This is quite an interesting movie, a mix of Gothic-style horror, adventure films, and comedy, that works well for about an hour and then loses its focus. the premise is great: In 1922 China, two opium trafickers (Kent Cheng, who plays his character as a fat lothario!, and Ricky Hui) dress up their comrades like hopping corpses, and pretend they are taoist priests,in order to smuggle opium (no soldeirs will stop them!) The problems begin when they become the caretakers of a real hopping corpse, the victim of a local warlord. During a skirmish in the woods with some bandits, they lose the body in a sulfur pit....

The atmosphere and production design are fantastic throughout this film; this film is considerably slower paced than the average HK horror film, too. The look of the film, with its haunted forests, and decrepit fog-filled castles, is much in the Western Gothic tradition. Ronny Yu mixes these motifs nicely with a Chinese sensibility, though, such as the garden of terracotta statues in the caverns of the haunted castle. Ronny Yu also keeps the funny stuff to a minimum; most of the comedy is black and satirical in nature. the film is very strong until about halfway through, once the 'monster' has made itself known, and then it begins to drag. There's also a rather pointless anti-climax involving a Chinese fat-si that is just there, it seems, to show-off the exotic accoutrements of Chinese magic. A half-haerted Exorcist-type epilogue, showing the fate of the heroes 20 yrs. later, is completely superfluous and kind of irritated me; it was a lapse into bad taste in an otherwise good film.
This film is often a foot-note in most Hong Kong film fans' minds, but it deserves to be better known. The Megastar VCD I have is really a great copy, 2.35 and with beautiful picture. Tough to find (I got in a small shop in NYC's Chinatown).