Split of the Spirit
(Li gui chan shen)

Directed by Fred Tan.
With Lap Ban Chan, Ai-Li Chou, Shu-Yuan Hsu.
Taiwan, 1987, 16mm, color, 89 min.
Taiwanese with English subtitles.

A dancer walking through an airport mistakenly collides with another woman, shattering a jar of ashes and spilling it on herself. Unleashing the curse of a recently murdered female spirit, she becomes possessed and seeks revenge through bizarre and macabre means. This was the only horror film by Fred Tan—once an assistant director for King Hu and a founder of the Taiwan Director’s Guild—who left behind three features focusing on female repression before his untimely death at age thirty-five.

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