“My Flying Wife” Theatrical Poster
Director: O Sing Pui
Cast: Sammo Hung Kam Bo, Tommy Wong Kwong Leung, Fennie Yuen, Yu Li, Roy Cheung, Shing Fui On, Terrence Fok, James Ha, Frankie Ng, William Ho Ka Kui
Running Time: 90 min.
By Henry McKeand
The legacy of Sammo Hung’s work with Jackie Chan is so massive that it’s easy to forget what a diverse filmography he has. In a sense, there are many Sammos. You have the rotund-yet-nimble martial artist who backed up Jackie in the classic Golden Harvest kung fu comedies. Then you have Sammo as an American Television star (Martial Law), Sammo as Rambo (Eastern Condors), Sammo as a stoic elder statesman (SPL and Ip Man 2), Sammo as a dramatic leading man (Painted Faces), and Sammo as one of the most in-demand fight choreographers in the world (pretty much every other martial arts movie you’ve ever seen).
Interestingly, there’s one Sammo that hasn’t seen much popularity in the West. I’m talking of course about Sammo Hung, horror comedy innovator. His work on movies like Encounters of the Spooky Kind revolutionized not only the Chinese vampire, but the very concept of a funny monster flick. His forays into horror-tinged material were wildly successful in Hong Kong, spawning franchises like the Mr. Vampire series, but they’ve mostly been regarded as cult curiosities overseas.
So, it should be no surprise that one of the only ways to watch My Flying Wife, a Sammo-starring ghost romp from ’91, is a mid-quality YouTube rip with barely understandable English subtitles. I mention this because it’s likely impossible to see the film as it was intended: in a packed Hong Kong theater full of fans who could have fully understood its comedic subtleties. But despite a good chunk of the jokes being lost in translation, My Flying Wife offers up a sizable portion of HK horror inventiveness.
The film, directed by O Sing-Pui, melds a contemporary world of low-level Triads with a zany story of possession and reincarnation. Sammo is in his comfortable “anxious goofball” mode as Qu, a Triad leader idolized by his mostly benevolent crew of young upstarts. A down-on-her-luck woman named Helen (Fennie Yuen) him money, and so he sends an underling, Chung (Shui-Wah Fok), to collect the debt without realizing that Helen’s getting ready to jump to her death.
Little does anyone know, a group of shady ghosts are planning on collecting Helen’s soul after she dies so that a scornful spirit named Siu-Hung (Li Yu) can be reincarnated. But when Chung and the triads end up foiling Helen’s suicide plan, they find themselves at odds with afterlife villains. To fight back, they enlist the help of a blind friend named Fatt (Tommy Wong) who is supposedly skilled in paranormal matters. This is even before they realize that Siu-Hung has a past-life connection to Sammo’s Qu. Before long, Chung is falling in love with Helen as Qu explores his connection with Siu-Hung.
Okay, so maybe it’s too inventive. At only 90 minutes, it’s packed full of characters and gags, and not all of them work. It eventually settles into a groove, but the setup is jumbled. This is to say nothing of the tonal whiplash in its first half, which was common in Hong Kong comedies of the time. It’s a rare film that can effectively combine forbidden love affairs, cute ghost kids, a wacky blind mystic, forced prostitution, Triad bickering, and Sammo Hung using a wet mop to cosplay as a God. My Flying Wife may not be that rare film, but it comes a lot closer than you might think.
Fans of this subgenre know that narrative specifics aren’t what matter, and O Sing-Pui rightfully puts his focus on madcap comic scenes that highlight Sammo’s charm and physicality. No matter how over-the-top the paranormal story becomes, Sammo’s comic timing and nice guy lovability are what sell the action. He gets some serious help from Tommy Wong, whose commitment to silliness leads to most of the laugh-out-loud scenes.
Even compared to other similar films in the “spooky comedy” subgenre, My Flying Wife is a disarmingly good-natured film, which is surprising considering its irreverent (and even offensive) tone. At the end of the day, it’s a rom com more than anything, and its parallel love stories are more important than any of the supposed scares.
These “scares” amount to little more than comic-relief ghosts wearing pancake makeup, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a kids’ movie with a raunchy exterior. But the shortcomings are easily forgotten when Sammo gets a chance to show off his kung fu or mug at the camera when something crazy happens. As always, he’s a pleasure to watch, which makes My Flying Wife an easy recommendation for Sammo diehards…even if it’s hard to find a decent version of it.
Henry McKeand’s Rating: 6.5/10
