Almohadón de plumas (1988)

... aka: Feather Cushion

... aka: Feather Pillow

Directed by:

Ricardo Islas

This was made by the same fella who'd just done the ultra low-budget shot-on-video vampire film CROWLEY (1987). Since I already wrote a bit about him on that review, I'll give you the Cliffs Notes version here: Islas was a horror-movie-loving teenager living in Uruguay, a low population country (around 3 million when this was made) that didn't have much of a film industry to speak of. Still, he didn't let that stop him from making his own camcorder-shot features, which appear to have only been shown on TV in his home country. Islas churned out quite a few of these in the late 80s into the mid 90s (including a Crowley sequel) before relocating to the U.S., where he continues to make ultra low budget horror films to this day. This one is an adaptation of a short story (a very short one) of the same name by Horacio Quiroga, who's sometimes referred to as "The Edgar Allan Poe of Latin America" and was born in Uruguay but spent most of his professional career working in Argentina. El almohadón de plumas was first published back in 1917 in a collection of eighteen short stories from the author titled Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte ("Tales of Love, Madness and Death"). Though he's mostly unknown here in America, apparently his work is frequently praised in Spanish-speaking countries.

The cheap-looking title screen and opening wobbly shots around a curio shop looking at dolls, masks and the titular pillow set to synth music is oddly charming, but we're also immediately slapped right in the face that this is an amateur home movie. The camerawork is shaky, the videography is sometimes blurry, everything is blindingly bright in the day yet too dark at night and there's almost no attention whatsoever paid to making sure we can actually hear what the actors are saying in the first scene. As our protagonist is discussing some kind of construction deal with his colleague Antonio (Richard Perlas) the audio is muffled and voices are drowned out by passing cars. Cars can even sometimes be heard in some of the scenes taking place indoors and a faint hissing sound is present over most of the dialogue from relying on the camcorder's built-in mic.

The story centers around Jordan (played by the director) and Alicia (Norma Morgan), former college sweethearts who have just gotten married, yet sleep in separate bedrooms. He's so preoccupied with work that he usually brings it home with him and it seems like it's all he can ever talk about. She doesn't seem to have a career or much to do aside from sleeping a lot. Alicia has recently purchased a fancy red feather pillow with a curious, hand-painted design on it (a six-pointed star with an eyeball in the middle) that she seems to be pleased with.

Alicia starts getting headaches and passing out. A doctor is called in and recommends she change her diet. However, her issues continue and she starts getting even worse. Woken up by a noise, she thinks she sees a black-clad figure lurking around their home and follows it into the cellar, where a ping pong ball eyed woman with rotten teeth charges at her. After hearing his wife screaming, Jordan rushes down to the cellar to find her unconscious. Back to the doctors they go. This time they run some more tests and question whether she's on drugs, vomiting blood and / or suffering from "nasal or vaginal discharge" (?!) They finally come to the conclusion she's having hallucinations brought on from anemia and recommend she get more rest. No problem there. All this chick ever seems to do is lie around in bed! Nevertheless, Jordan has his sister Nancy (Beatriz Rossi) come stay with them to help around the house so Alicia has even less to do.

Further encounters with the mysterious lady follow, which leads to more screaming and more passing out, plus dramatic physical changes like dark under eye circles, paleness, rapid loss of weight, rapid loss of blood and small sores on her face that resemble bug bites. After the doctors assure Jordan there's nothing to worry about, Alicia suddenly passes away in her sleep, just five days after first becoming sick. The doctors complete their analysis postmortem and reveal that she had been drained of her blood by something of a parasitic nature.

Considering what medium was used to make this, the unavoidable pratfalls of using said medium and the fact very little money was spent here, this showcases enough care, talent and ambition to keep it enjoyable if you can tolerate zero budget videotaped horror. Though there are awkward, bland and / or technically inept moments sprinkled throughout, a surprising number of scenes are professionally staged, paced and edited, to the point where you sometimes actually forget about this being a home movie. It's almost as if scenes were (gasp!) planned out by the director in advance to the point he may have actually (double gasp!) storyboarded them. Faults and all, I genuinely appreciated the effort that went into this, especially when compared directly to most other SOV horrors from this same time period.

This is also one of those instances where I don't recommend reading the source material before seeing the movie. You can breeze through that in just a couple of minutes afterward like I did, but watching the movie version play out with no knowledge of what's going to happen offers up some surprises you won't be getting if you familiarize with it beforehand. The film does a pretty nice job respectfully staying faithful to the story while also elaborating upon it, especially adding an ambiguous element about the source of the pillow that sends it into faintly supernatural territory.

