Operation Pink Squad II is a Hong Kong martial arts, ghost story comedy farce from the 80’s. That alone should tell you quite a bit about the movie – it has a bit of everything in it, and it’s all over the place. But these movies were made to entertain and generally Operation Pink Squad II does that.

Also known as Thunder Cops the story concerns four police women and their male superior officer who are trying to bust a Japanese counterfeit ring. The counterfeiters have used four Japanese girls as couriers to smuggle the plates into Hong Kong. The smugglers were stopped at the airport and arrested. Now the four policewomen are to take their place and arrest the Hong Kong connection in the scheme.

The police superintendent arranges for accommodation in Maple Towers, which is an old multi-storey apartment block complex. Unfortunately Maple Towers has a slight ghost problem. To alleviate this, the caretaker arranges for a kung-fu fighting Buddhist priest to come to the building and clean out the ghosts. And clean them out he does, capturing each of them and squishing them into little cloth bags.

As the priest takes takes his haul of sixty ghost filled bags down to the basement – and the doorway to hell – he drops one of the bags and it scuttles off. The priest believes his work is done and leaves the building. The ghost that has escaped, though, is the nastiest of the bunch.

Meanwhile the jealous husband of one of the policewomen turns up. He believes she is having an affair with her superior. His solution is simple. He plans to kill them both. As intense as this sounds, it is played out in a slapstick manner.

What we then have is four police women, one police man, and one deranged husband trapped in a building with a vengeful ghost. This leads to some mild horror and a lot of running around screaming. It gets even wilder when our inept heroes chop off the ghosts head with an axe. Now the head flies around the corridors chasing them, as does the headless body. Twice the trouble.

Then the boss of the counterfeit ring arrives to close the deal for the plates. He is carrying a bag full of money. Somehow in the chaos and the commotion, the ghosts head flies into the money bag and the counterfeiter takes it off site.

This as you’d expect from a Hong Kong martial arts, ghost story comedy farce is a pretty weird film. For me though, it isn’t as good as many others in this style simply because of the very broad comedy. In places it’s like a smutty version of Abbott & Costello, and I can imagine that a great deal of viewers will enjoy it. I was after more kung fu ass kicking, than farcical mugging, but having said that, I am sure on another given day, I will take time to watch this film again and think that it is an absolute classic. But not this time.