... aka: Jungleritualer (Jungle Rituals)
... aka: Jungle Virgin Force
... aka: Jungle Virgin Force - Le assassine nude di Giacarta (Jungle Virgin Force: The Nude Killer of Jakarta)
Directed by:
Danu Umbara
Vine-swinging jungle gal Jelita (Lydia Kandou) lives so deep in the jungle (on some uncharted island in between Australia and New Guinea) that she's never made contact with any other tribe, let alone any civilized man. All she's had is her pet monkey to keep her company. That finally changes when she sees a half-dozen young women from another tribe bathing topless under a waterfall and saves them from a crocodile attack by leaping into the water and stabbing it to death. The thankful women befriend her and then take her back to their tribe. The tribe's queen decides that since Jelita is in possession of a glowing talisman (the "symbol of holy powers") that proves she was sent their by the Gods. The queen (Rita Zahara) attempts to make her their new ruler and protector, but a faction of detractors led by evil high priest / witch doctor H.I.M. Damsyik, decide to overthrow them. During a fight filled with plenty of stabbings and spearings, many of the tribes people get killed and the queen is stabbed and thrown over a cliff. Jelita however manages to escape back into the jungle.
Meanwhile in Jakarta, a group of college anthropology students; Haydar (Harry Capri), Larasati (Esther Sumampouw), the hot tempered John (Torro Margens) and comic relief Mat Solar (Mat Solar), plus journalist and photographer Maya (Nena Rosier), are organizing an expedition to the island. Even though their professor (Hadisyam Tahax) has already tried to discourage them from going (after all, it's located in the "triangle of death" and only a handful of explorers who've dared gone there have returned), he agree to help them with maps and such, so long as they don't tell anyone about the island's location or attempt to take a treasure that's rumored to be hidden there. The professor also hooks them up with a guide: A hunter named Bunyan (Alwi A.S.), who's spent years searching the jungles looking for his daughter, who's been missing since a plane crash there years earlier. I'm sure you already know who THAT is...
John's lover rats him out to an unscrupulous group of criminals headed by Doris (Enny Beatrice) and her blonde, FILA shirt-sporting sidekick Piet, who have also heard about the treasure. She and her men head on over to the professor's place to get the details and end up killing him, but Larasati gets hold of the map and runs off with it. A brawl ensues and then a car chase, which finds one of the cars crashing through a horse drawn buggy wedding caravan (!) and then blowing their car up. The students manage to catch their plane and fly off. They first make a pit stop at another island to meet up with Bunyan. From there, it's a long boat ride to the uncharted island, where they're immediately greeted by dangerous water rapids, crocodiles, snakes, tigers and, of course, the evil tribe. Doris, Piet and their group, who've paid off the pilot friend of the students to bring them there, show up soon after.
After everyone has arrived, the evil tribe start capturing and killing everyone off. After falling into some rapids and into the tribe's clutches, Larasati is tied upside down on a "torture pole," has her stomach sliced open and is then decapitated with an axe. There's also death by spear, boulder, arrow, shards of rock, someone falling into a pit of spikes, arms chopped off, a native woman melting down into a pool of what looks like strawberry jam and much more. One guy is shot with a laser, ripped apart and becomes the main course for a cannibal feast.
With everyone getting killed left and right, you'd figure the characters would have other things to worry about than their relationships, but no such luck. Jelita discovers that Bunyan is her father right before he dies from a spear wound. He's set plenty of money aside for her and his last wishes are for Haydar and company to take her back to civilization so she can get educated and live a normal life. Haydar finds himself falling for Jelita, which doesn't sit too well with Maya, who's also in love with him. John thinks this leaves an opening for him to put the moves on Maya. However, she's not interested, so he tries to rape her instead. Hoping to exploit this fracture in the group to get the map, Doris tries to seduce Haydar and her men get in good graces with John, whom Doris also tries to seduce, though successfully this time. Despite his earlier transgression, Maya eyes a possible partnership with her attempted rapist. Lots of backstabbing, fist fights and cat fights follow.
While all that's going on, the evil and mostly male black magic / cannibal tribe and a faction of mostly female outcasts splintered off from the original tribe but now under the guidance of a white magic practicing priestess, are at each other's throats. The high priestess and her girls conduct a ritual dance to weird electronic music that concludes with a snake getting its head cut off and a voodoo doll popping out of a bubbling pool of blood. The doll is then used to make the cannibal tribe's "general" (Jeffry Sani) spit out his tongue and fall over dead. And that means all-out war between the two groups, which finds lots of men (many of whom have sprouted large devil horns due to a spell!) and women running around in loincloths and fur bikinis fighting and killing one another. The city folks get involved and nearly everyone is killed either during the fight or when things start blowing up everywhere!
Too much going on? Too many characters? Too many side plots that never really get resolved because they should have never been included here to begin with? Yes, yes and more yes. Thankfully, the rapid pacing, energy and overall weirdness keep you from caring all that much. Putting aside the female Tarzan wannabe and the black magic stuff, this very much resembles one of those 70s / early 80s Italian jungle cannibal flicks at times, which makes perfect sense seeing how they were still churning those out around the same time this was made. There's a very high body count, a wide variety of different kills and lots of blood and gore being flung around, though nothing nearly as gruesome as what can be found in the more extreme examples of this genre. This also lacks the gratuitous nudity (the topless bathing scene is optically censored, leaving only a couple flashes of bare male ass) and real animal killing / torture (though there's a scene where an already-dead goat is butchered) of those films, and tonally comes off as more of a light, silly jungle horror adventure.
IMDb and many other websites currently have this title listed as a 1988 release, though that's clearly not the case. Film Indonesia lists it as a 1982 production and the copyright date is 1983. This was also out on home video in certain countries well before 1988. In 1984, it was given a VHS release in Denmark courtesy of Video International and under the new title Jungleritualer ("Jungle Rituals"), plus there was an 80s era VHS release in Japan by TCC Video. Japan also received an English-language DVD release with Japanese subs, though the print quality is terrible. Actually, per my knowledge ALL of the available prints for this film are bad.
And speaking of terrible quality, this made its inauspicious U. S. debut on Videoasia's Tales of Voodoo: Volume 1 two film set in 2006, where it was paired with the Indonesian women-in-prison film Hell Hole (1983; aka Escape from Hell Hole). In 2014, bootleggers Mutant Sorority Pictures also released a DVD that they claim is "digitally remastered" (not sure about those claims) and which lazily steals the poster for the Eva Arnaz rape-revenge vehicle Barang Terlarang (aka Commando Wild Cat aka I Want to Get Even aka Lady Exterminator aka Violent Killer).
★★1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment