Tamu Tengah Malam (1989)

... aka: Midnight Guest

Directed by:

Atok Suharto

If you think your love life is a mess, spending 80 minutes with these folks should make you feel a little better about that. Wealthy, middle-aged Ningsih (Ully Artha) falls passionately in love with younger skirt-chaser Kadir (Hengky Tornando), but their doomed romance is rife with issues, starting with the fact she's married to Sulaiman (Jack Maland) and has a young daughter, Mirna. To solve that issue, she promptly kicks both of them out of the house and moves her new man in instead. However, Kadir is a player and isn't content with just one woman. He's been going behind Ningsih's back with a youthful widow named Suryani (Yurike [Prastica]). With his sugar mama supposedly gone for the evening, Kadir sneaks Suryani over, but Ningish comes home early and catches the two of them in the act. 

The spurned adulteress then goes into a rage. She throws a vase at Suryani's head, bites a chunk of flesh off of Kadir's arm and spits it on the ground (!) and then runs around the room frantically trying to skewer both of them with a spear. That ends when Kadir flings a machete across the room into her back and then Suryani finishes her off with the spear. The two then hide the body in a secret room in the cellar. However, before dying, Ningish promised to return from the grave to get revenge... and that she does!

Years later, Kadir and Suryani have married. The bookish, shy and now-teenage Mirna (Dian Nitami) is friends with the wilder and more rebellious Lisa (Sally Marcellina), who just so happens to be Suryani's daughter from her previous marriage, though both girls are oblivious to everything their parents have been up to. Mirna and Lisa get together at Lisa's mansion with some friends to study for an exam, where a hidden passageway and a strange statue made of green crystals, rumored to be some kind of vessel to summon demons, are found in the basement. The teens hold a séance using the crystal, which ends up unleashing Ningsih's vengeful spirit. Lisa is possessed, throws everyone around the room, tries to strangle a guy, spits green gunk in someone's face and then passes out. A doctor is called in and claims the incident was caused by stress from studying too hard (!!)

Both Mirna and Suryani are plagued by nightmares, with the former seeing her late mother as a leyak / leák (flying severed head with entrails attached) and the latter envisioning herself trapped in a jail cell with a worm that transforms into a snake with Ningsih's laughing head attached. While that's going on, Kadir's long-ago-healed arm wound opens back up again and starts bleeding. But it's the innocent Lisa who seems to get the bad end of the deal for most of the film. After hearing the ghost calling to her over the radio, she finds herself possessed yet again. Her face turns green, she does 360 degree spins with her head, turns holy water into blood, pukes some more and then thrusts her hand into a shaman's stomach, rips out his guts and throws him out of the upstairs window. That's followed by many more attacks on others. Another shaman is eventually called in to try to exorcise the spirit.

This alternates between wanting to be taken seriously and being just plain (intentionally) silly; almost as if it's trying to send-up The Exorcist, which it knowingly recycles plot points from, at times. As is customary with older Indonesian genre films, there are some grating comedy elements interjected into the mix, mostly centering around maid Mina (Lina Budiarti) and a girl-crazy, ass-pinching, always-horny chauffeur (Mandra Bokir) who will probably die a virgin. I'm sure these are included as a means to break up the tension but, as is often the case, they turn out to be the low points of the film. That said, at least these goofy moments are kept sidelined and aren't allowed to completely take over the film like you'd probably see if this were made in Hong Kong or Thailand at around the same time.

Aside from that, much of the rest of this is pretty great. Well, maybe not great, but it sure is entertaining and a lot of fun to watch! Remember that leyak I mentioned from Mirna's nightmare? Thankfully it turns out to be Ningsih's usual ghostly form so we get lots of scenes of a head flying around in the basement attacking people. Better yet, it gets to do so with a gigantic stretchy tongue that's used to subdue or even kill people! In one scene, it strangles a guy and then rips his head off after both of his arms get pulled off! During another amazing scene, it sprouts a small spinning saw blade at the tip (!) that's used to bore through a victim's head.

There are lots of other bizarre moments to be found here, like a scene where possessed Lisa's top half detaches from her bottom while the chauffeur tries to feel up her legs. Kadir's arm wound eventually sprouts a green snake, footage from the original murder is replayed on a TV set and the ghost writes "Hari Pembalasam" ("Judgment Day") on the wall in blood and then goes to a funeral, where she lounges on top of a gravestone wearing a white miniskirt and giant white sunglasses, admiring her own work. The whole thing has this really bizarre blue / green tint to it, though I can't tell if that's the way it was filmed or if the print is in need of color correction. I'm assuming it's the latter.

