The Shadow Boxing (1979)

The Shadow Boxing is special because it treats martial-arts mayhem like a playground for imagination: Lau Kar-leung stages fights with the crisp confidence of a master craftsman, then gleefully lets comedy and spooky folklore crash the party. The vibe is weird and wacky in the best way—part ghostly mischief, part rowdy road-movie energy—as two corpse herders stumble from one escalating predicament to the next, with Wong Yu’s bumbling charm grounding the madness. Gordon Liu and the Lau brothers bring real athletic grace to the action, so even when the film gets silly, the set pieces land with breathtaking clarity and punch. It’s not for everyone if you’re allergic to tonal whiplash or put off by brief nudity and some gore, but if you want a hilarious, high-skill kung fu oddity that keeps surprising you, this one’s a treat.

The Shadow Boxing clearly wants to bottle the same kung-fu-meets-supernatural-comedy charm as The Spiritual Boxer, with a quirky corpse-escort setup and the Lau family’s fingerprints all over the action. The problem is it plays like a rough draft of better Lau Kar-leung films: the pacing is uneven, the jokes don’t always land, and the story meanders just when it should be tightening the screws. Even the choreography, while still competent and occasionally inventive, isn’t consistently at the “wow” level fans expect from him. If you’re here for peak Lau or razor-sharp comedy-horror, you may leave underwhelmed—but if you enjoy oddball Hong Kong genre blends and can roll with some sleaze and mild gore, it’s an amiable curiosity rather than a must-see.