Legend of the Mountain

This epic 1979 supernatural tale from the great Chinese filmmaker King Hu echoes his more famous 1971 masterpiece A Touch of Zen and in many ways could be considered a companion piece. Like the earlier film, this one stars Shih Chun as a scholar who arrives at a haunted fort in the mountains, but where the ghosts of Zen were merely a cover for a political exile in hiding, here they are truly spirits of the dead and they are after the Buddhist sutra that holds the power of life and death, which is in the possession of the scholar. A seductive demon named Melody (Hsu Feng) and a lovely ghost named Cloud (Sylvia Chang) compete for his attention and the sutra in this three-hour tale set at a gentle, dreamy pace. The film is filled with sublime shots melding the natural and supernatural worlds, and there are some grand scenes of high-flying martial arts battles and magical showdowns but this is less action-adventure film than it is an epic of sustained mood and poetic beauty punctuated by humor and magic. A rediscovered masterpiece from a great filmmaker, this long unavailable film was restored in 2016 in 4K. Extras include a video essay by film critic David Cairns, an interview with film historian Tony Rayns, and a booklet featuring an essay by novelist Grady Hendrix. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)