There are a number of other filmed versions of the same story. It was adapted by Mexican filmmaker Alicia Violante in 1990 (which appears to have been a student film), was the subject of Cuban and Chilean shorts in, respectively, 2000 and 2007, was an episode of the Argentinian TV series Fantasmagorias in 2018 and an episode of the Paraguayan TV series Relatos Clásicos de Misterio y Terror in 2020. There's also Japanese TV movie version from 2022 and it's been featured on several Spanish-language podcasts. To my knowledge, this particular version has never been given an official home video release, nor has it ever been released with English subtitles.

★★1/2

De vlieg (1985)

... aka: Fly, The

Directed by:

Hans Heijnen

A year before David Cronenberg made his hit remake of the 1958 Vincent Price classic, we got another fly film not many know about. This one's a 19- minute short from the Netherlands and, unlike the other, more famous Fly horror properties, it does not involve a human turning into an insect monster. Instead, this is a black comedy dealing with normal-sized flies and just how bloody irritating they can be.

I would say the bachelor protagonist (Hans Beijer, who also had a small role in Dick Maas' slasher / mystery Amsterdamned) is a bit of a slob, but seeing how he has dishes piled up on both his oven and his sink and leaves food sitting out until it's festering with maggots, I'd say he's a major slob. As he's sitting down at the table with a newspaper and his breakfast, a fly swarms around his hand and lands on his arm. He hits it with the newspaper. Carry on. As he tries to eat, he hears the same fly buzzing about but can't find it. He goes for a pat of butter, but finds the fly sitting on top. That causes him to knock over a coffee cup. He attempts to blow the fly off the butter but it doesn't budge until he starts swatting his hands around.

Oh well, time to get some work done... well, except this guy's a photographer and the fly decides it's going to ruin all of his shots by landing directly on his camera lens and then refusing to get off. Seeing how swatting it has already failed, the man brings out the heavy artillery: a vacuum cleaner. Somehow, the fly manages to avoid getting sucked up. And it also manages to survive being lured into food traps utilizing strawberry jam and rotting meat and getting smashed with a flyswatter several times and roasted with a lighter. Is this thing even for real? Or is there something else going on here?

This isn't poorly made or anything (there's some OK camerawork and a few fly POV shots thrown in), it just isn't particularly clever and offers up too few surprises, though the last few seconds kind of deliver one. I had much more fun making the poster for this than I did watching it. The director would go on to a career as a documentary filmmaker.

★★

Ratu Ilmu Hitam (1981)

... aka: Black Magic
... aka: Black Magic III
... aka: Black Magic Queen
... aka: Black Magic Terror
... aka: Exorcisme noir (Black Exorcism)
... aka: Queen of Black Magic
... aka: Queen of the Black Arts
... aka: Ratu Santet (The Queen of Witchcraft)

Directed by:
L. (Lilik) Sudjio

One of the only Indonesian horror films from this time to receive any kind of theatrical distribution here in America, this was first falsely promoted as a sequel to Shaw Brothers' Black Magic films. One of the early advertised titles was, in fact, Black Magic III. Because someone had actually bothered to dub it into English, it was likewise an anomaly becoming one of the only Indonesian horror films to receive VHS distribution in the U.S.; something it would repeat in the DVD era with a 2008 Mondo Macabro release. The film played at Cannes in 1982 and was released in many other countries, including the UK, France, Japan and Spain. That makes it easily one of Indonesia's most accessible and widely-seen genre films. The only other pre-1990 film I can think of that eclipses it is the delightfully bonkers LADY TERMINATOR (1989), which has (deservedly) gone of to a large cult following.

In Indonesia, the film was a big theatrical hit and one of the highest grossing films of its year. It is also noteworthy as the film that redirected star Suzzanna into a series of horror roles throughout the 80s. Though this wasn't her first genre film (her horrorography goes all the back to 1971), it was the success of this particular performance that typecast her in similar films that she then used as a springboard to become her country's reigning queen of horror. Not only popular with audiences, Queen was also successful with critics and received five nominations at the Indonesian Film Festival (the countries most prestigious and coveted film award), including Best Actress (Suzzanna), Supporting Actor (W.D. Mochtar), Cinematography (Asmawi), Editing (Endang Muksin Hamzah) and Art Direction (the multi-talented El Badrun, who also did the special effects).

Someone is dead set on ruining the marriage ceremony of Kohar (Alan Nuary) and Baedah (Siska Widowati) and that someone is using black magic to accomplish their goal. Bean sprouts fester with maggots, an uncommonly strong wind tears down decorations, a thunderstorm moves in, a villager levitates and the terrified bride-to-be has hallucinations that her future hubby is a skeleton, the best men are disfigured mutants and strings of flowers are snakes. A witch doctor is called in to help, but he's slammed on the ground over and over again by an invisible demon until he's dead. Kohar instantly blames Murni (Suzzanna), whom he once had a romantic relationship with. If you choose to call it that. After taking her virginity and promising to marry her, he dumped her for Baedah; the not-so-virtuous daughter of the wealthiest and most powerful man in the village. Murni, on the other hand, is merely the daughter of poor widow Zaida (Sofia W.D.). Still, she fell in love with him and is now a heartbroken woman who may have fallen over to the dark side to get revenge.

