Seeding of a Ghost

[Guest ministry88]

Well, the ashes have settled after my first viewing of BEWITCHED and I've had some time to rethink my first impressions. I'm still impressed by the flick, no doubt, but I don't want to give the impression that it's as wild and over-the-top as OMEN. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think it makes it more fascinating when viewed as the first part of what I consider to be one long, two-part film (if only KILL BILL had been this interesting!).

As I see it now, the more traditional and (somewhat) more restrained approach of BEWITCHED plays as a perfect prelude to the excesses of OMEN. If you view the film simply on its own merits and hope it'll be BOXER'S OMEN, Part I, you may be disappointed. But if you view it more as a prelude, the vision of Kuei really comes through and both films are equally impressive, but in different respects. In a few months I may very well pull both titles off the shelf and do a double feature and watch them in the intended order. It would be fascinating to track the progression of events from the somewhat humble (if, at times, grotesque and bizarre) beginnings of BEWITCHED to the brain-melting excess of OMEN.

Also: I forgot to mention that BEWITCHED has a truly bizarre, moralist coda and a great CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST/mondo-film-styled disclaimer at the beginning of the film.

[Guest vengeanceofhumanlanterns]

Just viewed this film today. Very strange ending. Definitely worth seeing.

[Linn1]

I agree with most of the above comments. I actually did watch the pair as a double feature and what was interesting to me, is they play perfect as such. Bewitched sort of slides you into the Thai world of magic (it's actually a pretty good crime film that moves into horror, where the sequel is there from the start), and Boxer's Omen is the over the top payoff. Actually, Boxer's Omen is damn near the extended finale of Bewitched. By seeing Bewitched now, there's so much more context given to the events in Boxer's Omen that it actually makes it a more worthwhile film IMO. I can see someone who didn't like Boxer's Omen enjoying Bewitched, because it's not as "goofy" as Boxer's Omen is. The Thai spells are certainly treated with more seriousness. There's also a lot more effort to be scary, with some thriller tension going on. If anything, Boxer's Omen truly looks more like a typical (if incredibly nuts) sequel to me, with everything dialed up two more notches from the original film. Bewitched actually did live up to the hype I had built up for it, it that doesn't happen too often.

Spoilers

BTW, one of my fave scenes in Bewitched has to be when the policeman's wife contacts a Taoist priest (think Mr. Vampire) to help fight the Thai wizard and he's offed in a nasty way by the Black Wizard in seconds! I had to laugh out loud at that one. BTW, I'm positive the coda was tacked on to make sure the film didn't have problems with censors.

[Guest peringaten]

AH YEAH, get down wit' yo' bad self, Mr. Postman.

[Guest MEGATONE]

Just made a comparison between the Ocean Shore NTSC VHS and the DVD. Well, there's NO difference at all except that title cards on the VHS are white while on the DVD are red.

Of course quality cannot be compared, on the VHS all the night scenes are blue tinted, DVD colors are more natural (but less nocturnal) and the format is correct.

Have no idea if the PAL VHS was cut.

Btw, on the BEWITCHED DVD a couple of stills are from scenes not in the movie.

Now I hope somebody is going to release soon RED SPELL SPELLS RED...

[Guest ministry88]

Thanks for the comparison Megatone!

Hmm, I just double-checked the stills feature on the BEWITCHED disc and I distinctly remember every one of those scenes in the film, however fleetingly (that shot of the Thai sorcerer with the long nails and the green lighting was seen onscreen for only a split second, for example).

However, I do have a set of the lobby cards for this film and there IS a shot that isn't in the film in which Maigusu terrorizes his female client who sets the revenge/sorcery plot in motion. But this shot definitely smacks of a posed publicity shot that was shot exclusively for advertisement materials like lobby cards...

[Guest MEGATONE]

The soapland scene is in the movie? Gosh... ^///^

[Guest goliamoto]

Finally watched Seeding of a ghost and Bewitched and both movies are great! After watching Bewitched i had to play immediatly Boxer's Omen cos I wanted to see more of that crazy stuff. Both movies are really linked and it's a pitty Celestial didn't release Bewitched before Boxer's Omen. Bewitched really delivers and it's already in my top 10 of shaw movies.

Seeding of a ghost is less sickening than Bewitched but with that gory and crazy end, it's impossible not to like it. It's again one of the best titles released by Celestial this year and its fame is really deserved.

