Seeding of a Ghost (1983) December 29, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Horror, Supernatural, 1980s films , trackbackDirector: Richard Yeung Cast: Phillip Ko; Norman Chu; Maria Yuen; Tin Mat Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Shaw Brothers
Chow (Phillip Ko) is a taxi driver whose wife Irene (Maria Yuen) is having an affair with a casino gambler named Fong (Norman Chu). When Irene is raped by a pair of youths and dies in an attempt to escape, Chow summons her spirit with the aid of a mono-brow Black Magic priest to exact revenge on all guilty parties. But the ultimate revenge is hinted at by a prophesy of a son carrying out the final justice, and as no one involved has offspring, the warning is not heeded. But they had reckoned without the seeding of a ghost…
Reported to be the third and final film in the Black Magic series (although it shares no cast and has a different director, leading me to think it might be a spurious claim), it cannot be denied that Seeding of a Ghost is a pile of utter trash. But it can also be an entertaining pile of utter trash.
The film starts out hinting at trouble ahead when Chow knocks over a priest in his taxi, only to find the old guy is safe and well in his back seat and eager for a ride home. We then forget all about that and the focus shifts to soft-core pornography for a while. Quite a while, in fact. Irene gets her kit off at the drop of a hat in some of the most gratuitous nude scenes I’ve ever seen. For example, she’s shown playing about with Norman Chu on the beach (I think it was him and not Phillip Ko, but to be honest I wasn’t paying too much attention) when her top gets ripped off and she playfully runs after him in slow motion. And just so you get the message, we zoom in on her bouncing breasts for a few seconds. Now that scene could possibly be defended (except for the boob-zoom shot) as showing the blossoming of her illicit relationship with Fong but a little while later we see her starkers in the shower. Accompanied by sleazy sax muzak, we watch her wash and zoom in yet again on her boobs and…well, there’s a fair bit of full-frontal nudity in the film. This kind of thing elicits many reactions in people, but to be honest I thought it was just funny. Not the actual nudity itself, but the way in which it is so desperately and cynically used – a hallmark of late-era Shaw Brothers productions, sadly.
With this in mind, it is somewhat surprising that the rape scene that follows is not as exploitative as it could have been. True, her assailants do smack her around considerably (and would probably prevent the film getting an uncut release in the UK, I suspect) but this is not in the same ballpark as Sammo Hung’s Iron Fisted Monk, whose rape scene was purely meant to titillate viewers. This sets up the revenge plot for the second half of the movie when Chow seeks out the priest he knocked over at the start of the film to get revenge on the killers.
All manner of nastiness follows, such as people vomiting worms and unwittingly eating brains and drinking blood. Fong’s wife becomes possessed and needs the help of a Taoist priest (while she’s naked, obviously). The effects are obviously low budget, but as with most things of this nature, there are one or two cool effects in with all the cheap make-up and puppetry. The “creature” effects (inspired, no doubt, by John Carpenter’s The Thing) are particularly poor and I suspect that the DVD age hasn’t helped matters very much by showing all the limitations so clearly. The animation sequence for the “seeding” is quite good, however, and is similar to the effects in Wu Ma’s Dead and the Deadly from the same year.
From all the buzz surrounding the DVD release of Seeding of a Ghost, it is evidently a much-loved piece of eighties Asian horror. I have no doubt at all that in its day it would held its own with many other similar films from the lower end of the genre, and it is certainly still watchable if you can turn a blind eye to its faults. One final note: I would recommend watching this film with the Cantonese audio track, as the Mandarin track seemed dull and lifeless.
Comments»
Looks pretty interesting actually. Surprising to hear the claimed Black Magic connection (number 2 of which I’m still waiting for… any news?).
Black Magic 2 was up for release ages ago but was withdrawn and I haven’t heard anything else since. I can’t speak too much about any connection as I haven’t seen either of the other films, but this definitely deals with black magic!
Black Magic 2 is available through Jaman.com, a legitimate online film downloading service that specialized in world cinema and has several top titles from the Shaw library. Some titles are only available for download (rent or own) in certain regions, so you might have to check on that first. Not sure if they have the three-free-for-joining deal still on, but that’s how I got it. Definitely worth a look, but who knows how long we’ll have to wait for a proper DVD?
http://www.jaman.com/a/video/0j2hE1eS7MXE/
Yeah, I remember you mentioning BM2 at HKMDB and paulwjm was the guy who told me about its existance. After watching this film, I would actually like to have a look at it myself. I’ll give it a while and see if it does eventually show up!
Watched Seeding of a Ghost for the first time this morning - there are a few things I really like about it, for example the woman finding that old mansion as she’s on the run is quite errie, the animation used for the ghost/corpse mating process creates some unique and eye-catching imagery, plus the Evil Dead-esque gore finale in the house is a great climax. Oh yeah, and the near relentless nudity during the first half is not something I’m turning my nose up at! The black magic chaos during the latter half does become a little tiring for a while though. Not a bad film!