Capsule Reviews - 3 Ghost Movies

Ghost of the Mirror (1974)

Starring: Brigitte Lin, Shih Chun, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Chang Ping-Yu, Ku Wen-Chung, Chiang Wei-Min, Pai Lin
Director: Sung Tsun-Shou

This movie feels a bit like "The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag" from Pu Song-Ling's Strange Story from a Chinese Studio. That is, this feels a bit like the story that inspired A Chinese Ghost Story; The Enchanting Shadow; and any other movie based on the material.

Our hero is Young Noble (A Touch of Zen's Shih Chun), a young scholar whose mother (Chang Ping-Yu, of Imperial Tomb Raiders and Shaolin Wooden Men) has recently recovered from a severe illness. So severe, in fact, that it practically took her life. She was able to make a deal with the gods (or directly with Buddha) that her health would be restored in exchange for her (or someone by proxy) copying some Buddhist sutras some fifty times. The task itself has fallen onto her filial son, Young Noble, who finds an abandoned manor some ten miles outside of town to work in peace (and away from the influence of wome).

He settles into the manor with the company of a young apprentice, Qi Tung (Tuo Tsung-Hua, who grew up to play the main henchman whom Donnie Yen kills in Butterfly and Sword). They discover that the well is haunted by a female ghost, Su Su (Brigitte Lin, of Swordsman II and New Dragon Inn). Su Su just lies at the bottom of the well and mesmerizes men who look inside into falling in and drowning. When the Young Noble ignores her, she leaves the well and tries to seduce him outright. But he is too righteous for that and her master, the Poison Dragon, tries to possess her to kill him. That doesn't work and Su Su and the Young Noble start to fall for each other. But will their otherworldly love stand strong against the protestations of his pious mother and the evil of the Poison Dragon.

Ghost of the Mirror is a bit of a slow burner, although it gives you plenty of time to stare at a 20-year-old Brigitte Lin in period garb. The film builds to a tragic finale, although not quite in the way I was expecting. It does involve a giant dragon marionette attacking miniature buildings, so that was unexpected. My main issue with the story is the sub-plot that suggests that the ghost Su Su has an alternate personality, or horcrux (or something), in the form of a mirror that also fell into the well and has its own spirit (or something). Maybe it's Chinese Taoism metaphysics that I don't understand, but I don't think it added anything to the story.

The Ghost Snatchers (1986) 

Starring: Wong Jing, Joey Wong, Stanley Fung, Hsu Shu-Yuen, Joyce Mina Godenzi, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Shum Wai, Charlie Cho Cha-Lee, Tony Leung Hung-Wah
Director: Lam Nai-Choi
Action Directors: Yuen Bun, Wong Chi-Ming

Crazy Ghostbusters-inspired horror-comedy directed by Lam Nai-Choi, who later went on to direct the famous The Seventh Curse and The Peacock King. This sort of over-the-top WTFery is really up Lam's alley. That said, it pairs Wong Jing and Stanley Fung in front of the camera, so I assume that this movie is part of Fung's life's shame.

So, there is a building in Hong Kong that has some very bad Feng Shui. It was built on the execution site of a garrison of Japanese soldiers at the end of WW2 and their spirits are gaining strength from the fact that the building has "too much Yin" (and not enough Yang). In the first scene, a pretty lady (Hsu Shu-Yuen) is at a big office party when she gets assaulted (and stripped nude) by a corridor of "scary hands" (similar to when Sigourney Weaver gets attacked by Zuul). She shows up later on, now possessed by the ghosts.

Our main character is Bong (Wong Jing), a ne'er-do-well who somehow has managed to bag a hot girlfriend in the form of Hsueh (Joey Wong). His friend, Fan (Stanley Fung), manages to get him a job as a security guard at the same building from the first scene. Lots of weird things start to happening: Bong witnesses the pretty lady sucking the blood of the building owner (Shum Wai), a TV sprouts arms and legs and attacks him, his fellow guards start to get killed off, etc. They bring in an interior designer/Feng Shui expert, Ling (Joyce Mina Godenzi, looking her most va-voom-tastic), who is also a ghostbuster of sorts. She figures out that they have until July 14th to stop the Japanese ghosts before their power gets so big that they kill all the Yin individuals, including Bong and Fan.

