It's a good thing for film-makers that Qing Dynasty author Pu Songling has been dead for three centuries. If he had any inkling his classic Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio would be cited as the source material for Erotic Ghost Story - Perfect Match (whose Chinese title invokes the name of Pu's famous collection of eerie tales), he might have considered legal action. As it is, he is probably spinning in his grave.
Actually, Hong Kong movies have long mined these tales for script material, with varying degrees of success. An early example is Waste Not Our Youth (1948), starring Zhou Xuan, the Judy Garland of Mandarin musicals. The Enchanting Shadow (1960), remade by Tsui Hark as A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) and again this year in animated form, is probably the most artistically satisfying of the Strange Tales adaptations.
Directed by Lam Yi-hung, with no scriptwriter credited, Perfect Match is the tale of three rabbits from heaven who defy the Holy Madam (as she is referred to in the English subtitles) to come down to Earth in the guise of voluptuous maidens.
The rabbits face great danger on Earth. Not only is there the wrath of the Madam and her henchmen, but there is also the risk of becoming neither human (yan ) nor spirit (yiu ) but a human-spirit (yan-yiu, a play on words in Chinese, which can also mean transvestite).
Ying Ying (Pang Tan) is the most statuesque of the trio, with a figure to rival Jayne Mansfield. Ying Ying is unwilling to return to heaven, as she is happily married to a handsome hunk (Tsui Kam-kong, who gave a memorable parody of his soft-porn persona in last year's Viva Erotica ).
In order to help his wife in her quest to remain earthbound, he becomes a monk and wanders the countryside in Buddhist robes.