I was very happy when Celestial released its disc of THE SPIRITUAL BOXER (1975), a film I’d been seeking for years because it’s the directorial debut of Lau Kar Leung, who’d been laboring for the previous nine years directing fight sequences for Chang Cheh’s films. I watched it last night and I was quite pleasantly surprised. It’s not a traditional kung fu film by any means nor is it a horror or supernatural film as some of you might have expected. It’s really very different from any of the Hong Kong films of the '70s that I’m accustomed to. And I wouldn’t say that it looks forward to any Lau’s later films with the possible exception of LEGENDARY WEAPONS OF KUNG FU. I think a comparison of those two would be useful.

It’s a comedy-drama about Chinese folk superstitions and it uses the famed Boxers of the Boxer Rebellion (1900, seen in a prologue featuring cameos by Ti Lung and Chen Kuan Tai) as a departure point for a lightweight tale about a con artist who pretends to be a master of “spiritual boxing” who can invoke traditional gods in elaborate performance routines that provoke townspeople in his travels to shower him with gifts, free food and money. When real martial artists see through his tricks, he is generally forced to flee. The slim plot kicks into gear about halfway through when the conman settles in a town run by a ruthless loanshark and he finds his skills and tricks useful in standing up for the beleaguered townsfolk. It’s all a treatise on the exploitation of villagers’ superstitions and folkloric beliefs. As such, it has a great many details of local village life and appears to have been shot on authentic locales far from the Shaw Bros. backlot. (It looks like it was shot in Taiwan.) There aren't many of the usual Shaw Bros. regulars around either.

The star is Wang Yu (sometimes spelled Wong Yu), star of THE YOUNG AVENGER, HE HAS NOTHING BUT KUNG FU and co-star of several of Lau’s later films including EXECUTIONERS FROM SHAOLIN, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and DIRTY HO. (He’s not to be confused with One-Armed Swordsman Jimmy Wang Yu.) Wang Yu is quite good here and does an excellent Monkey King routine.
At some point in the action he picks up a female partner/sidekick who dresses like a male vagabond and proves to be as spunky as he is. The actress is Lin Chen Chi, someone I’ve never seen before. She’s quite amazing—beautiful but in a manner totally different from the usual Shaw Bros. starlet, and a fine actress to boot. Whatever happened to her and why didn’t Lau use her again?

There’s a not a lot of actual kung fu in it. If you’re expecting the goods that are normally delivered in a Lau Kar Leung film, you’re bound to be disappointed. There is a rousing 9-minute kung fu finale involving Wang Yu and Lee Hoi San and an actor I don’t recognize. But in the context of the storyline, this fight is something of a contrivance and kind of goes against everything that came before it. Still, while the film is nowhere near as entertaining as Lau’s later films, it is charming and engaging and is quite a refreshing departure from everything else these people were doing at the time.

I haven’t watched the sequel, SPIRITUAL BOXER 2, yet.

Lin Chen Chi was the female lead in Tsui Hak's DANGEROUS ENCOUNTER OF THE SPOOKY KIND. Quite obviously Master Lau wanted his women characters built from a different mold as the usual either whore or virgin found usually in Chang Cheh movie and Lin Chen Chi character is a nice forerunner for Lau Kar Leung other otherstanding female creatiion such as Hui Ying Hung's Auntie and Anita Mui's conniving step mom in DRUNKEN MASTER II.

Con artists and trickster centred movie were highly popular in the early seventies thanks to Li Han Hsiang series of very naughty movies (SINFUL CONFESSION, GOLDEN LOTUS etc) therefore it make sence that Master Lau would try to use this popular fad for his directorial debut. Once he was establish he drop it to make a string of Southern folk hero centred kung-fu movie.

SPIRITUAL BOXER still remains the prototypical kung-fu comedy though complete with naughty student schtick, animal style kung-fu and of course a drunken master.

SPIRITUAL BOXER 2 is one of MAster Lau's weakest Shaw Brother movie but still above average for a kung-fu movie and pretty enjoyable IMHO. Wong Yu stars, alongside Gordon Lau, Lau Kar Leung and another spunky beauty Cecillia Wong Hang Sau (now Nat Chan's wife). While Master Lau's describe spiritual boxer as fraud in SBI, here's he treat the "gyonshi herder" as genuine necromancers although they're pretty goofy. Despite the title the movie is no sequel, just a follow up with the same lead actor.


Yves.

I watched SPIRITUAL BOXER 2 last night--it's actually called THE SHADOW BOXING--its onscreen title and the one on the Celestial case. Seeing it so soon after SPIRITUAL BOXER diminishes it considerably. Its supernatural theme is so completely at odds with the first film's sincere attempts to debunk superstitions. The whole notion of "corpse herding" is so ridiculous to me that it put the film at a real disadvantage. The plot twist about a fugitive who makes use of the situation to get past army checkpoints could actually have been pretty funny, but the film completely fails to make use of the comic possibilities.

And there's hardly any kung fu. I'd hesitate to call either film a kung fu film. In this one, there's one good brawl at the gambling house early on, but the final battle is too dependent on those ridiculous "vampire chants." None of the fine actors in the piece really had a chance to shine, especially Gordon Liu. HE HAS NOTHING BUT KUNG FU (1977), an earlier film directed by Lau Kar Wing (this film's co-star) and starring both Gordon Liu and Wong Yu, two of the stars of this film, was much funnier and had a helluva lot more kung fu.

