Hong Kong Reviews Reviews

Film Review: Bewitched (1981) by Kuei Chih-hung

Fun and wild Hong Kong black magic movie

Few movements in the genre emerge as more uniquely localized to a central country than the Hong Kong scene. This started in 1975 with the aptly-named Black Magic from director Ho Meng-hua that focused on bizarre occult rituals, gross-out sequences of shock horror, and wild special effects. Despite reaching a zenith in the genre with the seminal The Boxer's Omen several years later, this earlier effort is no less impressive, enjoyable and outright revolting at times.

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Following the discovery of a dead body, police detective Bobby Wong () becomes intrigued by the story of chief suspect Stephen Lam Wai () who claims to have been possessed at the time of the murder. Traveling to Thailand to investigate the claims, a strange series of encounters begin that draw Wong to the same conclusion, that he himself has become possessed by a madman in order to carry out gruesome acts from beyond the grave under the control of Bon (), a woman who Lam Wai wooed but eventually scorned. Desperate to stop the events from continuing, he turns to a devout priest to perform the necessary rituals in order to protect himself.

There is quite a lot to like with “.” One of the many positives is that there's such a deranged and wild atmosphere present in this one due to the black magic cursing involved. The way the spells are enacted is quite intense and often creepy, being that they're carried about in one room. Here, all the different black magic relics are shown from the skulls, black candles, strange jars lining the walls, and the different pots and containers featuring all the ingredients to make their spells come to life. The way they include all the different objects, from the silver bells on the strings of the ceramic boxes to carving out the writing with the special tree-branch and the special altar where they preside over during all the special ranting and enacting their spells, all combine together to give this one a rather creepy and frightening atmosphere, which is what makes the film work as it does.

This also carries over to the rather fun curses that actually get played out. From the black marks on the body that continually spread across them to the different artifacts turning into animals and other objects being turned into lethal and rather dangerous elements to attack their victim, it becomes all the more effective. That is even before adding in the requisite vomiting up worms and maggots. Once it finally gets to the spectacular spiritual battle between the two sorcerers at the end, there's just such an insanely wild and fun time with the frenetic action enabling the two sides to engage in the battles against each other, as we get to see the dueling priests fire some truly outrageous spells at each other. Cursing pictures in order to cause painful sores to appear on the body, causing their equipment to crumble into dust at the merest touch, bringing objects in the room to attack the other and other activities, there's such a wild and crazy assortment of black magic that the film becomes a highly visceral experience on that alone.

Even the other finale, from Wong's battle to get free and how he reacts while under that control, makes this one quite fun. What makes all this sorcery work is the build-up exploring what happened to Lam Wai that will potentially happen to Wong. From his relationship with Bon that's quite fun and innocent to the strained way he interacts with his daughter amid the slow-building realization of his curse, the set-up to this one manages to work quite nicely. It gives “Bewitched” a burgeoning storyline necessary to really fuel the rest of the movie rather nicely. The only thing that doesn't really work is that there's the second affliction in the final moments rather than built up so that it really makes a rather strange inclusion. It comes off so suddenly and with no real purpose that this could easily have been removed without effect. Otherwise, there's not much to dislike.

An immensely enjoyable gross-out film that doesn't have much wrong about it, “Bewitched” manages to carry itself as a top-shelf entry in the genre even if it doesn't go to the extremes as later efforts.

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