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The Shadow Boxing
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (25th September 2024). |
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The Film
 During the Qing dynasty, corpse herding was the practice of using black magic to animate corpses that have died away from home in order to more effectively transport them back to their families. The corpses are considered jiāngshī, or vampires, not due to Western notions of blood drinking but because they can be dangerous if their herders lose control of them. Young Zhengyuan (Dirty Ho's Wong Yu) spends as much time herding corpses as he does resisting the charms of Feifei (The Blood of Heroes' Cecilia Wong) and herding his own master Chen Wu (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin's Lau Kar-Wing) who spends most of his time in local gambling dens between jobs. Chen Wu is able to put off the latest trip despite family complaints and Zhengyuan's concern about the state of the corpses during the current heatwave by claiming that transporting an odd number is bad luck (which may or may not be true). Fortunately, Zhengyuan takes delivery of a corpse (Flirting Scholar's Gordon Liu) but the deliverers are cagey about details and Zhengyuan wonders if he might have died a sudden or violent death since he seems rather insolent when it comes to obeying the spells; indeed, the corpse seems to have a mind of its own, falling out of formation regularly along the road and hopping off on his own at border checkpoints where the authorities are looking for escaped criminal Zhang Jie. The police lead by Bi Ying Heng (Corpse Mania's Wong Ching-Ho) and a local militia lead by Brother Xu (Duel to the Death's Norman Chu) are not the only ones looking for him, however, as local casino owner Mr. Zhou (Last Hurrah for Chivalry's Lee Hoi-Sang) wants Zhang Jie dead before he can expose any of his criminal deeds. When Chen Wu gets into a fight with Zhou's casino manager Brother Xiang (Ghost Nursing's Wilson Tong) and is injured, he decides to convalesce at Zhou's invitation and puts Zhengyuan in charge of the transport and training stowaway Feifei who suspects that one of the corpses is not entirely dead. Although it predates the Mr. Vampire series by six years and is considered a sequel to director Lau Kar-Leung's earlier The Spiritual Boxer, Shaw Brothers' The Shadow Boxing almost feels like a cash-in on the Golden Harvest series which actually popularized the "hopping vampire" outside of Hong Kong and China. This film reveals that many of the quirks of the folk legend were already in place from the hopping and the yellow scrolls used to control the corpses to fight scenes in which the corpses are either used as weapons or shields – although the vampire fighting style is novel – as well as revealing that even some of the most ruthless villains are superstitious and can be scared off by a hopping corpse. Wong Yu, Cecila Wong, and Gordon Liu are certainly entertaining but the film overall lacks the consistent fun of the Mr. Vampire films even though it reveals that series did not really innovate much but just had better gag writers (even Lam Ching-Ying's most popular character that he essayed in both the franchise, on television, and an aborted American co-production is just a more charismatic version of Lau Kar-Wing's corpse master). While The Shadow Boxing is not as good as the Mr. Vampire films, fans of hopping vampires should check it out.
Video
Less seen outside Chinese territories – apart from Australia – than its predecessor The Spiritual Boxer, The Shadow Boxing has been available in English-friendly form in Hong Kong from IVL as a PAL-converted transfer. 88 Films' dual-territory Blu-ray features a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer from an "HD Transfer From the Original Negative" according to 88 Films specs. The transfer is colorful and crisp enough to reveal the telltale shortcomings of many of the lower-tier Shaw productions utilizing older anamorphic lenses. Daylight scenes fare best as well as the sound stage night scenes but there are a handful of wide-angle setups of Shaw sets where the focus is either severely off or the depth-of-field is just not sufficient – in addition to the usual anamorphic bowing evident during pans – often undermining the production values and sometimes the drama with characters making appearances only to be unrecognizable. Actual exterior night-for-night scenes are almost impenetrable and rarely in focus while the intercut day-for-night shots vary in black levels. 
Audio
88 Films eschews the Cantonese and Mandarin 5.1 remixes of the Hong Kong DVD in favor of an uncompressed 24-bit Mandarin LPCM 2.0 – although the Hong Kong industry started transitioning to Cantonese in the late seventies, Mandarin was the original language here and in a number of Shaw productions of the film – and the post-dubbed dialogue is always clear as are the over-familiar library sound effects and a score compiled by rather than "composed" by Frankie Chan which is heavier on underscore than anything resembling themes or motifs. The subtitles have some proofing errors with Zhengyuan first called "Xian yuan" and then never again after. 
Extras
No commentaries this time around, just a theatrical trailer (1:06) and a stills gallery (1:44). 
Packaging
The disc comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original Hong Kong poster artwork while the first pressing includes a limited edition slipcase with brand-new artwork by Mark Bell and four collectible art cards. 
Overall
While The Shadow Boxing is not as good as the Mr. Vampire films, fans of hopping vampires should check it out. 
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