Godzilla Minus Zero (2026) - A Spoiler-Filled Review

Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)

Starring: Minami Hamabe, Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Masami Nagasawa, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Min Tanaka, Sakura Andô, Yuki Yamada, Sae Nagatani, Jun Kunimura, Munetaka Aoki, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Seiji Akitsu, Wes Wing, Miou Tanaka
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Special FX Director: Takashi Yamazaki

I don’t think very many fans expected Godzilla Minus One to be as successful, financially and critically, as it was. It made over 100 million dollars worldwide on a budget of only 15 million dollars and walked away with an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, taking out blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, both of which were about fifteen times more expensive. The Japanese Godzilla, which had long been the butt of a joke when it came to “dated” FX methods, had beat Hollywood at its own game for a fraction of the price. Hell, none of the MonsterVerse movies featuring Godzilla have gotten so much as a nomination.

So, I guess it went without saying that there would be a sequel to this movie, although the very ending suggested that there were still a few things that director Yamazaki wanted to explore. We got “First Look Teaser” about six months ago, which featured an American actor talking in the background and what appeared to be the image of floating city. The first teaser came out two months later and, to be honest, looked like it was going to be “more of the same” as the first film, with imagery that suggested the morality of trying to defeat Godzilla using very large bombs.

Then we get got the official trailer just two months before release. This one opened all sorts of avenues for speculation. Something about a weather forecaster prodigy whose abilities looked almost supernatural. And “fighting fire with fire.” And the return of the image of floating buildings and the mention of “Operation Narukami,” which means “God of Thunder.” And then a familiar cackle playing over the imagery. Okay, so I think fans knew what general direction the movie was going in, though not necessarily how the pieces would fit into each other.

The film kicks off in 1949—two years after the events of the first films—in the thick of things: the city of Matsumoto is being ravaged by a large, green dragon-ish monster. Among the only survivors of this attack are Professor Murukami (Min Tanaka, of Keanu Reeves’s The 47 Ronin and Blade of the Immortal) and his assistant, Hagiwara (Kô Maehara, of Shin Godzilla and Kamen Rider Black Sun). They return to Tokyo to report to Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka, returning from the first film), who is now in charge of Japan’s crisis response bureau. We learn that the dragon is the evolution of an organism from space that arrived on Earth via meteorite. The organism absorbs and assimilates whatever life it comes in contact with it, which leads the scientists to dub it “Ghidorah,” being a combination of “hydra” and “chimera”. It may look a little off, but knowing that in Japanese, “hydra” would probably be pronounced as “He-duh-rah” and the ‘ch’ in “chimera” is pronounced like a “k,” which is just an aspirated “g’ sound, one can appreciate the play on words.

Anyway, Ghidorah is now off in the mountains sleeping off the energy spent in the last attack. As Japan is still occupied by the American Armed Forces, the Americans get involved, albeit indirectly (once again, so as not to stir up the Soviets). They give the Japanese some of their best weapons, namely some modern jets and a very large aerosol bomb. At the same, one member of Noda’s team, a lady named Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa, who had played one of the Shobijin in Godzilla: Tokyo SOS and Godzilla Final Wars, and who is known around here for the Kingdom movies) has come up with a Plan B. You see, Aoyama is meteorologist of considerable talent and has a knack for not only predicting thunderstorms and hurricanes, but their severity, too. She thinks she can use the weather to their advantage in fighting Ghidorah.

Now, about those jets. Noda and his team have managed to scrounge up a few willing pilots to take on Ghidorah, although morale is rather low. I mean, fighting Godzilla is probably scary enough as it is. But what about a flying monster with a flexible neck and greater blast radius? That’s almost suicide. This is where Noda decides to bring in an old friend: Koichi Shikishima (a returning Ryûnosuke Kamiki). Although Noda doesn’t want Shikishima to risk his life again, especially now that he and Noriko (Minami Hamabe also reprising her role) are married and have officially adopted little Akiko (Sae Nagatami). But maybe by giving the pilots some of his acquired wisdom on flying close to monsters without getting oneself killed, some of the fear may be allayed. Yeah, that’ll work.