This was written by Tindra Rengat (director of the Indo cult classic MIRACLE BABY), who also shows up in cameo. The director made quite a few other obscure genre films, including Perempuan Malam / "Night Virgin" (1987), Putri Kuntilanak / THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER (1988), Melacak dendam / "Tracking Revenge" (1989; an uncredited remake of NINJA III: THE DOMINATION that I really need to see!), Misteri di Malam Pengantin / "Wedding Night Mystery" (1993), Misteri Permainan Terlarang / "Mystery of the Forbidden Game" (1993) and Roh: The Evil Spirit (2006).

I'm not aware of any official home video releases outside of Asian VCDs, and this has also never been available in an English-friendly version. The widescreen print I watched was snatched from the Flix channel.

★★1/2

Misteri dari Gunung Merapi (Penghuni Rumah Tua) (1989)

... aka: Misteri dari Gunung Merapi, Episode 1: Penghuni Rumah Tua

... aka: Mystery of Mount Merapi

... aka: Mystery of Mount Merapi: The Old House's Inhabitants

... aka: Mystery of Volcanoes

Directed by:

L. (Lilik) Sudjio

There are movies that are all over the place and then there's this one. Yeesh! A volcano erupts and out shoots old wizard Ki Jabat (Piet Pagau) sitting atop a glowing, floating piece of basalt. He flies over to his young peasant disciple, Sembara (Fendy Pradana), with a proposition. 40 days from now, he's to enter the dangerous "Forbidden Forest" to increase his knowledge of supernatural powers. If he's successful (and survives), he'll be promoted from pauper to prince. Against his grieving widowed mother's wishes, Sembara accepts the challenge. He'll not only leave her behind, but also his lover, Farida (Ida Iasha). The two are in a secret Romeo and Juliet-style relationship where Farida's parents, Rosmina (Rina Hassim) and Rasiman (Asrul Zulmi), disapprove of them being together and are willing to go to great lengths to keep them apart. 

After spying on the young couple in the woods, the parents send some of their thugs out with orders to kill. Sembara is beaten, slashed with swords and has a machete stuck in his back but, before the gang can administer the final death blow, they're scared off by a black panther. Sembara removes the machete out and passes out. Instead of treating him like fancy feast, the ferocious feline lies down next to him and starts licking his wounds. The thugs report back to the parents that Sembara has been eaten, which clearly doesn't sit too well with Farida, especially after she discovers her parents ordered a hit out on him. Sembara's only crime was coming from a poor family and the evil parents merely viewed him as a roadblock in the plan to hitch their daughter to Mardian (Baron Hermanto), whom they believe is of good stock and from a good family. As we will soon see, that's not the case!

What the parent's couldn't have foreseen is that the cat they think chowed down on their unwanted future son-in-law is actually a shapeshifting creature with magical abilities named Datuk Panglima Kumbang (Gino Makasutji) and the tongue bath he'd given Sembara has completely healed / revived him. Datuk, who also goes by the name Tiger Man, has been assigned to help aid Sembara by the wizard. He also passes along a special ability that enables our hero to hear voices from afar in the wind, like Farida grieving for him back in her home and further instructions from the wizard.

Ki Jabat swings back by on his volcano rock long enough to send a boulder after Sembara, which forces him into a cave. There, he finds a giant disembodied arm lashing an old woman with a "lightning whip." He's able to rescue the woman and get the whip away from the arm, which becomes another tool in his arsenal. Next up, he's trapped inside some glass box that looks like a giant ice cube, which he easily breaks out of using his new whip. This grants him a crystal that he can use to form similar cages around his opponents. After inhaling in some smoke, he's then given the "fog blanket" power that enables him to transform into fog to sneak into tight spaces, like under doors and through keyholes.

After being gone for quite some time (dig that tropical version of time lapse using banana-ripening) but with his training regime now complete, Sembara returns to his village, where he's greeted by his mother (Nani Widjaja), and his best friend, Bachir (E.K. Soemadinata). However, he's shocked to discover that Farida, who had promised to wait for his return, is now set to marry Mardian. Unbeknownst to him, Farida's parents have given her a black magic concoction that's made her swear him off in favor of Mardian. Confused and defeated, Sembara returns home, but vows to find out exactly what's going on.

