DEVIL SORCERY (1988)



I watched DEVIL SORCERY last night. It's directed by Do Gong-Yue who also did BLOOD SORCERY two years previously. Like BLACK MAGIC 1 & 2, SEEDING OF A GHOST, CENTIPEDE HORROR, DEAD CURSE, and most of the other movies in the dark and nasty horror movie genre from Hong Kong in the 1980s it deals with black magic and a wizard who does evil deeds in his own favour. The wizard gone astray in DEVIL SORCERY was really a student of a good wizard but the good life went down the toilet for him when he decided to get it on with his master's wife, and when the good wizard came home unexpectedly he stabbed him and stole half of his magic gear. Anyway, it all takes a while to kick off but once it does it's a roller coaster ride that's for sure. Just like in CENTIPEDE HORROR there are scenes of a girl chucking up live centipedes with the rest of her dinner but in this one it's definitely in more gross detail. DEVIL SORCERY is in the same vein like those other flicks but it's easy to see it was made on a lower budget than the Shaw Brothers produced films (eg. Black Magic + Seeding) but don't let that put you off. It's pretty entertaining. The only version available is the DVD pictured here which comes to us from down Malaysia way. The company Dragon Jester have released quite a few Hong Kong horror movies that aren't released anywhere else on DVD. It's weird to think that the only HK releases of these films are on VHS and VCD, but not on DVD, and that you have to venture to Malaysia to get DVD releases of these old (and forgotten) HK horror movies. Oh well. Fortunately we have 1) internet shopping, and 2) the cool store Sensasian! :-) Not the best in the genre but pretty entertaining! The DVD is fullscreen, has Cantonese and Mandarin audio, and has optional English subtitles. The picture quality is atrociously bad. It looks like it's lifted from a VCD or VHS. But as I said; it's the only version there is so I can certainly live with that.

Watched this yesterday and it does take a while to get going but it's still an entertaining low budget "curse" film. ;)
I have a couple of questions though...
Where is this set?
I would think Malaysia as the student flees to Ipoh and a Malay police station can be spotted.
Also do you think there may be footage missing?
I really don't know how the girls ended up tied up after they left with those guys (the singer etc)... :)

I actually thought the picture quality was half decent btw. :lol:

The Malay DVD is heavily censored. The HK version features tons of nudity, all either obscured or gone in the Malay version.

What I didn't know when I wrote my review a few years back is that there is a HK LD that has the nudity in it (or so I'm told anyway). :ph43r:

It would be interesting to see that uncut version,maybe some parts of the movie would make more sense.
Also shower faucets keep turning up in this one,signalling some "good stuff" is coming up but most of the time it's censored or completely missing on the Malay dvd. :lol:

I checked and seems there's also a long oop Ocean Shores vcd (with burned in subs) of this one.

The HK LD does indeed have the nudity.

Picture quality on the LD is quite excellent, too.