Runtime: 89 minutes
Directed by: Ho Meng Hua
Starring: Ti Lung, Lo Lieh, Liu Hui-Ju, Lili Li, Lin Wei-Tu
From: Shaw Brothers
What a zany horror film this was:
Recently I saw someone online briefly discuss the film and mention a few things about it that tickled my fancy; as it's for free via Amazon Video Prime, I figured I should watch the sequel to a film I saw last summer. While the writer, director and 3 stars are all the same, this has nothing to do with the first Black Magic aside from it being a horror film set in the 1970's... and a lot of wacky moments.
What a wild plot this has. Note the opening: it is less than 30 seconds before some women working at the women take their tops off and swim in the river. An alligator with green eyes (!) eats one of the girls, because I guess the filmmakers were like everyone else and loved Jaws... or all the money it made. Suddenly, an older dude draws that alligator over with a chicken... so he kills 'gator... all for retrieving that girl's bracelet? A few minutes in and I was baffled. The main plot kicks in and some people note that bizarre cases are being noted at a local hospital, so “spells” are being blamed by some of the locals. Even after some powerful evidence, there's a character who shouldn't have done something so dangerous in order to finally believe that something supernatural is going on.
They end up at a nightclub; I had heard various 70's funk songs were lifted for the soundtrack. A tune or two I may have recognized but that's uncertain; whether or not it's original, the score is pretty funky and the one ditty I did recognize was The Last Bongo to Belgium, by The Incredible Bongo Band. Apparently Shaw Brothers never asked beforehand if that tune could be used; then again, there have been movies from minor Hong Kong studios that did the same thing. As for the actual plot... Lo Lieh is an evil wizard who has created zombies; they aren't always the undead, but he controls them via a nail to the cranium so it's a voodoo sort of thing. One way he has his powers: drinking, well, human breast milk. As breast milk was also a plot point in the first Black Magic, does this say something about Hong Kong society at the time?
The movie has a lot of different elements... a deformed fetus, wacky 70's clothing, worms, voodoo dolls, a few moments straight out of James Bond (!), various gross-out moments I won't spoil, the dark arts in a capitalist society, and even on one occasion I was reminded of The Devil's Rain. The final act has some real strong scenes-ones I won't be forgetting anytime soon. That is why I can give this a nice rating, along with general entertainment value, sometimes the thrill being perverse.
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