Zhong gui

Angry men chase a sinister warlock through a misty cemetery. He runs into a street and under the wheels of a taxi driven by Chow, but then appears in the back seat of the speeding taxi. Irene, who deals cards at a Hong Kong casino, tries to pressure her boyfriend, Fang, into divorcing his wife so they can be together; she's married to Chow, who is diddling on the side, as well.

These characters, like the viewer, are stuck in a dull soap-opera for awhile, but SEEDING OF A GHOST shoots into high gear after Irene is raped and murdered by two young thugs. An enraged, grieving Chow blackmails the warlock into casting spells on the killers, Fang, and assorted friends and relatives.

From there, the filmmakers throw in every sick twist imaginable. Chow and the warlock exhume Irene's corpse. In the warlock's lair, and Chow is instructed to paint the decrepit body with coconut oil, "So she';ll feel better." As she comes alive, her killers start to hallucinate. One of the rapists is brought to her for some mystical necrophilia. This union culminates in a posthumous pregnancy, which is somehow transferred to the womb of Fang's expectant wife.

In the all-out, gory finale, the demon fetus liberates itself from the mother and goes on a murderous rampage. One character eats brains out of a coconut shell; there's an exploding toilet, strangulation by bra strap, gravity-defying sex, and (gulp) blood pastries. In one hideous sequence, Chow drains all of his blood into Irene's corpse as he slowly dies in agony.

SEEDING OF A GHOST is lively and competently directed, especially during two prolonged episodes in which magicians battle unsuccessful to put an end to the vendetta. Special effects credits are all top-notch, which will be of no comfort to viewers with queasy stomachs.

Yang Chuan is the man who directed this film, SEEDING OF A GHOST (1983) for the legendary Hong Kong Shaw Brothers, who produced many martial art classics and many "explicit horrors" which are so rare not many know anything about them. SEEDING is among the most insane films I've seen and this hyper rare film surpassed most likely every expections I had, and those were very high. I knew Hong Kong film makers can create things which simply cannot be found from elsewhere, and in the horror genre, they are as unique as in action and fantasy, too.

SEEDING tells the story of a cab driver (Philip Ko), whose wife has a lover whom with she spends a lot of time. One night the wife, Irene, is attacked in the street and raped and killed by some hooligans. The taxi driver husband finds her and sadly becomes number one suspect for the murder. At the very beginning and during the credits of the film, the taxi driver met a strange fellow who said he knows about and practises black magic and other "voodoo related stuff." He said to the cab driver that things may not go very well for him from now on because they have met.. Now, after the murder of his wife, the taxi driver remembers this guy and tracks him down. He finds the ominous looking man, and wants to revenge the murder of his wife. The black magic warlock agrees and he creates a horrific curse on all those who were involved in the murder. What follows is a series of over-the-top gory and insane mayhem filled with black magic, devils, tentacle monsters, worms and other things one would expect finding from Hell itself.

This film is the final nail to the coffin of the fact that the Hong Kong film makers really know how to create dark horror films, which this kind of films are called among the cult cinema specialists. Other similar "dark horrors" are (I haven't managed to track these down yet) RAPE AFTER, BLACK MAGIC and BLACK MAGIC 2 aka REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES. Many of these are produced by the Shaw Brothers and directed by man named Ho Men-Hua, and as far as I know, only RAPE AFTER isn't by Shaw and Ho, unlike many source books seem to say. I've heard this from one very reliable Asian cinema specialist who I believe of course in these difficult questions about these more-than-rare Asian films and oddities.

SEEDING OF A GHOST is dark with the capital D. There is smoke and shadows everywhere and only the beginning of the film has some genuine day light which seems peaceful and safe. But once the curse starts to affect, there's no hope for light or safety no more to the characters than the viewer! The effects are perhaps the most important elements here as they are so imaginative and detailed to the maximum effect. The monsters and creatures from the other side are as effective as in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) for example, and the budget for SEEDING wasn't too big I think, so they are all created by great imagination and talent to spend the limited budget.

The gore filled and monster inhabited mayhem on screen is incredible. There is a "devil fetus" who explodes through the hapless mother who starts to feel pain in her belly. What comes from her stomach is equally horrific as in David Cronenberg's masterpiece The Fly (1986), and it's very close to the tentacle monster in Carpenter's The Thing, too. Especially SEEDING's finale, during which this devil fetus is born, too, is an amazing barrage of bloody and nightmarish terror which cannot be controlled by the hapless people trapped inside that fateful apartment. The devil fetus once it gets born kills its victims with nasty tentacles which impale and rip anybody hapless enough to get in touch with them. There's also some very graphic nightmare scenes before the ending, too, and one of these is also illustrated in Tom Weisser's Asian Trash Cinema Book next to SEEDING review. I mean the scene in which one of the rapists suddenly starts to vomit worms while eating his food. Also the scene in which the guy gets his spine cursed through his back in explicit detail is again something never before seen in any other horror effort. These Hong Kong directors can create something which necessarily doesn't require plenty of money, but are as (and often, more) effective and nerve shocking as those made with plenty of money but not so plenty of talent.

