The penultimate instalment of the Lucky Stars series may have seen the likes of Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao jump ship by now but Sammo Hung stuck around (to oversee the action) along with regular players Eric Tsang, Stanley Fung, Richard Ng and Charlie Chin: this time adding a supernatural/ghost element to the hijinks.

As wayward in tone as previous entries (flip flopping between comedy, action, and violence with wild abandonment), ‘Ghost Punting’ opens with a rather shocking scene of a man being brutally murdered in front of his lady love before segueing into the quintet of stars trying to seduce beautiful women with the usually lacklustre and humiliating results. After much (far too much!) of the group trying to inappropriately seduce women (though Sammo pretty much sits out this part of the plot!), the ghost of the man killed at the beginning appears (through much convolution!) and asks the Lucky Stars to aid him in getting revenge on the gangster that killed him in the opening reel. Again, after much convolution, this leads to a big showdown where Sammo Hung unleashes some much-needed awesome action, as he takes on the gangster and his gang of goons.

Certainly dated with some questionable “comedy” featuring the core group attempting to seduce women, ‘Ghost Punting’ may be of its time but manages to scrape enough entertainment value out of its ghostly plot diversion and come the finale, some rollicking action. The supernatural slant benefits proceedings as when it kicks in there are some silly, albeit fun, comedy shenanigans as the crew deal with the ghost of the dead guy and a female ghost who has taken a shine to him. This takes up the bulk of the film with the gang even enlisting a group of female ghostbusters to aid them with the situation who of course they all try to hit on. It’s all very cringe and crosses the line of taste but the Lucky Stars are never really successful and ultimately humiliated for their efforts.

Mercifully the ghost busting escapades do provide some laughter and come the final run Sammo Hung and Corey Yuen unleash some wicked fight action. Hung cuts loose in grand style and Elaine Lui and Sibelle Hu get a fierce one-on-one that makes sitting through the extended comedy nonsense bearable.

There should have been more action, and this is far from the giddy fight heights of ‘My Lucky Stars’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars’ but if one can forgive its lack of copious fight action and out-of-date comedy, ‘Ghost Punting’ still provides a sprinkle of old school silliness and martial arts action from the Golden Era.