Remember the 1984 comedy All of Me, directed by Carl Reiner? In that film, Lily Tomlin plays a dying heiress who plans to have her soul transferred into the body of a younger woman but something goes wrong in the process and she ends up inhabiting the body of an attorney (Steve Martin). Imagine a horror fantasy variation of that premise and you have Li Gui Chan Shen (English title: Split of the Spirit, 1987), a Taiwanese film from director Fred Tan.
The film opens with two parallel narratives – one involving a woman, Wai Chu (Hsu Shu Yuan), with a devious fiancée, the other a professional dancer, Lu Ling (Pauline Wong), with emotional problems – before merging them into one storyline.
Bao (Shao-Kang Wu), Chu’s husband-to-be, is secretly planning to marry a wealthy socialite, so he hires Mr. Li, an evil magician, and his cohort, to murder Chu and make it look like an accident. First Bao drives Chu to the countryside under the pretense of meeting the developer of their dream villa but abandons her on a deserted road. Feeling threatened by a stranger stalking her in his car, Chu accepts a ride from a passing motorist but he is Mr. Li’s henchman. He drives the car off a road, escaping before it crashes but Chu is trapped in the wreckage. Mr. Li then appears and using an ornate looking glass reflector causes the car to burst into flames and Chu is burned alive.
Meanwhile, Lu is recovering from a suicide attempt after being jilted by her lover. She throws herself into a new dance production in which the central theme is the dead returning to life. Days later she is hurrying down a crowded street to avoid photographers and has a collision with Chu’s funeral procession, knocking the urn with the victim’s ashes onto the ground. In the process, Lu cuts her finger on a piece of the urn and Chu’s spirit is released and takes up residence in her body. From this point on, Lu starts behaving strangely and journalist Chi-Ping (Kuan-Chung Ku) tries to help her with the assistant of his girlfriend Kao (Cynthia Khan), an active member in a group of spiritualists. It soon becomes apparent that Chu is using Lu’s body to take revenge on Bao and her killers and the body count rises as Chi and Kao race against time to help Lu exorcise the vengeful spirit.
In some ways Split of the Spirit can be seen as a feminist revenge fantasy but it also works as a supernatural thriller in which Taiwan folklore and ancient rituals coexist in the day-to-day reality of modern life. Unlike many demonic possession movies that followed in the wake of The Exorcist (1973), Split of the Spirit stands apart from the usual formulaic nature of these imitators and creates some new and unexpected twists of its own.
For one thing, director Tan dispenses with developing a romantic relationship between Lu and Chi since his fast-paced 89-minute film has little time for superfluous exposition. Instead, we get an entertaining ghost story in which some deplorable men get their just deserts while Lu and Chu engage in a battle of wills. The final third of Split of the Spirit is particularly noteworthy as Chu reneges on her promise to return to the dead after her revenge is complete – she has come to enjoy living through Lu and won’t give it up. While the final moments employ some of the familiar exorcism tropes from other movies, it is still imaginatively staged against Lu’s comeback performance before a live audience.
Unlike some of the more extreme supernatural thrill rides from Hong Kong such as Black Magic (1971) and Seeding of a Ghost (1983), Split of the Spirit does not feature gross-out gore effects or outlandish special effects that border on the excessive. It also has no gratuitous female nudity, explicit sex scenes or scenes that push the envelope on censorship such as the newborn baby-eating demon of Mystics in Bali (1981). That will be a disappointment for fans of those infamous genre touchstones but that doesn’t mean Split of the Spirit is lacking in deliciously macabre situations such as Bao’s fiery demise or Lu being spirited away to an alternate universe of dead souls. It also helps that the film showcases two gorgeous women who happen to be accomplished actresses in the leads.
Pauline Wong, in the role of Lu, should be familiar to fans of Chinese genre films like Mr. Vampire (1985), The Spooky Family (1990) and The Blue Jean Monster (1991). Shu-Yuan Hsu (as the demon) has enjoyed a similar career, appearing in horror themed flicks like The Ghost Snatchers (1986) and The Seventh Curse (1986) but also an occasional art house drama like Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000).
Unfortunately, the director, Fred Tan, died at the young age of 35 from acute hepatitis without ever being able to capitalize on the success of Split of the Spirit. His other work includes the romantic melodrama Dark Night (1986) and the period tragedy Yuan Nu (1988).
Split of the Spirit is not available for purchase currently on any format in the U.S. but you can stream a decent print of it with English subtitles on the Cave of Forgotten Films website. This seems like the type of movie that offbeat distributors like Mondo Macabro or Vinegar Syndrome might remaster and release on Blu-ray so keep checking their websites.
Other links of interest:
Cinema Sojourns 