Ling huan xiao jie

This is a horror-comedy movie from Hong Kong, a story about a woman who committed suicide after thinking her actor-husband has been fooling around with other women. Her ghost then returns to haunt her husband and his fellow actor colleagues.

There is really not much originality in this movie; it is basically a ghost-on-the-loose flick with a plain plot. There is some slapstick humor you've come to expect in many of these horror-comedy films, mixed in with some ghostly but non-scary scenes. Pauline Wang Yu-Huan plays the vengeful ghost and I think she did a good job in the role, very enchanting, yet menacing looking. Probably thrown into the plot for good measure is a gentle ghost played by Si-dai Lau (origins unknown) who does battle with the evil ghost to protect the actors, which I thought was quite neat.

The English title of this film is Miss Magic/Lady Vampire, which I thought did a disservice to the story. "Lady Vampire" made it sounds like a vampire is the star of the movie (no vampires appear in this film) and "Miss Magic" made it sounds like that some sort of magician or witch was in the story. Had that been true, it would have made this movie a little bit more intriguing and made the plot a little more original.

This is an OK movie nonetheless, with plenty of ghost action, but doesn't match the hype and charm of the "Mr. Vampire" films and other 1980s ghost movies like "Vampire Buster" and "Bless this House" from Hong Kong.

Grade C