Ching nu yu hun (1960)

... aka: Enchanting Shadow, The
... aka: L'ombre enchanteresse (The Enchanting Shadow)
... aka: Qiannü youhun

Directed by:
Han Hsiang Li

I've always wanted to put together a comprehensive list of all the horror films produced by Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers, so now's as good a time as any! In the early years, back when SB was still being called Shaw and Sons Ltd., they first dipped their toes into the genre pool with 1954's Ren gui lian (Beyond the Grave); an adaptation of a ghost story by Songling Pu. Like many other early Asian supernatural / ghost films, elements of drama and romance are far more pronounced than the horror content. That doesn't appear to be the case with Anak Pontianak / Son of the Vampire (1958), a sequel to 1957's Pontianak, which centers around a female bloodsucker and her werewolf son and was a Shaw Bros. co-production with Singapore's Malay Film Productions. Unlike with Beyond the Grave and the first Pontianak (which is believed to be missing for good), a (very bad) copy of this film is actually available to view but only in its original language. Following that were a pair of 1959 releases; Chun Yen's Si wang de yue hui (Appointment with Death) and See Luk Chow's Jiang shi fu chou (The Vengeance of the Vampire), neither of which appears to have been released on home video anywhere nor are available to view and are also potentially M.I.A. And that brings us up to 1960 and The Enchanting Shadow, which is generally considered Shaw's very first horror offering despite technically not being its first horror offering. It's certainly more widely-seen than what came before it and has been issued on both VHS and DVD (from Celestial Pictures). The rest of the SB horror list will continue down below but, first, the movie at hand...

Young traveling scholar Ning Caichen (Lei Zhao) arrives in a busy village but is unable to find a hotel to stay in for a few nights because they're all full of soldiers and refugees due to an uprising of warlords and military turmoil. He's told that there's the Jinhua Temple ten miles away in the mountains if he's desperate but is warned not to stay there because everyone thinks it's haunted. Not only that, but it's also believed that every single person who's attempted to spend the night there has mysteriously died. The educated Caichen isn't about to let local superstition get the better of him so he offers to pay a carriage driver extra to just drop him off near the front gate. Upon arrival, Ning meets an older man named Yan Chixia (Chih-Ching Yang), who used to be a heroic swordsman but is now a hermit hiding away from all of the war and chaos. He's staying at the temple, he says, only temporarily, until things blow over. The men share a drink, talk and become friendly, but once a wind chime sounds, Chixia recommends his new friend hit the sack early.

Staying up late writing, Caichen is awoken by music. He follows the sounds to another wing of the temple and discovers a young woman, Xiaoqian Nie (Betty Loh Ti), talking to the moon about her loneliness, strumming a guqin and writing poetry. Xiaoqian lives in a nicer part of the temple with her grandmother Lao Lao (Rhoqing Tang), who stays busy playing games with her friends. Xiaoqian and Caichen eventually bump into each other, work on a poem together to accompany one of her paintings of mandarin duck and it's basically love at first sight... at least for her. When Granny catches them together, she angrily accuses Caichen of trying to seduce her granddaughter, calls him a “shameless playboy” and “an obscene rascal” and banishes him from their residence. Little does she know (or maybe she does), the real seductress is her granddaughter, who sneaks off to Caichen's room moments later and attempts to put the moves on him. He respectfully rejects her advances and sends her on her way.

The following day, Caichen goes into the nearest town and sees Xiaoqian wandering into a building. He follows and, though she's nowhere to be found, her duck painting graces one of the walls. He's then informed by an old man that the painting has been hanging there for years and the girl who painted it, the daughter of a governor passing through the area, died ten years ago. After he returns to the temple, Xiaoqian visits Caichen once again, this time claiming her granny found out about her visiting his room and beat her. She begs Caichen to take her away from there, claiming she'll work as his maid and even attempts to give him a valuable gold gift, but he refuses both. Later that night, another scholar staying there (Hsiang Su) and his servant (Lee Kwan) turn up dead, both with puncture wounds on the bottom of their feet. Xiaoqian eventually confesses to being a ghost, but claims that she's at the whim of the evil old woman, who's actually a witch who kills nearly every traveler who dares to stay there.

