Knighthawk701 This movie leaves off were part I stops. Ning Choi-san roams rural China seeing still a lot of chaos. In this chaos he is locked up in prison with an old scholar. The scholar helps him escape and gives him a pendant. He meets up with a young Taoist monk and they are attack by a gang led by two sisters who want to lay a trap to rescue their father who is seems as a traitor to the emperor. One of the sisters looks perfectly like Sui-sin, the girl he lost in the first movie. He falls in love and wants to help her rescue her father.Things take a turn as they battle the soldiers that take her father to court. There is a demonic presence too and they battle it together with Fu, a swordsman that escorts the father (he has awesome moves!). The battle ends when a high priest passes through and promises the sisters to help out with the case when it comes to court. The high priest is a demon however, corrupting the court and country. In the meantime, Choi- san asks his old friend Yin to help again.Together they fight the false priest, who turns out to be a demon. The swordplay is fantastic again and there is more humor thrown in this movie. Not as good as the first movie, yet still a great movie to watch if you liked the first installment.

david-sarkies This movie sort of follows on from the first one. It opens with a rehash of what happened in the previous movie and then Ling and the Taoist part ways. As Ling journeys through the land he comes to notice that there is an excess of thieves and robbers, and escapes with his life after entering an inn run by bandits who cut up their guests and eat them. Unfortunately he is captured by guards and locked up in jail and sent to be executed. While in gaol he impresses an old man who gives him a symbol and shows him the way out. He take this way out and comes upon a group of outlaws who behave as ghosts. One of them reminds him of Sui Sin, and throughout the movie he is constantly seeing her as Sui Sin. It becomes evident though that a great evil is menacing the land, and this evil has taken the form of the high priest.Chinese Ghost Story 2 attempts to out do what they did in the first movie. In the first they fight and kill a demon lord, while in the second one they are confronted by Buddha himself. Buddha is far more powerful than the demon prince, but the strange this is that Buddha is behaving very evilly. The characters in the movie, including the general and the Buddha's servants, appear far more dangerous than those in the earlier movie, but this is not surprising considering what Ling has previously been through. First he fights and destroys a demon lord, so to send him up against something less threatening would not be a challenge.These movie should really appeal to roleplayers as there are a lot of fantasy elements in them. They leave the Western Fantasy movies for dead for in these magic is magic and the monsters are real monsters. Magic is far more common in these movies - they are the providence of the Taoist monks - whereas in the Western movies, sorcerers are few and far between. The encounters are far more interesting as well, such as humans who can burrow through the ground, demons that can turn people into beasts, and soldiers that can turn invisible at will.This movie does go far better than the first, but it acts more to build upon it rather than outdo it. With the Chinese Ghost Stories, I think it works far better if we watch them all rather than say one is better than the other and ignore the others. I have not yet watched number three so I cannot comment on that yet. What it does do though is that it remembers what went on before. Ling is a character that has depth to him. He is pinning for Sui Sin, his lost love - one he knows he cannot see again. He holds tightly onto the painting, and enamoured with the woman who looks a lot like her.I find that these movies are very well done. Tsui Hark, the producer for these movies, did a lot to bring the special effects in Hong Kong up to a equal level with Hollywood. What happens in Hong Kong movies though is that the film makers tend to push for much more, and generally arrive at that place as well. Hong Kong horror is not horror in the Western sense, but more fantasy.

keala SINNUI YAUMAN II isn't bad at all, but it's disappointing. It isn't as funny, exciting, touching or visually inventive as its predecessor. The device used to reintroduce Joey Wong into the story is just plain wrong; if they didn't want to bring back her original character ( I have to admit they probably couldn't) they should have come up with a new love interest played by a new actress. Limiting Wu Ma to such a brief appearance limits his chemistry with Leslie Cheung, which is one of the things that made the first film such fun, and there's just about no one else here, except Cheung, who has as much charisma. It is a novel way to bring back the two actors, but it's a letdown.As for Cheung himself, he just isn't as disarming here as in the original; he doesn't fit his character as well. There's also what seems to be some kind of political allegory near the end that doesn't fit the rest of the story - maybe you have to be more familiar than I am with China to appreciate it? Oh, maybe I'm griping too much; it has its good moments (especially a scene concerning a slowly 'thawing' monster)...just not nearly as many as 1987's SINNUI YAUMAN. It waters down the impact of that jewel a bit, and frankly, I wish they'd taken all the good stuff in this film and used it on some entirely different project.

Issic After the resounding success of "A Chinese Ghost Story" a second part had to be made. And what a sequel it is! This time our bumbling tax-collector finds himself in prison, fighting stacks of rubber monsters and befriending a Taoist who likes to travel underground! It's nice to see all the cast back too. This movie is very funny and never takes itself too seriously. For some who didn't quite understand the first movie, this is great to clear up any confusion. For the others, this is lighthearted entertainment.