Ti Lung stars as construction worker Xu Nuo, who is the object of desire for his sexy millionaire boss Luo Yin (Ni Tien); however, despite the obvious attractions (horny woman hot for his body and bags of cash into the bargain), Xu Nuo remains faithful to his fiancé, teacher Quming (Lily Li)—at least until the desperate Luo visits evil sorcerer Sha Jianmai and pays him to whip her up a love potion...
Legendary Hong Kong martial arts studio Shaw Brothers had dabbled in supernatural horror before, producing spiritual romance movies, but it wasn't until 1975 that they started to embrace their trashier side, with Ho Meng Hua's Black Magic, a tale of evil sorcery and sex that introduced some of the more exploitative elements that would become staples of the genre in the years to come.
With Sha Jianmai's magic requiring such bizarre ingredients as a severed head, snake venom, a freshly exhumed corpse, rice that has been applied to a woman's vagina, severed fingers, centipedes, human breast milk, blood, hair and footprints trapped in mud, and the result of his spells being uncontrollable lust or sudden death, viewers can rest assured that this entertaining slice of wackiness delivers plenty of blood, gore, nudity and other assorted deviancy.
This being the first of its kind, it might not be quite as relentlessly nutzoid or as extreme as later, similarly themed films like Seeding of a Ghost, Corpse Mania or The Boxer's Omen, but it definitely has enough moments of madness to make it worthwhile, the action culminating with a particularly funny magical battle on a building site between Sha Jianmai and a benevolent magician, whose weapons include a skull emblazoned laser mirror, a shrunken head, and magical blue streaks of lightning.
