Less than 100 - Sammo Hung

 

My Lucky Stars (1985).  This appears to be a sequel, but I was looking for the first film: Winners and Sinners (1983).  It appears this group of actors made like 5 movies together led by famous dudes: Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan.  This movie has some good action and some mostly unfunny humor.  Still, it has its 1985 charms for the most part.  There is a painfully un-funny sequence in which our protagonists tie up a love interest.  There are great hijinks from Jackie early and then at the end of the film in a Japanese amusement park.  Jackie's charactaer is missing for most of the show.  Dude must have been busy with like 5 other movies at the same time.  Can Sammo and friends carry the weight?!  Not quite but I always appreciate this era of Hong Kong filmmaking.  It's like everyone was in an endless club, appearing, producing, or choreographing each other's productions.  Should I see the other movies in the series?  Yes.

So My Lucy Stars didn't have enough pure Sammo for me to check it off the list so I got Spooky Encounters (1980) also known as Encounters of the Spooky Kind, the latter perhaps a riff on Spielberg.  Helming the director's chair and starring - Sammo is a bungling cuckold who finds himself in some haunted house, then ultimately attacked via the spirit world by a goofy magician.  Said magician is employed by Sammo's own boss to conceal an affair, with the hopes of snuffing Sammo with supernatural means.  Can Sammo deliver the goods?  Yes, you'll be engaged as Sammo fights off zombies, voodoo kinda stuff, and random dudes placed in his way.  He's helped along tby the Magician's peer, who sneers at money-for-murder-magic.   In my alternate reality Sammo would actually travel to the spirit world and cause some havoc, perhaps rescuing a friend of his who was snatched early on. While the tone is mostly comedic, the characters don't exactly waltz off into the sunset.  Why so serious Sammo? 

I still have some Sammo itch-to-scratch but I'll check him off the list for now!