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Spiritual Kung Fu
(aka Karate Ghostbuster)
1978; directed by Lo Wei

Producer/director Lo Wei certainly tried to squeeze as much as he could when he had Jackie Chan under contract during the mid to late 1970's. Like most of Lo's other efforts with Chan, Spiritual Kung Fu is a low-budget mess that looks like it was slapped together to make a quick buck. Even Chan's helming of the fight scenes can't save this from becoming a sub-standard entry in his filmography.

Spiritual Kung Fu    Spiritual Kung Fu

In the movie, Jackie plays Yi, a student at the Shaolin temple who is always getting into trouble with his teachers because of his laziness. One night while he is supposed to be on guard duty, Yi falls asleep, which allows someone to steal the manual for the deadly "Seven Fists" technique. The Seven Fists can only be stopped by another style called the "Five Fists", the manual for which is thought to be lost. But, one night in the temple, a group of five ghosts appear, and lo and behold, each of them is a represenative of one of the fist styles. Yi begins to learn the Five Fists and then sets off to stop the evil clan member who has been going around the countryside killing people with the Seven Fists.

Spiritual Kung Fu    Spiritual Kung Fu

Spiritual Kung Fu's main problem is that it has the pacing of a turtle on qaaludes. It takes forever to get the story going, with most of the running time vastly dominated by the sort of extremely lame attempts at comedy many Hong Kong productions seemed to favor at the time. The jokes aren't as sophisticated as your average Hanna-Barbera cartoon and the laughter quotient soon falls into negative territory. And any attempts liven things up with the ghost story elements are taken out of the equation by the horrid special effects and especially the costumes worn by the ghosts. I've see junior high school plays held at the local VFW with better production values.

Spiritual Kung Fu    Spiritual Kung Fu

Things do pick up during the final act, where Jackie is allowed to stretch his cinematic legs a bit by directing the action scenes. The fisticuffs help to keep the viewer interested, but they're missing the inventiveness and kinetic energy that marks Jackie's better work. They certainly can't make the viewer forget about the crap-fest which proceeded them. Seriously, who the hell thought neon red wigs, white spandex suits, and sparkly skirts would create a menacing ghost? If you're a Jackie Chan completist, you might still want to track this down, especially since you can find it sitting on the top of any random 99 cent DVD bargain bin. Most others out there, though, will just want to leave the DVD in that bin.

RATING: 4

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