香港流行文化節2026 : 奇幻電影之旅《撞到正》

4K數碼修復版世界首映

At the Threshold of Imagination: The Spooky Bunch (4K Restored) World Premiere

Hong Kong cinema has produced many visionary fantasy films over the decades, but few stand at quite as remarkable a crossroads as The Spooky Bunch (1980). Tonight, the world premiere of its 4K digitally restored version opened the Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival 2026’s “Fantasies in Reality: A Cinematic Journey,” and the occasion proved as emotionally charged as the film itself is wildly inventive.

The restoration brings astonishing clarity to a film largely set at night—revealing textures of shadow, fabric, and folkloric dread that earlier prints could only hint at. But what makes this screening truly momentous is not merely technical: it is the belated rediscovery of a pioneering work that sits at the very threshold of the Hong Kong New Wave.

Directed by Ann Hui—then only on her sophomore feature, following The Secret (1979)—The Spooky Bunch fuses Cantonese opera with local supernatural legend into an outrageous comedic ghost story. A traveling opera troupe is summoned to Cheung Chau, only to find themselves enmeshed in wartime deception, vengeful spirits, and a curse that refuses to stay buried. Hui, aided by screenwriter Joyce Chan, uses the island’s isolation as a vast operatic backstage—a liminal space where tradition meets modernity, the living tangles with the dead, and theatrical artifice dissolves into terrifying reality.

But the film’s most enduring legacy may lie behind the camera. The Spooky Bunch was produced and conceived by Josephine Siao Fong-fong, who not only starred as the irrepressible lead but also founded Kao Yun Film Company to break through Hong Kong’s male-dominated industry. Siao assembled an almost entirely female production team: producer Pui Bo-chu, executive producer Tina Lau, editor and art director—all women. In an era when female voices in Hong Kong cinema were marginal at best, Siao’s quiet act of systemic subversion feels nothing short of radical. (One notable exception on the crew: a very young Stanley Kwan served as assistant director, years before he would become one of Hong Kong’s most celebrated directors himself, with films like Rouge and Centre Stage.)

The gamble paid off. Grossing HK$3.6 million—fifth at the 1980 box office—the film was later invited to the Berlin International Film Festival and named one of the “100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies.” Tonight’s restoration, authorised by Siao herself, returns it to the screen in revelatory form. The affectionate reception—director Ann Hui and producer Tina Lau appeared on stage, joined by a rare public appearance from 79-year-old Siao, greeted by a sea of mobile-phone lights out of consideration for her hearing—testified to the film’s enduring place in the collective imagination.

The Spooky Bunch stands exactly at the threshold the Hong Kong New Wave opened: between commercial genre cinema and personal vision, between Cantonese opera tradition and a restless modern sensibility. More than four decades later, its exuberant, genre-defying spirit—and Siao Fong-fong’s visionary behind-the-scenes labour—looks less like quaint history and more like prophecy.

Elven Ho

Reviewed at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, April 25, 2026