film really stinks. It's definitely OK to pass on this.
Grade F
The premises on this flick is set on New Years Eve at a cinema where the forces of the ghost world wreck havoc, causing untold gore, bloodbath and nastiness.
There is really no plot to the film - just nasty stuff after nasty stuff that is supposedly to make this a good horror film. However, with no substance in the acting, storytelling and atmosphere, this film really stinks. It's definitely OK to pass on this.
Grade F
This was pretty terrible...
paul_haakonsen5 January 2022
Well, if you ever have seen any of the comedies that made it out of the Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s, then you should have a pretty good idea of what you are in for here when you sit down to watch the 1999 horror comedy "Gwai ching lei tai hei" (aka "Last Ghost Standing")...
...Except that "Gwai ching lei tai hei" just didn't have an ounce of laughs to it. This was without a doubt one of the worst Hong Kong comedies from the 1990s that I have had to sit through. And believe you me, this movie was quite the ordeal to sit through.
The storyline, as written by Siu-Hung Chung, felt like it was written by a middle school student. The story was just so ludicrously bad and horrible. It was fully devoid of laughs and any sense of coherent red thread. And that made it difficult to watch this movie from writer and director Siu-Hung Chung.
Initially I had expect that the movie might have so sense of entertainment to it when I saw that Francis Ng was also in the movie. But that was not the case, and even with the likes of Simon Lui and Pinky Cheung on the cast list, the movie just flopped.
"Gwai ching lei tai hei" is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on.
My rating of "Gwai ching lei tai hei" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.
...Except that "Gwai ching lei tai hei" just didn't have an ounce of laughs to it. This was without a doubt one of the worst Hong Kong comedies from the 1990s that I have had to sit through. And believe you me, this movie was quite the ordeal to sit through.
The storyline, as written by Siu-Hung Chung, felt like it was written by a middle school student. The story was just so ludicrously bad and horrible. It was fully devoid of laughs and any sense of coherent red thread. And that made it difficult to watch this movie from writer and director Siu-Hung Chung.
Initially I had expect that the movie might have so sense of entertainment to it when I saw that Francis Ng was also in the movie. But that was not the case, and even with the likes of Simon Lui and Pinky Cheung on the cast list, the movie just flopped.
"Gwai ching lei tai hei" is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on.
My rating of "Gwai ching lei tai hei" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.
Not perfect, but better than some reviews would have you think...
Coolestmovies1 January 2014
Pseudo-gonzo horror-comedy isn't quite up to the bar set by last year's truly gonzo BIO- ZOMBIE, but does earn at least a couple of stripes for thinking outside the box in which Hong Kong genre outings have of late become increasingly confined. One the eve of its closure—indeed, on the eve of the millennium—the motley staff of an alluringly tattered old picture palace, tellingly located at 666 King's Road, must face off with a collection of delightfully, deliberately rinky-dink monsters unleashed by Satan (Francis Ng), who's grown tired of poor films and inattentive theatre owners and decides to put this little microcosm of oddballs to the test! Leading the charge, after dishy girlfriend Sherming Yiu is unpleasantly dispatched by the demon, is sheepish projectionist Simon Loui, jittery, goggle-eyed ticket vendor Wayne Lai (in a terrific performance) and sassy cop Pauline Suen. Meanwhile, chasing a turd monster (!) down the toilets in the upstairs washrooms are stoned rave punks Benny Chan, Angela Tong and Pinky Cheung. While allusions are frequently and rather obviously drawn to Lamberto Bava's DEMONS (1985) because of the locale and the trio of punks, the film's primary mainspring is very likely Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE (aka BRAINDEAD, 1992), from the emphatically saccharine romance between Simon and Sherming, to the squishy, rubbery, puppet-y quality of the shoestring special effects, to the blatant editing cheats that prolong some setpieces a bit beyond their sell-by date. To be sure, it's no DEAD ALIVE, but its makers have their hearts in the right place, and if their low-fi ingenuity won't stand up to careful appraisal, it isn't really meant to anyway: it's meant to wink at the audience along with the cast and crew, who clearly enjoyed being given free run of a theatre for a few days to craft something just a little bit...different.
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