Santet (1988)

... aka: Black Magic

... aka: Black Magic: Bringer of Death

... aka: Black Magic: The Science of Destroying Lives

... aka: Santet (Ilmu Pelebur Nyawa)

... aka: Witchcraft

Directed by:

Sisworo Gautama Putra

Mondo Macabro can't do it all by themselves, so let's take a second to thank Vinegar Syndrome for now also stepping into the ring to help fill in another Indonesian horror gap. This is the very first time this previously seldom-viewed title has been available in English here in America, and their 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative looks fantastic. It looks especially fantastic if you're anything like me and have already sat through countless awful-looking, non-subtitled VHS and VCD versions of similar films. While there's still a long ways to go when it comes to rescuing and restoring older Southeast Asian horror films, let's hope there are more releases just like this one in somebody's pipeline.

Santet ("Black Magic") is another collaborations between prolific director Sisworo Gautama Putra and horror queen Suzzanna, whose working relationship proved extremely fruitful throughout the 80s. How fruitful? Well, they also paired up for SUNDELBOLONG (1981), THE SNAKE QUEEN (1982), Sangkuriang (1982), Nyi Ageng, the Decoy Queen (1983), The Snake Queen's Wedding (1983), LAKE EERIE (1984), Awakening of the South Seas Queen (1985), Calon Arang, the Powerful Queen (1985), The Hungry Snake Woman (1986), The Night of Kliwon Friday (1986), Satu Suro Night (1988), Death-Spreading Heirloom (1990), Incarnation of the Snake Goddess (1990), Pact with the Forces of Darkness (1991) and The Queen of the South Sea (1991). Count this one and its sequel (yes, there was a sequel the following year, also now available from Vinegar Syndrome for the first time), and that gives us an impressive 17 horror films in just ten years. And that's not even counting a few other non-genre films they did, like their take on the legend of Samson and Delilah (1985), which may even be partially horror from the sounds of it, and the coming of age drama The Age of Turmoil (1986).

There potentially may have been even more than that had Putra not passed away at a relatively young age (54) in 1993. His passing also seemed to coincide with Suzzanna's semi-retirement, as she'd only appear in one other film afterward (2008's Hantu Ambulance), but that probably has more to do with the Indonesian film industry self-destructing in the 90s than Putra's departure. Suzzanna apparently also did some TV work here and there, including a soap opera in the early 2000s.

The setting is an isolated village called Karang Setan ("Satan's Coral"), where a lack of proper law enforcement means corruption is the order of the day. Bisman (I. Gusti Jagat Karana) is a fat, bumpy-and-cracked faced criminal who runs a gambling den / brothel / bar where all of the local hooligans like to hang out. His wife Parmi is always sick and thus cramping his style, so he decides to speed along her demise by tricking her into drinking pesticide, claiming it's medicine. Soon after, she has seizures, pukes up blood and falls over dead. To cover his tracks, Bisman falsely claims that local cleric Sarma (Novie Chandra), whose wife he covets, has cast a black magic spell on her. He gathers a posse of torch-carrying villagers and decides to go pay him a visit.

In actuality, Sarma is a kindly, moralistic and devout sort who runs a school with his wife, Katemi (Suzzanna), and condemns the use of black magic. Nevertheless, the men beat him up, drag him into the woods, cover him with gasoline and set him ablaze. Forced to watch her innocent husband being murdered, Katemi is then pulled into a hut and almost raped by Bisman. She manages to fight him off by squeezing his crotch from behind (!) and then flees into the jungle, where she spends the night. The following morning she follows a blackbird into some caves filled with giant mushrooms and runs across a crocodile with a human head, who announces herself as Nyi Angker (Joice Erna - BLACK MAGIC ANNIHILATION). She's the self-professed "Queen of Black Magic" and wants to recruit her visitor as an apprentice / heir.

