Miss Magic / Shogun Assassin
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Echoes From Spring Street: The World of Sing Lee and Chinese-Language Cinema in L.A.. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In person: Introduction by guest programmer Janet Louie, Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University.
Miss Magic (1988)
After her suicide, a woman returns as a vengeful ghost to haunt her unfaithful actor-husband on the set of his new film. Desperate, he and his crew enlist a stagehand skilled in Taoist magic for help. Miss Magic is a quintessential example of the popular jiangshi (“hopping vampire”) films of the 1980s and 1990s. The juxtaposition of Qing dynasty-clad jiangshi within a modern setting reflects Hong Kong’s anxieties over its impending 1997 “handover” from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China.
Director: Fung Hak-on. Screenwriter: Pang Chi-Ming. With: Petrina Fung Bo-Bo, Billy Lau Nam-Kwong, Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, Pauline Wong Yuk-Wan.
Shogun Assassin (1980)
This legendary chanbara (samurai sword-fighting) film is an English-dubbed, recut amalgamation of the first two Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub films (1972). Based on the manga series of the same name (1970–76), the films are widely credited with popularizing the trope of a grizzled, vengeful warrior charged with protecting a young child. The film gained notoriety in the U.K. in 1983 during the “Video Nasties” moral panic over its perceived obscene content, causing it to fall out of circulation for more than a decade.
Director: Misumi Kenji, Robert Houston. Screenwriters: Koike Kazuo, Kojima Goseki, Robert Houston. With: Wakayama Tomisaburō, Matsuo Kayo, Kobayashi Aki, Tomikawa Akihiro.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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