Shaw-Shock Horror Collection Volume 2 is Now Avilable for Purchase!
The Qing Dynasty of Imperial China is full of spiritual folklore, mysticisms, and romance. Three tales of supernatural passion arouse not only enduring amorousness and longing desire but also strikes fear of apparitional ghosts and grudges into naive and honest souls from beyond the grave, crossing existential planes to be with intended suitors no matter the cost. These stories will send a pining chill down your spine: a traveling scholar bunks at an abandoned temple to find he’s enchanted by a young woman not of life and protected by a blood thirsty lady-in-waiting, a provincial governor crosses paths with a beautiful virgin while taking shelter at her home. When he catches her nude, he’s willing to marry her to avoid her shame but little does he know she’s a lonely ghost searching for love and revenge against those who raped and killed her, and, lastly, an arranged marriage is foiled by the sudden death of a young mistress and the late arrival of the master because he was being robbed of a debt he owned the mistress’s family. Unfulfilled in love and life, the young woman returns to court the young master with the help of her elderly servant who took her own life to make the love between them possible. Not believing the rumors of her death and discounting the spirit warnings from those close around him, the young master falls in love with his intended bride despite the obstacles put in between them by the master’s servants, Taoist priests, and even a band of bodyguards.
Australian distributor Imprint, under their sublabel Imprint Asia, has released the second volume of the Shaw-Shock: Show Brothers Horror Collection with three more titles that fall within the release window of 1960 to 1973. These adapted stories stem from and inspired by Songling Pu’s Liaozhai Zhiyi, aka Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, which is a collection of classical Chinese ghost narratives, and they include the 1960 “The Enchanting Shadow,” directed by Han Hsiang Li (“The Ghost Story,” “Return of the Dead”) and written by Yue-Ting Wang and Wong Yuet-Ting, the 1972 “The Bride from Hell,” directed Hsu-Chiang Chou (director of “The Enchanting Ghost,” not to be confused “The Enchanting Shadow”) and penned by Tien-Yung Hsu, and 1973’s “The Ghost Lovers,” the only film of the three from Korean-born filmmakers, director Shin Sang-ok (“3 Ninjas Knuckle Up”) and writer Il-ro Kwak (“Ghosts of Chosun”). Runme Shaw produces all three films in the Shaw Brothers production studio.
Other than being a Shaw production, each of the three stories are also connected by common elements – travelling male scholars or those high in station, a dead or recently deceased high-born woman in phantomic form, and the two intertwine romantically under false pretenses all the while Taoist priest, servants, or family of the living beg, plead, and even self-interject themselves in between the unnatural love affair to save the man from a wraith’s haunt, whether the affectionate intent by the ghost is malicious or benign, but each also differ in style and substance. Lei Zhao (“Succubare”) plays a servant-less travelling scholar, Ning Tsai-Chen, unphased by the foreboding warning of ghosts and death of a dilapidated temple where those who stay the night don’t live the next morning. Ning falls for adjacent neighbor maiden in Nie Xiaoqian (Betty Loh Ti) and between the actors there is a show of palpable and touching natural coquet that’s honorable to their period and to their characters’ hearts but their being from two different worlds puts up a marital blockade unlike in “The Bride of Hell” that has generally has the same amorous bond between Yang Fang (Nie Yun Peng) and Anu (Margaret Hsing Hui) that eventually leads to marriage, but the Anu guileful portraying of a living is more deceitful to use Yang Fang despite also actually loving him in this more revenge based spookery involving Fang’s unscrupulous family members. “The Ghost Lovers” also uses ghostly deceit to trick the master into a coitus cemented bond revolving and complicated around Han His-lung’s (Wei-Tu Lin, “Corpse Mania”) honor and shame and the affluent Sung Lien-hua’s (Ching Lee, “Sexy Girls of Denmark”) unfulfilled life and love before an untimely death. There are of course the conflicts that get in the middle – the blood thirsty Lao Lao (Rhoqing Tang, “Brutal Sorcery”) aims to kill temple trespassers and Nie Xiaoqian suitors no matter how much a gentlemen they are, there’s the rape-revenge aspect in “The Bride of Hell,” and the sundry hindrances that try to keep the undead Sung and the alive Han from being unionized. There’s quite a bit of hammy performances to digest in what’s relatively near being the same story said over thrice, The three films fill out the cast with Chih-Ching Yang and Ho Li-Jen in “The Enchanting Shadow,” Carrie Ku Mei, Hsia Chiang, Chi Hu, Feng Chang, and Yi-Fei Chang in “The Bride from Hell,” and Shao-Hung Chan, Feng-Chen Chen, Ki-joo Kim, Ling Han, Han Chiang, and Mei Hua Chen in “The Ghost Lovers” as the belabor the melodramatics of ghostly fervor.