I have to say I found SHADOW BOXING/SPIRITUAL BOXER 2 tedious. As far as Lau's career goes, it and the later LADY IS THE BOSS are his weakest films.

A note about BRAVE ARCHER 3: I watched this also and found it interesting, but less so than the first two BRAVE ARCHER films. It has fewer characters and incidents. It focuses on a long side story involving Ti Lung as a nobleman-turned-monk and Ching Li as a concubine turned recluse-with-white hair and a detailed flashback to their back story. Almost like a side trip into Chor Yuen/SWORDSMAN AND ENCHANTRESS territory. The Five Venoms are all on hand to good effect, but there are no extended fight sequences until the very end--a nine-minute finale at the 82-minute mark that's quite rousing, but adds up to too little too late.

Glad to hear Lin Chen Chi is in Dangerous Encounters. I've become a bit of fan - her look is unusual but I think she's gorgeous. Did she just drop out of the industry or what?

She's had interesting roles in a few other Shaws that I've seen, Red Dress in Chang Cheh's Heaven and Hell, and Ti Lung's love interest in Hua Shan's Soul of the Sword. Anybody know what else she's appeared in?

I found SHADOW BOXING to be entertaining. Perhaps, it's other title, SPIRITUAL BOXER 2, led you to expect a similar position on the supernatural as the first film. Mainland films must always depict the supernatural as superstitious bunk; it is perhaps more of a challenge to the orthodoxy to depict it as a real, ordinary part of the world instead. Certainly it's one way that HK cinema was able to create a unique identify for itself in relation to the mainland (and continues to do so).

If I remember right, isn't this the film where Gordon Liu or one of the other actors uses "gyonsi fu?" His hopping vampire fighting style was fun and reminded me of RETURN TO THE 36th CHAMBER where Liu learns "scaffolding fu." It seems no matter what profession you are in, it can be mastered as a kung fu art, and that's pretty cool.

That said, it was a pretty goofy film, and by no means a favorite, but a heck of a lot better than many hopping vampire films out there.

-- Peter

I enjoyed THE SHADOW BOXING (SB2, not to be confused with THE SHADOW BOXER of course :P). I saw it well before SB1, so I didn't have any particular expectations, and was perhaps therefore more disposed to favouring it?

To Mr. Austin:

Don't know what else Lin Chen Chi appeared in,but I do recall in an old post from a couple of years back (can't recall the poster's name) the 411 on her was that DANGEROUS was her last film before she got married,left the film business,and started a chain of restaurants in either Taiwan or HK,I think. There's a recent pic of her in the HK Movie Star section where Yves did that wonderful bio of Yuen Wah (thanks a lot--I enjoyed all those cool pics of the man!) I've never seen any of her films,but I'm glad to hear that THE SPIRITUAL BOXER is finally available on DVD,because I just love me some of anything comic actor/martial artist Wong Yu was in--he was always fun,goofy as hell,and great to watch no matter what.

About Yuen Wah--just a couple of months ago SUPERCOP popped up on the UPN network on a Saturday afternoon,and I kicked myself for not having a VHS to tape
it with,because I think it's still one of the best action films Jackie made in the 1990's(it definitely supersedes RUMBLE IN THE BRONX) and it got me to thinking that I ought to start hunting down some more of his work,including THE MASTER--hopefully I can get around to it someday.

To Mr. Camp:

Since you're into Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh,have you caught this new animated show called XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN? It comes on Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. on the WB channel--I've seen it advertised before but just watched it for the first time today---the cast includes 4 fighting monks,a wisecracking dragon,and a Chinese-style ghost who just seems to hang around in the air for whatever reason. Why the heck is the word "Shaolin" spelled differently---are the creators afraid of a lawsuit or something? :) And thanks for the SPIRITUAL BOXER review--can't wait to see it now!

Well, Kim, I have to admit I've never watched more than a few minutes of "Xiaolin Showdown," although I probably should. I have a pronounced bias against American-produced animation and find my energy already taken up with all the anime shows currently on. (Not to mention "Power Rangers"!) But I have sampled "Jackie Chan Adventures," so I should check out this one. And I imagine the "Xiaolin" spelling was a means of avoiding a lawsuit (or even a threat of one) from SHAOLIN SOCCER-meister himself, Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Pictures.

By the way, since it's not been mentioned in the thread yet, I feel that I ought to comment that my enjoyment of SPIRITUAL BOXER was severely hampered by the fact that Celestial saw fit to "improve" the DVD with a 6.1 sound mix, produced in the most incompetent manner possible - the original music and sound effects seem to have been mixed down to about half volume, and new sound effects have been liberally added over the top, sounding far too loud and crisp and totally out of place with the original sound mix. It's hard to imagine somebody at Celestial listened to that mix and thought "That was money well spent". Unfortunately quite a few titles in recent batches have suffered a similar fate, but the SPIRITUAL BOXER dvd is one of the worst (ANGEL WITH IRON FISTS probably being the single worst - I found it literally unwatchable).

Apparently the VCDs have the original unmixed audio tracks.