The dialogue and screenplay isn't too great at all, and the dialogue especially is inept. People say what they think and they say things which should not be said in any noteworthy film. Everybody always screams something like "What are you doing!" when character's stomach explodes or gets his spine ripped off by an invisible force. This kind of brainless dialogue is very usual with some Hong Kong films, and I hated to find it that much in SEEDING, too. But I came to conclusion that the film is perfect in its "dark DARK horror level" so I don't give this the lower rating it deserved because of these errors. If reviewed as a piece of cinema, this would definitely not get the 10 stars rating, but when reviewed as a piece of Hong Kong terror cinema and Asian cult cinema, then this gets easily the ten rating, because it is something I hadn't seen before and something I think isn't easily surpassed anymore. I hope I can track RAPE AFTER and others of its kind down soon and see can they surpass the insanity and impact of SEEDING OF A GHOST in any way. Have a good night's sleep!

First off this film is pure exploitation. This is sex and violence and really gross, even by todays standards. Its not the best film ever made, but if you want gore and worms and gross things with your beautiful naked women this is for you. This film belongs in the exploitation hall of fame.

A very bare bones explanation of the plot has a beautiful woman having an affair because she is bored with her husband of a couple of months. She wants to run off with her lover, who is also married, but he won't go. Getting out of her car on a lonely stretch of road she finds a phone and calls her husband who's cab driver. While she is waiting she is raped and killed by two guys. The husband uses the services of a black magician he once saved to get revenge on the killers and the lover. Its gross fun from that point on.

The sex is early on as we see the very beautiful wife naked in the shower and having sex with her lover. Proving that this is exploitation at its finest we have a slow motion topless jog along the beach.

This film has a reputation for being gross out royalty and its nice to report that this certainly is the case. This is a film that will have you going "yuck" quite often. Done before CGI this film is helped by knowing that what you see is what you get, people really are spiting up insects and such.

The problem for me was that it seems oddly paced. Don't get me wrong the plot moves, but at times it seems a bit talky, which is odd since what you see is what you need to see and hear.

See this film.

I rated it as a 7 out of 10, but thats for most people who want to see a gross out horror film from overseas. For hardcore exploitation film fans or those who love gross effects this is a classic and should be 10 out of 10.

High expectations can be a bad thing when it comes to viewing obscure exploitation films. The problem is, once you've finally seen the film in question, it's like all of the past descriptions and reviews of it that made you want to see it in the first place were for a different film completely. SEEDING OF A GHOST suffers from this very syndrome. While certainly odd and unique, I have to admit that I was disappointed by this. Don't be fooled by all the hype surrounding this in cult movie circles; it's not half as outrageous as you've probably been led to believe.

The plot is suitably contrived. A cab driver accidentally runs into a mysterious vagrant, who promptly scuttles off into the woods. Meanwhile, his wife Irene has begun an affair with a handsome married man; she asks him to marry her, he refuses, and later that night she ends up getting raped and murdered by a couple of hoodlums. The cabbie is inexplicably led to her body through supernatural means, and decides to take revenge. He goes to the aforementioned vagrant, who promptly digs up Irene's body and begins a series of black magic rituals that lead to all sorts of weird happening amongst the perps: one guy throws up worms over his dinner plate, another is tricked into eating brains, and the married man's wife is possessed. Without giving anything away, all of this eventually leads to a blood-soaked finale in which Irene sets out for a final revenge...

From all the reviews I had read about SEEDING OF A GHOST, I had been led to believe that it was an incredibly disgusting, disturbing and downright nasty little film. Well, only a portion of that is correct. This film is not bad at all, but it's hardly notable. It reminded me of an EC comic book like TALES FROM THE CRYPT: it's incredibly over-the-top and weird, but too silly to be taken seriously. And although not as comical as, say, MR. VAMPIRE or A Chinese GHOST STORY, this still has a sense of humor, albeit a very strange one.

One thing this film is is SLEAZY; there's an undercurrent of misogyny here that will not fly with a lot of Western viewers. All of the women are essentially dumb, slutty punching bags, and the film is packed with a number of leering, gratuitous nude scenes that are so blatant in their execution they're not even erotic. The truth is, by the one hour mark I was kind of fed up; I had been given nudity galore, sex, creepy atmosphere, explosions and multiple kung fu fights (!), but what I really wanted was some horror. This film's structure is totally disjointed; it's like the filmmakers were making it up as they went along.

