Banana Spirit (1992)

Original title: 精靈變

Chic (Francis Ng) works as a beautician for the dead (his words, not mine) in a morgue, but he also helps his spiritual boxer buddy Che (Ngai Sing) out with an exorcism business that isn’t always completely honest even though Che does have actual spiritual powers.

One drunken night, the guys take a friend’s bet to wander off into a banana plantation at night to conjure up a banana spirit out of a banana tree. Banana spirits do apparently like a bit of good old ghost/living slash but also tend to – as most ghosts and spirits in Chinese folklore and religion do – suck their partners’ life energies.

The ritual – that includes Chic imagining his perfect woman whom he just met in form of a model in a bar - works out pretty well, and soon Chic has a new spirit girlfriend named Chang (Josephine Foo), who is actually a rather sweet gal, not in the habit of sucking the life out of anyone not a rapist.

She also uses her X-ray vision to help Chic win back the gambling debt Che owes the rather unpleasant gangster Rabid Hsiang (Tommy Wong); though Hsiang unfortunately cops to Chang’s true nature, which will lead to violent problems later in the movie.

Chic rapidly falls for Chang, of course, and why wouldn’t he? However also as a matter of course, in Hong Kong movies (and in Chinese culture), relationships between humans and spirits seldom end terribly well, so the couple’s time with each is other going to be short, and Chic, Cheng and their master Chen Sheng (Lam Ching-Ying playing your typical Lam Ching-Ying role of this era) will have to put quite some energy into at least getting her back where spirits like her belong safely in the end.

Lo Kin’s Banana Spirit is a rather typical ghost romance movie of its era in Hong Kong filmmaking, mixing an earnest romance, sometimes wild slapstick and whacky humour, kung fu, and eventually some pretty unpleasant (but fun) looking effects into a concoction that feels lively, surprising and likeable even when you know all of its constituent parts from quite a few other movies. This isn’t a masterpiece of its genre – it’s neither quite that charming nor visually quite imaginative enough – but a film doesn’t need to be that to be a highly enjoyable time, and that, Banana Spirit certainly is.

I particularly liked how genuinely Chic and Chang seem to fit together, filling the holes in each other’s character, the film thus perfectly fulfilling the romantic element while not overplaying it. I also had a lot of fun with the film’s other parts: Lam Ching-Ying is obviously always the best, if he’s kicking a burning dead guy’s butt, making fun of his increasing age that apparently means he can only use kung fu defensively anymore (which does of course set-up a couple of fun fights), or romancing Chic’s aunt. Rabid Hsiung’s return from the dead as a melty fire undead gentleman is fun too, providing the opportunity for more kung fu and a couple of excellent looking effects, and adding the needed outward dramatic tension to the climax.


All of this will be a bit too episodically structured for strict contemporary tastes, particularly of western viewers, but the film’s looseness never feels lazy. It is simply a way to pack a broader variety of fun stuff into its running time. It’s a bit of a trade-off against greater structural tightness and tension of course, but whenever any given scene calls for it, Lo Kin has no problem providing that tightness too; and this isn’t so much a film about creating tension as one that wants you to fall into tropes and ideas as if they were your favourite comfy chair. If you ask me, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.