Musnahkan Ilmu Santet (1989)

... aka: Black Magic Annihilation
... aka: Destroy Black Magic

Directed by:
H. Maman Firmansjah (Maman Firmansyah)

Four evil black magicians led by Rudy (Rudy Wahab) perform rituals around a misty, skull-filled cave. They levitate off of the ground, the earth cracks open, a big rock comes out and the image of a newlywed bride forms on it. We're next at the slow-motion outdoor wedding reception of the woman seen in the rock. The pleasant event suddenly becomes a free-for-all massacre as the warlocks have picked it as the perfect place to practice their magic spells. The cake and other things explode, snakes invade the refreshment table, plates levitate and impale people and the entire thing turns into one big bloodbath. After nearly everyone is killed, including her husband (who gets torched) and her father (who's killed by an uprooted tree), virginal bride Hindun (Joice Erna) manages to escape into the woods. She then spends a terror-filled night being pursued by the killers until she's finally cornered and passes out. The wizards take her back to their cave and plan on sacrificing her but, just as the knife is coming down, Hindun miraculously disappears. Luckily for her, a black magic queen (Devi Ivonne) happened to see what was going on and decided to intervene. She scoops up Hindun and flies back to her hidden cave lair.

Although at first resistant, Hindun soon falls under the queen's influence. Her soul is separated from her body and then set on fire, she learns how to do a 360 turn with her head and other nifty magic tricks from her new master. Meanwhile, an associate of the black magicians keeps busy hypnotizing and kidnapping young women to hand over to Rudy after they're fittingly delivered to him in coffins. One of the girls is dragged off to a blue and red lit room, is placed out on a table where bubbles fall on her and then is horrified by something she sees. Another is killed when Rudy places his hand on the top of her head, it starts smoking and she's then reduced to a pile of bloody bones.

Arriving in town in the midst of all this is Helmi (Hengky Tornando), a previous boyfriend of Hindun's. Once he learns of all of the deaths and of Hindun's disappearance, he decides to look into matters with help from an older mentor (Bung Salim) and a couple of his goofy (and it later proves, cowardly) friends (Dorman Borisman and Mandra Bokir). When word gets back to Rudy about his presence, he sends one of his men to attempt to kill him with a fireball but it's warded off by prayer. When that doesn't work, one of the wizards and some regular ole human thugs try to kill him in a graveyard at night. Hindun shows up there and kills a bunch of them with boards, a rope and by shooting bullets out of her mouth, spinning someone high up into the air and then dropping them on the ground.

After she kills a second of the wizards by causing him to crash his car by sneaking snakes into it and then blowing it up, Hindun gets into a magic duel with the two remaining black magicians that lasts a surprisingly long time... around 20 minutes! This is where the film really shines. One of the magicians grows time lapse bark on his face, his chest erupts in vines and limbs shoot out of his ears, that then all attack Hindun. As the vines hold her in place, Rudy sends a giant saw blade after her, but Hindun's sorceress friend steps in and sends the blade back to kill the tree wizard. Finally, Hindun must face off against the powerful Rudy all on her own. Their fight involves phantom daggers, fire ropes, wind, a demon hand bursting through the ground, someone getting thrown around rooms and dragged across the walls by an unseen force, a hand jabbed into a chest, a face torched by fire and not one, not two, not three, not four, but five person-crashing-through-a-window shots. There's so much going on that the house it takes place in can't take it any more and decides to explode.

When it comes to its narrative, this thing's a mess. The pacing never seems right and many of the characters (the former boyfriend, his friends, etc.) are completely disposable in the grand scheme of things and don't add anything to the film. The relationship between Hindun and the underutilized Ratu Santet / "Queen of Witchcraft" should have been further developed instead. That said, there's so much crazy magic stuff going on here at most times that this is seldom dull and it's is actually more entertaining than a lot of other higher-budgeted films of this type. It's almost like the filmmakers saw various scenes in other black magic films, said "Hey, that was cool" and then just decided to assemble those all into one film... plot and budget be damned! They clearly didn't have enough money to do effects as they're mostly cheap and poorly executed but that merely just enhances the fun here.

