Monday 28 January 2019

Black Magic 2 (Hong Kong, 1976)


Black Magic 2

Hong Kong | 1976 | D: Meng Hua Ho


I can’t believe they made a sequel to Black Magic. Even more amazing is that it’s the same director and virtually the same cast. Except they are all in completely different roles.

This time, Get Quick Rich guy from the first movie is now the Black Magic Master (BMM) – and he is all kinds of super-awesome. And yes, he also has an obsession with breast milk to ensure we get our nudity quota sorted. Speaking of which – opening sequence pretty much has you covered.

So, this film concerns a virus outbreak and a trio of doctors who want to get to the bottom of what is going on. Tragic wife from the first movie surprisingly plays tragic wife in this movie too. Poor Lily Li – she can’t catch a break in this series.

Lily Li plays Margaret – a far too westernised name for a HK movie, but that’s beside the point – and her husband (same husband as the first film too) is a doctor at the local hospital. He calls a few friends (Lady Boss and Concerned Friend from first movie), also doctors, to help determine what is going with this virus he can’t seem to cure. He instantly suspects black magic. The other two are not so sure. Margaret on the other hand bumps into BMM and he decides he wants her breast milk, thus he puts a curse/spell on her and she becomes his milk slave.

At this point of the movie, you really need to suspend all disbelief. Not over the black magic stuff, but over the fact that everyone knows who everyone is, knows where they live and what they do – its almost uncanny and quite frankly ridiculous and insulting to the audience (although by choosing to watch this, we’ve pretty much declared to the filmmakers “insult us please”).

To highlight this point – BMM’s house is apparently right next to the cable car to Sentosa Island (yeah this was filmed in Singapore). Right next to it… even though in none of the establishing shots or other shots of the exterior do we see any of the cable car infrastructure.

The doctors decide to test if black magic is true, so they decide to visit BMM and get him to put on a love spell on Lady Boss. She falls in love with Tragic Wife’s husband (who is in hospital having suffered from a forced C-section to remove a deformed baby that no one knew she was having), they decide to meet in the Botanical Gardens and then go to a hotel to have steamy sex. It was hilarious to note that these people seem to have a hotel room on retainer for such occasions.

Anyway, the other doctor/husband comes to save the day. He does that by using the skills of a Super BMM to defeat the original BMM. I wont give too much away other than the fact that the eyeball scene has to be witnessed to be believed, and even then you wont believe it. You’ll most likely replay the scene to double check what you saw.

And how are those effects? Still terrible. And this time they’ve added a good old “project an image behind the actors while they do some stunts in front of it” ending. That technique died in 50’s in the USA. The end fight sequence is stuff of legends. Bad cinema legends.

Watch it today. Right now. Immediately. This movie is so bad its bad.
 
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074211/


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