Friday, October 23, 2009

Teresa Mak in Troublesome Night 11.

"Troublesome Night 11" might have been forgotten about by those who made it as soon as it wrapped. It looks like a project in which the actors showed up, did their parts, got paid and looked for the next job. The only "names" in the cast were Teresa Mak, playing a ghost, and Helena Law who is first her nemesis, then her ally and who casts spells on people by spitting milk on them.

Teresa's character, Lan, is dead before the opening credits role, murdered by a foul beast of a boyfriend who leaves her body where it falls on the beach. Her spirit is very much present and is restless, demanding revenge on him.

She appears to some young women who are volunteer workers cleaning up the beach and who are accompanied by young men who are more interested in them than in saving the environment. While working they discover her body although in keeping with the conventions of this kind of film it is no longer there when they return with the police. Her after death demeanor makes it difficult for the spirit to convince anyone of anything, other than they should run like hell, since she is green and bleeding from a huge gash in her head.


After fighting it out with old supernatural hand Helena Law (here Mrs. Bud Long, matriarch and chief spell-caster of the group who discovers her body, Lan is convinced to work with them. She tells her story of being seduced

(you want me to do what with that?)

making a loan to her lover of all the money she has and then abandoned.


Despite her please on the beach she is murdered, not only for the money but because he likes killing people.

And is now interested only in avenging her murder and counts on rallying Helena's family to help her.

Although there are always a few things to work out when the newly dead try to work closely with the living world, even with the intervention of someone with a foot in both camps:

Another hitch comes up when the worse of the two loutish cousins decides to make a play for Lan before realizing that she is not exactly what she seems:



His most outrageous fantasies have been fulfilled! He meets an attractive woman, asks her out and has her volunteering to jump into bed with him.

But there is a problem. There is always a problem. In this case it is that she is dead. Big problem.

Which puts a merciful end to that bit of almost funny comic relief. Everything is fine by the end of the movie, though, as the murderous boyfriend tastes his own medicine--in this case an extremely unscary skeleton that looks like it was rented from ACME Medical Supply.

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