Obviously, Noriko doesn’t even like the idea of Shikishima going as a consultant, let alone flying if yet another pilot gets cold feet and drops out. You see, in the very last scene of Godzilla Minus One, we learned that Noriko had survived contact with the shockwave that followed the atomic explosion caused by Godzilla’s breath. But viewers noticed a little black mark growing on her neck. And what was that? Well, Noriko has contracted what may best be called “Godzilla’s Disease”. People exposed to Godzilla’s tissue initially develop Wolverine-esque healing abilities, but quickly succumb when the bony spines start growing in the darndest places, like a kaiju version of Epidermodysplasia verruciformis. All of the other patients have died from it, but Noriko is a soldier. Nonetheless, she doesn’t think she’s long for this world and thus doesn’t want Akiko to become an orphan…again.

Unfortunately for all involved, yet another pilot drops out of the project, thus forcing Shikishima to participate in the attack on Ghidorah. Aoyama’s plan—dubbed “Operation Narukami”—is pretty clever by 1949 technology standards: fire a giant copper-lined harpoon into Ghidorah and let the lightning (which she is so good at predicting) do the rest. Initially, the plan looks like it works. But then Ghidorah, the Borg of the Godzilla universe, not only adapts to the lighting, but involves into a form that we fans are much more familiar with today. And whatever it didn’t destroy of Matsumoto the first time is absolutely screwed in ways we fans have never seen. At the same time, a Japanese naval vessel is almost capsized by Godzilla, who has since regenerated his body completely. This leads Professor Murakami to suggest that they fight fire with fire by having the two monsters fight and then bombarding the (presumably) wounded victor with all they got. But how to get Godzilla to where Ghidorah is? Well, Murakami has a plan, but he’s going to need someone who was up close with Godzilla to make it work…

Much like Godzilla Minus One, this film places a large focus on the human characters. Once again, much of the film is about scarred (some literally), traumatized people doing their best in an impossible situation to preserve Japan for the next generation. Shikashima is doing okay until he learns that Godzilla is still alive and slips back into his PTST/survivor’s guilt, at least initially. Aoyama is plagued by memories of the destruction that a recent typhoon wreaked on Japan, in which disaster she played the role of the Cassandra. Professor Noda is holding it together, but even he has to deal with the knowledge that the weapons he had developed for the war effort cost many young men their lives.

And then there’s Professor Murakami. Murakami shows up at the crisis control headquarters almost completely spaced out, simply muttering, “I survived again.” We assume he’s referring to Godzilla’s attack on Ginza, but that’s only part of the truth. He was also in Hiroshima on August 6^th, 1945. It was while wandering through the ruins of the city in a zombie-like trance that he discovered that his family—his wife, daughter, and grandson—were almost completely carbonized in the explosion. The experience has left him occasionally suffering from audio hallucinations and stupors, but as the film reaches its conclusion, his PTSD has graduated into delusions of revenge.

The greatest strength of this movie is that the human characters matter throughout and most of them do not get relegated to standing around watching the final monster duel. Everyone has something to do, especially when things do not go as initially planned. I can forgive Aoyama having to spend much of the climax just standing atop the only remaining building in Ginza to watch the spectacle, since she had done her part to get the monsters there in the first place. But we care about characters, even the nameless pilots who are honestly afraid to engage in combat with a kaiju, something we never seen in even the best Japanese monster flicks.

And by the end, there are some real high stakes for everyone, both because of the monsters and because of outside forces. The movie does bring in the theme about the misuse of scientific innovation, not too unlike Serizawa’s fear that his Oxygen Destroyer might be used as a weapon. In Gojira, the fear was abstract. In Godzilla Minus Zero, the fear is concrete. One group is willing to exploit their current political power to get their hands on a powerful weapon, even if it means depriving individuals of their civil rights. And on the macro scale of the Cold War, there is some level of justification of why they would want such a weapon (we need to have it before a more dangerous power gets it), but on a micro scale, they look like horrible people. I could have gone without some of the extra melodrama in the last scene, but oh well. After all, so many of these movies end with people standing around looking relieved that Godzilla won (or was defeated, depending on the movie), so a bit more focus on the characters is welcome.

