Anthony Wong and Herman Yau, the dream team behind such exploitation classics as Ebola Syndrome and The Untold Story, teamed up before both of those movies to make Taxi Hunter. While one could still file “Taxi Hunter” under the exploitation label, it’s not nearly as tasteless and grotesque as Wong and Yau’s later efforts.

Wong plays an average insurance salesman who seems to be living a great life: He is moving up the corporate ladder in his career and also has a good wife who is soon to give birth to his child. Things aren’t bad. That is, unless there is a taxi around. Evidentially, Wong’s picture perfect life frequently gets disrupted by Hong Kong taxi drivers, who are apparently the scum of the earth. One such driver swerves in front of Wong and abruptly breaks to pick up some passengers. Wong rear-ends the taxi, and the driver promptly bullies him (with help from other taxi drivers) into paying a large sum of money for pettily damages.

However, this isn’t enough to upset Wong, so he shrugs it off and goes home. After his wife goes into labor, he calls a cab, which promptly ditches him in favor of a higher fare. Wong stops the next taxi, but that driver too refuses to take his wife, as he doesn’t want blood all over the seats. Unfortunately, this driver closes the rear passenger door with part of Wong’s wife’s dress caught in it, so she gets dragged down the street and eventually dies because of this.

Since Wong is an average white collar guy, he copes with his grief by crying and getting an extended vacation from work. While eating outside, Wong notices a taxi driver attempting to extort extra money from a passenger. Upset, he walks across the street and, in what is perhaps the film’s funniest moment, impulsively punches the taxi driver in the face, prompting applause from the surrounding crowd. Later that evening, Wong gets drunk with his brother-in-law (who happens to be a cop) and takes a taxi home alone. Wong is harassed by the driver, who he eventually strangles with a seatbelt buckle. Thus begins a murderous rampage on taxis and the people who drive them.

While the premise sounds rather nihilistic, the film shies away from violence in all but a few scenes, which may put off fans of Wong and Yau’s later collaborations. The film’s exposition takes up the first forty minutes of the running time, during which little happens (apart from an opening action sequence). Not to say Taxi Hunter is a bad film; it’s decent entertainment, just don’t expect a bloodbath. The only complaint I have is that Man Tat Ng (sans Stephen Chow) plays a cop, and it’s quite obvious that the film tries to play him for laughs. The juxtaposition between his bumbling character and the grave seriousness of the rest of the film doesn’t quite work out, which ruins the atmosphere at points. Still, Taxi Hunter is an above-average offering from the exploitation genre, which may be well-suited for those who couldn’t stomach The Untold Story or Ebola Syndrome.

Two years before Poltergeist III came out, Hong Kong made their own film about a haunted skyscraper entitled The Ghost Snatchers. While The Ghost Snatchers was not directed by Wong Jing, the prolific (and often hated) filmmaker wrote the script and stars as one of the principal protagonists; his trademark irreverence is also reflected heavily in the film’s story and narrative structure. And really, I will tell you up front that this is not a quality film. As far as storytelling is concerned, the script falters in the typical Wong Jing way; every character is unashamedly one-dimensional and tangential subplots randomly manifest, disappear, and reappear later in a confusing manner. What this film does have going for it are the special effects. In fact, the story seems to be nothing more than a convenient way to link one effects-laden scene to the next, and while that approach will never qualify as quality filmmaking, it is unabashedly fun to watch. The effects aren’t all crafted well, but they are exceptionally possessive of the fun 80′s kitsch factor (think Ghostbusters) and are very cartoony in an amusing way.

Oh, you want to hear the synopsis? Well, I’ll be honest, I’m not even completely sure what the story is about, but basically Wong Jing and Stanley Fung are security officers who work in a skyscraper that turns out to be tainted by bad feng shui and haunted by the spirits of angry Japanese soldiers. Also, some girl gets possessed, but her subplot doesn’t seem to matter much, since the film devotes little screen time to her and her plight. Anyway, Wong Jing’s girlfriend (Joey Wong) enlists the help of a spiritual medium (Joyce Godenzi) to rid the building of it’s problems. In typical Wong Jing fashion, it seems that every idea that came up during the brainstorming session for the film shows up in the final product. Consequently, the tone continually shifts between low-brow comedy and light horror.

Besides the mix of funny and unfunny jokes, we get a special effects bonanza; haunted TV sets walk, skeletons attack, a giant guillotine cuts a room in half, and a dude even blows up without much warning or reason. Most of it isn’t genuinely scary, but the film makes up for this by providing plenty of “Did that seriously just happen?” moments. All in all, if you can get past the complete lack of a storyline, there are many amusing moments and diversions to be found in The Ghost Snatchers. Of course, for further Wong Jing hijinks in a skyscraper, be sure to check out High Risk with Jet Li and Jackie Cheung, released nine years later in 1995.