This is one of those movies that I just have to write a paragraph about some of the weird things that happen and you decide whether or not you want to watch this. Do you want to see a man pull off his own face and rip out his own heart? Do you want to see a climax involving a protracted fight with an animated skeleton? Do you want to see Wong Jing run into a porno theater and stand in front of the screen for 30 seconds while looking for one of Stanley Fung's three (out of ten) souls? Do you want to see Wong Jing win at mahjong with the help of a low-rent Alf-looking imp? If you say "yes" to any of those questions, then Ghost Snatchers is for you.

Split of the Spirit (1987) 

Starring: Pauline Wong, Hsu Shu-Yuen, Wu Hsiao-Kang, Ku Kuan-Chung, Cynthia Khan, Peter Mak Tai-Kit, Chan Lap-Ban, Yang Yuan-Zhang, Yang Tuan-Sun
Director: Fred Tan

Okay, after the nuttiness of Ghost Snatchers, here's a supernatural revenge drama that takes itself quite seriously (for the most part). The film revolves around two women: Lu-Ling and Hwei-Chu. Lu-Ling (Pauline Wong, the pretty ghost in Mr. Vampire) is a huge figure in Hong Kong on the modern (or interpretive) dance scene. She has been dumped by her lover and is contemplating suicide. Hwei-Chu (Hsu Shu-Yuen, who was the possessed girl in Ghost Snatchers) is romantically-linked to a playboy named David Bao (Ku Kuan-Chung, of Web of Death and Clans of Intrigue). Bao has cheated on her before, although he now promises that he will end his philandering ways.

NOTE: This is one of those toxic relationships where he openly has cheated on her. But she tells everyone that she believes he has turned a new leaf and will now be faithful to her. But in private, she acts so suspicious toward him that you wonder why she forgave him in the first place.

Anyway, it is suggested that Lu-Ling was the woman that David Bao was cheating on Hwei-Chu with. And when he goes to Taiwan with Hwei-Chu, Lu-Ling tries to kill herself by overdosing on pills. She is saved by her nosy secretary, Amy (Chow Ai-Lei). While Lu-Ling is recovering, David Bao has Hwei-Chu killed and her spirit "sealed" in her place of death by a sorcerer named Master Li (Yang Yuan-Zhuang). However, their accomplice accidentally break the spirit mirror, meaning that Hwei-Chu's spirit is free to roam. Due to a huge coincidence and happenstance at the Taipei airport, Lu-Ling (who has recovered and is preparing for a special Taiwan performance) is marked for possession by Hwei-Chu. Hwei-Chu uses Lu-Ling's body to execute the men responsible for her murder.

And when Hwei-Chu decides that she wants more from Lu-Ling than just a temporary vessel, it wil be up to an observant photographer (Wu Hsiao-Kang), his spiritualist girlfriend (a young Cynthia Khan in a non-fighting role) and her mentor to save Lu-Ling.

Split of the Spirit will probably be creepy to people who don't watch a lot of horror. And even if it doesn't spook you, it gets points for being a Hong Kong horror that doesn't become a kung fu movie or broad comedy (or both) halfway through. The finale does get a bit crazy, though, with eye lasers and eye flamethrowers and badly-composited scenes of spirits flying through the heavens. And the film ends on an ambiguous note, although I don't like the sort of twists that suggest that everything you just saw did not happen the way you just saw it. When you the viewer are expecting one outcome and the opposite happens, the preceding event needs to be shown in a way that is ambiguous enough that you assume things happened a given way before "X" is revealed. A good example is the surprise ending of the film Life. This one doesn't pull it off like it should have.

Shaolin vs. Black Magic (1983)

Shaolin vs. Black Magic (1983)
aka: Weird Story
Chinese Title: 小和尚捉妖
Translation: Little Monk Catches Demon

Starring: Yu Kuo-Tung, Wang Ryong, Kong Wan-Hsing, Kim Yoo-Haeng, Ma Chin-Ku, Ho Hing-Nam, Chiang Ching-Yen, Lee Eun-Sook, Suen Siu-Ming, Im Eun-Joo
Director: Wu Chia-Chun
Action Director: ???

Another Hong Kong/South Korean co-production from Wu Chia-Chun, the man who gave us the same year's Shaolin vs. Tachi and South Shaolin vs. North Shaolin, plus Bruce Lee Against Supermen and Jackie and Bruce to the Rescue. This one is odd, in that it actually reminded me of a completely unrelated film, Rape of the Sword. It has been debated whether or not that movie is an adaptation of Wang Dulu's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. If it is, then it is doubly fascinating because the story of that film reverses the roles, making the Li Mu-Bai stand-in the villain and the Jade Fox and Jen the heroines. In the case of Shaolin vs. Black Magic, it felt (to me) like a dime store version of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, but with the Six Schools (mainly Shaolin) being the heroes and the Evil Sect being...well...actually evil. 

