SHAW-SHOCK: SHAW BROTHERS HORROR COLLECTION VOLUME THREE: THE HEX TRILOGY (1980-1982)
Limited Edition Blu-ray Hardbox
HEX (1980)
HEX VERSUS WITCHCRAFT (1980)
HEX AFTER HEX (1982)
Shaw-Shock is back with Volume Three, with the three gruesome, gooey, ghostly entries in The Hex Trilogy from director Kuei Chih-Hung: These 80s revenge horror-comedies are brimming with gore, sex, and slapstick humor, which places them amongst some of the most unique genre-blending entries in the Shaw Brothers catalogue. If you love over-the-top sound effects, gauche comedy, and characters breaking the fourth wall, then this is the trilogy for you. Brought together on Blu-ray in a Limited Edition 3-disc Hardbox, strictly limited to 1500 copies
HEX (1980)
Imprint Asia #74
Label: Imprint Asia
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 94 Minutes 25 Seconds
Audio: Cantonese LPCM 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Kuei Chih-Hung
Cast: Tanny Tien Ni, Wang Jung, Chen Szu-Chia, Shen Lap
First up is Hex (1980), directed by Kuei Chih-Hung, a phantasmagorical Honk Kong riff on the French thriller Les Diaboliques (1955), sees Sau Yung (Tanny Tien, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold) married to the abusive Yeung Chun Yu (Wang Yong, Corpse Mania), a cruel drunkard who regularly beats not only his ailing wife, who is suffering from tuberculosis, but her nursemaid. When the nursemaid leaves for fear of amore abuse the daughter of a woman from Sau Yang's village, Yee Wah (Chan Sze-Kai, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin), arrives and agrees to stay on as her new nursemaid. She is vocal against Chun's cruelty and abuse, but he does not stop, and one stormy night when he comes home sauced and violent the two women drown him in a cistern and dump his body in a nearby pond. When that pond is later drained, due to a mysterious stench the bloated corpse is nowhere to be found, with the fragile Sau Yung fearing her murdered husband water-logged corpse has risen from the bog to seek vengeance. Sure enough she is haunted in her dreams and around the house by his waterlogged, decomposing and quite gooey corpse. She ends up dying of fright and we get a diabolical revelation about her husband and the seemingly sympathetic nanny, however, the treacherous lovers are in turn are haunted by the vengeful spirit of Sau Yung. This one has some decent atmosphere and spooky shenanigans, including the aforementioned drippy corpse of the drowned man, but is absent of much graphic violence and gore, though we do get some wildly exploitative nudity rights at the end as a with an erotic exorcism ritual performed that is pretty far and away the most memorable aspect of the film.
Special Features:
- NEW! Audio commentary by Asian film expert Arne Venema and filmmaker Domting
- Triple Threat - Critic and Historian Tony Ryan's on the Hex Trilogy (25:14)
- Theatrical Trailer (In Mandarin, 1:07)
HEX VERSUS WITCHCRAFT (1980)
Imprint Asia #75
Label: Imprint Asia
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 100 Minutes 20 Seconds
Audio: Cantonese LPCM 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Kuei Chih-Hung
Cast: Yi Lei, Pei Ju-Hua, Jenny Liang, Lo Meng, Shirley Yu, Wang Li
Next up is the sequel-in-name only Hex Versus Witchcraft (1980), wherein a degenerate gambler Yu Nam (James Yi Lui, The Haunted Cop Shop II) find himself heavily in-debt to monster Brother Nine (Chan Shen, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires), so much so that he attempts to trick his sexy wife (Jenny Liang, Hex) into having sex with the gambler to pay off his debt, without her knowledge, which results in Brother Nine nearly losing his manhood and Yu Nam's wife understandably walking out on him. He attempts to kill himself afterward but he cannot even do that right, but he does manage to stumble upon a bag full of gold and jewelry, but the bag's owner tracks him down and makes him an offers, he will provide him with a luxurious lifestyle i he will simply marry the restless spirit of his dead daughter A-Lui, who raped and murdered by gangsters. Assuming the guy is nut he takes him up on the offers, only to discover that the ghost of A-Lui is real, and quite angry. She tries to appease her new husband by inhabiting the bodies of his neighbors to satisfy her sexual needs, starting with his sexy stewardess next-door neighbor (Ju-Hua Pei, Angels with Golden Guns), which he finds most agreeable, but not so much when she inhabits a the dumpy housekeeper, or the cross-eyed male laborer (To Siu-Ming, Project A). It's quite a comedic flick, there are no scares to be had here, just a mix of slapsticks silliness and ghostly shenanigans. Eventually falls back into his compulsive gambling ways, and she has to defend him against the mobsters who show up to castrate him, as well as having to possess the casino dealers to give her rather unlucky corporeal hubby the upper hand for a change. That is until until the casino's resident sexy-witch (Shirley Yu, The Ghost Story) arrives to put a stop to the supernatural cheating. This is just a lot of supernatural silliness crammed into a pretty wacky flick. It was not what I was expecting but I liked the non-PV sex shenanigans and the goofy ghostly happenings of it, not horror, but a fun ghostly goof of a watch.
