Seeding of a Ghost Blu-ray Review

Arrow Video

Blu-ray Release: December 9, 2025 (as part of Shawscope: Volume 4)

Video: 1.85:1/1080p/Color 

Audio: Cantonese and Mandarin LPCM 1.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 90:19

Director: Yang Chuan

The authorities aren’t any help when Chou Tang’s (Phillip Ko) wife Irene (Maria Jo) is found brutally murdered, forcing the bereft cab driver to seek assistance from a black magic sorcerer (Hussein Abu Hassan).

Ho Meng-Huathe’s Black Magic (1974) and Black Magic Part 2 (1976) set a precedent for a special brand of Shaw Bros. horror movies often referred to as their black magic series. Though not narratively connected, these films were united by content and visual themes, including elaborate black magic rituals, esoteric wizard battles, curses, exorcisms, squirming bugs, and gushing bodily fluids. Kuei Chih-Hung more or less perfected the formula with Hex (1980), Bewitched (1982), and The Boxer’s Omen (1983), and Shaw ceased film production in 1986, but not before they oozed out one more black magic classic – Yang Chuan’s Seeding of a Ghost (1983).

While it has plenty of its own original flavor, Seeding of a Ghost is functionally a greatest hits package, drawing from all corners of the Shaw black magic tradition – the slo-mo, topless beach trysts and endlessly barfing bugs from Bewitched, the impossibly convoluted rituals of The Boxer’s Omen, the grotesque curses of Black Magic, and everything in between. Also like Bewitched, it spends a long time pretending to be a hardboiled crime film, before finally admitting that it’s a supernatural horror geek-show. Kung fu fans can even enjoy a couple of knockdown, drag-out fights from stunt coordinator and Shaw acting regular Huang Pei-Chi.

As if all this, haunted house aesthetics, and descents into bodyhorror weren’t enough, Seeding of a Ghost also fits under the unlikely subgenre heading of a Hong Kong evil fetus movie, alongside Lau Hung-chuen’s aptly titled Devil Fetus (1983), Wilson Tong’s Ghost Nursing (1982), and Lam Ngai Kai’s The Seventh Curse (1983). I assume this was an escalation from Black Magic 2’s stillborn demon baby and Bewitched’s fetus drink. Seeding of a Ghost’s beastly zygote is unique in that it bears little resemblance to a human baby. Instead, it resembles the toothy xenomorphs of Douglas McKeown’s Return of the Deadly Spawn (also released in 1983).

In the Kuei Chih-Hung tradition, Yang values dynamism, and brings an affable energy to what could’ve been a distressing slog of a movie, given the seedy, mean-spirited nature of Lam Yee Hung & Kamber Huang’s screenplay. His style is arguably a bit slicker than his Shaw forebearers, bridging the gap between the studio’s early ‘80s horror and the urban action movies that Golden Harvest and Golden Princess started releasing a few years later. Perhaps best of all, Yang doesn’t waste any time on dopey comic relief. Audiences can decide for themselves if they find the increasingly frantic situation and inherently absurd set-pieces funny without characters pausing to mug at the camera, as tends to happen in even the best Shaw horror films.

These poppy sensibilities often clash with the exploitative subject matter in uncomfortable ways, such as an extended, over-the-top sequence of sexual abuse that is shot like a music video and features incredible stunt work from actress Maria Jo (and seemingly her stunt double?), who is, unfortunately, the victim of said abuse. Marvel as she throws herself head-first down a flight of stairs with no shirt, let alone padding to protect herself. Then cringe as you recall the actual context of the scene. 

Like Ho and Kuei, Yang was an industry veteran and had been directing films since the ‘60s and worked across genres, though for smaller studios, like Goldig Film Company. For Shaw, he made Seeding of a Ghost, one other possession horror flick, Hell Has No Boundary (1982), and assorted comedies and dramas, My Darling Genie (1984), My Mind, Your Body (1985), and Twisted Love (1985). 

Bibliography

• Hands, Fingers and Fists: ‘Grasping’ Hong Kong Horror Films by David Scott Diffrient (from Hong Kong Horror Cinema edited by Gary Bettinson & Daniel Martin, Edinburgh University Press, 2018)

• Mondo Macabro: Weird and Wonderful Cinema Around the World by Pete Tombs (St. Martin's, 1997)

Video

Seeding of a Ghost had its US video debut on DVD via Image Entertainment. Its first Blu-ray came from 88 Films in the UK in 2017 and it was also released by Australian company Imprint earlier this year as part of Shaw-Shock Volume One, alongside The Oily Maniac (1976) and Sex Beyond the Grave (1984). I’m not sure about the Imprint disc, but the 88 Films disc definitely uses an older Celestial Films HD transfer. Arrow’s transfer, which shares space with Portrait in Crystal (1983), features a brand new 2K remaster of the original negative, like all the films in Shawscope: Vol. 4, so it is an upgrade.

This is yet another ‘80s Shaw horror movie with smokey effects and diffused filters, so expect quite a bit of grain and snowy noise throughout. Close-up detail is tight and the many wide-angle shots (so wide that some are fisheye) are complex in spite of the grain. The palette differs greatly based on location, contrasting dingy urban settings with cooled nighttime exteriors, lush natural locations, and neon-soaked supernatural chaos.

Audio

Seeding of a Ghost is presented with Cantonese and Mandarin dub options, but in uncompressed LPCM mono. The disc defaults to the Cantonese track if you just hit play and, to my ear, that’s the way to go. The lip sync is much closer, given that much, if not all of the cast is performing in that language. The Mandarin track, on the other hand, is mixed in a way that dialogue overwhelms the incidental effects. The score is credited to Chin Yung Shing & Chen-Hou Su, but is, of course, mostly made up of De Wolfe library standards and cues from other films.

Extras

• Commentary with James Mudge – The critic, industry expert, and filmmaker returns with another mile-a-minute expert track jam-packed with information about the end of Shaw Bros.’ productions, the studio’s black magic movies, Seeding of a Ghost’s warring tones and class divide satire, the history of gambling in Hong Kong, and the careers of the cast & crew (his information about Yang is pretty invaluable, because there isn’t a lot available about the guy). 
  

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