Black Magic (1975)

Black Magic (1975)
Chinese Title: 降頭
Translation: Sorcery/Black Magic

Starring: Ti Lung, Lo Lieh, Lily Li Li-Li, Ku Feng, Tanny Tien Ni, Ku Wen-Chung, Lee Sau-Kei, Yueh Hua, Chen Ping
Director: Ho Meng-Hua

Having already watched (and reviewed) the über-grotesque horror films that the Shaw Brothers produced in the early 1980s, something like Black Magic feels almost “quaint” in comparison. I mean, it has it’s share of disgusting moments, but it is ultimately small potatoes compared to the likes of Bewitched and its more notorious follow-up, A Boxer’s Omen. Nonetheless, every sub-genre has to start somewhere and for the “black magic sorcerer in Southeast Asia makes people’s lives a living hell” genre more-or-less started with this film.

The film is set in what I believe to be Malaysia, judging by all the minarets on their buildings. Usually, it’s Thailand, but Malaysia is a perfectly-acceptable alternative and the end result is ultimately the same. We open with a woman (Helen Ko, of Sex for Sale and The Killer Snakes) going to a black magic sorcerer named Shan Jianmi (Ku Feng, of The Kung Fu Instructor and Dynamo), requesting that her philandering husband and his current lover (Dana, of Super Infra Man and Edge of Fury) be killed. She gives him an offering of gold and jewels, to which he requests 5x more if he’s going to kill two people. Nonetheless, he takes her offering as a downpayment and gets to work: using the SE Asian equivalent to voodoo dolls, he makes the illicit couple have sex before jamming needles into them and causing their demise.

The bodies are discovered the next day by the locals, who quickly alert the village shaman, Master Furong (Ku Wen-Chung, of The Twelve Gold Medallions and 5 Fingers of Death). Furong quickly realizes that Shan Jianmi is behind it and starts chanting to send a supernatural Buddha avenger after him. Shan is saved at the last moment by the arrival of most recent client (the aforementioned woman), whom he ties to a post to distract the avenger while he runs out of the house. Time to move and set up shop in the city.

We then switch to Kuala Lampur, where we meet our main characters. The first is Xu Nuo (Ti Lung, of Duel of Fists and The Revenger), a handsome construction manager who is engaged to Quying (Lily Li, of Executioners of Shaolin and The Young Master). Unfortunately for Xu, he is the object of desire of millionaire widow Zhou Luoyin (Tanny Tien Ni, of The Magic Blade). Luoyin has set her sights on Xu Nuo and will do everything in her power to seduce him. Including, black magic, you say?

Well, not immediately. Mainly because that option is initially obvious to her. What brings it to her attention is her own admirer, a leech of a man named Chia Chieh (Lo Lieh, of The Chinese Boxer and Heroes of Shaolin). Chia Chieh wants to get in Luoyin’s panties because a) he’s almost broke, and b) she’s hawt. But his attempts to woo her usually result in abject failure, that is, until a friend of his suggests he go see a black magic sorcerer to cast a love spell. And wuddiyaknow? It’s Shan Jianmi, who has set up shop right outside of the city.

The spell involves hanging a large-schlonged voodoo effigy in her house and making her drink a love potion, which guarantees him a long night of pleasure with Luoyin. But the next day, the effigy falls from its place and the spells wears off. Rather than scream “Rape!” upon discovering Lo Lieh in bed next to her, Luoyin slyly asks him how he managed to bag her, and the idiot reveals his tricks to her. She offers him enough money to pay his debt to the sorcerer in exchange for the man’s address and sends him on his way.

So, the process for magically seducing Xu Nuo begins. It involves a love potion made from Luoyin’s own breast milk; samples of Xu Nuo’s blood and hair; and hiding effigies beneath the man’s bed. Soon enough, the spells takes effect—at the man’s own wedding, I might add—and soon he has forgotten about Quying and is spending his days banging Luoyin.