Thankfully, there's the final ten minutes. As many other viewers have noted, the climax is worth viewing in itself. Think a more outrageous, blood-splattered Asian version of John Carpenter's THE THING, and you have the right idea. I wanted more of that! Overall, SEEDING OF A GHOST was hardly as off-the-wall, gross, and skin-crawling as I was hoping for. It's more in line with the rest of the Hong Kong films I've seen, in the sense that all it wants to do is please the viewer, not necessarily scare him or disturb him. Hong Kong fans should seek out the incredible (and very similar in tone) SEVENTH CURSE with Chow Yun-Fat over this one.

I have been putting this off for a few years (I have had the DVD since 2009) mainly because I thought it was going to be shockfest that outdid The Boxer's Omen in gonzo-style horror. Well it was not even close to The Boxer's Omen which still holds a place deep in the suppressed subconscious of my cranium (actually it is more weird and gross than actually scary). In fact this has to be one of the most overstated and over-hyped horror films of Hong Kong though this is not a horrible film.

Chow (Phillip Ko: The Boxer's Omen, Shaolin Intruders) interrupts black magic by inadvertently saving the life of a black magic priest who is being chased down by an angry mob. Because of this the priest says at best he will get very sick and at worst his whole family will die. Since this is a horror film we know which scenario is going to take place. A film with him just being sick would not be as fun. But it is especially hilarious that it seems that the angry mob gets off clean and that he picked up the priest far from where the incantation went awry. I am probably over-thinking this.

Chow's wife Irene has been cheating on him because of his lowly taxi driver job, taxi drivers are a deranged lot (ask Anthony Wong), and his hair (seriously one of the worst wigs I have seen, worse than a Sammo Hung haircut). She is enticed by playboy Anthony Fong Ming (Norman Chu Siu-Keung: Bastard Swordsman) who visits her job of dealing cards and showers her with money, gifts, better hair (to be fair to Phillip check out Norman's perm in Hong Kong Godfather) and affection. One night those two adulterers have a fight and she gets out of the car and goes off by herself. Never good to be alone late at night when ruffians are about. She is confronted by two young hooligans who chase her down, one rapes her and ultimately she gets killed (why she runs into an abandoned house I do not know, why there would be an abandoned house in an abandoned area Hong Kong I also do not know).

When Chow finds out she is dead, he is ultimately a suspect for about 15 seconds. Fong is another suspect and despondent Chow finds out about the affair. He gets bad ideas in his head and wants revenge at all costs for those involved and goes to the black magic priest (still dressed like a shirtless jungle native; I wonder if he goes to the store like that) to seek revenge. This requires that they dig out his wife's corpse and he is warned that his monomaniacal revenge will likely result in his demise as well. The corpse is used quite effectively and it is creepy, the most scary aspect of the film. You can see it on the cover of the DVD and poster.

Fans of horror could do worse by seeking this out. I do not think it is as unique/interesting/gratuitous as Black Magic or The Boxer's Omen out of the Shaw Brothers horror oeuvre and I would suggest seeking those out first. This film overdoes the sleazy exploitation aspect of it, elongates the nudity and the film comes off more as a voyeuristic exercise especially in the beginning which starts to drag on. The slow motion topless running scene becomes almost absurd in its length and its use of the zoom lens. But you do get the benefit of a few fight scenes decently done involving Phillip Ko (still mad about the outcome with Norman Chu) who proves once again that you should not mess with taxi drivers or Phillip Ko. You also get a variety of gross out moments, Taoist priests, scares all done better in a variety of Hong Kong films. However, when the ghost is seeded there are plenty of horror elements, while keeping the exploitation element alive, especially towards the finale that will be of interest to viewers. There you get to witness a creature that seems inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing while a segment from the soundtrack from Alien is played.

I have the R1 Image release and it has English and Spanish subtitles. It comes with the Mandarin mono dub only. The R3 IVL release comes with both the Cantonese and Mandarin dub. At the time of the Hong Kong audience would have heard the Cantonese soundtrack, but most of the transnational audience would have heard it in Mandarin. Since at the time post dubbing was the norm and multiple dialects were often used on set it does not matter as much to me. However, this is a controversial topic where some have to have the "preferred" dub. I personally would like a release from this time period to have both the Cantonese and Mandarin language, but I will take what I can get. There are plenty of the Image released Shaw Brothers trailers (not the original trailers) on this release, but no trailer for the movie.