The Mr. Vampire films of the 1980s may be the most familiar examples of a unique Hong Kong subgenre, the knockabout horror comedy. But here, as elsewhere, the true pioneer turns out to be the Fat Dragon, Sammo Hung. He worked out all the basic moves (sticky rice as a ghost repellent; the frantic use of spells scribbled on slips of paper) in this 1980 ghost farce. It's a fancy-dress period film in which a gang of clowns, pretending to be spooks in order to terrorize each other, inadvertently invoke the real thing. Pretty soon everyone in sight (including Sammo's foxy but unfaithful wife) is conjuring up a hopping corpse or a nasty poltergeist, and a supernatural traffic jam ensues. (The same basic idea was recycled, much less effectively, in 1982's The Dead and the Deadly.) Hung's world-class kung fu skills prove to be as well adapted to slapstick horseplay as to knockdown action, and in the best scenes they work both ways at once. In the finale, Hung fights off several attackers as his body is possessed by one ectoplasmic intruder after another, each with a distinct personality. Sammo is never more graceful than when he's pretending to be a clumsy oaf. --David Chute

asin: B0007IO6Z0 binding: DVD list price: $9.98 USD amazon price: $9.98 USD other availability:

Posted by Vladimir Sat, 01/26/2008 - 21:17

 

Night Symphony (Forever Soul)

Silent night you embrace me
and Invite me into
your symphony
I feel you run within my energy
and take me to calm
away from daylight
In your womb I lay my complete soul
and dance In your whirlwind
of an fantastic orgasm
And as morning arrives in distant sky
I follow you into sleep
away from all sounds of day
Forever Companion that always awakens
me from within, each night
takes me to the symphony
Forever and without changing
life and death,this is
my home, my soul.......

Stefan

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Untitled

Pricked by the thorn
from a dusky red rose.
Blood drips from my fingertips
and falls...
onto the rain-washed sidewalk.
Waiting for my lover
who will not return.
Waiting for my lover
who is in the arms of another.
My tears stain the rose
standing there in the rain.
Sorrow is my companion.
The rose falls to the ground
as a painful reminder
to a love that did not last.

Rhiannon
May 8, 2001

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Chapter 20

They were sitting in a little Italian restaurant where they had often, in the old days, lingered late into the night over a glass of Lacrimæ Christi. But no pale ghost of the past rose from the wine. Only a wriggling something, with serpent eyes, that sent cold shivers down her spine and held her speechless and entranced.

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At the End

I have aged as time's worn on
And now my life is nearly gone
A life of war and battles many
Plundered cities and now I'm ready
To battle with my final foe
I will face the Reaper's blow

I have but one wish of my death
It be in battle mong horses breath
Gleaming steel and flowing blood
Dying men and victory's flood

I wish not to die on my throne
Be in the field my final groan
There have been battles I have lost
And my life they've nearly cost

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'30 Days of Night' a good laugh

November 8, 2007 (The Arctic Sounder / Alex DeMarban) -- Barrow residents are laughing off their latest brush with fame -- a vampire movie set in the Arctic city -- though many haven't seen it.

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