Hex / Bewitched - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Hex / Bewitched



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
Hex:
I know I’ve been beating this horse to death for the films in this set, but it’s blatantly obvious that the 4th Shawscope set is DISTINCTLY different than any of the sets that came before it due to a changing audience in the late 70s and the 80s. The world had moved on from Wu Xia, and wanted something else. So naturally Shaw Brothers tries to shake things up and experiment during this later time period. The result? A lot less Wu Xia epics and a lot more horror and comedic films that feel sort of out of place when you compare them against the rest of their filmography. Most of them weren’t the best films that the dying (or restructuring really) studio had ever put out, but 1980’s Hex is probably one of the few that was an actual success. Or at least VERY close to it.

Directed by famed Shaw Brothers collaborator Kuei Chih-Hung, Hex is a much more intimate and creepy horror flick from the martial arts studio. The story seems to originally revolve around a sickly young woman named Sau Ying (Ni Tien) suffering from congestive heart failure during the early 1900s. Her husband, Chun Yu (Jung Wang), sneers at her suffering while lamenting their change of financial fortune over the years. After beating their last maid nearly to death, the couple ends up hiring young Kei Wah (Szu-Chia Chen) to make up the slack and look after the missus. But Chun Yu’s drunkenness and lechery forces the women’s hands, as they decide to drown him in a rain barrel and toss his body into a pond.

Tortured with guilt, Sau Ying fears that her husband’s soul has come back from the dead to haunt her. Each day she arises with the same fear stuck in her throat, and as time commences the specter of her dead husband draws her closer and closer to the death she and her maid wrought upon him.

I’m going to be cagey here, but there are several twists that happen about halfway (and near the end) that throw a monkey wrench into the narrative, and they’re actually rather clever. As such I’m going to refrain from spoiling them, as the film really plays out best if you watch the secrets unfold rather than have me spoil the salient points. Needless to say, this cleverness actually has Hex coming out as one of the better produced Shaw Brothers films of the 80s, blending horror, gore, and some light comedy to make a film that actually held my attention a lot more than I thought it would. I swear I have seen most of the Shaw Brothers films over the decades, but this is the first time that I’ve found one of the 80s experimental films turn out this good. Maybe it was a change of pace, and maybe it was the fact that Kuei Chih-Hung had his hands in the pie for this one. Either way, the body horror and suspense is quite good. If I had to point out one major distraction, it has to be the final point where the exorcist basically has an interpretive dance battle with a nude ghost that goes on for WAAAAAAAAAAAY too long. And it’s not really the nudity, but the sheer hilariousness of what looks like an interpretive dance battle played out for over 5 full minutes.

[ Bewitched:
Acting as the companion piece to Hex, Bewitched features the return of Chih-Hung Kuei the very next year. Except instead of going for a period piece horror film, he places this one right in the present as a horror “procedural” that deals with a curse rather than a ghost story. Again, this may not be as amazing as the previous decades of Shaw Brothers entertainment, but it at least is a solid horror film that is mostly likely a result of Chih-Hung Kuei’s veteran hand at the steering wheel.

After discovering a dead body, Hong Kong detective Boby Wong (Melvin Won) becomes fascinated by the claims of the chief suspect, Stephen Lam Wai (Fei Ai), and his insistence that he was possessed during the murder. Traveling overseas to Thailand as he researches the events, Bobby soon becomes convinced that Stephen’s claims are true. Mostly because the detective has become convinced that he has also been possessed by a malevolent spirit and being forced to commit heinous acts. Desperate to break the chain of events, her turns to a devout priest in order to cleanse his body of the spirit infecting it, and stop the violence.

While Hex was sort of gonzo and out there with the horror elements, Bewitched takes it a good deal further. One of the biggest positives in the film is that it is so deranged and bizarre due to the black magic curses going back and forth throughout the film. The spells themselves are quite intense and varied, changing with each different curse that crops up throughout the film, ranging from creepy and bizarre, to downright hilariously over the top. We have everything from black spots forming over victims bodies, artifacts that turn into animals and attack their victims, and the classic vomiting up maggots and other creepy crawlies to enjoy.

The plot itself is rather simply, and it’s super amazing, but Bewitched is quite clever in how it masks the deficiencies with the visual horror elements. It’s not nearly as gory as Hex, but Bewitched is visually a treat with how things pay out. My only complaint is the final curse that just crops up in the last few moments. It feels out of place and not nearly staged so well, which clashes with the slow buildup for the curses during the rest of the film.




Not Rated by the MPAA / Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Once more, I’m not going to separate the audio and video sections as they’re pretty much identical in quality for both films on the disc. Both feature very good remasters from Arrow with strong detail, good grain structure and pleasant visual effects. Hex leans more into the period piece costuming, with bright colors on garments, but grim and dingy interiors as the ghost haunts the ancient familial house. I did notice more than a few times there was a strange fish eye lens on certain shots that creates some vertical stretch on different characters (an optical issue from the filming, not encoding related). Bewitched is brighter, with strong whites and rusty looking colors thanks to the present day locations in the film. Again, good grain structure, strong details, and except for some occasional softness, more than revealing.








Audio:

Back again to dual Cantonese and Mandarin LPCM Mono tracks, I’m actually giving a slight edge to both the Mandarin tracks on each film. The Cantonese mixes sound a little harsher and brighter with the dialog, and there’s a VERY slight persistent background hiss on the Cantonese tracks. However, dialog is still strong in both mixes, and there’s some creepy score elements that work to the films advantage.










Extras:

Bewitched
• Commentary by James Mudge

Final Score: ​

Both Hex and Bewitched are very solid compared to several of the other films in this set, and most likely a result of having Chih-Hung Kuei’s involvement behind the camera. Both films are distinctly creepy in their own way, and visually very different than many of the other flicks in the box set. I will give the edge to Hex for being the better film, but both are a fun watch. Video looks good on both, while the audio mixes have some minor issues plaguing them that keep the tracks from being AS good as the video. Sadly there is only a single extras on the disc (commentary for Bewitched), but it’s a solid commentary that reveals more than a few of the behind the scenes antics happening at Shaw Brothers during this time period.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Ni Tien, Jung Wang, Szu-Chia Chen, Fei Ai, Melvin Wong
Directed by: Chih-Hung Kuei (Both Films)
Written by: Chih-Hung Kuei, Chin-Hua Tan / On Szeto
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 AVC / 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: Cantonese: LPCM Mono, Mandarin LPCM Mono (Both Films
Subtitles: English
Studio: Arrow Video
Rated: NR
Runtime: 97 Minutes / 101 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 9th, 2025

Recommendation: Creepy Watch

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