Encounter Of The Spooky Kind (1980) has been somewhat charitably referred to as a "classic" Hong Kong action movie, one of the first to bring slapstick, martial arts, and supernatural hokum together in glorious alchemy. It also introduced the hopping vampire, which is exactly what it sounds like—and, therefore, is possibly the most entertaining creature ever devised. Blind, stupid, and vulnerable to chicken eggs and uncooked rice, these flesh-gnawing corpses appear more often and to better effect in the Mr. Vampire series, but they provide this generally solid Sammo Hung vehicle with its brightest moments. The portly kung-fu director/star, who currently appears without hopping vampires on CBS's Martial Law, plays the unsuspecting husband of a shrill, unfaithful wife. When she pays a Taoist priest to unleash voodoo curses and other black magic on him, Hung teams up with the priest's equally powerful brother to fight back. Encounter Of The Spooky Kind combines mild shocks and special effects with a lot of mugging shtick, sort of like Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein. As an action hero, physical comedian, and frequent director, Hung has never been as nimble or witty as sometime collaborator Jackie Chan, but here he's better than usual in all three duties. When the dueling priests threaten to take over the movie, he makes a bizarre but inspired transformation into The Monkey King, curling into a fetal slouch and squealing madly at his foes. Inspired touches like these make this groundbreaking pastiche—now available in letterboxed, subtitled, and legal form—of interest to more than just Hong Kong completists.