This is where things start to get real complicated. First of all, Shan Jianmi has fallen for Luoyin himself and performs a love spell on her to get into her panties—though it is not strong enough to overcome her love/lust for Xu Nuo (nor does Shan mind sharing her with her beau). Second, Quying’s attempting to bring her husband back to his senses irritates Luoyin to the point she requests that Shan kill her with a spell, too. He hits her with a curse that fills the poor woman’s body with worms, but thankfully for her, Xu Nuo’s best friend had almost been a disciple of Master Furong and some point. Furong recognizes Jianmi’s handiwork and is able to save Quying. From there on out, it becomes a series of magical confrontations between the two magicians for the life and soul of Xu Nuo.

If I were to point out one major flaw in the film, it’s that the film runs out of steam in the third act. The problem is that after Master Furong sets his sights on Shan Jianmi, there’s a scene where the spell on Xu Nuo is temporarily broken. Xu Nuo is about to go back to his old life when Jianmi starts doing his craft again and Xu Nuo becomes what is essentially a rage zombie. This leads to a prolonged sequence of Xu Nuo in the hospital undergoing brain surgery and recovering and whatnot. It is a total momentum killer when the film should be confidently barreling its way toward a big magical showdown.

The film also suffers from some really bad optical effects at the climax, the sort of which will leave you pining for the colorful beams of Toho’s 1950s and 1960s science fiction movies (including the Godzilla franchise).

The magical rituals themselves would be “very gross” to the newbies, but for those who have watched the movies I brought up in the first paragraph, will probably not make you wretch quite as much. There is a scene when Shan Jianmi has to “wake up” the corpse of an old woman in order to get some sort of fluid from her mouth to use in his death spell against Quying. And one random client has a ball of rice rammed into her snatch to make a love potion for her soon-to-be husband. The animal violence is not as bad as we know it can get in these movies. People may get squeamish at the idea of worms burrowing under the skin of Lily Li, but it’s presented in a manner that suggests that the actress herself wasn’t involved in the special effect.

There is a fair amount of sex and nudity, as one expects in these black magic films. We get to see Dana naked (again), in her brief scene with the unfaithful husband. At least two of the female clients have to give their breast milk for their respective love potions. In Tanny Tien Ni’s case, despite being something of a sex symbol in the 1970s, I don’t think she did nudity herself and usually employed a body double. In the case of this movie, the double had a noticeably larger bust size than she.

In the end, I found it interesting as a curio and as part of my Hong Kong cinema education, but nothing I’d consider wanting to revisit multiple times. Mileage of course will vary according to one’s tastes and preferences.

A Working Man (2025) & Mutiny (2026)

 Jason Statham vs. Human Trafficking: A Working Man and Mutiny

The more time that passes, the more apparent it is that Jason Statham has become this generation’s Steven Seagal. At least when he’s in action mode: unlike Seagal, Statham can switch to British criminal mode and occasionally into villain mode. But like Seagal, his action movies dictate that he has to be either a former cop, a former special forces operative, a former intelligence, or any combination of the three. He is also borderline unbeatable in his fight scenes, not too unlike Seagal. But unlike The Rotund One, Statham has kept himself in tip-top shape over the past quarter of a century since he started hitting it big. And he has more natural charisma than Seagal ever could muster, even at his best. But like Seagal, if you watch enough of his movies, they all start to feel rather interchangeable.

Jason Statham's follow-up to the sleeper hit that was The Beekeeper—I wonder how many people watched that because they liked it, and how much because there simply wasn’t anything better to watch at the time--was A Working Man, which reunited with that film’s director, David Ayer. Here we have a film about human trafficking. Now, let us all remember that Seagal himself has fought human traffickers on multiple occasions, most notably in Out of Reach. But given A Working Man’s release date, I’m guessing that Statham and company were more inspired by the runaway success of The Sound of Freedom than Seagal’s film.

The plot involves the kidnapping of the daughter of Statham's employers, who (yawn!) are like a surrogate family to him. For the record, the family is Mexican, which doesn’t have much bearing on the story, but there you go. Statham is a former British operative whose job took him away from home for long periods of time, which meant he wasn’t around when his wife passed away. His father-in-law has principal custody of his daughter and is fighting for sole custody under the impression that Statham is a violent man who has no business being a dad.

