{"id":13195,"date":"2026-10-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=13195"},"modified":"2026-10-05T09:07:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T09:07:38","slug":"a-triple-feature-without-any-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/a-triple-feature-without-any-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"A Triple Feature Without Any Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>7 Minute, 34 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nGhouls Gone Wild<\/strong>
\n – <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Horror, Comedy, Martial Arts, Fantasy
\nYear: <\/strong>1987–1988, 2026 Blu-ray
\nRuntime: <\/strong>4h 32m
\nDirectors: <\/strong>Lau Kar-wing, Jeffrey Lau, Chung-Hsing Chao
\nWriters: <\/strong>Szeto Cheuk-hon, Wong Ying-kit, Ng Kam-hung, Jeffrey Lau, Wong Kar-wai, Chung-Hsing Chao
\nCast: <\/strong>Chow Yun-fat, Anita Mui, Eric Tsang, Michael Miu, Jacky Cheung, Ricky Hui, Wu Ma, Kitty Chan, Hsiao-Lao Lin, Pao-Ming Ku, Chen Shan
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available October 19, 2026. Pre-order your copy here: www.eurekavideo.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>At a certain point, while watching GHOULS GONE WILD, you keep trying to categorize what you’re watching, and that just becomes completely useless. One minute there’s comedy, the next there’s a murder investigation, then vampires, martial arts, dreams come to life, flying bodies, monsters, the supernatural, or some practical effect that seems to have been created simply because somebody wondered whether they could get it onto the screen. That refusal to behave may be the best reason for Eureka Classics to put SCARED STIFF, THE HAUNTED COP SHOP, and MAGIC OF SPELL together.<\/p>\n

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These aren’t three variations of the same movie. They’re three examples of just how far filmmakers in Hong Kong and Taiwan were willing to stretch horror during the 1980s, when genre boundaries often seemed more like suggestions than rules. Horror could be funny without losing its monsters, martial arts could wander into supernatural fantasy, and something aimed partly at younger audiences could suddenly become far stranger or nastier than anyone would expect.<\/p>\n

SCARED STIFF might be the most recognizable entry point of the three, although recognizable certainly doesn’t mean predictable. Lau Kar-wing starts with a premise about the ability to enter other people’s dreams and gradually piles on comedy, crime, horror, and action. Eric Tsang, Michael Miu, and Chow Yun-fat give the movie plenty of personality. At the same time, the supporting cast includes Anita Mui and Wu Ma, making this one of those Hong Kong productions where even scanning the cast list becomes part of the appeal.<\/p>\n

Its biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. SCARED STIFF keeps changing what kind of movie it wants to be, and the transitions aren’t especially smooth. The comedy can suddenly give way to something much darker, while the dream material introduces another layer before the movie moves somewhere else again. At times, that unpredictability feels exciting; other times, it feels like several movies fighting for the same 93 minutes.<\/p>\n

That messiness is also wonderfully revealing. Modern genre movies can feel so concerned with maintaining an exact tone that watching something this comfortable with changing directions becomes refreshing. SCARED STIFF doesn’t always connect those directions successfully, but its willingness to try them gives it personality that a cleaner movie might have lost.<\/p>\n

Then THE HAUNTED COP SHOP arrives and pushes the comedy much harder. Jacky Cheung and Ricky Hui play police officers dealing with supernatural trouble connected to their station, and their chemistry gives Jeffrey Lau something sturdy enough to build the movie's increasingly ridiculous situations around. The film is loud, juvenile, and occasionally exhausting, but it can also become legitimately eerie when it stops joking long enough to let the ghosts and vampires take over.<\/p>\n

There’s an especially fascinating historical footnote attached to this one because Wong Kar-wai co-wrote it with Jeffrey Lau before becoming the filmmaker most audiences now associate with CHUNGKING EXPRESS, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, and 2046. Anyone going into THE HAUNTED COP SHOP looking for early signs of those movies is probably going to be very confused. This is a broad supernatural comedy populated by incompetent cops, practical jokes, vampire attacks, and increasingly absurd attempts at survival.<\/p>\n

