The Enchantress (1983)

"Well done. You walked straight into hell."

In The Enchantress it took the martial clans and celestial warriors to bring down one vengeful ghost. And no one ever bothered to check their notes to see if maybe she had good reason for wanting revenge.

Feng Xi Wu decides to check out the Moonlit Palace where martial artists keep getting the life sucked out of them and thrown in the water after entering the colorful place. Once a samurai stronghold, now it lies empty or so people think. He meets Shui Ling outside and saves her from sword wielding men. She attempts to discourage him from entering the palace but he does so anyway and meets her mother, Shui Tian Jiao. Shui Ling saves his life and infuriates her mother causing nearly 20 years of anger and anguish to explode.

The Enchantress didn’t really have any main leads, except for perhaps Bonnie Ngai as the Japanese princess Shui Tian Jiao. She had the most screen time as the murderous ghost. Ngai spent nearly all of her scenes suspended from wires being swung around and laughing manically. Max Mok and Yung Jing Jing were the star-crossed lovers with serious in-law problems. Lo Lieh played a master of the mystical arts with one of the most annoying apprentices ever. Tony Liu had several hysterically funny scenes when he was possessed and fighting himself. Shaw Brothers regulars Norman Chu, Philip Kwok, and Yueh Hua all made appearances with numerous other familiar faces.

The fighting rarely let up and was often accompanied by Roman candles, smoke/fog, colorful lighting, spinning lanterns, and 1980’s low rent special effects. Wire work and trampolines were used copiously. As I mentioned, Ngai was thrown about routinely as she terrorized she blamed. Most of the fights were standard with some serious undercranking at times. Basically, quantity over quality with plenty of explosions, flying objects and people, and ghostly possessions. My only complaint was that Yung Jing Jing was embarrassingly bad when she attempted fight moves. Her best acting was when her character was unconscious.

The Enchantress wasn’t horrible for this genre of kung fu flick, but it wasn’t very good either. Too many characters made it hard to invest in any of them. I thought it was humorous that it took nearly every martial artist in the area, plus the celestial order to bring down one pissed off female ghost. There was a lesson to be learned in there. They should have handed the offender over to her right off the bat and let him fulfill his oath. Only for fans of the genre or who have a fave in the cast. As always, I rate these old niche films on a generous curve.

“It’s all because of a love turned sour.” I have notes on this below. *


2 October 2026

Dubbing notes: I really wish this had been done in Cantonese. Sometimes the Mandarin dubbing in these SB films could be atrocious with the words and lips not matching up.

Spoilery comment below:
















* “It’s all because of a love turned sour.” Makes it sound like he was unfaithful or they had a falling out. He was responsible for the Japanese princess being brutally murdered—and she was his loving wife no less. She and the samurai had not proved themselves to be a danger and yet the families decided they needed to be eliminated with extreme prejudice and her husband joined them because he didn’t have the cajones to say no.

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