Without any actual proof of who the culprit is (hint: it's NOT the innocent and devoutly-religious Murni), Kohar gathers together a torch-carrying mob of villagers to go after her. They beat her and her mother, burn down their house and then toss Murni off a high cliff. Luckily for her, she's caught by mysterious hermit Gendon (Mochtar). He takes her into his home, tends to her wounds and nurses her back to health. After hearing her story, he then encourages her to seek revenge. Actually, he pretty much demands she take revenge. He saved her, he makes the rules and his rules are "Kill them all!" And, conveniently enough, he happens to be highly skilled in black magic himself and is willing to teach her all he knows. Murni is put through a ceremony that involves her doing a trampoline act in front of a full moon, meditating until her hair is (literally!) smoking and having blood ladled over her head. Now she's ready to enact her revenge.

After tying a string tied around a voodoo doll's penis, Kohar is unable to be intimate with his new wife. Murni then makes her presence known in her village, starting with blowing a swarm of bees in the direction of one of her attackers; killing him. Darmil (Dorman Borisman), who witnessed the death, runs off to inform Kohar, who initially doesn't believe him. It isn't until another of her attackers, whose veins and skin swell until he explodes into a bloody mess, is killed and there are even more witnesses, that Kohar gets his mob back together again. He beats and kicks Murni's mother yet again when she shows up pleading for her daughter, killing her this time, which further fuel's Murni's rage. A man is hung from a tree by a shawl and another sinks into a rice paddy and then emerges bloody and covered in snakes. For an encore, she makes a man rip off his own head and then the head is revived, flies around and attacks people!

Things take a less horrific turn upon the arrival of vacationer Permana Sidic (Teddy Purba) from the big city. A kind, religious man, Permana know the power of faith and prayer. Seeing how the village has abandoned religion and let their mosques turn to ruins due to neglect, he encourages them to fight off evil with spirituality. It seems to work. Coinciding with his arrival, Murni decides that she's through with killing and wants to move on elsewhere and restart her life. Gendon, however, has other ideas. Behaving like your prototypical abusive partner, he tries to chip away at her self-esteem and good nature by insisting she's now forever tainted having used black magic and can no longer live a normal life. He also points out that no man will want her now that she's not a virgin. Gendon demands she continue to kill villagers, though she refuses. Murni (now calling herself Zaruni) runs into Permana and the two start meeting by some waterfalls to fish. They quickly fall in love and plan to go to the city and marry but Gendon won't let her go so easily.

Though the horror takes a back seat to soap opera / melodramatic tragedy in the last 25 minutes, Queen is still good oddball entertainment. It's notably better-made than other Indonesian horror films I've seen from this decade, perhaps because the director had actually attended film school at one point and was already very experienced at this stage in his career,. Not only is it well-shot (the training sequence in front of the moon is especially striking), but the editing and special effects are also above average. Hell, they even manage to skillfully pull off jump cuts in this one! While the English dubbing is bad, the performances themselves, particularly the two leads, are not. In addition, there are plenty of varied, imaginative and gruesome death scenes. The gory makeups are quite impressive for the time, though probably seemed more outrageous when this was first released than they do now. A couple of plot twists (neither of which are all that difficult to figure out) are thrown out at the end, along with a nice full body explosion to cap things off.

The cast also includes Doddy Sukma as the village chief / Kohar's father (who really isn't a bad guy despite his son being a complete prick), Mien Brodjo as his wife and H.I.M. Damsyik, who is seemingly in every other Indo horror film from the 80s, in a small role as a villager. Director Sudjio made many other genre films over the course of his career, including Ratu Ular / "Snake Queen" (1972), Darna Ajaib / "The Amazing Darna" (1980), Manusia Berilmu Gaib / "The Magic Man" (1981), Misteri Rumah Tua / "Mystery of the Old House (1987), Dendam di Jumat Kliwon / "Revenge on Kliwon Friday" (1987), Ngipri Monyet / "Monkey Worship" (1988), Siluman Teluk Gonggo / "Demon of Gonggo Gulf" (1988) and three-part Misteri Dari Gunung Merapi / "Mystery of Mount Merapi" series (1989-1990). To my knowledge, none of those was ever released in the U.S. nor are they available in English.

The French VHS release called Exorcisme noir uses images from Lady Terminator on the box. A remake of the same name directed by Kimo Stamboel (Macabre) and written by Joko Anwar (who also wrote the remakes of Satan's Slave and Gundala) was released in 2019.

★★★