Seeding Of A Ghost

Seeding of a Ghost  (Zhong Gui) (1983)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Kuen Yeung

Starring: Norman Chu, Phillip Ko, Maria Jo, Jung Wang, Mi Tien

From: Shaw Brothers

Wild, this was: 

At least this ended with a bang.

For awhile now I've known of this infamous Shaw Brothers production; recently I tracked down the movie on DVD and this was the perfect time to see what the hub-bub was about. Well... I see it did earn its reputation. The story: a dude accidentally hits a “dark magician” with his taxi cab and the taxi driver's luck turns rotten. His wife cheats on him then she is horrifically attacked and killed by two punks. Taxi driver unwittingly asks the guy he hits for revenge, which revolves around the dead wife's corpse. Bad things then happen to the punks and the cheater, most of them gross. This includes vomiting worms, disgusting images, and then the finale... I won't reveal what happens in the finale except that obviously the filmmakers had seen a horror movie that must have come out right before they rolled production on this.

The storytelling through this is not always strong and it does take time to get going-part of it is pretty much a police procedural, which was unexpected-but once it does, things get pretty wild. Thankfully most of the effects look fine even today, and what happens in the final few minutes are good, although not legendary like the film they are blatantly ripping off. This was retroactively rated as a Category III film (the rough equivalent of an NC-17 in the United States) in Hong Kong, and for good reason. There are plenty of bloody and downright icky special effects, there are taboo moments and there is gratuitous female nudity to be seen; I mean, more than one woman is full frontal.


This movie is set in modern times (i.e. early 1980's) so among other things you see a sweet Fiat X-19 vehicle and the soundtrack occasionally has some synth action. It seems like a lot of things were thrown (and literally at one point, fireballs were used as projectiles) against the wall to see what stuck; that's what I meant by uneven storytelling. That said, the film was still an experience so for some this will be the cat's pajamas.