The movie does have some real flaws, however. The first two involve a pair of subplots that don’t get developed enough. We learn early on that during the events of the climax of Godzilla Minus One, that the American Air Force was ready to drop a nuke on Godzilla if Operation Wadatsumi (Wadatsumi? Narukami? Makoto? I’m getting Genshin Impact flashbacks here) had failed. And they seem particularly interested in doing so again with Ghidorah. Only that the possibility is brought up once…and then never mentioned in the film again. There is also the subplot about Murakami’s descent into madness, which gets resolved in an almost offhand manner almost as soon as it’s brought up. It does result in one of the most horrific scenes in the film, but I think a little more could have been done with it.

Part of the problem is that there is simply too many characters and too much going on for these subplots to really be able to flesh out all aspects of the story. On one hand, all of the characters get their chance to shine, some even have multiple chances to do so. The main story beats are generally well handled, too. But eventually something will get the short shrift, and that ends up happening with those two subplots…and Godzilla himself.

Long story short: Godzilla may very well have less screentime than he did in Godzilla vs. Megalon; Terror of Mechagodzilla; or Godzilla ’14.

But to be honest, that tends to be an issue whenever Godzilla plays the hero. If he doesn’t have another monster to fight, then there’s not a lot that Godzilla can do onscreen without losing audience sympathy. Some films get around this by giving him multiple opponents to fight, like in Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster where he fights Ebirah, the Giant Condor, the Red Bamboo jets, and the entire Red Bamboo base. But by the 1970s, he was just appearing on cue to fight, like in Godzilla vs Gigan and its follow-up. And since this only has one monster to fight, Godzilla ends up getting treated the way he did in the 1970s.

Speaking of 1970s, there are a number of callbacks to other films and even some unmade scripts. When we first meet Hagiwara and Prof. Murakami in the midst of Ghidorah’s rampage, they are wearing yellow windbreakers like the scientists in Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster. When Ghidorah evolves into his more well-known form, we see him destroying a Shinto Arch in the foreground, much like that film, too. The scene of the space organism absorbing the local wildlife reminds me of the script for the unmade 1994 Jan De Bont Godzilla, which is how the Gryphon monster was born. The visual aesthetics of Prof. Murakami’s lab feel like they came out of the original 1954 Gojira. Also, the device used to attract Godzilla reminds me of the one used in The Return of Godzilla (or Godzilla 1985, if you will), but with Yamazaki’s own personal stamp on the device. Moreover, the angle at which the camera is set up when Godzilla shows up in front of New York feels like it was inspired by a similar scene in Destroy All Monsters! And some of the imagery at the end of the climax will remind fans of Godzilla 2000.

The special effects are, for the most part, expertly done. The only effect that threatened to take me out of the movie was one of Shikishima driving his motorcycle down the street. But the monster effects and city destruction scenes were great. And this movie cost between 13 and 19 million to make, about a tenth or less of the budget of, say, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Ghidorah is probably at his scariest since his original appearance. And the filmmakers didn’t even need to hide the CGI behind rain, snow, or smoke. We get nice loving daylight shots of Ghidorah, and it looks great. Also, the official name for Ghidorah’s electric bolts has always been “gravity beams.” Well, in this movie, he truly does have a gravity beam attack, in way that might have been hinted in things like “Zone Fighter” and Godzilla Final Wars, but never explored on this level.

The movie did get some hubbub about getting an R-rating. The film is by no means a “Hard R,” but the scenes showing the victims and survivors of Godzilla’s rampage and the Hiroshima bombings will most likely disturb younger viewers. This also goes for the now-infamous dream sequence, which paints an especially grim picture of those who thought Godzilla was their hero. The monster fight is also especially graphic, with both monsters utilizing battle techniques I don’t think I’ve seen in these movies. It’s a little disappointing that, if you edit out the human scenes, there isn’t a whole lot of actual fighting, but they make every hit count.