Once the daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas), is kidnapped by low-level Russian mobsters, Statham swings into action. (Actually, he goes to see his old war buddy for “permission” first, which buddy is played by David Harbour in a glorified cameo). He starts with the shady bartender at the last establishment—Jenny had been celebrating her first semester of college by getting a fake ID and going bar hopping—the girl had been seen at. This puts him into conflict with some local grunts for the Russia mafia, which leads him to mid-level lieutenant, Wolo Kolysnik (Jason Flemyng). He learns from Wolo that the man’s errant son, Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), was probably the one responsible: Dimi has his hands in all sorts of illegal activity that the other Russian mobsters do not wish to be involved in…such as kidnapping women and whoring them out to the highest bidder.

Because nobody that meets Statham—his name is Levon Cade, but we’ll just call him Statham---lives to tell the tale, it isn’t long before a higher-level mafia boss, Symon Karchenko (Andrej Kaminski), is on Statham’s trail. Apparently Wolo was Yuri’s brother or something. Meanwhile, Statham’s investigation puts him into contact with a gang of biker meth dealers, led by a African-American former special forces operative named Dutch (Chidi Ajufo). Dutch leads him to Dimi, but Statham can’t act until he knows where Dimi is. And it will only be a matter of time before Jenny’s rebellious attitude will get her in trouble with the prospective clients and Dimi’s enforcers, Viper (Emmett Scanlan) and Artemis (Eve Mauro).

On one hand, the film does take its time setting up a rather complex web of relationships between criminals. There are a lot of mini-bosses for Statham to deal with…I didn’t even mention the two unhinged mafia enforcers that Symon’s boss sends to assist him. On the other hand, the film is much too long and spins its wheels in the third act, especially when it introduces the Completely Random Corrupt Cops. Also, much like The Beekeeper, there was far too much profanity in this, especially from Artemis, who swears like she was in a Rob Zombie movie. We’re not talking about Quentin Tarantino “swearing with finesse.” It’s just F-bombs for the sake of F-bombs.

The fight scenes are generally pretty good, staged by Guillermo Grispo. Guillermo’s credits include The Kingsman films and some of the more recent Star Wars projects, like “The Acolyte” and Rogue One. There’s a short fight at the beginning between Statham and some (presumably) Trem de Aragua members hassling a member of the construction team he works for. That has him using a bucket, a pickaxe, and his fists…like a brutal Jackie Chan fight. The martial arts highlight is the fight at the biker bar, which sees him taking on a whole room full of drug-dealing bikers. Good choreography overall. The ending is more of a bullet ballet, but is a disappointment because his final showdown with Dutch is just too easy (which is where the film really feels like a Seagal flick), and his showdown with the two crazy assassins is even more so.

Although less successful than The Beekeeper, A Working Man still did reasonably well for the sort of generic action film that usually gets relegated to direct-to-video status. However, Statham's last two movies--Shelter and Mutiny--have been box office disappointments. I wonder if audiences have figured out that Jason Statham just keeps on making the film over and over again. Or maybe 2026 has really set the stage for successful blockbusters that the last two years didn’t do, so there was simply no way to compete with the likes of The Odyssey and Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Mutiny plays like a rehash of both The Beekeeper and A Working Man. Statham plays a former special forces operative and policeman (seen that before) who is working as a bodyguard for a shipping magnate in Thailand...who serves as a sort of surrogate family for him (seen that before). When bad people cause problems in the of his surrogate family (seen THAT before), he kicks into action to get revenge (seen THAT before) and go on a rescue mission save people from human traffickers (SEEN THAT BEFORE!!!).

The human trafficking element plays like a secondary element to the revenge aspect, although both threads more or less dealt with concurrently. It’s just that the people being trafficked often disappear for large swaths of the movie, at least until the final reel. In that way, Mutiny starts to look a little like The Transporter, but without the car.

The film puts a little more emphasis on the suspense elements than the action. There is a lot of Statham sneaking about the hull and the depths of the ship, trying to avoid conflict where he can. Assisting him is the third-in-command of the ship, a former Navy girl named Angie (Annabelle Wallis, of The Mummy and Anabelle). In this regard, it feels a lot more like the original Die Hard than, say, Under Siege, which was more outright action-oriented.