The film opens with a woman named Yuen Kee (Lee Eun-sook, of Wild Panther and Ninja vs. the Shaolin Guards) and her female entourage entering a mysterious cave. They are joined by a bunch of fighters who materialize from the cave walls. Yuen Kee performs a spell to resurrect her father, Wu San (Wang Ryong aka Mike Wong). Wu San declares that they, the Moon Worshipper's Clan, must either subject the Six Schools (Shaolin, Wu Dang, Sin Cheng, Kunlun, and two others) to their clan, or destroy them. He also adds that they must do it before Shaolin and Wu Dang can unite the Miraculous Mirror and Golden Buddha. We quickly cut to a scene of Wu San murdering the heads of three of the schools, including Im Eun-joo (Dragon Fist and My Name Called Bruce). Three down, three to go.

We then switch to Shaolin, where two things are going on. First, we have our main hero, Lu Chen (Yu Kuo-Tung, of Shaolin vs. Tai Chi and War of the Shaolin Temple), who works in the kitchen. He has been forbidden (for undisclosed reasons) from learning kung fu, but he has been learning in secret from a (supposedly) mute monk who walks around in leg shackles. At the same time, the head of Sin Cheng School (Ma Chin-Ku, Cantonen Iron Kung Fu and Ninja in the Dragon's Den), shows up at Shaolin to tell the Abbot and senior-most monk (Ho Hing-Nam, of Revenge of the Shaolin Master and A Massacre Survivor), about the murders of the other masters. The three go to Wu San's grave--a flashback shows that he was defeated in combat with the six school leaders 20 years prior--and find that the body is missing.

After some completely random aside about some kung fu master sneaking into the temple to fight the monks, Lu Chen is teamed up with a portly monk (Kim Yoo-haeng, of The Tiger of Northland and The 18 Amazones) to go to Wu Dang (led by Chang San-Feng, the legendary personage played by Sammo Hung in Kung Fu Cult Master and Donnie Yen in New Kung Fu Cult Master) to fetch the Miraculous Mirror. They reach Wu Dang and depart with Brother Kong (Kong Wan-Hsing, of Magnificent Warriors and Lucky Seven 2), the top Wu Dang student. All three of them are carrying the Miraculous Mirror, although only one of them is real. After a fight with the Moon Worshipper's Clan in a restaurant, the three men separate. They are attacked by ghosts, wizards, and jiangshi, and Brother Kong is killed (or captured) by the clan. At the same time, Wu San and his minions are challenging the Sin Cheng leader to a duel while his daughter and her fiancé are fleeing to Shaolin for protection. It all culminates in a big fight at Shaolin between the monks and the Moon Worshipper's Clan.

Shaolin vs. Black Magic, like Shaolin vs. Tai Chi, feels like a movie that was made three or four years too late for the genre. It suffers from all-over-the-place script and too many characters, much like SvTC, and the fight choreography is old school, but anachronistic when you consider what the Yuen Clan, Ching Siu-Tung and Lau Kar-Leung were doing in 1983 in their kung fu films. There is some confusion about the main villain: he is referred to as Wu San by the characters, but in the flashback sequence, they call him "Nan Kun-Jin". Why both names? Was he resurrected into a new body and given a new name? And what is the story about the young fighter with the red nose who sneaks into Shaolin? He fights with Lu Chen and disappears from the narrative with no explanation as to who he was or what he wanted with Shaolin. (EDIT: the inability of director Wu Chia-Chun to give sufficient attention to any one plot point before losing interest and moving onto the next, leaving everything undeveloped, was a liability in both Shaolin vs. Tai Chi and North Shaolin vs. South Shaolin, too)

Several main characters enter the narrative with no real introduction, like Brother Kong from Wu Dang or the portly monk who accompanies our hero. The asshole senior monk (Suen Siu-Ming, of Lady Killer and The Powerful Men) shows up to berate Lu Cheng for learning kung fu in secret, but disappears from the rest of the movie, including the climax at Shaolin. Three of leaders of the six schools show up, are killed, and are no longer mentioned...and we never actually learn who they were or which school each of them represented. And the subplot involving the Sin Cheng leader's daughter and her fiancé never really goes anywhere, although they do participate in the climax. Several main characters are killed unceremoniously, too, which also indicates this movie was just badly directed.

