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| Images courtesy of 88 Films |
88 Films and Arrow Video have made it their respective life
missions to curate and publish either Shaw Brothers titles or Golden Harvest
titles in the UK and US through Fortune Star distribution in deluxe limited
collector’s sets. Replete with full
digital restorations often taken from the original camera negatives, the boutique
releasing label 88 Films continues to push ahead with publishing distinctly
Hong Kong based martial arts actioners that bend the rules of realism favoring
something far more fantastical that could only ever happen in the movies. One which seemed to push further into the
area of the supernatural kung-fu flick was Chia-Lian Liu’s 1975 Hong Kong debut
actioner The Spiritual Boxer.
Written by Kuang Ni and starring Yue Wong in the lead role as a conman
swindling villagers with magic trickery only to turn around and use his skills
for good when bandits attack the villagers, its an action-comedy filled with
magical realism and stunning fighting choreography and editing.
Back in 2018, 88 Films released the film on blu-ray disc for
the first time though region locked for British consumers only and without a
stateside disc release. Which brings us
to this new 88 Films release of director Chia-Lian Liu’s and screenwriter Kuang
Ni’s 1979 spiritual sequel of sorts The Shadow Boxing. Reuniting Yue Wong with Chia-Lian Liu in the
leading role in service of a far wackier endeavor and spearheaded by martial
artist Lau Kar-leung, we zero in on a pair of undertakers tasked with carting
several bodies of ‘vampires’ across the country before their inevitable
burial. Only thing is they use magical
powers to revive the bodies so they can hop around at command towards their
destination like bunny rabbits. As a go-getting
young woman with a chip on her shoulder joins in on the task of transporting
the undead, it starts becoming apparent that one of the bodies isn’t dead but
an imposter out for revenge played by none other than Kill Bill Vol. 1 &
2 actor Gordon Liu.
Considered by cinephiles to be the jumpstart of what would
or wouldn’t evolve into the kung-fu horror comedy subgenre, paving the way for
such fare as Sammo Hung’s Encounters of the Spooky Kind or Yuen Woo-ping’s
phantasmagorical The Miracle Fighters, The Shadow Boxing is a
bonkers classic of magical realist Hong Kong Shaw Brothers action cinema. With a snarky sense of dark humor running
through it, a myriad of wildly choreographed fights, fast-zooming whip-panning
cinematography by Arthur Wong and a rousing score by Yung-Yu Chen, this is
quintessential Shaw Brothers cinema.
While technically a sequel film to The Spiritual Boxer, it also
is very much a standalone piece not necessarily requiring you to have seen the
predecessor to follow the story. Even
without having the previous film available stateside, 88 Films have produced a
fantastic set with reversible sleeve art, a collectible slipcover and four
original lobby cards reprinted.
Yes it would’ve been nice to have the first film included,
perhaps in a two film set which may or may not still happen one day, but on its
own merits The Shadow Boxing is deliriously entertaining and
unpredictable. Never fully taking itself
seriously, almost carefree in sensibility and playfulness, it represents one of
the stranger Shaw Brothers efforts which opened the doors to a whole new genre
of kung-fu based actioners. Seeing
Gordon Liu fully engaged in top physical fighting form onscreen is breathtaking
and the constant working in of black magic and a never-before-seen rendering of
the undead make this a wild if not certifiably insane Shaw Brothers romp. 88 Films’ disc release is great and is a
significant addition to one’s sizable library of Hong Kong martial arts movies
slowly tipping over outside of the box into uncharted territory.
--Andrew Kotwicki