Immediately following the wedding ceremony, Farida is not only horrified to discover she's now married to Mardian, but has even more reason for alarm when her honeymoon turns into a horror show and her new groom suddenly makes a werewolf-like transformation (!) into full-fledged tiger in their bedroom! While she manages to escape, her mother Rosmina isn't so lucky. The tiger attacks and bites her before escaping into the woods. Now infected with the tiger virus herself, Rosmina also transforms into a cat and runs off.

After murdering a young woman by a lake, Mardian finds himself seeking shelter in a huge, seemingly-abandoned, gated mansion, which very well could be the most brightly lit and inappropriately dressed "old dark house" of all time. Destroyed furnishings in one room reassemble themselves before cackling, ugly witch Mak Lampir (Farida Pasha) makes her presence known. She informs him that she's merely the caretaker there and the home is actually owned by Nyai Kembang (Yurike Prastica). Trapped in a cellar with rats and skeletons, Mardian decides to go through with a blood pact quickie "marriage" to Nyai Kembang. Unbeknownst to him, there are actually sort of two Nyai Kembang's. One is the dead Nyai, a bloodless though well-preserved corpse who lies in bed awaiting a blood transfusion that will return her to life and the other (the one Mardian has been interacting with) is her wandering spirit.

Mak Lampir manages to hypnotize not only Mardian but also Farida, who she lures to the mansion because she needs fresh virgin blood for a ceremony. The witch chains them both up in a hidden underground room / torture chamber / sacrificial altar that can only be accessed by going through a Jacuzzi bath (?) There, she introduces them to the skeletal remains of both Nyai and her former lover, Adolf Peter (Muni Cader), while a giant stuffed bat with glowing eyes sits and squawks in the background (!) This leads to an attempt to transfer souls from the deceased to the new hosts, but it's all interrupted by our hero, who engages in a lengthy and wild kung fu fight with the witch that's better watched by you than described by me!

This nearly 2-hour-long Indonesian whack-fest starts out as your standard fantasy-adventure 'hero on a quest' type of movie and then becomes a star-crossed lovers family drama of sorts and then gets all were-catty before finally settling into a haunted house romp and the whole thing is punctuated with frequent martial arts, sword fighting and flying-around-and-flipping-in-the-air-on-visible-wires scenes with all kinds of fun little touches tossed in along the way. It's quite something... something every bit as entertainingly zany as it is mind numbing!

The ads for this one promised a "Super colossal film with sophisticated tricks processed in Hollywood (America)!" In reality, the effects are nowhere near up to late 80s Hollywood standards. Visual effects look more like what you'd see in very low budget films produced at the beginning of the previous decade. Not surprisingly, the credited U.S. studio (Image Transform Inc. out of North Hollywood) had been around since 1971. There's also some very crude and poorly-executed stop-motion work (a decomposing corpse with chunks of pink Play-doh flaking off is especially bad) and hilariously unconvincing stuffed panther and tiger heads mixed with newly-shot tiger footage and stock footage for the cat stuff. However, it's all rather fitting in this particular context, with the wonky fx being a good fit for the the slapdash nature of the rest of the film. Robert Santoso also deserves a shout out for doing a nice job with the action and fight choreography here, especially in the final fight scene.

Based on a radio play of the same name by Asmadi Syafar (who is given a story credit here), this was followed by two immediate sequels. The first of these; Misteri dari Gunung Merapi II (Titisan Roh Nyai Kembang) / "The Mystery of Mount Merapi II: Incarnation of the Spirit of Nyai Kembang)" (1990), is announced in the end credits and features most of the same principle characters seen here. The second sequel was Misteri dari Gunung Merapi III (Perempuan Berambut Api) / "Mystery of Mount Merapi III: Fire-Haired Woman" (also released in 1990). All three were made by the same director, writer, producers and crew. There was also a Merapi TV series that lasted three seasons, spread out from 1998 to 2005, as well as Merapi books released.

Cast standout Pasha, who seems to be having a ball playing the evil witch, was able to reprise the role in both sequels, the TV series and in the 2012 horror-comedy Mama Minta Pulsa (2012). Sadly, she passed away of complications from COVID-19 early last year at the age of just 68. There were numerous VCD and DVD releases for the title, but only in Indonesia to my knowledge. None of them come with English subs.

★★★