From a bird’s eye view, the Shaw Brothers productions appears virtually unoffensive and harmless period pieces set in the Imperial China with romanticized slices of fantasy in love after death, unstoppable passion, and an adherence to honor, principles, and duty to others, but a closer look reveals a darker sliver coursing through the supernatural palaver with it’s unnatural fascination of hooking up dead beautiful women with eligible scholarly men. The most outlying and blatant example would be the rape-revenge narrative of “The Bride form Hell,” a coarse title that’s been spun into various renditions over the decades – take Quentin Tarantino’s The Bride from “Kill Bill” for example – by a woman embarking on path of retribution after being wronged in a maliciously despicable way and she uses everything to her advantage, even if that means marrying a relative, while a spirit I might remind you, of the men who raped and murdered her during their plundering of riches. The film also doesn’t mind it’s hands a little dirtier with some nudity unlike the other two films of the set. “The Ghost Lovers” isn’t as deeply disturbing with more of an untimely and unfortunate situation robbing mistress Sung of life and love and master Han of time and wealth that would have solidified a bond if the elements were not stolen from them. There’s also a misunderstanding with fear of the unknown and a twisted sense of intent by humble servants and priests who distress of anything not of this plane of existence. Much can be said the same about “The Enchanging Shadow” but that also deploys a countermeasure to the good heart nature of spirit Nie Xiaoqian as she’s balanced by her pure evil and bloodthirsty caretaker Lao Lao who between love and represents unholy demise. Han Hsiang Li, Hsu-Chiang Chou, and Shin Sang-ok don’t stray too far away from each other when it comes to production set and scene compositions by keeping much of the storylines set during the mischief of the night when folkloric ghosts are more awake and present and keep the coloring cold contoured under grays, blues, and only hints of muted vibrancy outside the monochrome. Special effects are kept close to the chest with fleeting rudimentary prosthetic and makeup, superimpositions to liven the ghost effect, and lay a dense fog in certain moments of atmospherics. Combine all the elements infused with Chinese culture and superstitions and you get three stories that shutter with phantasmic passion.
The Shaw-Shock: Shaw Brothers Horror Collection Vol. 2 from the Imprint Asia line under parent company Via Vision is another awesome Shawtastic boxset that takes obscurity into the light. The three disc Blu-ray set is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, encoded onto BD50 is limited to 1500 copes. Each included film is catalogue as numbers 31 to 33 in the Imprint Asia sublabel. “The Enchanting Shadow” is the only one of the three presented in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, transferred from a rougher print that has patches of cell damage and varied grading as if a couple of prints were spliced together. There is a prelude title card warning of the quality so there should be no surprise when it does come up. “The Bride from Hell” and “The Ghost Lovers” are presented a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio and have used a cleaner print for the hi-def transfer with no notice of damage issues. All carrier a softer, airy image from the film stock and film processing scans and combine with sharp key lighting, there is a glow effect around objects but not enough radiance to affect the diffusion of colors and smooth out details. Skin tones often fluctuate between an organic and an orange tinge that can sway the perceived quality. The much older “The Enchanting Shadow” from 1960 definitely shows its age with more muted earthly tones within its darker scaling. Each film uses a compressed, spherical lens as the curvature is more severe than you notice in more modern productions, hallmarking Hong Kong’s utilized lenses during the decades. All three films are in Mandarin with no other language option within a LCPM 2.0 audio format that adequate fills the front channels of dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack. Dialogue and ambience is not immersive with the stereo mix but the ADR track is present and discernible with some noticeable sparse hissing in the dialogue and low level gurgling interference amongst more docile moments. Along with the image damage, “The Enchanting Shadow” has counterpart audio damage with tears in the audio layer that pop and crackle during the damage breaks. English subtitles are available on all three titles and are paced well but the subtitles on the “The Ghost Lovers” come with a few grammatical and misspelling errors. New special features encoded on the releases include an audio commentary by author Stafan Hammond and Asian film expert Arne Venema, film historian analysis by Paul Fonoroff, an archival interview with director Hun Hsiang Li, and the original and DVD trailer for “The Enchanting Shadow,” the “The Bride from Hell” has a new audio commentary also by Arne Venema with the DVD trailer, and “The Ghost Lovers, too, has a new audio commentary from critic and filmmaker Justin Decloux with film scholar Wayne Wong discussing the film. The new encoded special features compliment the tremendous and substantial Imprint Asia rigid box set with a removable jagged tooth locked top that includes compositional artwork and permeated with the Shaw Brothers insignia. Inside, the three Blu-rays sit snug in individual clear Amaray cases, each with their own original cover art reflecting the original posters with the reverse side pulling a still from the film. The total runtime of all three films is 4 hours and 14 minutes in its region free, unrated capacity.
Last Rites: A triple threat of Shaw Brothers’ classics resurrected from the dead to haunt your collection! Imprint Asia’s boxset continues to recover unearthed Hong Kong and Chinese culture, folklore, and fantasy for new enthusiasts of the far East and avid collectors of physical media!
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