★★1/2

La maldición de la momia azteca (1957)

... aka: Curse of the Aztec Mummy, The

Directed by:
Rafael Portillo

At the end of THE AZTEC MUMMY (spoiler alert so avert your eyes if necessary), Popoca the hollow-eyed, putty-faced, 400-year-old resurrected Aztec warrior was put out of commission with a stick of dynamite while criminal mastermind El Murciélago / "The Bat" was revealed to be disgraced and disbarred scientist Dr. Krupp (Luis Aceves Castañeda) in disguise before being hauled off to prison by the cops. However, some of Krupp's goons managed to get away and his right hand man Tierno (Arturo Martínez) and another gangster named Lobo (Guillermo Hernández) are busy scheming. They get all of their lowlife associates back together again and plot to somehow spring Krupp from prison. At the police station, cops get their first taste of one such attempt as an anonymous letter with a bat insignia on it arrives. After giving police a detailed description of Krupp's still-on-the-loose underlings, Dr. Eduardo Almada (Ramón Gay) returns home and reassures everyone, "We are finally going to have some peace!" Yeah right.

Eduardo's fiancée Flor (Rosita Arenas) reminds him about the possibly-still-active curse of the gods. As it is foretold, first her father will die (which already happened in the first film) and then his children (which means her). Eduardo insists that since they returned the breastplate and bracelet to the mummy's tomb, they have effectively stopped the curse. That should mean no mo late night mummy visits for them. Still, that doesn't explain why they aren't the least bit concerned about Krupp's henchmen being on the loose, knowing where their home is (they tried to break in there in the first film) and the high likelihood of there being a vendetta against the family.

While armed guards try to transport Dr. Krupp out of the city, they're ambushed by his goons on a back road. A gunfight ensues. All of the coppers are killed but there's an unexpected guest who arrives; a mysterious masked super hero / crime fighter by the name of El Ángel. He's so virtuous he dresses in white, wears a white mask and drives a white Rolls Royce convertible. Still, being good and dressing in tights and a cape doesn't mean you can't get your ass handed to you, which is precisely what happens to him. However, unlike the cops they indiscriminately popped, Krupp lets Angel live because he wants to kill him at another time "in my own way." Huh? Soon after, Angel visits Eduardo, Flor and company to warn them of the escape and gives them a "radio watch" they can use to contact him in case of an emergency.

Meanwhile, at Krupp's lair, he narrates a five-minute-long recap of some of the first film's events. Seeing how he knows all about the hypnosis session, Flor's past life as an Aztec maiden and how she knows the whereabouts of the ancient tomb containing many valuables, they decide to kidnap her and try to replicate the hypnosis session. They snatch both Flor and little Anita (Almada's daughter from his previous marriage) and beat the snot out of Almada and his assistant Pinacate (Crox Alvarado). The girls are taken back to the lair. Anita is locked up and Flor is given a drug to make her easier to hypnotize. Dr. Almada is lured there himself, gets beaten up again and is tied to a chair where we're forced to listen to Krupp recount his plans again. Warning: You will likely be seeing the word "again" a lot from here on out.

Thankfully, Almada's kid brother Pepe (Jaime González Quiñones) knows where the radio watch is and uses it to contact Angel and give him the address of Krupp's headquarters. Angel shows up and gets into another fight with the henchmen, which ends in him getting his ass kicked yet again, is tied up next to Dr. Almada (who also got his ass beat again) and is slapped around. Our "hero" is then dragged off to "the mortuary room" and locked inside. The floors start to slowly open up and underneath is a snake pit. Angel manages to jump onto a hanging light fixture and hang there, which gives him enough time to contact young Pepe to come and save him! All of this puts Angel in contention for the title of worst super hero in film history, something that is only solidified later on when Almada and Angel escape only to be recaptured and tied up again. Notice a pattern here?

While the original built up a little bit of intrigue at the start and eventually went somewhere (though it sure took its sweet time getting there!), this one is like a skipping record that keeps repeating itself over and over and over again. The mummy itself, which just pops back up after the bad guys remove a big rock sitting on top of it, doesn't make an appearance until the last fifteen minutes, is only in two scenes and is off screen even more than the previous film. It's basically used as a convenient plot device to take out the bad guys at the finale because our heroes are so incompetent! What this does offer more of is silliness and camp value, mostly in the form of horribly-choreographed fight scenes. There are also a few funny flubs, especially a shot of a car driving down a road where a female bystander accidentally walks into the frame, looks over, sees the camera and then quickly ducks behind a pillar to hide!

This and the third film in the series - THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY - were imported to the U.S. and horribly English-dubbed by K. Gordon Murray. Both were distributed by AIP, who sold these to TV. Due to the English dubbed version, this was also much easier to find on home video for a number of years. Something Weird put it and Robot out on both VHS and DVD and there have been a number of other releases, culminating in a box set of all three now-restored films distributed by BCI/Eclipse.

★1/2