To me, a kaiju movie has to have a good score. That is just as important as the quality of miniatures and monster wrestling. That is actually one of the reasons I have such a hard time getting into the Showa Gamera films, X From Outer Space; and Yongary, Monster from the Deep. Or some of the low-budget kaiju films that genre fans made from 2007 throughout the 2010s. Low-budget scores on a Cassio keyboard just don’t cut it for kaiju eiga. Naoki Sato is back on board and his theme for Ghidorah, “Eclipse,” is especially atmospheric in context. Sato does reuse Godzilla’s main theme (by the legendary Akira Ifukube) whenever he appears onscreen. Certain tracks from the first movie, especially “Determination,” play at key moments of the climax.

So, did I like Godzilla Minus Zero? Yes, I did. A lot. It had a generally strong human story with characters you liked and who felt developed for the most part. It has great special FX and a solid score with some strong individual tracks. Ghidorah has never been this imposing and scary, even in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Its showdown with the jets is genuinely suspenseful and even a bit freaky at times. I don’t know if it will enter my list of all-time favorites, but it is proof that you can make Godzilla vs. [Another Movie] without all the seriousness and depth that his best solo efforts boast. Bring on Godzilla Plus One!

Street Fighter (2026)

Street Fighter (2026)

Starring: Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, David Dastmalchian, Andrew Shulz, Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Jason Mamoa, Mel Jarnson, Orville Peck
Director: Kitao Sakurai
Action Director: Anthony Rinna

Street Fighter was announced in 2023, almost three whole decades since Hollywood’s original attempt to adapt the insanely-popular video game had disappointed audiences everywhere—I do concede that the film has developed a certain cult following over the years and that it was reasonably successful at the box office, at least by lead actor Jean-Claude Van Damme’s standards. The original idea was to have horror filmmakers The Philippou Brothers direct. About a year later, it was announced they had left the project due to scheduling concerns. By September of 2024, Kitao Sakurai, whose career highlights included episodes of Twisted Metal, was announced as director.

In any case, people in my community were hopeful that this would be a reasonably serious martial arts film, much like in the vein of the live-action Mortal Kombat films, albeit hopefully without the original character serving as the Audience Proxy. Then the casting announcements started coming in early 2025. Former teen actor Noah Centineo as Ken. Andrew Koji as Ryu. Okay, hit and miss. Jason Mamoa as Blanca. Relative unknown Callina Liang as Chun Li. Oh, okay.

Then the casting started going off the rails. In June 2025, we learned the South African country singer Orville Peck was cast as Vega…on the basis that he was known for wearing a mask at his concerts. WTF? That was followed by rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson being cast as Balrog. Then comedian Andrew Shulz was cast as Dan Habiki…and all of us started wondering if this was going to be parody. Then two professional wrestlers—Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes—were cast as Akuma and Guile, respectively. By this point, this was looking like it might become Legendary’s “Taste the Golden Spray.”

Around April or May of this year, the first trailer was released. And it was clear what the filmmakers were going for: high camp. All of the color, the costumes, and crazy hair styles of the video games were there. The special moves were there. But the trailer gave us a glimpse of Ken Masters singing “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes (which turns out to be an integral part of the story). And it appeared that this movie, like many blockbusters, was going to suffer from “Joss Whedon Syndrome” in that every character interaction would be a build-up to a punchline or a sight gag. Nonetheless, the visual elements were enough to intrigue me.

So, how was the final film?

It was…a thing.

To be serious, it was “pretty good.” It accomplishes what it sets out to do, but the question is whether it should have been doing that in the first place.

The film opens with an anime sequence of the 1987 World Warrior Championship, in which newcomer Ryu is pitted against reigning champion Sagat. Although Sagat initially has Ryu against ropes, Ryu turns the tables by tapping into the power of the Hadou, much to his master’s chagrin. You see, in this Universe, the Hadou works like The Force in Star Wars: if you have it, you’d better learn to control it, otherwise you’ll become a demon like Master Bokken’s first student, Akuma. And Ryu has enough envy in his heart and negative stuff in his past to make him a liability if he taps too much into it.

