Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

I remember being transfixed by the film's unpredictability (even in stylistic terms, you're not sure what's coming next), and missing Kim Cattrall when she was off-screen (Lea Thompson overtook her position as my #1 Crush later that summer upon appearing in a negligee in Howard the Duck), and laughing at being startled by the final shot (surely inspired by De Palma's Carrie, though by the point such homages were a horror-movie convention).

The villain (James Hong) appears first as a smirky hobo, then resplendent in Ming the Merciless robes, then a pissy Methusela in a wheelchair, yearning to be made flesh following millenniums as an apparition; the heroes enter a warehouse and end up in the "Hell of Upside Down Souls" ("the Chinese have a lot of hells"), while Kim Cattrall breezes through to buttress Only Angels Have Wings in Carpenter's pop magpie foundations, which also include Year of the Dragon, Blood Alley, The Magic Blade, Hair-Raising Hare, etc. W.D. Richter worked on the screenplay, and Russell lovingly evokes the spirit of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension by firing his gun into the air before a showdown and getting knocked unconscious by falling debris; for the rest, Richter's loopy jokes receive Carpenter's unerring formalist elegance, the villain's lair has a cocktail lounge where the intrepid warriors mix magic potion and neon skulls adorn sinister subterranean ceremonies.