On the next few days I'm gonna check Hell has no Boundary. I hope this one delivers too.

[venoms5]

SEEDING OF A GHOST 1983 Act. *1/2 /Blood ****/ Movie **1/2

Philip Ko (Chau), Tsui Su Keung (Fang), and lots of naked Asian women

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

A taxi driver (Chau) accidentally runs over a man who turns out to be a warlock. He helps the strange man who tells him it was not wise for the two to have crossed paths as something bad will happen to him soon. As (bad) luck would have it, Chau's wife is brutally raped and beaten leading to her falling from a building. He seeks the aid of the sorcerer he hit with his car and the two plan a gory revenge against those connected with, and responsible, for his wife's death.

This film is one of the most talked about and discussed out of the entire Shaw Brothers library of movies. It is finally out on DVD in a remastered edition and it looks great. However, I can safely say that the film is highly overrated. That's not to say it's not a great piece of Asian sleaze because it is. Only this film has been praised for its unequaled, OTT exploitation elements and some reviewers have said that it is the goriest and sleaziest of all HK horror films. That MIGHT be true. Granted, the bulk of the gory action doesn't come until the final 10 minutes.

There is an astonishing amount of female full frontal nudity on display here which would never see release in a HK theater today without the Category 3 rating and even then, some of it would be trimmed. The sleaze quotient is VERY high in this one, I think I was expecting it to be a wall-to-wall gorefest which it is not.

Philip Ko Fei, who made his career portraying hundreds of kung fu villains (and an occasional hero) appeared in a number of sleazy horror flicks like this one in the 80s. Here, Ko is top billed but he takes sort of a backseat to the other characters. He wants revenge for his wife but he never learns until late in the film that she was cheating on him with another man. The other guy, Fang (Keung) has a hot and horny wife who in one scene, does everything to get him aroused although he at first seems uninterested finally succumbing to her charms which results in another sex scene.

When Chau asks for the sorcerer's help, he is told that he must pay a price for the black magic. This price causes Chau's skin to rot resulting in his death once the revenge is carried out. The revenge itself is quite elaborate requiring the rotted and decomposed corpse of Chau's wife. The films title more or less tells you what will happen next. When one of the rapists is killed (his spine erupts from his back), his corpse is used to have sex with Chau's dead wife. This scene is pretty OTT and quite nasty. While this is going on, Fang's wife is experiencing stomach pains and she becomes possessed leading to a duel between a Taoist priest and the evil sorcerer in which the wizard is killed leaving Chau to complete the revenge himself.

There are also some good fight scenes sprinkled throughout the film involving Chau as he meets up with the various men responsible shortly before they all meet a gruesome demise. One of the best bits has one of the rapists eating dinner. When his mother comes into the room, he is now eating a bowl of brains instead! There are also several puking scenes inherent in HK horror movies, with one having one of the men regurgitating lots of real maggots.

Once Chau's wife's corpse is pregnant with a 'Plazawa', some kind of demonic creature, Fang's wife is also pregnant, but not with his child. Chau feeds his blood to the monster within the corpse's stomach. Meanwhile, Fang and many of his friends are having a party. Fang's wife complains of serious pains in her stomach. Soon, her stomach explodes and the monster erupts revealing itself to be some kind of multi-tentacled fetus creature with lots and lots of teeth. Here is where the gore kicks in as the guests have their limbs torn from their bodies and their faces ripped off before the creature is supposedly destroyed.

Director Yang Chuan does deliver the goods, but again, the film was so hyped up for me that I possibly would have liked it more had it not been. I will assuredly see it again in the near future. Yang also directed the far more serious and better HELL HAS NO BOUNDARY (1982). An extremely nasty obscure Shaw horror that I'd never heard of starring Erh Tung Sheng. Now an award winning director and critical darling, I suspect Derek Erh (or Derek Yee) probably wishes this extreme slice of HK horror stayed in the vaults.

SEEDING OF A GHOST is definitely one of the most unusual exploitation movies. I put off seeing the fullscreen bootleg of this for years after learning the Shaw films were coming to DVD. Strangely, many of their horror films such as HAUNTED TALES (1980) and CORPSE MANIA (1981) were VCD only releases in spite of the fact that their horror films were quite successful back then. Thankfully, this and several other horror films of late have been given the DVD treatment. Well worth seeing out but for me at this time, not the be all and end all of HK horror. Another view now that the hype has died down would prove beneficial.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

I thought I remember reading a review of this. I can't wait to get the Image release. HAve you seen Corpse Mania? You probably did a review for it on here, lol. Which one do you think is better?

