General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Dead and the Deadly (人吓人)

The Dead and the Deadly (人吓人) is a 1982 Hong Kong supernatural kung-fu comedy directed by Wu Ma (午马), produced and co-written by Sammo Hung (洪金宝), and starring Sammo Hung, Wu Ma, Lam Ching-ying (林正英), and Cherie Chung (钟楚红).¹^•² It was produced by Golden Harvest (嘉禾) and released in Hong Kong on 22 December 1982.² The story follows a man who fakes his own death to claim his family's fortune, is murdered for real by his co-conspirators, and returns as a ghost to enlist his best friend's help in taking revenge.¹

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title	人吓人 (The Dead and the Deadly)
Release	22 December 1982, Hong Kong; produced by Golden Harvest, production company Bo Ho Films (宝禾)²
Director / writers	Directed by Wu Ma; written by Sammo Hung and Barry Wong (黄炳耀); produced by Sammo Hung¹^•³
Cast	Sammo Hung, Wu Ma, Lam Ching-ying, Cherie Chung, Chung Fat (钟发)²
Runtime	1 hour 37 minutes per Apple TV and Rotten Tomatoes; 99 minutes per Hami Video and Baidu Baike⁴^•⁵
Box office	HK$10.10 million by 12 January 1983, ranked eighth among Hong Kong films for the year²
Awards	Five nominations at the 3rd Hong Kong Film Awards (1984): Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Action Choreography²
Genre context	A companion piece to Encounter of the Spooky Kind (鬼打鬼, 1980), in the linghuan (spiritual/fantasy) kung-fu comedy wave of early 1980s Hong Kong cinema⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Ma Lun-cheung (马麟祥), played by Wu Ma, is the scion of a wealthy family who has squandered the estate and left town. His childhood friend Chu Hung-lei (朱宏利), nicknamed "Fat boy" and played by Sammo Hung, works in a paper-effigy shop and remains loyal to him.⁴^•¹

Ma fakes his own death so that his pregnant "widow" can claim the family fortune, but his co-conspirators learn the inheritance will go to the unborn child and kill him for real.¹^•⁷ Chu grows suspicious when the body is carried home by outsiders, hides in the funeral hall disguised as one of the paper effigies, and examines the corpse, finding no wounds.⁵^•⁴

After Ma is murdered, his ghost persuades Chu to lend him his body so the two can take revenge on the killers. The scheme costs Chu his own life: his soul is driven out of his body by evil magic, and he becomes a ghost himself.⁴ The final act centers on Chu's fiancée Ah Wan (阿云), played by Cherie Chung, who marries a live rooster in a ritual to enter the Chu household and, with the help of the elderly Taoist priest (Lam Ching-ying), battles demons and the underworld escorts on the night of Chu's returning spirit to win his resurrection.⁴ Reviewers have noted that this ending, centered on a woman's love and bravery, gives the film a sincerity unusual for its genre.⁸

Production and genre context

The film belongs to the linghuan gongfu pian (灵幻功夫片, "spiritual kung-fu film") wave that Sammo Hung started with Encounter of the Spooky Kind (鬼打鬼, 1980), which mixed martial arts, comedy, and Chinese folk supernatural beliefs such as Maoshan magic and hopping vampires.⁶^•⁹ A People's Daily overseas edition feature described The Dead and the Deadly as the sister piece to Encounter of the Spooky Kind, with Sammo Hung's loyal, righteous hero and Cherie Chung's steadfast heroine, and a message that "people are scarier than ghosts".⁶

Wu Ma directed the film and also played Ma Lun-cheung. In a 2003 interview he said that audiences knew him best for this ghost film, in which he played Sammo's good friend who is assassinated, becomes a ghost, and joins the living in revenge.¹⁰ The supernatural effects combine cel animation, in-camera effects, and wirework.¹

Unlike most films from Sammo Hung's regular troupe, the martial arts content is limited; the film concentrates on comedic set pieces, Cantonese wordplay, and supernatural shenanigans, with the smattering of kung fu that does appear handled by the Hung troupe's action team.¹^•³

Reception

The film earned HK$10.10 million at the Hong Kong box office by 12 January 1983, ranking eighth for the year, a commercial result that Chinese-language film histories describe as a win for Golden Harvest against the dominant comedy studio Cinema City that season.² At the 3rd Hong Kong Film Awards in 1984 it received five nominations: Best Film, Best Director (Wu Ma), Best Actor (Sammo Hung), Best Screenplay (Sammo Hung and Barry Wong), and Best Action Choreography (Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Lam Ching-ying, and Chin Yuet-sang).²

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 54 percent from two critic reviews, with more than 250 audience ratings on the Popcornmeter.¹¹ Critics writing around the 2022 restoration described it as a bizarre comedy-horror hybrid that relies on Cantonese-style repartee rather than action, and praised Sammo Hung's comedic performance.¹ Far East Films called it possibly Wu Ma's best directed feature, while noting that his films can lack cohesiveness and become confusing.³

Home video and restoration

Eureka Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on 21 November 2022, sourced from a new 2K restoration presented at the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with Cantonese theatrical and home-video mono mixes, an English dub, two audio commentaries, and a 2016 Udine Film Festival interview and Q&A with Sammo Hung.⁷ Reviewers of the disc noted that the restoration's color rendering flatters the film's stylized, Argento-like palette.⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026