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Ghosts no laughing matter

A look at the Hong Kong skyline confirms its grasp of modernity; a look at its movies shows a society still clinging to the superstitious.

In recent years there have been a string of modern ghost stories in a comic vein, a sub-genre of which is the anthology comedy ghost movie. Producer Andy Chin Wai-keung and director Wilson Yip Wai-sun had a minor hit in 1995 with 01:00AM. Earlier this year, Chin took over the director's reins with 02:00AM. Now Yip is back in the director's chair with Midnight Zone, which is so similar in style it might have been titled 03:00AM.

A collection of three semi-comic ghost stories scripted by Philip Kwok Wai-chung, Brian Chung Wai-hung, and the director, Midnight Zone is mildly entertaining and mercifully brief, with each yarn clocking in at about 30 minutes.

The first is Headless Soul, in which a bumbling cop (Jerry Lam Hiu-fung) shows a yellow streak when ordered to keep night watch at a factory where a woman's headless corpse has been discovered.

All the usual ghost movie conventions are used: atmospheric lighting, wind effects, eerie music, exaggerated camera speeds. But it does so in a tongue-in-cheek manner, with Lam a coward all the way. The ghostly sightings that so scare him are even given logical explanations by the factory's night watchman, Uncle Seven (Lam Song-yee).

The story's most interesting aspect is its superstitious details, including the hapless policeman's attempt to ward off the evil spirit by taking pages from the Bible and pasting them, Taoist style, on the factory's walls and doors.

Alas, rather than leave the headless ghost's existence intriguingly ambiguous, the film-makers provide a concrete - and implausible - explanation.

Next is Hit and Run, better described by its Chinese title, a colloquial expression literally meaning 'colliding with a ghost' that connotes bad luck.

A yuppie couple (Tsui Kam-kong and Liz Kong Hay-mun) run over a man and leave before the police arrive.

They anonymously call the police and, to their relief, find no report of a hit-and-run accident or a roadside corpse. But their happiness is somewhat dampened when the dead man moves in across the street.

They try to ward him off by bringing lit sticks of incense to his home. When that does not work, they use the karaoke machine to broadcast Taoist chants at night. It fails, but works like a charm in attracting the police.

Despite a weak denouement, the sequence demonstrates how the home entertainment technology can be adapted to update age-old superstitious practices.

Midnight Dinner is the slightest and most traditional tale. Anthony Wong Chau-sang and Kingdom Yuen King-dan are a most unloving couple and heads of a lower-class family that gives 'dysfunctional' a whole new meaning.

Seven days after the death of Wong's mother (Law Lan), whom the family mistreated in life, she returns with chopper in hand. But rather than wreak ghostly revenge, granny prepares a last supper and teaches her descendants to love one another.

It is a wonderful message, and a rarity in ghost films, but implausible in light of the intra-family cruelty displayed on screen.

Despite the message, one never believes the family will not return to its unloving ways once granny returns to wherever ghosts reside.

Midnight Zone elicits more chuckles than laughter and demonstrates superstition is alive and well. Midnight Zone, Empire circuit

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