Pharaoh's Curse (1957)

... aka: A Maldição do Faraó (The Curse of the Pharaoh)

Directed by:
Lee Sholem

Set in 1902 in Cairo during the British occupation of Egypt, this begins with Egyptians rioting in the streets and throwing a brick through the window of the British headquarters. So what has angered them? Well, it turns out the Brits arranged for an archaeological expedition exploring an ancient king's tomb without first getting permission. Two survivors from the riots, one of whom had his tongue cut out and then fed to him, manage to make it back to warn the higher-ups of what's going on. Colonel Cross (Ralph Clanton) enlists the aid of one of his finest men, Captain Storm (Mark Dana), to head to the Valley of the Kings the following morning to stop the expedition so the superstitious locals will stop attacking them. He's given just two other men, Sgt. Smolett (Terence de Marney) and Sgt. Gromley (Richard Peel), to accompany him on their long journey because that's all the men they can afford to lose at the moment. Also joining them will be Sylvia Quentin (Diane Brewster), who's just flown in from the U.S. to join her archaeologist husband Robert (George N. Neise), the expedition leader. The four take an alternate route through the desert (on horses, not camels!) so they won't be detected. As they camp out for the night, they get a mysterious and unexpected visitor...

After night falls, Egyptian beauty Simira (played by Israeli-born Ziva "Shapir" / Rodann) shows up at their camp. She claims to be alone and that she's from a mountain village hundreds of miles away but has traveled all the way there by foot. She also happens to be headed to the exact same place they are: the tomb of King Rahateb, to locate her missing brother Numar (Alvaro Guillot). Simira even offers to show them a shortcut. However, her suspicious story and strange behavior creates enough doubt ("If you ask me, that beautiful mirage is a walking nightmare!") to where they first decline her offer, thinking she may trying to trick them into an ambush.

The next morning, one of their horses has vanished and Simira's bizarre behavior continues. She doesn't sleep the entire night, refuses food and water and refuses to even ride on a horse; instead opting to speed walk behind their caravan. The team's water and food supplies disappear and a usually-reliable oasis where previous travelers generally stop has completely dried up. When they camp out for the night, Sylvia is stung on the arm by a scorpion and falls ill due to the poison. Now they'll be forced to let Simira lead the way.

Meanwhile, at King Rahateb's tomb, Robert and four of his colleagues - wary pipe-puffer Walter Andrews (Ben Wright), rational Dr. Michael Farraday (Guy Prescott), drunk Claude Beauchamp (Robert Fortin) and translator Hans Brecht (Kurt Katch) - have located the king's sarcophagus. Despite passive protests from Walter and warnings to the tune of "eat of thy flesh" if they disturb Rahateb's sleep inscribed right on top of the coffin, they decide to crack it open and take a gander. Numar, who has accompanied them there as a servant, instantly passes out as soon as they do and then Captain Storm and company show up to crash their party. He orders them to seal up the tomb and return with him to Cairo as soon as Sylvia, who has actually come there to announce to Robert she's planning on divorcing him, recovers from her scorpion sting and physical exhaustion.

We're already halfway through this talky and none-too-exciting movie when we finally get to the mummy stuff. One of the best aspects of this film, which I won't ruin with too much detail, is that it doesn't simply have the mummy rise from its tomb and start attacking. Yes, we get a fairly traditional mummy (with a pretty good make-up design to boot) doing traditional mummy things (like slowly lumbering around tombs, secret passageways and catacombs), but how it comes to life incorporates aspects of rebirth and rapid aging and is fairly original. The revived mummy also isn't dressed up in bandages like your typical mummy and has vampire-like tendencies; sustaining itself by drinking blood. Either human or animal blood will do as Mabel the horse can solemnly attest. Further translations of a tablet found near the grave reveal that all intruders must die before the mummy can be returned to its sarcophagus.

This was made by Howard W. Koch and Aubrey Schenck's short-lived Bel Air Productions, who churned out several dozen features from 1954 to 1958. Their most popular release nowadays is the all-star-cast film noir The Girl in Black Stockings (1957). They also made VOODOO ISLAND (1957), which frequently played on a double bill with Curse and starred Boris Karloff, and THE BLACK SLEEP (1956), which featured a classic genre lover's dream cast consisting of Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. The script was written by Richard Landau (THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT) and there's a Les Baxter score.

