Eko Eko Azarak II: Birth of the Wizard (1996)

Directed by Shimako Sato

Country of Origin: Japan

In this sequel/prequel, we see how our favorite witch Misa Kuroi (Kimika Yoshino) gained her occult powers. In a flashback to 1880, a village is slaughtered by an evil force. Saiga (Wataru Shihôdô), the only survivor, is cursed with eternal life so that he can guard over the corpse of an evil woman who brought death to his village. In modern day Tokyo, some dang fool archeologists find the lady mummy and remove the ceremonial dagger from her head and -boom!- the evil is awakened. It’s one of those body-hopping evils made famous by fan favorite, Jason Goes to Hell (1993).

Cut to Misa and her pals having a party where the cheap beer flows like wine and she’s just a normal high school girl with a crush on some bozo. The party turns into a bloodbath because of course, Misa is descended from a powerful magical family. Before she gets gotten by the evil, Saiga who barely looks a day over 140 years old, shows up and gets her the heck out of there. Now the chase is on and it’s up to Saiga to awaken Misa’s latent abilities and teach her how to fight.

While ditching the perversity of the first film, Eko Eko Azarak II has a lot going for it. For starters, it’s action-packed, somehow more ridiculous, and fairly bloody. Human beings are like very full of a lot of blood, y’all. There’s more CGI fun but a lot less adventurous in scope than the original. While it may be the old Tokyo Shock DVD, the film is very dark and got a little tiring for my eyes. But you youngsters with your night vision apps on your phones probably won’t have any problem.

Shihôdô of Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) makes for an interesting lead dude and it’s nice to see Yoshino reprising her role. Veteran character actor Hideyo Amamoto of King Kong Escapes (1967) shows up as Saiga’s master. While this prequel is a worthy follow-up to the first Eko Eko Azarak film, it is just a wee bit of a disappointment but is definitely worth checking out if you’re feeling it. I’m starting to wonder just how the third film in this franchise turned out…

And I just found out that over in Japan, there was a video game based on the first movie. Here's a walkthrough over on YouTube.