The action is pretty good, although a little sparse at times. The fights were staged by Godefroy Rykewaert, whose credits include Statham’s own Shelter from this year and the much-maligned The Crow remake. Much of the action is gun-oriented, but we get a narrow corridor knife fight and a big fight involving a fire axe at the end. The knife fight showed up in the red band trailer, in which we see Statham rip a man’s face open with the shackle of a padlock. But then it goes into Martial Club territory, and I’m always down for fights like that (that are well shot and staged). The final fight between Statham and the ship’s captain (Roland Möeller, of Skyscraper and Atomic Blonde) is more brutal Hollywood brawling, including the use of a fire axe (I watched this after several days worth of watching Hitman 3 shorts on Youtube, so I was pleased to see him kill people with an axe).

Mutiny probably has less to say about human trafficking than A Working Man did. The victims play more like an extra wrinkle in Statham’s quest for revenge—and an explanation of why the bad guys are so bad—than actual characters. I mean, we hope they are rescued before the mercenaries sent to pick them up can rape them, but the film is so preoccupied with Statham skulking about the ship that we forget about them whenever they aren’t onscreen. We never really learn who they are, how they were kidnapped, or what exactly the mercenaries’ aims with them are: cheap labor? Slave labor? Sex tourism? All of the above?

After watching The Beekeeper; A Working Man; and Mutiny in rapid succession, I sort of feel like I don’t need to watch anymore Statham films. Or, I don’t expect them to differentiate themselves much more from this template. That said, I do wonder if Statham will find himself relegated to direct-to-video films if the Beekeeper sequel fails to take off with audiences. But who am I kidding, I’ll probably keep on watching his movies regardless.

Hero Dream (1992)

Hero Dream (1992)
Chinese Title: 淫妖豪情
Translation: Lewd Demon Passion

Starring: Chin Siu-Ho, Chin Kar-Lok, Carrie Ng, Michiko Nishiwaki, Lau Siu-Kwan, Hung Fung, Hon Yee-Sang, Ka Ling, Sophia Crawford
Director: Lau Siu-Kwan
Action Director: Ma Yuk-Sing, Wong Choh-Wah

Hero Dream is a film I’d heard about before, probably thanks to Keith Allison’s review at Teleport City. The general gist of the review was: “Parts of this movie represent the bygone days of the best of modern Hong Kong action, but it’s really just a porno movie.” That more or less sums it up. It has a great action cast, a few decent fight sequences, a large helping of gunplay…but it’s mostly just a skin flick. This is one of those movies that I could see developing a cult following today, as much of the salaciousness revolves around LadyBoys (or transsexuals).

The hero of our movie is Hao (Chin Siu-Ho, of Fist of Legend and The Tai Chi Master), your standard-issue Hong Kong policeman with superior martial arts skills and competence with any sort of firearm imaginable. Hao is married to Kiki (Carrie Ng, of Crystal Hunt and Naked Killer), who has just discovered she’s pregnant. Life seems to be going well for him.

Hao and his colleague, Chuen (Lau Siu-Kwan, of Corpse Mania and The Emperor and his Brother), are on the tail of Lok (Chin Kar-Lok, of King Boxer and Little Hero on the Run), a crime boss who’s dealing in arms and industrial espionage (of the arms industry). When the police crash one of Lok’s deals—or it may have been him crashing the party and stealing the material—a big shootout erupts, followed by a foot chase, followed by a martial arts duel between Hao and Lok. Lok is only able to escape after Chuen shows up and wrestles him into the harbor.

Following that mess, Hao takes leave and goes on vacation with his wife to Thailand. Upon arrival, a transvestite being chased by a gang hides her purse in Hao’s taxi. The gang, known as the Chiu Gang, assumes that Hao is in cahoots with the mysterious girl. They break into their hotel room and take Kiki hostage, threatening to kill her if Hao doesn’t turn over whatever’s in the purse.

While this is going on, we learn that the transvestite is in the employ of Lok, who in turn is a mid-level lieutenant in another gang, run by Yi (Michiko Nishiwaki, of Outlaw Brothers and My Lucky Stars)…the subtitles refer to them as the “Transvestite Gang.” Yi also employs Chuen, whom she occasionally uses for sex whenever he has enough time to visit Thailand.

