Released to take advantage of the current theatrical actioner THE PROTECTOR, BCI’s two-disc special edition of SPIRITED KILLER features Thai superstar Tony Jaa in an early performance. Well, maybe not performance, but a role which calls on him to kick a lot of people.

The villain of SPIRITED KILLER is Dr. Duang, the village’s “voodoo doctor.” As the film opens, he’s given a small group a potion he whipped up that he claims will give the drinker immortality. He lies; one woman dies shortly after downing a shot. So the others – including a guy in a way-cool Wrangler T-shirt – run to tell the chief, but Duang moves in super-fast-motion, so he kills them all. The villagers fight back by killing him, then fear they’ve “gone too far.”

Five years later, Duang pops back up from the dead, on the eve his old village is due to be visited by an intrepid band of Japanese students making a hike to check out their “ancient relics.” One of those students is played by the heavily eyebrowed Jaa, who at one point proclaims his desire to “horny sluts just begging to be nailed. Goddamn!” Another student is a guy in a mullet. The village and the students team up to kill Duang again. You know how it goes.

From the same team who brought you Jaa’s ONG BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR, SPIRITED KILLER is less Jackie Chan-like as that film. Instead, it’s more of a standard kung-fu flick of the golden Hong Kong ’70s era, with a strong supernatural element thrown in. So don’t go looking for Jaa to be jumping through hoops (literally). Instead, expect rounds of fight-to-the-death skirmishes, with the same three or four sound effects employed. And hey, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This is exactly the kind of martial-arts flick I love to kick back with on the weekend. The fact you get a glimpse of some pre-star Jaa is simply icing.

This is best watched with English dubbing and English subtitles, because the dubbing is over-the-top and the subtitles don’t match up. BCI’s extras are actually pretty cool, including a nifty, lengthy featurette on Thai action cinema. That shit’s crazy, let’s put it that way. –Rod Lott

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