Seeding of a Ghost

Yang Chuan's 1983 Hong Kong film is among the most extreme horror pictures of the period before the Category Three rating. A taxi driver's wife is raped and killed by two young hooligans, and he goes to a sorcerer asking for revenge. The result of the ritual is that both the perpetrators and the spell itself go beyond control. The film belongs to the black magic horror vein Hong Kong was producing at the time and deliberately pushes violence and sexuality past the line. The birth scene in the final section is a sequence separately remembered in genre history; the makeup and effects work is inventive despite the budget. That the story uses its woman character only as the justification for revenge is its weakest and most uncomfortable feature. Who it's for: viewers interested in the extreme wing of Hong Kong horror and 1980s black magic films. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding sexual violence, torture and graphic body horror, or troubled by a woman character used as an instrument.