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Witch from Nepal
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (12th July 2025). |
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The Film
 Architect Joe Wong (Hard Boiled's Chow Yun-Fat) is in Tibet with his ballet teacher girlfriend Ida (The Bride with White Hair's Yammie Lam Kit-Ying) looking for inspiration for an account. He starts to realize that he is being followed by a woman named Sheila (Rouge's Emily Chu Bo-Yee) everywhere he goes. While he falls off of an elephant and breaks his leg, Joe is rushed back to Hong Kong where the doctor tells Ida that there is something "problematic" about his blood; and yet, Joe's leg miraculously heals when Sheila stows away on a plane and appears at his bedside. Hiding Sheila from immigration (and Ida), Joe discover that not only does she have magical powers but so does he and Sheila reveals that he is the chosen leader of their Tibetan tribe who are being terrorized by "The Tyrant" (Project A's Dick Wei), a half-man, half-cat demon bent on taking over the world with a talisman Sheila has given to Joe for protection. Ida is jealous when she discovers Sheila's existence, but soon their love triangle must be set aside when The Tyrant attacks them with zombies and various sharp projectiles. Director Ching Siu-Tung's followup to his masterful Duel to the Death and one of Golden Harvest's many attempts to turn a pre-A Better Tomorrow Chow Yun-Fat into a star, Witch from Nepal is a more romantic comedy take on the Golden Harvest horror-comedies like Mr. Vampire but it is quite boring. The main trio are charming enough but the love triangle itself is uninvolving and hackneywed, poor Dick Wei has nothing to do but jump around to dubbed cat cries, and the zombies are Thriller-level spooks. Although Ching Siu-Tung is an action director of note, the fight scenes consist more of frenetic camerawork and quick cuts and it appears that he must have just seen Highlander in the theaters as the rooftop fight owes a lot to that film's climax. The film's visual effects are reasonably accomplished and production values are slick as usual for Golden Harvest but it is more of a time-waster than a satisfying work; however, it did pave the way for Ching Siu-Tung's wonderful A Chinese Ghost Story and it sequels in which he managed to better balance scares, action, and sentimentality. 
Video
Witch from Nepal had a subtitled VHS release through Tai Seng stateside in the eighties – presumably a dual Chinese/English subtitled transfer – but a letterboxed transfer turned up on laserdisc twice in Hong Kong (lddb.com lists a Tai Seng laserdisc from 1997 although the lack of a cover image and the 5.1 and surround designations are suspect and possibly confused with a different film). Universe Laser & Video and then Media Asia both put out DVD editions featuring non-anamorphic letterboxed transfers, 5.1 upmixes, and optional English subtitles while Fortune Star's anamorphic remaster was done in PAL. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray – and presumably Vinegar Syndrome's double feature with The Seventh Curse – comes from a new 2025 2K scan of the original camera negative. Close-ups and studio interiors fare best along with a few Nepal daylight exteriors but the safari scene looks a little less sharp overall presumably due to the use of long lenses since the actors are on elephants, and there are plenty of backlit, blue-tinted, fog-shrouded scenes later in the film when the supernatural havoc occurs with close-ups and inserts looking the best in terms of fine detail compared to several of the handheld, whip-panning, and quick-cutting fight scenes as well as some optical effects and a few prettified love scenes. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Cantonese LPCM 2.0 mono track that is entirely post-dubbed including dialogue – according to the commentary, only Chow Yun-Fat dubs himself – and foley effects while the scoring turns out to be original including a romantic theme song. While this is a film that probably could have benefited from a surround remix – we have not heard Fortune Star's DVD remix but presumably the earlier 5.1 upmixes were awful going – the mono mix conveys the film's action effects well during the climax. Optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors (it is the subtitles that refer to the cat guy as "Tyrant"). 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) who speaks more enthusiastically of this title, not only as the bridge between Ching Siu-Tung's debut and A Chinese Ghost Story, noting that the director wanted to do something different than his Chang Cheh-esque first film. He also notes that the film was part of Chow Yun-Fat's "box office poison" period when Golden Harvest was trying to launch the TVB actor as a film star, and it too was one of his many flops. Djeng also provides context of the film in Golden Harvest's horror comedies and Shaw Brothers sleazy gore horror films of the period that lead to the Hong Kong ratings system as well as background on the other cast members, conceding that Dick Wei had a "thankless" role and relating the details of Yammie Lam Kit-Ying's sad later years. He also points out what was actually shot on location in Tibet and what was shot in Hong Kong, revealing that the oddly spaciously empty hospital was one of the few Hong Kong colonial buildings preserved while many others had been bulldozed for development. The disc also includes an interview with with Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns (18:49) who actually has little to say about the film itself and instead focuses on Ching Siu-Tung's background including wandering around film sets with his director father Cheng Kang and early roles in Shaw Brothers films like Come Drink with Me, and the director's acknowledgment that he had a poor education but picked up material for his own films from observation. Of the film, he suggests that a lot of the film's battle is spiritual and actually takes place in the head of the main character rather than externally (although it may just be that the Hong Kong streets are conveniently empty at night because its a fantasy film). The disc also includes the Hong Kong theatrical trailer (3:29) and a stills gallery (3:02). 
Packaging
Not provided for review were the rigid slipcase and reversible sleeve with artwork by Sean Longmore, collectible postcard, and 40-page booklet with writing by C.J. Lines and David West.
Overall
Ching Siu-Tung's Witch from Nepal may be an early Chow Yun-Fat film and paved the way for the director's own A Chinese Ghost Story but it is pretty boring on its own.
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