That connection is fun trivia, but the movie works better when it isn’t treated like an archaeological expedition through Wong’s career. Lau’s energetic direction and the cast’s commitment to stupidity matter more. Some jokes haven’t aged particularly well, and the movie has portions where the constant mugging and noise get tiring. Yet, the horror sequences deliver far more atmosphere than the surrounding silliness would suggest.<\/p>\n

The collection saves its most ridiculous entry for last. MAGIC OF SPELL is the kind of movie capable of making the first two suddenly look restrained, with Chung-Hsing Chao throwing demons, zombies, magical warriors, living plants, transformations, wirework, elaborate costumes, and strange bursts of visual effects at the screen until predicting what comes next becomes pointless.<\/p>\n

There’s an almost childlike approach to imagination here, except the material can become surprisingly gruesome for something with such youthful fantasy elements. The movie pulls from Japanese folklore, martial arts fantasy, horror, and live-action cartoon logic without worrying whether those ingredients should comfortably exist beside one another. They simply do, and the confidence with which it keeps adding new ones becomes part of the entertainment.<\/p>\n

That creates the strangest and possibly most entertaining film in the set. The practical effects aren’t hiding their limitations, either. You can see the handmade quality in costumes, creatures, wires, and transformations, but that visibility becomes part of their appeal rather than something working against them. People physically built these things, put performers into them, and figured out ways to make impossible ideas happen with whatever resources were available.<\/p>\n

MAGIC OF SPELL can still become overwhelming. Its enthusiasm rarely includes restraint, and anyone looking for careful storytelling may feel like they’re being hit with new ideas faster than the movie can develop the previous ones. Yet that’s also the movie I found hardest to imagine being made today in quite the same way, because the imperfections and excess are tied directly to its personality.<\/p>\n

That makes Eureka’s decision to preserve these particular movies worthwhile beyond their immediate entertainment value. GHOULS GONE WILD captures a period when filmmakers were taking ideas from different traditions, reshaping them, borrowing from international hits, and then combining everything with distinctly local filmmaking styles. SCARED STIFF can resemble a dream thriller before becoming something else, THE HAUNTED COP SHOP pulls Western vampire imagery into Hong Kong supernatural comedy, and MAGIC OF SPELL takes Japanese folklore and turns it into Taiwanese martial-arts fantasy insanity.<\/p>\n

The Blu-ray release also treats movies that have spent years outside the easiest paths of discovery with more seriousness than their ridiculous content might suggest. All three receive new 2K restorations, original-language mono audio, and newly translated English subtitles. SCARED STIFF includes both its Hong Kong theatrical version and a longer 97-minute cut, while new commentaries accompany each film.<\/p>\n

The additional material helps place the movies within a larger history, rather than presenting them merely as three weird discoveries from the 1980s. Fraser Elliott’s discussion of Hong Kong and Taiwanese horror and Iain Robert Smith’s booklet essay on the films’ habit of borrowing and remixing international genre traditions are especially appropriate for a set where almost every movie seems to grab ideas from somewhere and immediately twist them into something stranger.<\/p>\n

Not everything in GHOULS GONE WILD lands, and expecting consistency would probably be the quickest way to become annoyed with it. Even within individual movies, the comedy, horror, and action don’t always cooperate, and several stretches feel like ideas were added faster than anyone could decide what to remove.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t want that roughness taken away, though. The attraction here is watching filmmakers work with seemingly no fear of chaos, practical limitations, or the possibility that an idea might be too ridiculous. GHOULS GONE WILD collects three movies willing to fail rather than play safely, and even when they’re messy, there’s usually something strange waiting a few minutes ahead that makes the trip worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Please visit https:\/\/linktr.ee\/overlyhonestr for more reviews.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEW Ghouls Gone Wild –      Genre: Horror, Comedy, Martial Arts, Fantasy Year: 1987–1988, 2026 Blu-ray Runtime: 4h 32m Directors: Lau Kar-wing, Jeffrey Lau, Chung-Hsing Chao Writers: Szeto Cheuk-hon, Wong Ying-kit, Ng Kam-hung, Jeffrey Lau, Wong Kar-wai, Chung-Hsing Chao Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Anita Mui, Eric Tsang, Michael Miu, Jacky Cheung, Ricky Hui, Wu Ma, Kitty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367841.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t