Encounters of the Spooky Kind (Chinese: 鬼打鬼; pinyin: Guǐ dǎ guǐ; lit. 'Ghost Against Ghost') is a 1980 Hong Kong martial arts comedy horror film starring and directed by Sammo Hung, written by Hung and Huang Ying, and produced by Hung's film production company Bo Ho Film Company. Hung stars as Cheung, a rickshaw worker whose wife is having an affair with one of his wealthy clients. His wife and her lover hire a powerful sorcerer to kill Cheung, who is aided by the sorcerer's colleague (Chung Fat).
Released as Spooky Encounters in the United States, the film is also known as Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind, a more blatant mimicry of the title of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Encounters of the Spooky Kind was one of the first Hong Kong-produced action horror comedies; it popularized the production of films featuring jiangshi, hopping vampires of Chinese folklore, though it was not the first film to feature jiangshi. Encounters of the Spooky Kind was followed by a 1990 stand-alone sequel starring Hung and Lam Ching-ying, Encounters of the Spooky Kind II (also known as Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2). A soft reboot directed by Dick Wei was filmed in 2016.
Contents
Plot
Bold Cheung awakens from a nightmare in which he narrowly escapes two ghosts. He is challenged to spend the night in an abandoned house where he must peel an apple in front of a mirror. If he breaks the skin then something bad will happen. Upholding his mantle as the boldest, he accepts the challenge. However, that night, whilst peeling the apple, his friend tricks him. While scolding his friend for the prank, a real ghost appears and snatches Cheung's friend away. The ghost reaches for Cheung, but he cuts its hand off and then quickly shatters the mirror, causing the house to collapse.
The next day, Cheung overhears a story about a promiscuous wife from a sweet tofu seller; he goes to his home to check on his wife and finds two peeping toms outside his door. He scolds them, causing his wife and employer, Master Tam, to hear. Tam escapes, but leaves his shoe which Cheung finds and confronts his wife with. His wife pulls a tantrum and makes Cheung feel guilty.
Master Tam is worried Cheung will find out about the affair, so he hires a Mao Shan witch, Chin Hoi, to get rid of him. When Chin mentions this to his junior disciple, Priest Tsui, Tsui states that it is against the rules of their sect to harm others, and is then kicked out by Chin. Cheung is tricked into spending the night in a temple, but he encounters Tsui who tells him that he must sleep on the roof. Cheung does so. A coffin in the temple opens, and a jiangshi, a hopping corpse controlled by Chin, begins looking for him. Cheung hides in the rafters and under the coffin, but is found; the two fight until sunrise forces Chin to move the corpse back into the coffin.
Cheung is tricked into spending another night in the temple. Again he meets Tsui who tells him to collect fifty chicken eggs to throw into the coffin. If he runs out of eggs, he must throw dog's blood over the jiangshi. However, the egg seller puts in ten duck eggs. That night, Cheung throws in the eggs when the coffin begins to open and it works. However, when he throws a duck egg inside, the corpse escapes so Cheung throws dog's blood onto it which sends Chin flying into Tam's roof, severing his control of the jiangshi.
Cheung goes back to town, but an Inspector arrests him for murdering his wife, even though it is a set-up. Cheung is thrown in prison, but escapes by pretending to be sick; he beats up the guards and runs into a forest where he trips over a coffin exposing the corpse within. As Cheung sleeps, it comes to life and mimics his actions before an evil force causes it to attack and chase him. Whilst on the run from the corpse, Cheung bumps into the Inspector and his men. The jiangshi collapses onto the Inspector, giving Cheung time to escape.
Production
Actor-director Sammo Hung conceived Encounters of the Spooky Kind after having heard numerous ghost stories from Hong Kong as well as other countries, like Malaysia and Singapore. In September 2000, Hung said of the film's origins: "We were doing a lot of movies and we wanted something new... I made the movie thinking it would be interesting." He was reportedly discouraged from working on the project by some of his film industry peers who believed that audiences would not be interested in the film's supernatural themes.
Music
Encounters of the Spooky Kind includes excerpts from a section of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, composed by Béla Bartók; it is the same section used in the 1980 film The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Reception
Box office
Encounters of the Spooky Kind grossed $5,675,626.00 HKD at the Hong Kong box office. It ran in Hong Kong theatres from 24 December 1980 to 8 January 1981.
Critical response
Jackie Chan praised the film's climactic duel in which Cheung is possessed by a monkey-god, describing the choreography as "amazing". Authors Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc called Encounters of the Spooky Kind "an almost peerless blend of comedy, horror and kung-fu". In 2014, film critic Andrew Heskins of EasternKicks wrote, "Sammo Hung [...] took the idea of hopping vampires/deceased from The Shadow Boxing (aka The Spiritual Boxer II) and turned it into a phenomenon with Encounter of the Spooky Kind, and things were never the same."