[venoms5]

HAve you seen Corpse Mania? You probably did a review for it on here, lol. Which one do you think is better?

Ha Ha, no I didn't do a review for that one. I thought it was quite good and had a sort of Giallo feel about it. People seem divided on the film itself was I was pleasantly satisfied with it. The ending is very cold and depressing. I am looking forward to CORPSE MANIA on DVD.

[peringaten]

Agreed on the overhyped points. But then again for years I was going off an Asian Trash Cinema review for this one. I mean I knew not to take Weisser and cronies writings seriously, dude's a woolly bullshit merchant, but I thought there had to be 'at least some' real foundation to this quote:

"The result is a relentless barrage of vengeance, graphically administered. Victims upchuck worms. Body parts explode. In short, there's an absolutely amazing amount of blood spilled, sprayed an splattered...making this movie the zenith, the apex, the very top in the Asian "repulsive" gore category. In other words it doesn't get any better than this."

Even Eastern Heroes book went some way in part to confirming this. But sadly the film just didn't deliver - and nowhere near to the extremities such as the above quote might lead you to believe, or even I guess if you were to imagine things from the film's actual elements written down. I mean the elements were there, but in practice they just don't pan out. Film trundles with a bit of sick in its swagger. Good ending too. But doesn't overwhelm like I expected. On its own merits it's reasonably well crafted, but not one of the best Shaw horrors as I was expecting it might be.

Thought it better than Hell Has No Boundary, in most respects, but think I liked Hell that tad bit more. Got the director's Twisted Passion to deal with next; I like the guy's aesthetic as drawn from these two horrors, even if they didn't fully satiate, be good to see what else he came up with.

Seeding absolutely whoops Corpse Mania in my estimation though.

[venoms5]

Several books (not by Weisser) accentuated the proposed non stop glop and gore found in SEEDING OF A GHOST and I passed up the VHS tape of it to wait for the DVD but even friends who had seen it hyped it to the extreme. I watched this and BEWITCHED back to back and BEWITCHED was far and away the better movie in every department. And I don't see how SEEDING was supposed to be BLACK MAGIC 3 because of censorship problems resulting in a title change. There were far worse movies out in HK and the title itself--SEEDING OF A GHOST, gives away the necrophilia found within the movie. I can see THAT title being changed. If any Shaw horror deserved to be BLACK MAGIC 3, it's BEWITCHED. HELL HAS NO BOUNDARY from the same director has more horrifying scenes than SEEDING, IMO such as violence perpetrated on children (the WW2 flashback for example) and a generally sleazy and serious atmosphere that I found more compelling than the whole of SEEDING OF A GHOST.

[Tosh]

I just posted this in the review section as I thought it was in the Shaw section, I'm looking forward to seeing Seeding of a Ghost -

I was wondering if Bewitched was going to hold up to the huge expectations put forth by Boxer's Omen, Bewitched is outstanding! I love these monk battles and the elaborate setups and props, I'll take cheap fx over cg anyday.

Kuei Chi Hung loves his maggots, I wasn't really taken with Corpse Mania, but Bewitched is great, I'm going to have to do a double feature with B'sO one night, Halloween is coming up

[Tosh]

Watched Seeding of a Ghost the other night and I have to say I was less than impressed, I got excited when I saw Philip Ko and Norman Chu but compared to Bewitched it fell flat.

I will have to say, between both films I certainly got my quota for the year for topless Asian girls running slow mo through the surf, actually with Seeding I was starting to wonder if I was watching a soft Asian porn flick instead of horror.

The movie itself makes no sense, Ko goes through great lengths to avenge a woman he only knew for 4-5 years and was cheating on him, he wanted greater revenge on the man cheating with his wife than the two that raped and killed her, then the ghost having sex with her rapist/killer? The end was, well, laughable, I'm not sure if in a good way yet:xd:

[masterofoneinchpunch]

I watched it yesterday, I'll probably have a small write up on the film later. I was thinking it was going to be more like The Boxer's Omen, but it was a lot more tame (though still exploitative) than I was imagining (good for sleep, not so good for the film).