We then switch to live action, moving forward to 1993 (the soundtrack is all 90s R&B and hip hop, though some of the songs used came out after ’93). Ryu has since disappeared after his Master was mysteriously murdered. And his martial brother, Ken Masters, has become something of an MTV celebrity and is quickly losing his MA cred. Meanwhile, in the Southeast Asian country of Shadaloo (the capital city is called Metrolau), dictator M. Bison is performing experiments on “psycho power” by draining the life energy from the strongest men alive. Unfortunately, it’s not helping him very much. He decides that he needs the likes of Ryu to really make his experiment work, so he sets up another World Warrior tournament in hopes of coaxing Ryu out of hiding.

In his employee is Chun Li, who is actually an Interpol agent working undercover to find out what crimes against humanity the dictator is up to. She is sent out to recruit the world’s strongest fighters to participate in the tournament. Those would include Russian strongman Zangief (Olivier Richters, of Black Widow), American Air Force pilot Guile, Japanese sumo wrestler Honda; American boxer Balrog; Spanish(?) claw fighter Vega; Joe (UFC fighter Alex Volkanovski); Indian yoga master Dhalsim (Bollywood action actor Vidyut Jammwal); and Ken Masters. Although most people in that industry would object to Ken being included, it is actually a shrewd move on Chun Li’s part.

You see, we learn through flashbacks (all flashbacks in the movie are done via anime) that the World Warrior Tournament has the unfortunate effect of calling the attention of Akuma, who is always waiting for a fitting opponent for him to fight. Back in ’87, Ryu’s victor brought Akuma to his school, where the same murdered Master Boken. This created a rift between him and Ken, which the latter hasn’t gotten over yet. But when Chun Li finally finds Ryu and informs him that Ken will be participating, that alarms Ryu. Because if Ken somehow (given his current physical state) manages to win, that will bring Akuma a-calling. And since Ken never learned how to throw a Hadouken, winning the tournament would be the same thing as Ken signing his own death warrant.

So, by the time the tournament is underway, we have several character motivations set up. Chun Li is biding her time until she can get close enough to Bison to try to stop him. Ryu wants to protect Ken. Ken wants to win for the honor of his deceased master, plus his own ego. And Bison is willing to separate Ryu from the tournament if it means he can drain him of his Hadou energy.

Plot-wise, Street Fighter feels a lot like the Street Fighter Alpha anime from 2000, but with M. Bison in the role of Dr. Sadler. Both of those films combine a man’s attempt to harness the energy of the world’s fighters for his own means, while the heroes are fighting for Ryu’s soul. The opening anime sequence is definitely a nod to the 1994 anime movie and there are a few callbacks to the ’94 live action film, too (mainly a few in-jokes regarding M. Bison). The main protagonists who get sidelined are Guile and Dhalsim, although the ending suggests that they’ll have a bigger role if a sequel gets made. Spoiler: the film leaves one major plot thread completely unresolved and ends on a cliffhanger.

The strange thing about the movie is its tone. The entire film is just as campy as the trailer suggested it was and the film is often more of a comedy than a martial arts fantasy. For much of the movie, Ken is the butt of jokes (there is a running gag between him and the tournament’s announcer, played by comedian Eric André (who has collaborated with the director in the past) and only really becomes a serious character in the last act. Jason Mamoa’s portrayal of Blanca establishes him as this fearsome beast whom everybody is afraid of, but then acts like a big Teddy bear to people whom he decides he likes. The biggest in-joke is the resolution of the tournament, which is laughably absurd to anyone familiar with the games.

Speaking of the tournament, I was disappointed with the way the tournament was portrayed. The focus is on Ken throughout this portion of the narrative, which ultimately results in three fights taking place offscreen. That means we don’t get to see Guile fight Vega or Dhalsim take on Zangief. Boo, people! Boo! I understand on one level that the story wanted emphasize Bison’s plans and Ryu’s fight against himself more than the tournament, but we fans still want to see our favorites fighting (and not just at a random bar fight).

