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.