Katemi is resistant at first. After all, she's Muslim and black magic is frowned upon, but Nyi Angker (who sheds her crocodile skin and takes on a normal human look at certain times of the month) can be quite persuasive. There are three steps Katemi must complete to become a powerful black magic practitioner. First, she has to find and then eat a placenta from a newborn baby. Second, she has to spend all night bathing and meditating in a pond with crocodiles and avoid getting eaten. Finally, she has to strip naked and walk through her village during a full moon. As she's working on step #2, two of Bisman's goons end up getting eaten by crocodiles while trying to capture her, which only further puts her on Bisman's bad side.

As Katemi is doing her training, Bisman keeps busy sex trafficking kidnapping virgins and conspiring to overthrow the current leader, Chief Markum (K. Arief Raduma), who he already pays off under the table. Potentially throwing a wrench into their plan is the arrival of Markum's pious son, Achmad Pramuja (Jeffry "Daniel" [Waworuntu]), from his studies in the city. However, a couple of Bisman's henchmen (Karsiman Gada, Belkiez Rachman) are able to get to him first and trick Markum into drinking poisoned coffee. Bisman again blames the death on black magic, frames both Katemi and Nyi Angker as the responsible parties and uses it as an excuse to appoint himself as the new village chief; promising to make it a priority to hunt down and execute the two witches.

While this black magic romp isn't all smooth sailing, it mostly makes up for that by featuring all kinds of insane things you're not likely to see anywhere else. A large frog causes a man's crotch to burst, a snake enters a mouth, gives birth and causes a stomach to explode with spurting blood and baby snakes, eels break their way out of legs and are pulled out of ears and a breast is ripped off and squirts milk in someone's face! There's also a werewolf, numerous people getting burned alive, a super-stretchy long tongue, fireballs and perhaps the strangest and least erotic "erotic" scene in recent memory; a Vaseline smeared Adam and Eve garden fantasy with cardboard flowers, a papier-mâché volcano, fog, bubbles and neck stroking that ends with a nipple getting bitten off (!!) After plenty of violence and gore, plus some some sleaze / nudity (courtesy of a single body double used for both female stars), this then tries to justify itself with a religious / moral message about the power of prayer and Allah at the very end!

Not surprisingly, there's also plenty of humor along the way, or should I say attempts at humor. Skinny, giraffe-necked H.I.M. Damsyik is featured in a single scene as a con artist trying to sell evil-repelling trinkets to naïve, superstitious villagers. Getting more screen time are a pair of bumbling, inept security guards named Bokir (played by Bokir) and Dorman (Dorman Borisman), who are the closest thing this village has to police, which certainly explains a lot. Bokir has a couple of cute / silly scenes with his basket weaver wife Siti (Bu Siti) and performs an entire song wearing an over-sized pair of underwear during a 5-minute-long random musical interlude that erupts into a village dance party where someone carries around a sign that says "Bokir: Rambo IV (Rambutan Bogor)" and then Bokir transforms into Rambo (!?) There appears to be some kind of inside joke here that went right over my head. 

What harms this film most is the under-utilization of the Nyi Angker character. She's off-screen a lot, and for long periods of time, while this focuses mostly on the scummy misdeeds of Bisman and his men. They're shown in such a bad light that Nyi Angker, who's mostly around to facilitate Katemi's revenge, actually comes off as not so bad in the process. That results in an unsatisfying finale when she's brought back in the last few minutes and treated like the final boss. Even worse, Suzzanna doesn't even really factor into the finale of her own film and has to be white knighted by the boring, unlikable and self-righteous Pramuja (who's played about as blandly and woodenly as possible by Waworuntu). I ended up rooting for Nyi Angker.

The director also made the non-Suzzanna PRIMITIVES (1980), SATAN'S SLAVE (1980), THE WARRIOR (1981) and WOLF (1981). Prior to the new Blu-ray, I found only an Indonesian VCD and a Malaysian VHS release for this title but nothing else, so I doubt even most folks in Asia had access to this one.

★★1/2

Perawan Rimba (1983)

... aka: Jungle Girl

... 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