A late night TV staple in the 70s, this laid dormant for years until MGM finally unearthed it for DVD release (part of their "Limited Edition Collection") in 2012. Their release print isn't some glorious restoration or anything but it's perfectly watchable.

★★

Dukun Ilmu Hitam (1981)

... aka: Black Magic Shaman
... aka: Black Magic Wizard

Directed by:
A. (Abdillah) Harris

In a small village, an evil shaman / black magician (Dadang Iskandar) occasionally turns into a hairy-faced, werewolf-like creature and is attacking local ladies. His equally evil wife Dewi (Ruth Pelupessi, who also played a similar role in THE SNAKE QUEEN) is a cave-dweller snake woman who sometimes appears as a scaly-faced human and sometimes appears as a python. The two have a baby daughter who's just hatched from her egg. Dewi would like her to have a sister so she goes to a home, kills the mother (in her snake form), injures the father (in her human form) and then steals their baby. With maggots burrowing in his face, the father manages to crawl to a teacher's (W.D. Mochtar) farm where, after a few blows to the stomach and head, he pukes up a bunch of bloody maggots and centipedes. He then puts in a dying request for the teacher to find / save his daughter and notes he'll know who she is because she has a unique black birthmark on her wrist. Still, she's won't be easy to find. Before transforming back into a snake, Dewi handed the two babies off to her husband to raise, which he does in complete seclusion.

Many years pass and the babies are now teenagers. Sari (Farida Pasha), birth daughter of the snake woman and shaman, has the same cheekbone facial scales as her mother and an angry temperament to match, while Maya (Dian Ariestya), the stolen human baby, has turned into a cute and sweet-natured young woman. The shaman treats the girls no differently though and teaches both all he knows about black magic. Soon, they're casting various spells, controlling a killer rubber-bat-on-a-wire pet, transforming into bats themselves, creating fireballs and learning how to fly. Sari is, of course, jealous of her sister's beauty and normalcy as a human, and the two don't get along very well.

While doing laundry, a piece of Maya's clothing washes down the river. When she goes to retrieve it, she meets Panji (Ray Sahetapy), a student of the same teacher Maya's father had spoken to before dying. The two start frequently meeting by the river to talk and eventually fall in love. Because Maya isn't ready to divulge much about her home life, Panji decides to secretly follow her there. Once he learns who she's living with, he reports it to the teacher. A meeting is arranged and Maya is informed all about her lineage and what became of her birth parents. That prompts her to abandon her evil family and start studying at the school. Meanwhile, the shaman is up to no good, especially after Dewi returns to the picture. Angry their daughter has left them, the two start transforming into their animal forms to kill villagers, which leads a torch-carrying mob to burn down their home. Temporarily defeated, Dewi slithers away at Sari's request while Sari and her father are driven back into a cave.

About a decade later, Panji and Maya have married and are raising a daughter named Ayu. All that time, Sari and the shaman have been sharpening up on their black magic skills. Wanting to get back at her sister, Sari sneaks into her niece's bedroom and force feeds her a baby snake. When Maya discovers what's happened, she unsuccessfully tries to pull the snake out but then must suck it out with her mouth and becomes possessed. In scenes clearly ripping off Cronenberg's RABID (1977), she runs around the village trying to seduce and feed off men using a snake that sometimes pops out of a bloody wound on her neck. The disappointing, unexciting finale is a black magic showdown featuring talismans, a magic dagger, fireballs, one of the characters continuing to fight after losing their head and the worst cheap-o laser fx I believe I've ever seen.

Either I've seen one too many of these things by now and the charm is starting to wear off or this is just a mediocre version of this type of film. Seeing how I doubt I'll ever really tire of things like witches turning into disco balls and fire-breathing decapitated heads, I'd say this just isn't all that good. It's a really low budget production, even by 80s Southeast Asia standards. As a result there's a lot of talk (including far too many bland romantic scenes between the two young leads), minimal action, flat lighting and photography, bland art direction and awful special effects. All that I could live with had this been crazy enough... or trashy enough... or imaginative enough... or energetic enough... or even unintentionally funny enough. However, it's none of those things. Most of the "best" stuff is relegated to the first ten minutes and finale. Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene Part 4" must have been insanely popular in Asia at the time as this is about the tenth film early 80s film I've see use it!

Like most pre-2000s Indonesian films, this was never released in English, which is automatically going to make it a no-go for most viewers who don't speak the language. The fact it isn't very good and you can find similar yet much better films elsewhere is likely to doom it to this fate.

★1/2