Scared Stiff (1986)

Scared Stiff
1986
Dir: Chia Yung Liu (AKA Lau Kar Wing)

Lau Kar Wing, (director of Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon), directs this frantic mess of a movie, that fuses childish antics with occasional moments of melodrama and brutal violence. At this point I need to mention that I find this movie an absolute treat. From start to finish there is never a dull moment, owed in large part to that “let’s throw everything we can into this movie” approach that Hong Kong filmmakers seemed to love in the 1980’s.

Scared Stiff opens with Halley (AKA Wei AKA Fatty AKA Superman), played by HK cinema lifer, Eric Tsang (Gen X Cops), having a sex dream in which he futilely refuses the sexual advances of three women who are attempting to “rape” him. His “Arch of chastity” whatever that is, prevents him from pursuing intercourse with the ladies, apparently. Much to Halley’s chagrin his best friend, David (AKA Miao Miao) played by Kiu Wai Miu, enters his dream and proceeds to save Halley by cockblocking him and making love to Halley’s dream girls in his place.

Halley, the stocky, maybe slightly overweight, bespectacled man-child wakes up and berates his apparently more handsome best friend, David for getting into his dreams and stealing his women. It is then that we discover that David has ESP, or EXP as it is referred to at one point in the subtitle track.

Much of this movie revolves around the lecherous antics of David and Halley as they attempt to put the moves on the ladies using childish ploys. One such childish ploy involves David dressing Halley up like a robot and pretending to control him via remote, this results in Halley’s robot pouring coffee over David’s date and then watching her get undressed. These are classy guys.

At risk of explaining the entire plot and ruining the next seventy-five odd minutes of movie for you, I will leave my elaboration there. It is hard when writing about a movie such as Scared Stiff to keep myself from gleefully explaining every farcical plot turn and absurd occurrence. But I will attempt to restrain myself.

Here goes… so basically after it is discovered by doctors that David has ESP, he is put in the minds of “mad” men with the use of state of the art machinery that looks like a pair of beds and a couple of metal headbands with some wires attached.

From here on out the movie becomes absolute madness. We have David fighting vampires in a mad man’s mind, Halley, being repeatedly brutalised and humiliated and an ensuing plot involving corrupt police violently pursuing our not-so-heroic protagonists. The result of all this is quite nasty, particularly for our hapless buffoon sidekick, Halley.

What we end up with here is a movie that starts out sex comedy, turns into a supernatural farce, then a romance, followed by slasher and finally a bloody, balls-out action finale. Oh yeah and don’t hold your breath for the top billed “stars” of this movie, Chow Yun Fat and Anita Mui. Neither join the cast until after the 50 minute mark and while Chow at least remains in the film until the end, Mui has barely 5 minutes of screen time.

Overall, Scared Stiff is chaotic, switching gears frantically throughout, leaving you feeling all “wait, what am I watching?”. But that is why it’s so much fun. The low budget effects look great and the pace doesn’t let up. Also fans of Chow Yun Fat will enjoy seeing him playing a more villainous role than they might be used to, though fans of Mui might be a little disappointed.

Oh yeah, and think of this clip from Scared Stiff next time you are awkwardly licking cake cream off a knife after getting out of bed with your sister:

As a final bonus I have also included a scan of the blurb off the back of the legit DVD of this movie I bought in Hong Kong. Please note, that at no moment in this movie was it ever mentioned that our protagonists work at a pest control company (in fact Halley mentions that he is a toy designer), also in the movie no character is ever referred to as Alan. Enjoy.

This little bonus comes with a spoiler and misinformation alert.

**************SPOILERS BELOW**************

Thanks Fortune Star, your DVD blurbs truly are hilarious and mystifying.