The basis for this is the same basis of Shaw's earlier Beyond the Grave: Songling Pu's Liaozhai Zhiyi, or Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. This collection of nearly 500 short stories, primarily ones about ghosts, creatures and / or the supernatural, was first published sometime in the mid 1700s and didn't see an English translation until 1880. Enchanting Shadow is based on one of the stories in the collection called Nie Xiaoqian, which was later re-filmed much more famously as A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). In fact, it's pretty obvious Tsui Hark viewed this earlier version before making his own since a lot has been carried over into it, visually and otherwise. It's actually as much a remake of this film as it is an adaptation of the story.

While Shadow in poorly dated in some respects (especially some painfully corny music cues) and may lack the kinetic action set pieces of Hark's film, it makes up for that with a splendid visual presentation. The entire film was shot on sets, giving it an almost fairy tale-like quality that I really enjoyed. The art direction, sets, costumes, lighting and makeup effects are all excellent and it was gorgeously shot by Luying He in deep, rich Eastmancolor. The score is a mix of traditional Chinese music (including several songs performed by the cast) and what sounds like Theremin for the spookier parts. After playing at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and being nominated for the Palme d'Or, it was chosen as Hong Kong's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 33rd Academy Awards, but lost out to the likes of Macario from Mexico and The Virgin Spring (which ended up eventually winning) from Sweden.

Oh yes, and before I forget, here's the rest of the Shaw Brothers horror / horror-related catalogue (not including this one and the four already discussed above). I've scoured various websites to compile this, but if you see any movies missing, please let me know and it'll be added...

Beyond the Grave (1954), Son of the Vampire (1958; co-production with Malay Film Productions), Appointment with Death (1959), The Vengeance of the Vampire (1959), The Enchanting Shadow (1960), A Night of Thrills (1960; aka A Night of Terror), Mid-Nightmare: Part 2 (1963), Lady Jade Locket (1967), The Brain Stealers (1968), Dear Murderer (1969), Raw Passions (1969), The Enchanting Ghost (1970), Hellgate (1970), THE BRIDE FROM HELL (1971), Come Haunt With Me (1971), Mission Impossible (1971), THE BAMBOO HOUSE OF DOLLS (1973), Ghost Eyes (1974), The Ghost Lovers (1974), The Killer Snakes (1974), The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974; co-produced with Britain's Hammer Pictures), BLACK MAGIC (1975), Evil Seducers (1975), Fearful Interlude (1975), Night of the Devil's Bride (1975), BLACK MAGIC, PART II (1976), The Criminals (1976), The Oily Maniac (1976), The Web of Death (1976), The Criminals 2: Homicides (1976), The Snake Prince (1976), Spirit of the Raped (1976), Cobra Girl (1977), The Criminals 3: Arson (1977), The Criminals 4: Assault (1977), The Criminals 5: The Teenager's Nightmare (1977), Fangs of the Cobra (1977), The Mighty Peking Man (1977), Bank Busters (1978), The Psychopath (1978), The Ghost Story (1979), Heaven and Hell (1979), Return of the Dead (1979), Haunted Tales (1980), HEX (1980), HEX VERSUS WITCHCRAFT (1980), Lost Souls (1980), Avengers from Hell (1981), BEWITCHED (1981), Bloody Parrot (1981), CORPSE MANIA (1981), Revenge of the Corpse (1981), Curse of Evil (1982), The Fake Ghost Catchers (1982), Hell Has No Boundary (1982), HEX AFTER HEX (1982), Human Lanterns (1982), Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave (1982), THE BOXER'S OMEN (1983), Ghosts Galore (1983), Portrait in Crystal (1983), Seeding of a Ghost (1983), Sex Beyond the Grave (1984), The Siamese Twins (1984).

★★★

La notte dei diavoli (1972)

... aka: Az éjszaka ördögei (The Night Devils)
... aka: Az ördögök éjszakája (Night of the Devils)
... aka: Damonen der nacht (Demons of the Night)
... aka: Djävulens natt (Devil's Night)
... aka: La noche de los diablos (Night of the Devils)
... aka: Night of the Devils

Directed by:
Giorgio Ferroni

Director Ferroni started out making documentaries and shorts and won numerous awards at the Venice Film Festival in the late 30s for his early work. After this promising start, he moved on to making features and the acclaim pretty much vanished. Regardless, Ferroni churned out over 40 movies in all different genres from the late 40s until the mid 70s, making westerns, war movies, sword-and-sandal / peplum films, romantic comedies and returning to documentaries for a short spell in the late 50s. What's a shame about all of this is that, going by all available evidence, the man had a real flair for making moody and highly-atmospheric horror films... yet only had a chance to make two of them. The first was the stylish Gothic horror Mill of the Stone Women (1960), which was the first Italian horror film to be shot in color and was widely unseen (and under-appreciated) by American audiences until a 2004 DVD release from Mondo Macabro remedied that. The film has since earned itself a small yet faithful following. Night of the Devils, his second and final horror film (and second to last film period), was also the recipient of a belated release here in America, but likewise shows great promise that we sadly never got to see fully realized.

An Italian / Spanish co-production filmed entirely in Italy, Devils is based on the 1839 Aleksei Tolstoy novelette Sem'ya vurdalaka, which was most famously adapted by Mario Bava for his colorful three-part anthology Black Sabbath (1963), starring Boris Karloff. Other adaptations included "La familia Vourdalak" (1975, “The Vourdalak Family”), an episode of the Spanish TV series El quinto jinete / "The Fifth Horseman" in 1975, and several Russian versions, including Semya vurdalakov (1990; THE VAMPIRE FAMILY) and Papa, umer ded moroz (1991; Daddy, Father Frost Is Dead). As was typical for the time, alternate takes of certain scenes were shot for different markets. Some of these contained nudity while others showed the actress clad in something like a nightgown. Naturally, in the restrictive Francisco Franco era, the Spanish cut was missing all traces of nudity, yet most of the blood and violence remained intact. Kind of sad to know that today's “moralists,” who seem to think showing a female breast is more offense than hundreds of people being shot and blow to smithereens in some glorified war epic, haven't really evolved much over the years.

Clothes ripped and dirty, face bloody and bruised, Nicholas (Gianni Garko) wanders out of the woods and passes out near a stream. He's taken to an Italian hospital where Dr. Tosi (Umberto Raho) and his nurse (Rosita Torosh) run some tests and Nicholas has horrifying visions of a naked woman being pawed, a face exploding, claws ripping through flesh and a hand tearing out a beating human heart. Suffering from shock and amnesia, Nicholas doesn't remember what happened to him but he does know he has good reason to fear the dark and gets extremely agitated whenever the lights are shut off. At night, he stands guard at his window as if he's waiting for someone or some thing to show up... Someone eventually does show up; a pretty young woman named Sdenka (Agostina Belli) who arrives by cab late at night and claims she met him in Yugoslavia when he was there doing business. As soon as he lays eyes on Sdenka, Nicholas flips out, has to be put in a straight jacket and is given a sedative, but why is he reacting this way? As Nicholas falls asleep, the truth will reveal itself in the form of a dream / flashback...

Upon arriving in Yugoslavia, Nicholas makes the unwise choice of leaving the main highway and going down an old dirt road. To avoid hitting a woman who suddenly walks out of the brush, he wrecks his vehicle and is then forced to walk through the woods until he finds someone who can help. He finally reaches an old house. At first, no one appears to be home, but that's because most of the family are off burying one of their own. When they arrive back at dusk from his brother's funeral, patriarch Gorca Ciulevak (Bill Vanders) offers Nicholas a place to stay because once the sun goes down, he claims, it's too dangerous to be outside. It's also too dangerous not to lock all your doors and board all of your windows up tight... and apparently too dangerous for anyone else to live there as all of the previous villagers have fled the area save for Gorca and his kin.

At dinner, Nicholas is introduced to the rest of the family, including newly-widowed daughter-in-law Elena (Teresa Gimpera), her two young daughters; Irina (Cinzia De Carolis) and Mira (Sabrina Tamborra), and Gorca's three grown children; the hot-tempered Jovan (“Mark Roberts” / Roberto Maldera), who's secretly been in love with Elena for years and more than ready to take over where his dead Uncle left off, Vlado (Luis Suárez) and, of course, the lovely and sweet Sdenka. Nicholas is given the Uncle's bedroom and instructed to never, under any circumstances, open the doors or windows at night. Just what are they trying to keep out? Well, whatever it is likes to come right up to the home after nightfall and knock on the door and likely has something to do with a creepy old woman (Maria Monti) lurking around in the woods. Nicholas finds himself stranded there while all of this is going on while he waits for Jovan (who spent some time in the military and knows a little about mechanics) to fix his car.

Rightfully believing his entire family has been cursed because a bargain his brother made with the old woman (a witch), Gorca sets out with a wooden stake to kill her. He makes an agreement with the rest of the family that if he's not finished with his task and back by 6 p.m. to not let him in the door. Just as the chime is ringing on the clock to announce his deadline, Gorca arrives back with a severed hand to prove the witch is indeed finally dead. However, he's not quite the same after supposedly killing the woman. He takes little Irina out into the forest one day and returns without her, leading his family to believe he's now one of the undead. From there on out, one family member after another meets a bloody demise. Some even come back from the dead. The witch has unleashed the curse of the Wurdulak upon them and, once transformed, the lonely Wurdulak prefers having company, especially the company of those they loved when they were still human.

Having fallen in love with Sdenka, Nicholas feels compelled to help even after his car is fixed and he can leave all of this behind if he so chooses. He goes to the city to ask former brigadier Kobacic (uncredited Renato Turi), now a heavily-religious man, to help and gets to hear all about the “never ending chain of death” caused by the curse. However, the chain can be broken if one of the victims is killed before they have a chance to claim another. Nicholas rushes back to the farm, but will he be in time to save Sdenka and her remaining family members? Things return back to present day at the hospital where our hero and Sdenka have a final encounter, which ends up not working out too well for either of them!

Already being familiar with the story and having seen two of the other film versions, this didn't offer up too many surprises but it's so well-made and wonderfully gloomy I didn't care so much. Unlike many other Euro Gothic's from the 60s and 70s, this doesn't suffer any real lags in action since we're thrust into that almost immediately through the first bookmarking scene, which builds up enough intrigue early on to get us through the obligatory expository passages later. The cast is good (leading man Garko especially), the forest locations and old farm houses are ideal and the lighting, art direction, camerawork and score are all skillfully done and contribute much to the atmosphere. There's also some fine work here from makeup artist Carlo Rambaldi, including fingers getting cut off in a car door and an excellent “putrefying” scene where skin on a face melts away to reveal a skull underneath. My one major beef with this one is a ridiculous twist at the very end. I'll admit it took me by surprise, but that doesn't mean I had to like it!

This was theatrically released in France, Italy, Spain and other countries and there were VHS releases in Hungary (twice; once from Hungaro Video and one from Vico Filmek), Japan (TDK Super Video), the Netherlands (Video for Pleasure), Sweden (Videce) and a number of Spanish-speaking countries but it was never officially released in America until Raro Video issued a DVD and Blu-ray in 2012. The Italian and English-dubbed Japanese VHS releases are both believed to be uncut and clock in at around 89 minutes; ditto for the restored Raro DVD release, which they claim runs 95. When this debuted on Spanish TV it was cut down to just 72 minutes. An 86-minute remastered Spanish DVD print (titled La noche de los diablos) splices in previously cut (though very brief) nude scenes from Belli and Gimpera but is missing some other scenes.

★★★