Special Features:
- Theatrical Trailer (1:09)
HEX AFTER HEX (1982)
Imprint Asia #76
Label: Imprint Asia
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 105 Minutes 48 Seconds
Audio: Cantonese 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Kuei Chih-Hung
Cast: Lo Meng, Liu Lan-Hsi, Liu Tan, Han Kuo-Tsai
The third film in the Hex Trilogy is again a sequel sort of in name only, while having a similar continuing storyline, that of a bereaved father looking for a replacement husband of his dead daughter A-Chui, it does not really continue anything from Hex Versus Witchcraft. In it muscular movie stuntman Muscles Tsang (Lo Meng, Human Lanterns) is approached by the dead girl's father who offers him the same deal, gold and gems, a wonderful apartment, but Muscles is just not into any of it and turns him down. A-Chui really has her dead heart set on the attractive Muscles, so she instead arranges for the fatal accident of his neighbor (Liu Lan-Hsi, Chasing Girls), then possessing the dead girls body and introducing herself to Muscles as Rosy. A courtship and romance ensues, and things get complicated when Muscle gets involved in an effort to save the apartment building he lives in from being sold out from under them to a corrupt land developer, with A-Chui haunting the building to scare of the contractor who arrive to demolish it, bizarrely taking on the form of Yoda and Darth Vader in the process! That's already bizarre on it's face, but then take into consideration that Vader's light saber doesn't laser slice anyone, it just makes their clothes disappear! I thought this entry was pretty funny, it's super silly stuff, but I thought the humor here actually hit better than the previous film, I even like the self-referential Shaw Bros in-jokes that are peppered throughout the film, including a guy getting the Shaw Brothers logo branded onto his ass, so yeah, wacky stuff, but fun and pretty entertaining if you're looking for some goofy supernatural shenanigans.
Special Features:
- Seriously Funny - Interview with film scholar Dr. Luke White (2026, 21:02)
- Trailer (In Cantonese, 1:13)
Audio/Video: All three film gets 1080p presentations, with Hex and Hex Versus Witchcraft presented in 2.35:1 and Hex After Hex in 1.85:w widescreen. There are source limitations and some occasional minor blemishing via scratched, dirt and speckling but they are minor. Colors for the most part look terrific, some of the darker scenes can be a tad murky with occasionally milky blacks, but overall, I found all three to look solid. Audio on all three comes by way of Cantonese 2.0 with optional English subtitles, they are clean and properly balanced, dialogue, foley effects and score all fare well, zero complaints. .
Extras for Hex include an Audio commentary by Asian film expert Arne Venema and filmmaker Domting (2026), Triple Threat – critic and historian Tony Rayns on the Hex trilogy (2026), and the Theatrical Trailer. Hex Versus Witchcraft gets just a Theatrical Trailer, While Hex After Hex gets a 21-min Seriously Funny - Interview with film scholar Dr. Luke White (2026) who talks about this being a peculiar horror comedy, much more comedic that the first film, and how reference heavy it is with loads of Shaw Brothers in-jokes and the trickster supernatural characters. The last of the extras is a Trailer.
The 3-film/3-disc limited edition Blu-ray set arrives in a top-loading Rigid Hardbox adorned with images from the three films, I love how striking the extra-large Shaw-Shock branding is on the spines and top cover are, very cool-looking and eye-catching on the shelf. Lifting the top off the hardbox reveals a three keepcases housing the feature-films, the wraps are 2-sided but non reversible, both featuring different theatrical artworks with images from the film on the reverse side, and the discs have the same art as the wraps.
This is a terrific trio of Shaw Brothers supernatural flicks, 2/3rd of which are straight up ghost-comedies. Imprint Asia, offer solid A/V presentations and a decent slate of extras, too. If you're a Shaw Brothers fan who craves the supernatural chills as well as good chuckle this set comes highly recommended.
Screenshots from the Imprint Asia Blu-rays:
HEX (1980)
HEX VERSUS WITCHCRAFT (1980)
