For a while now I’ve been trying to pin down some early HK vampire/ghost films. I’ve read about a few in passing, but I couldn’t find more then basic information about them. Then I tracked one down on DVD. Two Fools Capture a Ghost from 1959. It turned out to have a lot in common with HK horror comedies of the 1980's. The DVD put out by Winson doesn’t have any subtitles, but I was able to follow the story thanks to a mix of the standard genre clichés that they used and my basic Cantonese.

The story as far as I can piece it together revolves around a couple of bumpkins who are visiting rich relatives. There is a local ghost scare and people are buying up Taoist charms. The main characters conspire with the daughter of the family they are visiting to fake her being possessed so as to play some kind of trick against the mother or maybe stepmother. Then they pretend to be Taoist priests in order to exorcize the girl. Eventually they are seemingly menaced by real ghosts and turn to another Taoist to help them. But he turns out to be a con artist and the leader of a criminal gang two have been tricking people in order to sell charms and charge for exorcisms. Eventually they find out about it and the family, bumpkins, criminals and a group of police go on a Scooby Doo style chase around the grounds of a Taoist temple.

While in the end most of the supernatural elements appear to be fake, there are still a lot of similarities with what would come later. At one point while the bumpkins are going around dressed like Taoists they do run afoul of a real corpse wrangler and his group of hopping vampires that he is transporting. They then accidently get the corpses to start following them and of corse a freak out commences. That scene could have come right out of the 1980's. Also one of the two bumpkins looks a lot like Ricky Hui which further put you in the HK horror comedy mood. There are also several musical numbers interspersed that are enjoyable enough.

If someone was interested in doing so the DVD could be picked up from a HK based site like www.buyoyo.com although I doubt many people would want to check out a late 50's horror comedy with no subtitles. But I’m posting about if incase I’m wrong on that, or that someone who does have an interest in 80's HK horror might find it interesting to read about.