Lam Ching-Ying Movies

Primarily intended as a showcase for the prodigious pulchritude of popular Hong Kong pin-up queen Amy Yip, this softcore exploitation thriller from director Yeung Chi-kin stars Yip as May So, who comes to Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland with her husband and baby after she kills a man who attempted to rape her. The police kill her husband in a shootout, and May So asks one of the officers to take care of her baby before she is deported back to China. The action picks up a few years later with May So falling in with a group of girls headed for Macau as she attempts to get back to Hong Kong and recover her child. Unfortunately, the women are tortured and beaten and forced into prostitution by a criminal gang instead. May ends up being helped by a john from Portugal who is actually an undercover police officer, and the obligatory happy reunion follows, but not until a great deal of Category III raunch, rape, and violence fills the screen. Charlie Cho, Wu Ma, and Lam Ching-ying head the familiar cast. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Andrew Lau Wai-keung spins this low-budget horror-comedy set during the one day of the year in the Chinese lunar calendar when the gates of the underworld are opened up and ghosts are given a day's furlough to wander about the world of the living. The film centers around a Taoist master named Lin Chiu (Lam Ching-ying) and his two dimwitted assistants, Wanchai (Ronald Wong Ban) and Charleson (Chin Siu-ho). When his underlings are beguiled by a comely sprite named Li (Carrie Ng) and end up stuck in a China Opera performance strictly for ghosts only, Lin does the only thing he can -- he decapitates the hell police, scattering the ghosts and saving Charleson and Wanchai. In order to corral the dead back up again, Lin is aided by a shady magician named Shek Kin (Lau Shun). Meanwhile, when Shek's assistant (Wong Chi-yeung) shows off his ability for an astral project, Wanchai and Charleson pull a prank on the lad and hide his body. Unfortunately, the kid's body is soon devoured by wild dogs. Rectifying this situation proves to be as ugly as tracking down the ghosts, and involves kissing vampires and eating dog doo among other unappealing solutions. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

This drama focuses on life at the Peking Opera School and is a loose biography of Hong Kong film stars Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao. Sammo Hung portrays Master Yu, the academy's brutal schoolmaster, who takes the youths through the rigorous acrobatic training. The film offers an introspective view of Master Yu, as a man who must face the fact that the institution to which he has devoted his life is fading with the passage of time. Although many of the film collaborations of Hung, Chan, and Baio have hinted at their youth together, this film attempts to depict the harsh reality. Nevertheless, Chan has criticized the film, stating that his longtime friend Hung's portrayal was actually too sympathetic an interpretation of Master Yu. ~ Jonathan E. Laxamana, All Movie Guide

Actor/director Sammo Hung gathered an international cast including the late Oscar winner Dr. Haing S. Ngor (The Killing Fields) and some of the most recognizable faces in Hong Kong cinema for this action-packed martial arts adventure. Set in 1976, the film focuses on a ragtag group of Chinese and Vietnamese prisoners trained by the United States government to carry out a potentially suicidal parachute mission into Vietnam. They are charged with destroying a cache of American weapons accidentally left behind when Saigon fell the previous year before they are recovered by the Vietcong. Led by Tung Ming-sun (Hung), the troops are escorted by a trio of hardbitten female guerrilla fighters from Cambodia (led by Joyce Godenzi), and guided by a black market peddler (Yuen Biao) and his insane uncle (Ngor). Chased by a crazed Vietnamese colonel (Yuen Wah), the team makes their way to the underground storage complex for a violent, impressively staged finale. Blending traditional genre elements with those of the American war film (notably The Dirty Dozen), the film co-stars Corey Yuen, Yuen Woo-ping, Dick Wei, and Phillip Ko, among a host of other familiar genre regulars. The dubbed version released by Tai Seng changes some character names to eliminate any Vietnamese among the heroes and cuts three sequences available in subtitled import editions from other distributors. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

This Jackie Chan martial arts actioner is a bit different than most of his films (although it does have the requisite spectacular stunts and kung fu fights). In it, he plays a police officer who is a member of a SWAT team but leaves it to join the C.I.D. division. His reason for leaving isn't to get more "action," though; it's to keep a closer eye on his feebly-minded brother Danny (director Hung). ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

As a sequel to Pom Pom I, this attempt at slapstick comedy is glued together by a story about a detective and his bride, also a policewoman, who are trying to save their former boss in the precinct from a frame-up. Thwarting their every move is a new, antagonistic boss, some gangsters, and the couple's own tendency to screw things up. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

One of the more noteworthy Hong Kong horror-comedies of its time, this period thriller from Golden Harvest and actor/director Wu Ma (who co-stars as Ma Lucho) is filled with both fascinating mythology and outrageous setpieces. Co-screenwriter Sammo Hung stars as Fatboy, who becomes suspicious when his best friend's death is listed as being due to natural causes. Adding to Fatboy's doubts is the fact that his late friend Ma Lucho's wife is now pregnant, and Ma was well-known to be impotent. Fatboy decides to conduct his own after-hours autopsy to prove that Ma was murdered, not knowing that his friend has actually faked his own death so he could sell all of the valuable treasures bequeathed to him by his late father. Just as Fatboy is about to hack the possum-playing Ma open with a meat cleaver, he is interrupted by a priest, sparing his devious friend. The respite is only temporary, however, as the treasures turn out to be junk, fronts for the real fortune which Ma's wife will inherit when she gives birth to an heir. Realizing that she is better off as a sole beneficiary, Ma's wife conspires with the priest to have her husband killed. Ma goes from playing dead to really being dead, but then rises from the grave as a ghost and ends up possessing Fatboy in order to further his campaign of revenge. The ensuing confrontations and their consequences for Fatboy's discorporated spirit result in a rousing conclusion. It's also a peculiar one -- at one point, Fatboy's soul ends up inside the body of a beetle, which his girlfriend Yuen (Cherie Chung) protects from the demons sent to escort it to hell by hiding it in a feminine napkin. Lam Ching-ying and Chung Fat co-star. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Sammo Hung stars in this parody of Return of the Dragon, the 1973 kung fu classic that paired Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. Sammo plays Lung, an apprentice pig farmer sent to the big city to help his family, only to find himself confronted by a gang of thugs trashing the grocery stand where he works. Lung's hero is Bruce Lee, and he's carefully studied Lee's martial arts techniques; however, he also weighs a good hundred pounds more than Bruce, which makes him look like a less than threatening opponent. However, the gang soon discovers that Lung knows how to throw his weight around (literally), and he soon dispatches the toughs, only to find a full slate of adventures before him. Originally released in 1978, Fei Lung Gwoh Gong received a belated video release in the United States in 1999 after Sammo Hung became an unexpected success with his American TV series Martial Law. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide