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Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: September 19th, 2023.
Director: Wilson Tong
Cast: Norman Chu, Shirley Yim, Melvin Wong, Yuet-Sang Chin, Billy Chan
Year: 1982
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Ghost Nursing – Movie Review:
Wilson Tong’s 1982 film, Ghost Nursing, details the story of a young woman named Jackie (Shirley Yim), who has become disenfranchised with her lousy life in Hong Kong. To combat this, she hops on the next flight to Thailand to hang out with her friend who takes her to a karaoke bar where they slow dance with some guys to ‘The Greatest Love Of All.’ Jackie kinda-sorta winds up as an escort of sorts, having to accompany a man with bad teeth whose brother is a powerful general on various dates.
At any rate, her friend introduces her to the concept of ghost nursing –wherein to improve one’s luck, you adopt the ghost of a dead child and take care of it but indulging in different arcane rituals. Jackie consults with a wizard dubbed the God Of Gold (Yuet-Sang Chin) about this and is soon hooked up with her very own petrified fetus in a jar to take care of by pricking her finger and letting drops of her own blood somehow nourish it. Soon enough, her luck does start to change. First, a weirdo runs up to her and hits on her only to slip on a banana peel, hit his head and die! Later, a guy barks up a mouthful of maggots.
Eventually Jackie falls in love with a nice guy named Raymond (the seemingly always working Norman Chu, whose career goes back to the Shaw Brothers’ glory days), who hangs out with his pal Sam (Melvin Wong, credited under the far more amusing name of Melbourne Wong) a lot. When they accidently stumble across Jackie’s bizarre altar to a dead fetus, Raymond is understandably concerned but when Jackie forgets to feed the ghost, he gets possessed and leaving everyone’s fate in the hands of a potentially insane sorcerer (frequent Sammo Hung collaborator Billy Chan) and his flip flops.
Very similar in tone to the Black Magic and Hex styled horror movies that Shaw Brothers was releasing around this time, Ghost Nursing, like many Hong Kong horror movies, takes place outside of Hong Kong in an attempt to make things feel a bit more exotic and weird for Chinese audiences. For the most part, it works pretty well here. We get a little bit of travelogue footage showing off some memorable Bangkok locations, including an amazing looking temple, but it’s more the focus on the black magic rites and rituals that give this movie its pervasive sense of wacky weirdness. There’s a bit of decent gore in the movie, highlight by one bit towards the finale that you absolutely won’t see coming (ouch!), some crazy flip flop action, a fun shoot out in a locker room, the aforementioned karaoke scene, a flying skull, some eye lasers and lots, lots more – all of which adds up to a ridiculously entertaining way to kill an hour and a half of your time.
Ghost Nursing – Blu-ray Review:
Ghost Nursing arrives on a 50GB region A Blu-ray disc with the feature presented in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen “newly scanned & restored in 2K from its 35mm original camera negative.” Picture quality is really nice. The image always looks like a proper film transfer and we get nice detail and color reproduction. There’s really very little print damage here at all and strong detail and depth are noticeable throughout, even in the movie’s many darker scenes.
The main audio option for the feature is the original Cantonese language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 track with optional English and English SDH subtitle options provided. Audio quality is solid. There are no problems with any hiss, distortion of sibilance and the track is properly balanced throughout. The score sounds quite strong and the sound effects used throughout the movie are appropriately punchy, without ever burying the performers in the mix. A Mandarin dubbed option is also provided and it’s interesting to have it included here, but the sound is noticeable thinner.
Extras start off with a commentary track with From The Big Boss To Ghost Nursing, a fun eight minute interview with actor Billy Chan that covers how he came to work on the movie, where the inspiration for some of the ideas came from, the poster art, the effects work and his adventures in Thailand.
Ghosts And Black Magic In Hong Kong Cinema is an eighteen minute video essay by Samm Deighan that goes over the significance of the Cat III rating and how this movie, which precedes the rating itself, ties into that movement. From there, it goes over the different tropes that Hong Kong black magic movies from this period tend to indulge in, a brief history of horror in Chinese culture, the tradition of ghost stories in China and Hong Kong, how these films would become increasingly grotesque over the decades, the success of Shaw Brothers output in this arena, the popularity of possession films in the eighties and why these movies deserve to have a wider audience.
As far as the packaging goes, Vinegar Syndrome offers this release with a nice embossed slipcover limited to 6,000 pieces and designed by Robert Sammelin if purchased directly from their website, as well as with some cool reversible cover sleeve art.
Ghost Nursing - The Final Word:
Ghost Nursing is ridiculously entertaining stuff, a truly bizarre but yet completely engrossing slice of icky black magic horror with a fun cast and some unforgettable set pieces. The Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome looks almost shockingly good and there are a few decent extras thrown in here too. Highly recommended!
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Ghost Nursing Blu-ray screen caps!
