Directed by:
A. (Acok) Rachman
A dispute over an inheritance (money and a mansion) drives a wedge between Emma Gatot (Yenny Farida) and her stepson Rudi Sahyudi (Johan Saimima). Rudi and his teenage sister Ria ("Deasy Damasari" / Desy Ratnasari), who actually wants Emma to get her share despite Rudi's wishes and a court order giving them possession of it, end up getting everything while Emma is screwed over, has to move out and threatens to sue them. After several heated arguments, both siblings and Rudi's fiancée, Henny (Alba Fuad), are plagued by bad dreams, hallucinations and strange, ghostly occurrences. Henny has a nightmare-inside-of-a-nightmare where she's stalked in a lumber yard by a killer and then (in the film's best scene by far) locked inside a bathroom as the bath, sink and toilet start overflowing, water shoots out from between the shower tiles and the room quickly fills up with water. At the hospital where she works, Ria freaks out after she envisions a newborn baby is a Maraschino cherry-eyed mutant and then almost drowns after an invisible force levitates her and starts thrashing her around in the swimming pool. And Rudi has an encounter with a possessed wardrobe that knocks him to the floor with strong gusts of wind, pelts him with clothes and makes a photo of his late parents go up in flames. And that's just the start of it.
Blood miraculously appears on Rudi's forehead, which leads him to hallucinating pulling his entire face off. While watching her brother and his fiancée making out through a keyhole (?), Ria sees them as lumpy-faced ghouls. Henny, who's become reluctant to marry Rudi and move into the home due to the recent horrific developments there, is almost scalped by her hair dryer, pelted by floating figurines, levitated on the bed, scratched up, has her clothes shredded by an invisible force and is then left hung outside the window by her wrists.
When Henny is rushed off to the hospital, Ria and her boyfriend Johan get back from their date and head upstairs to mess around. Instead, he gets thrown out the window to his death while she's tossed around, rolled up and down the wall, menaced on a levitating bed and then dies after getting thrown into the ceiling fan. In a scene that directly rips off a similar scene from the previous year's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5, Rudi's buddy Broto (Alfian) is attacked by the own motorcycle he happens to be riding, which sticks wires under his hands, legs and face.
As it transpires, Emma has teamed up with a gigolo / criminal low life named Leo, who has hooked her up with some kind of black magician who's creating the "haunting" and killing off those standing in Emma's way of getting her hands on the home. To counteract that, Rudi goes to shaman Mrs. Resko for help and there's a minor white vs. black magic duel between the two the involves pink lighting, spitting up blood, someone getting crushed under a car and lots of crazy editing. A couple of detectives get involved and there's a scene at a discotheque, lots of Vaseline-smeared POV shots prowling around the house and an attempt at a Carrie-like shock at the end. For some reason (probably because this would barely be 70 minutes otherwise), five minutes of recycled clips from the film we've just watched are re-run at the end.
While many of the supernatural and horror scenes are pretty fun here, this spends too much time with corny, narrated romantic interludes plus a bunch of coy "sexy" scenes. You may think throwing in some sex here and there may not be such a bad thing, but you haven't seen just how long, pointless and drawn out it can be here. Besides, we can't forget that this is an Indonesian production from the 80s and their soft-core is almost always really soft as in there's a lot of bare shoulders, under the covers rolling around and close-ups of kissing yet no nudity whatsoever. Hell, Fuad even spends five whole minutes nude during her big shower nightmare but wears flesh covered pasties and underwear and the filmmakers shoot it in such a way that they never really show anything. The ladies are frequently clad in bras, panties, nighties and bathing suits and the voluptuous Yenny Farida makes for one sexy stepmom in her collection of body-hugging mini-skirts.
There were several VCD releases for this one in Asia, though it's never been made available in English. At least a decent quality widescreen print is now available, which was likely taken from some HD TV broadcast.
★★
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