Explosive
Summary
A comedy with a supernatural twist and some fight scenes in the climax, The Shadow Boxing (also known as The Spiritual Boxer) has a clever setup and an engaging delivery with a plot that keeps its wheels spinning, and thanks to its nearly slapstick approach to comedy, and then an action-filled conclusion, the movie has a winning streak from start to finish.
Plot: A small group of “corpse herders” gets into trouble when they realize that one of their corpses is … not dead.
Review: When people die in towns they didn’t live in, instead of laying these poor souls to rest, a couple of low-level sorcerers with secret spells are tasked with “herding” the corpses (here called “vampires”) to their respective towns of origin, which means they literally reanimate the bodies and have them hop along with their herders (who walk) from town to town, hoping to drop them off wherever they belong. A seasoned sorcerer and his young apprentice take four or five recently deceased men on a long walk from town-to-town, but they have a couple complications with this particular delivery: One is that they have a female stowaway who wants to be part of their team, but female corpse herders are forbidden (something about their chi being wrong or something), and another is that one of recently dead is … not dead. In fact, the corpse (played by Gordon Liu) is an escaped convict with a newly shaved head and face to disguise the fact that he’s on the run and has the perfect cover as a vampire under the spells of the corpse herders. As a group, they’re able to pass all the checkpoints and searches from authorities who’re looking for him, but eventually the con’s ruse is revealed because he gets hungry, he has to use the bathroom, and he generally outs himself as being alive because how long can a man pretend he’s dead while on the road?
A comedy with a supernatural twist and some fight scenes in the climax, The Shadow Boxing (also known as The Spiritual Boxer) has a clever setup and an engaging delivery with a plot that keeps its wheels spinning, and thanks to its nearly slapstick approach to comedy, and then an action-filled conclusion, the movie has a winning streak from start to finish. It’s got some similar themes to other Hong Kong / Shaw Brothers films (I remember Mr. Vampire being kind of like this), but if you’ve got a formula that works, why not keep that up? It was directed by Chia-Liang Liu (Lau Kar-leung).
88 Films recently released a premium Blu-ray edition of The Shadow Boxing, and it comes in a vivid high definition transfer, with a slipcover (limited edition only), four collectible cards, reversible artwork for the sleeve, a trailer, stills, and more.