General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Happy Ghost (开心鬼)

Happy Ghost (开心鬼) is a 1984 Hong Kong comedy-fantasy film directed by Clifton Ko (高志森), produced by Cinema City (新艺城影业), and starring Raymond Wong (黄百鸣) as the ghost of a Qing-dynasty scholar whose soul inhabits a length of rope brought back to a 1980s girls' school by three students.¹ Made for about HK$2 million, it earned over HK$17 million at the Hong Kong box office and grew into a five-film series released between 1984 and 1991, which Wong described as the most successful comedy of the 1980s.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Release	14 July 1984, Hong Kong; Cantonese, color, 35 mm⁴^•¹
Running time	94 minutes per the Hong Kong Film Archive; 96 minutes per other databases¹^•⁵
Director and producer	Directed by Clifton Ko (高志森); produced by Raymond Wong (黄百鸣) for Cinema City¹
Cast	Raymond Wong, Lo Ming-chu (罗明珠), Loletta Lee (李丽珍), May Law (林珊珊), Teresa Carpio (杜丽莎), Clifton Ko¹
Budget and return	About HK$2 million to make; Wong recalled the company earned HK$12 million from the first film²
Box office	Over HK$17 million in Hong Kong, per Clifton Ko's filmography profile⁶
Series	Five films, 1984–1991: 开心鬼, 开心鬼放暑假, 开心鬼撞鬼, 开心鬼救开心鬼, 开心鬼上错身³

Spoilers

Plot

Zhu Xiucai, a Qing-dynasty scholar, failed the imperial examination more than ten times; his father died of anger and his wife left him, and he hanged himself in a temple. Because he died with a grievance, he could not reincarnate, and his soul remained attached to the rope.⁵ In the 1980s, three secondary-school girls, Lin Ching-ching (林青青, Lo Ming-chu), Lin Hua-hua (林小花, Loletta Lee), and Yan Ru-yu (颜如玉, May Law), shelter from a storm in the ruined temple during a school trip and carry the old rope back to their dormitory, bringing the ghost with them.⁷

The ghost's presence produces comic situations, but the film's center is the friendship that develops: Zhu and the girls become confidants, and he urges them to build their futures through their own abilities. Once his grievance is resolved, he is freed to reincarnate.⁵ The Hong Kong Film Archive's synopsis gives the ghost's name as Zhu Jinchun (朱锦春) and describes him as a bangyan, the second-place graduate of the Xianfeng era, while other synopses describe a scholar who repeatedly failed the examinations; the sources differ on this detail.¹^•⁵

Origin

The story began as a school production. Ma Wai-ho (马伟豪), then a secondary-school student preparing for the Hong Kong school certificate examination, wrote a stage play called Zhu Xiucai (朱秀才) for an inter-school drama competition. It won an award and brought him to the attention of Cinema City, which bought the rights; Wong acquired the property and adapted it into a youth campus comedy, hiring the first-time director Clifton Ko and casting new young performers.¹^•⁴

Wong later explained the production logic. By 1984 Cinema City's Aces Go Places series had reached three entries with rising costs, and he wanted a low-budget campus comedy instead: a new director, student-age actresses rather than expensive stars, and himself as the male lead. The finished film cost HK$2 million.²

The series

The first film's success led directly to sequels. The series comprises five films: Happy Ghost (1984), Happy Ghost's Summer Vacation (开心鬼放暑假, 1985), Happy Ghost, Happy Ghost (开心鬼撞鬼, 1986), Happy Ghost Saves Happy Ghost (开心鬼救开心鬼, 1990), and The Happy Ghost Wanders into the Wrong Body (开心鬼上错身, 1991), directed variously by Clifton Ko, Johnnie To (杜琪峰), and Raymond Wong.³^•⁸

Because the first film ends with Zhu Xiucai reincarnating, the sequels follow his next life: he returns as Kang Sen-gui (康森贵), a kind-hearted teacher at a girls' school, a name chosen as a Cantonese homophone of "happy ghost".⁹ The second installment is credited with opening the era of Hong Kong campus youth comedy.¹⁰ The series also made names of its young cast, whom the press called the "Happy Girls" (开心少女).¹

Reception and legacy

The first film was described by the Hong Kong Film Archive as a low-cost, high-return production, and Wong recalled that its HK$12 million profit for the company was large enough, at a time when a good Hong Kong apartment cost about HK$200,000, that he framed the series as the most successful comedy of the 1980s.¹^•² Clifton Ko's profile records the first film's Hong Kong box office at more than HK$17 million and notes that he followed it with Happy Ghost's Summer Vacation the next year.⁶

The series remained a reference point in Chinese-language cinema. Director Cheng Wei-hao named the Happy Ghost films and the Lam Ching-ying jiangshi films among his influences.¹¹ In the 2011 film The Sorcerer and the White Snake production Happy Magic (开心魔法), Wong played a righteous teacher again named Kang Sen-gui, an explicit nod to the series.⁹ A 2016 mainland Chinese web film, Huan Tian Xi Di Kai Xin Gui (欢天喜地开心鬼), reused the happy-ghost premise with a different story and cast.¹² The final series entry, 开心鬼上错身, was the subject of a 2021 Beijing Internet Court copyright case in which ByteDance, holding the exclusive information-network dissemination rights, sued iQiyi over unauthorized streaming.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1980s › Teen and coming-of-age comedies of the 1980s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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