Hung plays Chang, a town bumpkin who unwittingly is drawn into the realm of the supernatural after a trick by his buddies goes awry and conjures up a zombie. His cheating wife takes note and, with her lover, attempts to kill Chang by duping him into repeatedly staying the night in a haunted cemetery, where he must face a powerful zombie. Eventually, he enlists the help of a friendly white (good) wizard to try and help him get rid of the zombies once and for all.

One of the first successful attempts at combining martial arts with horror, Encounters of the Spooky Kind is a classic in the genre that helped pave the way for such popular movies as the Mr. Vampire series. It should be noted though that the HK definition of horror is a bit different than here in the West. The zombies (or vampires, depending on the interpretation) look and act (at least to Western standards) weird, hopping about in a kind of dead man's dance. As such, the horror aspects of the movie probably aren't as strong to me as they may be to others. But the film does succeed in creating some excellent action pieces. The finale, which has Hung and the wizard teaming up to defeat a dark wizard and his demon is a textbook example of the genre and quite exciting to watch.

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