Human Lanterns is the 1982 Swordplay/Martial Arts/Horror hybrid film by Sun Chung who in the prior year began dabbing in horror and martial arts with his film Revenge of the Corpse. The film follows Master’s Tan Fu and Lung who are ultra competitive with one another. Right now it is the yearly “Lantern” festival, and Lung has been the winner for many years in a row. To guarantee his continued win, Lung tries to associate with a former competitor that he won against Chun Fang (played by Lo Lieh). At the same time young beautiful women begin to go missing in their town, and it soon becomes apparent it is Chun Fang who is the culprit, skinning the women and using their flesh as the material for his lanterns. While this happens both Tan Fu and Lung are blaming each other for the murders.

I love a good Shaw Brothers movie, but over the last few years I’ve come to have a special appreciation for 80’s Shaw Brothers films that seem to take a kitchen sink approach to their standard martial arts formula, and just pile on the weirdness so you get things like Holy Flame of the Martial World, Boxer’s Omen, and this. I’ll say that this isn’t as high a high point as some of those other films I just mentioned, but the atmosphere of horror, mixed with performances such as Lo Lieh’s really kick this one up a notch. The fight choreography is solid here, but nothing over the top that really pushed it above its contemporaries.

88 Films does a really solid job restoring Human Lanterns for Blu-ray. It is a 1080p transfer from the original negative with solid detail, and colors especially reds and purples. Audio is handled with a 2.0 Mono track in Mandarin with English subtitles and sounds quite solid and without issue. Extras include a commentary 2 video interviews, another archival interview with recording issues, and a trailer. RECOMMENDED!