Rural sorcerer Shan Jianmi (Ku Feng) terrorizes the populace by selling his evil abilities to anyone offering the right price. When a young couple suffer a horrible death from one of Shan's curses, benevolent seer Furong (Koo Man-chung) engages him in a magical battle but is not quite able to vanquish his rival. Handsome construction engineer Xu Nuo (Ti Lung) is coveted by rich widow Luo Yin (Tanny Tien Ni), but he continually rejects her advances. Meanwhile, gold digger Liang Jiajie (Lo Lieh) covets Yin and strikes a deal with Shan to cast a love spell. When Yin realizes what has been done to her, she decides that Shan's magic is the answer to getting Nuo into her arms. The spell is effective and Nuo walks out on his wife (Lily Li Li-li) during their wedding reception. She soon realizes what has happened and enlists the aid of Furong to save Nuo and destroy Shan.

While time has blunted its shocks somewhat, Ho Meng-hua's BLACK MAGIC remains an enjoyably gruesome thriller. Shan's spells utilize unholy ingredients like human milk, blood, flayed skin, severed heads, and an unidentified putrescence drawn from a freshly exhumed corpse. There are other charming elements like self-mutilation (during the initial attack by Furong, Shan slices open his tongue with a dagger and uses the blood to launch a counter spell), people disintegrating into masses of putrid flesh, maggots, and bone in a matter of seconds (unconvincing lap dissolves), and one especially unlucky victim is left with worms crawling around under her skin! The soap opera level romantic conflicts, thankfully, do not slow the film down to any great degree and the cast (which also includes Lin Weitu, Yueh Hua, Chen Ping, and Norman Tsui Siu-keung) is as believable as one could expect under the circumstances. Ho's in-name-only 1976 sequel, BLACK MAGIC 2, features Lo Lieh as the spellcaster and offers even more gruesome diversion. It was originally due on DVD from Intercontinental in the fall but has been dropped from this year’s release schedule.