This film from Jeff Lau, master (?) of crazy comedy, finds Stephen Chow as a mental patient/ghostbuster who dresses like Leon from The Professional and talks to his plant. Here’s the scoop: when a Hong Kong highrise is haunted by the ghost of someone’s grandma, Chow gets involved by teaching the security force how to fight ghouls from the beyond. Karen Mok plays his love interest and greatest fan, and she skews both her character in Fallen Angels AND Natalie Portman’s from The Professional.

This movie is wacked out beyond all belief, throwing jokes at you from every possible angle. As you'd expect from a Stephen Chow/Jeff Lau collaboration, there's enough toilet humor, movie parodies and general silliness to go around. Jeff Lau relentlessly assaults our funny bones, taxing them to near exhaustion with so much nonsensical silliness that it threatens to be criminal. The effect can be fun, but also tiring and even obnoxious and annoying.

Widely regarded as Stephen Chow's least popular film during the nineties, Out of the Dark is generally disliked in Hong Kong. However, Western audiences with a taste for Chow's high-speed antics may not be disappointed. Watch for an extended role for Lee Kin-Yan (the guy who crossdresses in all Steven Chow movies), as well as director Lee Lik-Chee. This is probably Steven Chow’s darkest and bloodiest movie and it’s actually frequently side-splitting. But when it isn’t, fast-forward. (Kozo 1996)

image courtesy of Mei Ah Laser Disc Co., Ltd.