Speaking of fighting, I was a little disappointed with the fights. They were staged by Anthony Rinna, whose credits as a fight choreographer include The Blue Beetle (one of the DCU films made after audiences largely stopped caring about the DCU) and A Minecraft Movie. He also worked as an assistant fight director on Thor: Love and Thunder and Mortal Kombat ’22. The fights are often more focused on showing us the characters performing their special moves, and even basic attacks as they appear in the games, then inserting them into actual choreography. This is especially apparent in the Ryu vs. Blanca fight.

The highlight is a sequence at the beginning of the third act where Ryu and Ken fight their way out of prison through dozens of guards—often shot in a way that makes it look like side-scroller beat’em up—which is intercut with Chun Li taking on both Vega and Julie (world champion martial artist Rayna Valladingham). This sequence finds the best balance between actual fight choreography and techniques we see in the games. A later fight between Ken and Ryu is also pretty good.

I do hope this movie does well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel. If only because I hate the idea of movies ending in a way that makes a sequel necessary for the narrative to be concluded, only to not be filmed because not enough people watched the original in the first place. That said, I only found it to be “good,” but not great. I think Mortal Kombat 2 definitely won the contest of best fighting game adaptation of 2026.

Black Magic, Part II (1976)

Black Magic, Part II (1976)
Aka: Black Magic 2; Revenge of the Zombies
Chinese Title: 勾魂降頭
Translation: Soul-Snatching Curse

Starring: Ti Lung, Tanny Tien Ni, Lo Lieh, Lily Li, Lin Wei-Tu, Wai Wang, Terry Liu, Yang Chi-Ching
Director: Ho Meng-Hua
Action Director: Yuen Cheung-Yan

Black Magic, Part II share a lot of similarities with its predecessor, in terms of cast, setting, and general overall atmosphere. A lot of spells are carried out in the same (or similar) manner as the first film, with a large emphasis placed on love spells. However, Black Magic, Part II represents a marked improvement over the first film, in terms of plotting and pacing, plus it has a more thrilling and altogether fulfilling climax.

The film is set in “some tropical city,” where we meet Dr. Chi Chung-Ping (Ti Lung, playing a different character than he did before) and his wife, Cui-Ling (Tanny Tien Ni, this time not playing the villainess), as they arrive in the city from Hong Kong. They were invited by an old friend, Dr. Shi Zhensheng (Lin Wei-Tu, of The Master of Kung Fu and The Flying Guillotine), to come see him. He has been seeing a lot of strange cases in his hospital of late, things like boils that look like human faces and the like. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t show up in the medical journals. Zhensheng is sure that black magic has run amok in the city, though he wants his trusted friend to give him a second opinion.

It doesn’t take long for things to go south for the foursome—Dr. Shi is married to Margarete (a returning Lily Li)—in fact, to all outward appearances, things go awry the first night. The four are hanging out at a strip club—in the 1970s, it was still considered fashionable to do so, the same way it was fashionable to go to porno movies—and watching the main dancer (Terry Liu, of Super Infra Man and The Dragon Lives Again). Two more men are watching her, too. One of them is Chang Da-Nian (Wai Wang, of The Men from the Monastery) and the other is a dapper-looking gentleman named Kang Cong (Lo Lieh, also playing a different role this time around). Although Da-Nian would like for nothing more than to take the dancer home with him and bed her, she opts to go with Kang Cong instead.

Once at his house, Kang Cong exercises what is practically a hypnotic effect over the woman, to the point that she doesn’t even react when he removes the jewelry from her body and undresses her. But the telling part is when he makes her kneel in front of him. But instead of getting a B.J., Kang Cong parts her hair, revealing the exposed head of a nail. He extracts the nail, and we the viewer watch her age and die in real time as he does so. So, it appears that Kang Cong is our resident black magic user.

