Spooky Encounters: A Gwailo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror

Hopping vampires, seductive spirits and giant predatory tongues! Tsui Hark's A Chinese Ghost Story in 1987 gave many Western viewers their first taste of supernatural thrills, Oriental style. Yet the film was a comparatively late entry in a well-established genre. From Sammo Hung's Spooky Encounters to King Hu's valedictory Painted Skin, the 1980s Hong Kong ghost film cycle produced a stylish and distinctive body of work that compares with the best of Universal and Hammer.