The action is just alright. The traditional shapes aren't bad, but some of the background fights during group melees are just bad. The worst offender is the actress who plays the Sin Cheng daughter, who stiffly walks into the final brawl, stiffly (and slowly) waves a flute around as a weapon, and looks like she isn't taking the fight seriously. There are a lot of supernatural elements: like headless female ghosts (or female sorcerers who can use magic to detach their heads) and one girl who can extend her neck like a rokurokubi (played by a vacuum hose with a papier-mâché head). However, don't go in expecting detailed and disgusting rituals like you'd find in a Shaw Brothers horror film of the same era (i.e. The Boxer's Omen and Bewitched).

The film's resident McGuffins, the Golden Buddha and Miraculous Mirror, can fire colored lights at their opponents and are used a few times. There is also a "Miraculous Staff" that shows up at the end. The latter was described earlier as a dangerous weapon that can kill people indiscriminately, but we just see the heroes using it and stabbing the main villain with it (i.e. there is no reason in what we see in the film for it to be described the way it is). The fact that it can break into two parts makes me wonder if the staff is the "Heaven Sword" and "Dragon Sabre" of the film. Whatever. In any case, this is for completists only.

The Boxer’s Omen (1983)

The Boxer’s Omen (1983)

Starring: Phillip Ko Fei, Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Wai Ka-Man, Johnny Wang Lung-Wei, Bolo Yeung Sze, Cheung Chok-Chow, Leung Hak-Shun
Director: Kuei Chih-Hung
Action Directors: Luk Chuen, Chu Ko

The Shaw Brothers were probably desperate to grasp any market share in the film industry by the time the 1980s rolled around. Lau Kar-Leung’s films were still generally doing well, but most of their other kung fu output (and most everything else) were struggling against Golden Harvest and Cinema City. They did find some degree of success in the horror genre and the totally nuts approach to graphic horror and overall weirdness extended into a lot of their late-period wuxia movies as well. Long story short: Shaw Brothers made a lot of crazy films during their final years.

One of them was a horror flick called Bewitched, which you might say was a spiritual successor to Ho Meng-Hua’s two Black Magic films (also made for the Shaws). That movie was a success, coming in at #6 among the Top 10 domestically-produced films that year. That was enough to greenlight a sequel, which came two years later. The Boxer’s Omen was that sequel and it ended up being most outrageous, (arguably) most disgusting, and just all-out bonkers horror film that the Shaw Brothers produced (although one might make an argument that Seeding of the Ghost deserves that distinction).

It takes a little while for us the viewer to find out how this and Bewitched are connected. The movie starts out at a kickboxing match between Chan Wing (Johnny Wang Lung-Wei, of Invincible Shaolin and Five Shaolin Masters) and a Thai fellow named Bu Bo (Bolo Yeung, of TC 2000 and Shootfighter). Although Chan Wing technically wins, Bu Bo pulls a dirty trick and attacks Chan from behind, doing some elbow and knee drops that ultimately break his neck, leaving his paralyzed. In Chan Wing’s corner is his brother, Chan Hung (Phillip Ko Fei, of The Loot and Shaolin Intruders). Chan Hung appears to be a boxer as well, in addition to a mid-level of Triad of sorts.

After finding out that Chan Wing will never walk again, Chan Hung decides to go to Thailand to challenge Bu Bo to a revenge match. But not before getting into some trouble with a Mainland gang vying for territory and then getting it on with his hot girlfriend (Wai Ka-Man, of Seeding of a Ghost and Rocky’s Love Affairs). The former point is interesting, because the gang gets the drop on him and the only thing that keeps his life is the magical intervention of a monk (Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong) whom Chan has never met before. The same monk visits him after his lovemaking session, although it appears only Chan can see him.

So, Chan heads to Thailand, where he barges in on a public event celebrating Bu Bo’s “victory”—amusingly enough, the spokesman for Muay Thai says that Bu was the rightful winner despite some prejudice from the Hong Kong referee. Yeah, okay. If you say so. Bu Bo gives Chan three months to prepare for the fight. One day, while sightseeing on the Mekong, Chan sees a Buddhist Temple. While those are a dime a dozen in the Asia, one of the arches is growing bright yellow, like he had seen in one of his visions. Intrigued, he visits the temple, where all of the monks know his name and somehow were expecting him. The head monk then explains the meaning of the visions.