Kang quickly sets his sights on Margarete, obtaining a sample of her blood by posing as a flower deliveryman and “accidentally” poking her with the thorn. And then he hangs a dead monkey—or a biturong—near her house. And then he starts performing a spell on voodoo doll that looks pregnant. Before you know it, Margarete is in a trance and walking to Kang’s manor, which is not far from Dr. Shi’s house. Once there, Kang engages in erotic lactation because, according to this film’s logic, breast milk is the key to longevity. The hypnotized Margarete is so enthralled with the “sexiness” (such as it is) of getting suckled by Lo Lieh (ew!) that she sleeps with him outright.

When she wakes up the next morning, she is not only pale and weak, but she is miraculously several months pregnant, too. An emergency C-section reveals an already-formed fetus inside, which is both deformed and stillborn.

Meanwhile, Chang Da-Nian has been itching to get into bed with the exotic dancer, but he can’t find her anywhere. So, he goes to Kang Cong and asks him to perform a love spell on her, wherever she may be. In this case, she happens to be in Kang’s basement with an assortment of other dead bodies. He sticks the nail back into her, restores her youth, and sends her out to seduce Da-Nian. And it’s going well, too, at least at first. Then Da-Nian’s Buddha necklace droops over here during sex and she ages herself to death while he’s knocking boots…total rager killer right there.

Chang Da-Nian considers himself cheated out of a good five grand (U.S. dollars, that is) and goes to Kang to complain. Kang simply kills him with his magic, although Chang makes it into the city before he expires…right in front of Dr. Shi and Dr. Chi. They begin to suspect Kang, and thus try to get into his good graces to force his magic out into the open. How about a ruse in which Dr. Shi asks Kang to perform a love spell on his colleague’s wife, Cui-Ling? And what will happen when Kang Cong figures out what the two men are up to?

Black Magic, Part II does feel like an overall more focused narrative than the last film. Yes, it’s often gory and frequently exploitative, but it has direction. I didn’t bring up the “White” Magician (Yang Chi-Ching, the main villain in Vengeance!) in the plot summary, because his introductory scene in the film’s opening has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and then he doesn’t show up until the third act. Yes, the film frequently shows us the mechanics of Kang Cong’s magic spells, but it’s done in a way that flows naturally from the film, instead of grinding the story to a halt so we can see all the gross things that a magician has to do for a given hex. It’s hard to explain in words, but the magic scenes feel more organic to the plot.

As with the last film—and most HK films dealing the black magic—there is a lot of female flesh on display. The movie opens with a bunch of Thai (or Malaysian) girls fishing, until one of them removes her top and jumps in for a swim…followed by her friends. Terry Liu is always dependable for showing her breasts in films like this. And not unexpectedly, both Tanny Tien Ni’s and Lily Li’s body doubles get a lot of screen time, especially Lily’s. And yes, you know they’re doubles because the women’s breasts appear to double in size from what is implied by the clothing we see them wearing.

The magic on display does feature love spells as in the first movie, but there is a greater emphasis placed on zombiefication. The nail through the skull is a way of asserting one’s control over the corpses, with the idea that people who are killed under “unhappy” circumstances end up having their spirits not stray too far from the body, which makes them susceptible to becoming zombies. The film climaxes with a Ti Lung having to fight off a small army of them as he tries to put an end to Kang Cong’s evil plans. And like many Hong Kong films, nobody is safe in a movie like this.

Now, speaking of fighting, this film does have a credited action director in the form of the late Yuen Cheung-Yan. There is one fight, which is a running brawl between Ti Lung and Lo Lieh, which starts at the house and goes all the way to an aerial tramway. The brawling itself is choreographed, but in a way that suggests that neither men are martial artists, but just two men desperate to beat the hell out of the other. The fight is actually quite long, but the tramway section is marred by some of the worst matte work since Yongary, Monster of the Deep.

Do I recommend Black Magic, Part II? Sort of, I guess. Although I have seen more than my fair share of HK/Taiwanese films involving black magic, they are far from my favorite sub-genre of horror and I tend to watch them as a completist more than a fan. But people who like weird sh*t should enjoy this film thoroughly, from its cheesecake nudity to its gross spells to a climax that features “real” zombies, not the Romero ones. Fans of B-movies and trash cinema should lap it up as much as Lo Lieh was doing with Lily Li’s breasts.