venoms5
12-09-2007, 06:34 AM
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.
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.