The monk whom Chan Hung has been seeing is Qing Zhao, who was the monk that assisted Melvin Wong against the evil Thai sorcerer Magusu (Hussein Hassan) in Bewitched. When that film ended, Qing Zhao had destroyed Magusu with his Buddhist “white” magic and taken the little plush bat demon that emerged from his body. We then get a flashback sequence in which Qing Zhao performs a ritual to destroy the bat demon, which calls the attention of another Thai sorcerer, presumably Magusu’s superior. This guy performs a spell in which he mixes cobra venom with the preserved brains of a dead person and has a trio of oversized spiders (played by plush dolls) suck up the mixture. He then unleashes them on Qing Zhao, who kinda-sorta “dies.” The problem is that this spell not only is going to kill Qing Zhao, but it threatens to prevent him from achieving Enlightenment, upon which he is on the cusp.

So what does that have to do with Chan Hung? Apparently, he and Qing Zhao were twin brothers in another life so they have a karmic bond extending into this one. On one hand, Chan Hung is the only person who has the ability to defeat the sorcerer and save Qing Zhao from losing his chance at nirvana. On the other hand, that also means that if Qing Zhao dies from this black magic spell, Chan will die, too. Sorta unfair, isn’t it?

Chan Hung initially dismisses the story as a bunch of hokum and returns to Hong Kong. But shortly after he arrives, he has an episode in which he vomits an entire moray eel and decides that the monks may have a point after all. So, he returns to Thailand and agrees to become a monk in order to defeat the sorcerer…but will he be ready for the magical battle that awaits him? And when he learns that this new sorcerer has a trio of colleagues who are just as, if not more, talented?

The Boxer’s Omen is a phantasmagorical parade of the gory and gooey, with Chan Hung being unwillingly drawn into the Battle Between Good and Evil…between white magic and its opposite, sorcery of the blackest sort. It is a battle drenched in bodily fluids (especially vomit…oh, how much vomit is in this film) guaranteed to make almost the staunchest of viewers gag at one point. Ironically, the time I winced was when Phillip Ko Fei was slicing his own arm open in order to fill it with the Essence of Iron: that scene made me think of the uncomfortable Naked Blood film from Japan (shutters).

But beyond that, some feel that there is a spiritual side to the film, especially as the hero finds himself travelling to Kathmandu, Nepal. The main idea is about saving someone with whom you share a bond from a previous life and we learn a little more about the Monk Qing Zhao’s history of lives, including one as a Tibetan Lama. Part of the finale has Qing Zhao manifesting himself as the Lama from his previous life in order to fight their final foe: the Crocodile Witch. I’ll be honest though, I can see some people seeing a hint of spirituality in terms of the story being about one’s quest to guarantee another man’s salvation, but I think that ends up buried in knee deep in all the regurgitation, animal blood, slime, putrid brains, and everything else this film has on display.

I mean, this is a movie where a man stabs himself in the neck with a pair of needles and suddenly becomes a male version of the Penanggalan (from Mystics in Bali). This is a movie where a man bites the head off a chicken and spits the blood onto an army of crocodile skulls, which attack its opponent. This is a film where the characters kill a crocodile, remove its innards, stuff a dead body into it, and that body is reborn as a naked woman (full-frontal nudity and all)—although let me note here that the story never specifies if that body is of the one sorcerer who gets defeated and is being reborn as a man, or if it was of a female sorceress who needed to be resurrected anyway.

But with all the flying goblin heads and vomit-eating that defines the many magic sequences, everything else almost becomes unimportant. Yes, there are a pair of martial arts sequences (thanks to the bouts with Bolo Yeung), but they’re pretty standard and forgettable when compared to a man getting attacked by dozens of plush bats or a monk trying to kill a walking skeleton bat. There is a fair amount of full-frontal nudity—from both the reliable Wai Ka-Man and whomever plays the Crocodile Witch—although there is a good chance that the next disgusting magical ritual will be a total boner killer.

The Boxer’s Omen is recommended for Hong Kong cinephiles, although newbies may be put off from further explorations into HK horror if they have weak stomachs. This is for the gorehounds. The fans of the extreme. The ones who scoff at limp and weak PG-13 films made for teenie-boppers want something “real.” The sort of person who find the Terrifier movies to be endearing. The Boxer’s Omen is for the hardcore. It is not for the faint of heart.