Gou hun jiang tou

In a Hong Kong hospital, worried doctors scratch their heads about a patient covered with pulsating ulcers, who is diagnosed as suffering from black magic. Another patient has worms crawling under his skin. It's the work of a zombie master named Fang, who hangs out in discos, drinks human milk to survive, and drives a Mercedes-Benz.

He picks up a woman at a bar, takes her to his basement dungeon, and pulls a long spike out of the top of her head with a pair of tongs. The spike enables his zombie spell, so right away she keels over, turns into a hag, and expires.

Fang captures one of the doctor's wives, demanding, "I shall drink your milk every day, understand?" The rest of the movie's dubbed dialogs is just as wild. Using his victim's pubic hair, he creates a potion to make her produce milk. Meantime, the doctors sit around talking about how they don't believe in magic.

Eventually, they set a trap for Fang but it backfires. Only one man is left to confront the magician, as well as an army of zombies that includes some of his friends, who have been "spiked." Much of the film's horror imagery is appalling: One woman becomes pregnant overnight and aborts a monstrous fetus; someone who tries to double-cross Fang starts pulling out clumps of his hair and quickly melts into a fleshy blob.

You might be surprised by the "Black Magic" films, as they have no martial arts in them yet they were made by the famous Shaw Brothers' Studio. Instead they are gross films about the occult. However, despite the gross scenes, most of it is really pretty tame. What IS gross are the scenes where the octogenarian black magician is shown drinking human breast milk to stay youthful! Yuck! And, speaking of that, this and the previous film in the series both have a lot of nudity--so it's probably not a good film to watch with your mother.

As for the first film (1975), it was a thoroughly stupid and low-budget film. While this one is also stupid and low-budget, it manages to work much better--with a more believable bad guy, better special effects and some really, really spooky scenes. It's still not an especially good film, but considering how bad the first one was, it could only improve!! Not worth seeking out unless you could use a laugh or have a bizarre fetish about breast milk.

I had heard that this film and its in name only prequel were suppose to be some of the best of the of the Hong Kong Horror films. I very much liked the first film in a goofy gory sort of way, while this one just didn't grab me. I mean that almost literally since after about the first five or ten minutes I became distracted, not a good sign, and began to do other things while this un-spooled.

Certainly its better than many horror films from the period, but at the same time, its just not as good as its reputation suggests. I suggest you try it, its not bad, just not the be all and end all, but if possible have the first film with it as a double feature.

7 out of 10.

(I will try it again at some point simply because it maybe a case of being over-sold before going in.)

A hospital is full of patients suffering from mysterious and very icky ailments. A doctor believes that spells might be the cause and tries to convince his wife and colleagues, putting them all in danger from the black magician responsible.

Black Magic 2 starts as it means to go on: in full-on bonkers mode, with a group of topless cuties taking a dip in a river only to be attacked by a unconvincing model crocodile that eats one of the girls. A white magician lures the reptile to its death and cuts it open. Cue the opening credits…

The rest of the film is equally as insane, with plenty of those Hong Kong black magic movie staples, mucus, maggots and worms, plus zombies with metal spikes in their heads, potions made from burnt pubic hair, breast-milk drinking, and eye-ball eating. There's also a hilariously bad fight in and on a cable car (complete with really dreadful back projection), lots more gratuitous female nudity, and a fiery finale in the evil magician's home.

It's by no means a great film—the plot is virtually non-existent—but Black Magic 2 dishes up more than enough weird nonsense to keep fans of cult oddities entertained.

Voodoo Dolls and Zombies "Dr. Shi Chen-Sheng" (Wei Tu Lin) is a physician in Singapore who becomes concerned about several cases of skin lesions and other mysterious illnesses that have no medical parallels or explanations. Convinced that it is black magic of some form he calls in a couple of medical experts by the names of "Dr. Chi Chung Peng" (Lung Ti) and his wife "Dr. Li Tsui-Ling" (Ni Tien) to see for themselves and give him their professional opinions. Meanwhile, an attractive dancer named "Hung Wa" (Terry Liu) is performing at a nightclub and after she is finished one of the patrons named "Chang Ta-Nien" (Hung Wei) approaches her and asks her out for a date. Yet even though she had promised to go out with him earlier she now decides to cancel their date and subsequently departs with another man named "Kang Cong" (Lieh Lo). Not long afterward we learn that both Hung Wa and Kang Cong are not what they appear to be. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film incorporates the old-school tradition of linking the creation of zombies to voodoo rather than a virus as found in the majority of zombie films today. And it works to a certain degree as I found the film to be quite entertaining-at least at first. Unfortunately, as the show progressed I noticed that the director (Meng Hua Ho) kept using the same voodoo techniques over and over again and it got rather redundant after a while. But even so I still found it worth the time spent to watch it and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.