Corpse Herding Isn’t Easy in “The Shadow Boxing.” Purchase Your Copy Here!

Corpse herder Fan Chun-Yuen has studied Master Chen for years, learning the ritual incantations and mastering the nuances of getting the dead home to their loved ones for proper burial.  What should have been a routine corpse herding goes astray when the last arrival of a corpse, a bald man, seemingly has issues following the simple incantations and master Chen’s leg is broken during a misunderstanding over gambling winnings at one of their resting pitstops.  Being left with no choice, Fan Chun-Yuen must herd the rest of the hopping corpses, publicly feared as hopping vampires, to their terminus with the aid of aspiring corpse herder and an undeterred woman Ah-Fei.  At the same time, criminal overlord Zhou, a casino owner, and a corrupt military leader are in search of a moral sub-lieutenant who can foil their plans and who has seemingly evaded all military checkpoints in route to Zhou, leaving the corpse herding understudies in the middle of a danger. 

The jiāngshī, or hopping vampire, is the Chinese version of the living dead, whether be a vampire, zombie, or a ghost in the country’s folklore.  In Chia-Liang Liu’s 1979 comedy-actioner “The Shadow Boxing,” the horror element of the jiāngshī is reduced to no more than a few false scares on the Chinese cultural collectiveness of superstitious fears.  Originally known as “Mao shan jiang shi quan” and also known as “The Spiritual Boxer II,” the film is considered a quasi-sequel to also Liu’s 1975 “The Spiritual Boxer” but only in association to the director and one of the principal actors and not a direct, character-connecting sequel by any other means.  The late “Human Lanterns” and “Demon of the Lute” writer Kuang Ni pens the script with Kung-fu comedy in mind amongst seedy corruption aimed to thwart tradition and principles, shot in Hong Kong by Celestial Entertainment on the Shaw Brothers studio lot, and produced by younger Shaw brother, Run Run or Shao Renleng. 

The actor who carries over from “The Spiritual Boxer” is “Dirty Ho” star Yue Wong in the role of corpse herding apprentice with a bad memory, Fan Chun-Yuen.  Wong’s character is a likeable learner who has the skills to be great at his vocation but lacks the confidence without being tethered to his master, played as drunkard and obsessive gambler by Chia-Liang’s brother, Chia-Young Liu, a longtime stunt man (“Once Upon A Time in China,” “The Savage Killers”) and actor (“The Return of the One Armed Swordsman,” “Five Fingers of Death”).  Fan Chun-Yuen tries to keep his sifu on a straighten arrow and focus on the task on hand and Wong and Chia-Liang invest that dynamic wholeheartedly while maintaining their sense of strength outside military force and criminal brutality to be masters under the flags of good and just.  Between them, a level of trust and reliance is displayed through their fighting casino goons and military soldiers where Wong needs his master to shout commands of the vampire style due to his bad memory.  There’s almost zero context on why that is but adds a melted layer of slip-in, slip-out comedy to make it unusually entertaining.  An understudy of the understudy and borderline love interest comes from Cecilia Wong (“The Hunter, the Butterfly and the Crocodile”) as Ah-Fei, a friend of Fan Chun Yuen who doesn’t want an arranged marriage but has an underscoring coyness with Fan Chun but their misadventures delivering the beloved bodies to grieving relatives proves to be difficult and much of their shenanigans to try and make their “mastery” believable in order to deliver the goods gets in the way of that amorous connection.  Also in the way are the corruptive forces hellbent to track down Chang Chieh (another Liu brother in Gordon Liu, “Kill Bill”) before he foils their transgressions, coinciding with performances from Lung Chan, Han Chiang, Wu-liang Chang, and Norman Chu.

“The Shadow Boxing” finely blends the chop-socky action with mystical folklore and comedy that’s not overly slapstick or buffoonery.  A serious layer runs through the middle of story and while the line chart fluctuates between peaks of let-loose Wing Chun and then violent sway the other direction with fleeting spikes of death and ghoulish shades, there’s never a tiresome tone of stagnating acts as Kuang Ni’s script develops and progresses upon the micro and macro dynamics of good versus evil characters, especially how Ni slyly introduces audiences to the last and bald corpse and it’s diverging acts of not exactly following incantational direction, in a mistakenly, humorous way.  The off feeling is there of baldie being of some importance but not until more third-party clues come to light halfway through the runtime and it’s by then the lightbulb begins to flutter and anticipatory wait for exposure begins.  If looking at “The Shadow Boxing” on a more comprehensive scale in the martial arts genre, the pace of fighting emulates too much on the lines of choreography counting.  Slow and herky-jerky, there’s not a smooth transition of moves in either of the individualized faceoffs or in the group skirmishes that doesn’t reflect well upon the stunt department as martial arts is the centerpiece of the action.  Every other aspect of creating tension and levity with the action works perfectly only to be lopsided by the sudden starts, stops, starts of checklist kick and punches. 

88 Films’ North American label lands the new high-definition release of “The Shadow Boxing” with an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50.  The transfer is processed from the original negative and presented in the original Cinemascope aspect ratio of a 2.35:1.  The anamorphic lens used compresses the image, creating a spherical or rounded out sides on tighter shots, a known issue for the lenses of those times.  The 35mm negative has won the test of time with a near spotless print that 88 Films sharpens the color palette and defines the broader details with texture lacing, decoding the image at an average of 33Mbps.  There are times the details appear too texturally chiseled with the Shaw Brothers’ set backgrounds exposed as obviously painted backdrops, see the final showdown fight.  A single audio, uncompressed output of a LPCM Mandarin 2.0 mono is offered on the release.  The track comprises enough overlapping range of effects to sturdy the sound design almost as if it was an innate recording.  The instilled post effects have the traditional Chinese martial arts flare of whacks and thunks but added with greatly synchronous care whereas the dialogue, though clean and present at the front, has the expected timing issues with an intensity level that doesn’t quite match at times.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Surprisingly, this is one of the few 88 Films releases without special features other than the original trailer.  Instead, the label elevates the physical release with a limited-edition stunning monochromatic and illustrated cover art by Mark Bell with subtle tactile elements on the cardboard O-slipcover.  The same image is showcased as the primary clear Amaray cover art but with slightly more color added to it while the reverse sleeve features the original Hong Kong poster art.  The LE also comes with 4 collectable artcards, though they’re more still image cards than art.  The not rated, 101-minute runtime 88 Films release is encoded for only two of the three regions with an A and B playback.

Last Rites: Hong Kong cinema has been fast, loose, and either furiously funny or folklorically fist over hard-hitting fist and Chia-Liang Liu’s “The Shadow Boxing” takes into account both now on a format pedestal with a new Blu-ray release from 88 Films!

Corpse Herding Isn’t Easy in “The Shadow Boxing.” Purchase Your Copy Here!