From that point, the film escalates into a series of violent encounters between Hao and the Chiu Gang, or the Transvestite Gang and the Chiu Gang. Lives are taken. People are tortured and murdered. Lok is pressured by Yi into handing over his transvestite friend into Chiu’s hands. In the end, Hao and Lok are compelled to team up to bring down the Chiu gang.

So…uh…yeah. I’m not sure who the writer was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was director-producer-supporting actor Lau Siu-Kwan. Lau, whose career started in the waning days of the Shaw Brothers, worked as an actor in low-budget films well into the 2000s, but occasionally produced, directed, and even wrote some of his own movies. Many of those were either adult films or no-budget horror schlock. This was his first foray into directing, which makes me wonder how he had much of a career at all.

The plot, such as it is, never makes very much sense. Most reviews state that the plot revolves around the search for stolen plans for American missile technology, but that doesn’t really feel like a thing after the first big set piece five minutes in. It’s like the movie sets up the McGuffin, quickly forgets about the McGuffin, occasionally mentions something that might be the McGuffin (the contents of the transvestite’s purse), but then allows the plot to escalate to the point that the McGuffin loses all relevance. By that point, you wonder what the entire point of the McGuffin was in the first place.

Something similar can be said about the subplot involving Chuen being a dirty cop. It’s established early on that such is the case, but it ultimately turns out to be irrelevant. Why? First of all, I don’t think Hao ever even discovers Chuen was even in Thailand, let alone that he was corrupt and in cahoots with Yi (whenever he wasn’t just outright in her). Second, nothing about him being a cop makes a difference in his actions while in Thailand: he could’ve been introduced as one of Yi’s lieutenants and the resulting film would have been largely the same.

Then there the usual plot holes for films like this. Mainly: Where does Hao get a hold of so much military-grade hardware in his running vendetta against the Chiu Gang? I mean, the guy arms himself with M-16s, grenade launchers, hand grenades…the works. I know these things probably go for (reasonably) cheap in Southeast Asia if you know where to look, but surely they can’t be so cheap that a man on a Hong Kong cop’s salary can just buy them at a minute’s notice.

Ultimately, the film is more about the sex than it is about anything else. This is exemplified by Chin Kar-Lok’s introductory scene, where we see him in bed with a naked woman, his head placed right next to her (exposed) crotch. Early on, we get a scene where an older policeman (who helps cover up Chuen’s activities) has a threesome with a pair of well-endowed woman, including HK Playboy Playmate Ka Ling (of Hong Kong Eva). The scene goes on for about eight minutes and, well, leaves you no doubt about the actresses’ bodies. Michiko herself also gets some love scenes, although she never shows anything more than some bare back. There is a lot of nudity—including a love scene of sorts—involving the Thai Lady Boys, with their silicone breasts and “man parts” on display. It’s equal-opportunity sleaze in Hero Dream. Something for all tastes!

The film’s action sequences were staged by Ma Yuk-Sing (Fist Power) and Wong Choh-Wah (The Cyprus Tigers and The Killer’s Romance). Much of the action is gunplay, which staged OK for an otherwise low-budget film. There are a number of shootouts—probably about six—that are probably on the level of Commando in terms of credibility, if not overall carnage. There are also a few fight scenes here and there: Brothers Chin Kar-Lok and Chin Siu-Ho have two short throwdowns, with Kar-Lok stealing these fights with his impressive kicking skills. Sophia Crawford shows up early on, throws a few kicks, and is promptly killed. Michiko Nishiwaki’s fights feel over-edited, either to compensate for her limited skills, or for those of her opponents. At the climax, there are a few individual fights once the heroes run out of bullets. Once again, not bad, but far from the caliber of the best of Sammo Hung.

As an actual film, with a story and things like that, Hero Dream comes pretty close to being a complete bust. Some of your lower-budgeted HK action films from the 80s and early 90s had questionable plots, but this one largely forgets what it’s supposed to be about for long swaths of time. Vintage HK action fans may enjoy the fights, but there are better showcases for the skills of the Chin brothers without having to wade through so much female skin. But then again, if you’re not the type to watch outright XXX porn and want to know how a ménage-a-trois works, than this is the film for you!