Well, if you ever have seen any of the comedies that made it out of the Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s, then you should have a pretty good idea of what you are in for here when you sit down to watch the 1999 horror comedy "Gwai ching lei tai hei" (aka "Last Ghost Standing")...

...Except that "Gwai ching lei tai hei" just didn't have an ounce of laughs to it. This was without a doubt one of the worst Hong Kong comedies from the 1990s that I have had to sit through. And believe you me, this movie was quite the ordeal to sit through.

The storyline, as written by Siu-Hung Chung, felt like it was written by a middle school student. The story was just so ludicrously bad and horrible. It was fully devoid of laughs and any sense of coherent red thread. And that made it difficult to watch this movie from writer and director Siu-Hung Chung.

Initially I had expect that the movie might have so sense of entertainment to it when I saw that Francis Ng was also in the movie. But that was not the case, and even with the likes of Simon Lui and Pinky Cheung on the cast list, the movie just flopped.

"Gwai ching lei tai hei" is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on.

My rating of "Gwai ching lei tai hei" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.

LAST GHOST STANDING (1999, original title Gwai ching le tai hei) is Hong Kong's answer to EVIL DEAD II and by that I mean it's pretty much an open copy of the Sam Raimi classic. This time around the setting is a cinema - shades of DEMONS - where Satan unleashes a bunch of minions to take down anyone unlucky enough to be caught inside. What follows is a mix of senseless action and puerile comedy, with characters riding 'excrement monsters' through the corridors and lots of other silly stuff going on. EVIL DEAD bits include a woman's severed head flying around and attacking her loved one and a guy's hand getting possessed forcing him to chop it off. Chin Kar Lok has a small role spoofing Jackie Chan, complete with a massive prosthetic nose. It's too low budget to be much cop, with non-existent horror and way over the top comedy.

This is a millennium, New Years Eve spoof, whose only value may be in offering insomniacs some relief. The special effects may have started out as a kindergarten project......possibly the worst I've even seen in a movie. There were a few funny (for those still awake) scenes, but were milked from a smile into a yawn. Guess this was necessary to come up with 85 minutes of film.