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.

★★★

Killings at Outpost Zeta, The (1980)

... aka: Farlig Planet (Dangerous Planet)

... aka: Muerte en la estación Zeta (Death at Zeta Station)

Directed by:

Robert Emenegger

Allan Sandler

This was one of a number of tame, talky, ultra low budget sci-fi flicks from the Sandler / Emenegger team, who'd previously made the schlockumentaries UFOs: Past, Present and Future (1974), narrated by Rod Serling, and Death: The Ultimate Mystery (1975), narrated by Cameron Mitchell. Other films from these guys include Captive (which starred Mitchell [playing an evil alien waylaid on Earth] plus the director's kids), Laboratory, Beyond the Universe, Escape from DS-3, Lifepod, The Perfect Woman (again with Mitchell), PSI Factor, Time Warp and Warp Speed. All ten of these quick-churn titles were made and released in just a two year period (!!) by Gold Key Entertainment. While some were used as schedule filler on late night TV, I don't recall ever seeing any of these films for rent at any video store I frequented in my youth, back when I would have snatched up literally anything involving aliens. Based on the VHS boxes I could dig up, a number of these appear to have received better distribution outside of North America.

The Killings at Outpost Zeta is one of the most widely circulated titles of the entire Emenegger / Sandler catalogue, having received not one, but two, American VHS releases: one on the United Home Video label in 1987 and another from Star Classics in 1989. It is also the most rated / reviewed title on IMDb and, to date, one of only three features from these guys to receive over 100 ratings on the site.

A pathfinder team was dispatched to an Earth-like planet called Zeta two years prior with seemingly no problems. That is until recently, when suddenly all contact with them was lost. A three-man rescue team was then sent to check up on them and also didn't return, followed by another three man team, making for a grand total of twelve missing people. Frustrated Commander Craig (Paul Comi) decides to get together yet another exploratory crew to see if they can find out just what's going on. It's of the utmost urgency because officials are desperately wanting to colonize the planet, which has a mildly toxic yet still survivable atmosphere, to further extend our reach into the galaxy.

Tapped for the new rescue team are captain and commanding officer Clark Young (Gordon De Vol), veteran biologist Dr. Carol Sisco (Hildy Brooks), engineer Paul Carey (James A. Watson Jr.), heavily-decorated security officers Sigmund Stewart (Stanley Wojno) and Gore Stat (Jackson Bostwick) and medical doctor Linda Saunders (Jacqueline Ray), who will be making her maiden rescue team voyage into space. They're informed the mission is so dangerous they'll have to get their life insurance in order and sign their last will and testament prior to leaving. They're also given body bags with their names embroidered on them (!!) just in case.

Right before landing on the planet, the team intercept a capsule with an audio recording from the previous team warning them to turn back, along with human blood on the capsule. Still, a mission is a mission and off to the planet they go. They land, find the outpost and then make the horrifying discovery of eleven blood-drained corpses of all the previous teams in various stages of decomposition. Each body is a hollow shell sucked dry of all fluids and internal organs and has a gastrolith (rock) embedded in the stomach. The female biologist, who they keep telling us has a genius IQ, becomes the first victim of this new crop when she goes outside by herself at night with a flashlight just minutes after they discover the bodies.

The killers are eventually revealed to be intelligent volcanic rock monsters that blend in seamlessly with the desert environment. They inhale carbon and sulfur yet exhale oxygen, leave behind a silver, slimy substance and reproduce asexually. These creatures were at one time docile / peaceful, but the previous expedition managed to bring out their ugly side by capturing and then accidentally killing one in their lab. Now the creatures see any human as a threat and act accordingly. After several rescue team members are killed, the survivors set up a "dimensional laser fence" around the parameter of the base and try to come up with a way to destroy the aliens and make it back to their ship.

Considering when this was released, it's almost impressive how it manages to defy nearly every single popular trend of the time. In the post-Alien wake, audiences were wanting to see either elaborate, action-packed and expensive effects-driven science fiction films or, at the very least, enjoy the sleazy B movie charms provided by folks like Roger Corman. This offers neither and is instead a curiously staid, old-fashioned, incredibly talk-heavy 50s-style outing with no profanity, gore or exploitative elements. And that's all probably entirely by design to ensure an easy sell to TV with no edits needed.

Nearly everything on display here is uninspiring in its mediocrity. There's this bland "coulda been better, coulda been worse" barely-there competence to the acting, dialogue, direction and plot. As in, while it's all occasionally bad, it's usually not consistently, offensively bad to the point where you can have a good laugh at its expense. They even do a good job with certain elements of the film, especially their choice of rocky desert shooting locations that, when combined with liberal use of a fog machine, effectively represent a volcanic planet's surface. On the other hand, the creature designs are neither here nor there as we barely get to see them outside of a few brief flashes. They do however manage to look exactly like rocks when we do, so mission accomplished there, I guess. Gratuitous circular POV shots are used to fill in the gaps.

The only aspects that really drag this down into the realm of the awful are things that can be directly attributed to the ultra low budget, which could only afford toy spaceships, laser guns clearly made from red plastic tubing, sets constructed out of aluminum siding and spacesuits that look like a grandmother's first attempt at making pajamas with her new sewing machine.

As for other potential points of interest, well, I guess Anne Spielberg being an associate producer is one. While her slightly more famous brother Steven was working on stuff like Raiders of the Lost Arc and E. T., this is what she was up to. A still from the film also ended up being used as the cover for the Boards of Canada 1995 EP Twoism.

VCI Entertainment eventually released this to DVD both as a standalone and as part of a 4 movie set, which also includes Time Warp and Lifepod, plus the Italian stinker Star Odyssey (1979).

★★