Golok Setan (1984)

... aka: Der herr der krokodile (Lord of the Crocodile)
... aka: Devil's Machete
... aka: Devil's Sword, The
... aka: Koral le justicier (Koral the Vigilante)
... aka: Le justicier contre la reine des crocodiles (The Vigilante Against the Queen of the Crocodiles)
... aka: Lord of the Crocodiles
... aka: Svaerdets dronning (Queen of the Sword)

Directed by:
Ratno Timoer

A small village worships or, more specifically, has no other choice but to worship, a cruel, insatiable and all-powerful nympho white crocodile demon queen (Gudhi Sintara) who lives in a palace underneath a nearby lake along with a slew of crocodile handmaidens, faithful male warriors and a wizard sidekick. The queen's sexual appetite is so huge that she's been ordering the village to sacrifice all of their strong, brave and handsome young men to her. After all, it sometimes takes at least seven at once to please her on her croc-themed silver chaise lounge. You could say that she's high maintenance. She also hates being disappointed. If she grows tired of her sex slaves, feel they're misbehaving or they fail to live up to her expectations, she simply does away with them by tossing them into a bamboo cage filled with hungry, crazed cannibals!

Since the village has recently been unable to keep up with the queen's demands, she resurrects the great warrior Banyujaga (Advent Bangun) from beyond. He goes to the village (riding in on a levitating boulder!) and demands a young man named Sanjaya (Yos Santo), who's right in the middle of wedding village leader Barata's (H.I.M. Damsyik) daughter, Pitaloka (Enny Christina), accompany him back to the queen's palace. When the villagers refuse to cooperate, Banyujaga punches, kicks, cracks bones and uses his twin swords to slash, slice, impale, chop, disembowel, dismember and decapitate. Interestingly, Pitaloka (who has a parasol weapon and knows martial arts) mostly fights him while her hopefully-husband-to-be is left to stand by and watch. During the fight, Pitaloka is injured and her father is killed after having his hand chopped off. But not all hope is lost...

Virtuous warrior Mandala (Barry Prima) rides in on his horse to help but Banyujaga is able to resurrect some alligator men from underground to distract him long enough to run off with Sanjaya, who's taken to the queen's kingdom. There, she hypnotizes him with her mesmeric eyes and has her way with him on a spinning bed surrounded by fire. Meanwhile, Mandala finds his teacher Abirama (Kandar Sinyo), whom he communicates with telepathically, seriously injured. Snake venom from a previous fight is making his legs turn black and rot. Mandala is able to stabilize him with a concoction made from exploding mushrooms (!) and then chops off both of his legs to keep the poison from spreading. Abirama reveals that he was attacked for refusing to give up the secrets of the Devil's Sword, which was made from a fallen meteor and possesses supernatural powers. Whoever has it in their possession could use it to end life as we know it. Mandala is given a map and sent on quest to locate it. He teams up with the persistent Pitaloka, who is determined to rescue her husband.

Banyujaga is not only beholden to the evil crocodile queen (whom she's taken as a lover), but he's also teamed up with three other evil, power-hungry warriors. There's the Red Snake King, who has a poison staff that can turn into a snake (or vice versa), an old, rotten-tooth witch (Rita Zahara) with a deadly whip and a bald-domed man (Kusno Sudjarwadi) who has a nifty hat that can explode or rip off heads. As they'd all like to possess the sword, the four soon turn on each other and battle it out. The snake and hat men aren't difficult for Banyujaga to defeat but the witch, who's called a "polluted bitch hound" and "dirty daughter of a whore," regenerates after being cut in two and keeps on going even after losing her head. Though she's forced to retreat, she promises to return to get revenge. That never happens.

Getting to the sword proves to be no easy task and starts with a (marvelously done!) raft ride across a foggy lake from a skeleton. Some floppy-headed alligator men attack and the sword itself is located inside a pink-lit cave filled with bats and a bunch of booby traps, including an acid lake, spikes that pop out of the floor and a room that shoots out spears. A one-eyed stone monster is the final challenge and considering it appears to be made out of paper it's easily defeated. Mandala and Pitaloka must then do battle with Banyujaga before descending into the queen's underground lair to do battle with her, her minions and a gold, blue-eyed flamethrower / laser crocodile icon.

Many viewers make mention of the low budget special effects, cheap-looking sets and wonky fight choreography and editing on display here. However, once you start descending down the Indonesian fantasy / horror rabbit hole a bit further you'll realize that all of the above get much, much worse than this. For an Indo production from this same time frame, Devil's Sword is more elaborate, better-made and appears to have a larger-than-usual budget. That's all relatively speaking, of course! Still, I have seen far cheaper and far more incompetent.

The action is extremely fast-paced and gruesome as this juggles all kinds of odd fantasy-adventure / horror / mystical ideas and leaps from one fx-fueled set piece to another... coherence be damned! Nearly every scene ends up turning into some kind of big fight. While some of these are almost passably choreographed, at other times they resort to speeding up the action, which of course looks ridiculous and comical. The plot is jam packed with assorted nonsense, some of which doesn't feel like it belongs at all. You never really know what you're going to get from one scene to the next, but the nonsensical nature of the plot eventually takes its toll. The final act suffers because of this, in part because you've grown accustomed to slapdash nature of the movie and in part because most of the better weird stuff has already occurred or is simply being repeated.

This was based on a comic by Man (pen name for Mansyur Daman) and is part of his Mandala serial. The ending seems to be a set-up for a sequel, though one was never made. Very prolific actor / director / writer / producer Timoer (real name: Ahmad Suratno) also directed the genre films Kuntilanak / "Female Ghost" (1974), Gondoruwo / "The Haunted House" (1981), Jin Galunggung / "Galunggung Genie" (1982), Rimba Panas / "Jungle Heat" (1988) and Pembalasan Setan Karang Bolong / "Revenge of the Karang Bolong Demon" (1989), plus acted in a handful, most notably some of the Sisworo Gautama Putra / Suzzanna collaborations. He'd won some major acting awards (including Best Actor at the Indonesian Film Festival) in the 70s and amassed over 150 credits during his 30 year career.

This is one of the best distributed Indonesian genre titles from this era. There were home video releases in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands and elsewhere and this was English-dubbed for release in the US and UK. A 2006 DVD from Mondo Macabro gave it even more exposure, boosting it to near the top of all Asian cult films.

★★1/2

Love Bites (1992) [copyright 1988]

Directed by:
Marvin Jones

Well this - a gay-themed soft-core vampire comedy from the late 80s - was certainly an anomaly for its time. And by "gay" I don't mean lesbian, because we've seen hot lesbian vampires doing their thing very frequently and very explicitly since the late 1960s. Hell, even Hollywood took notice after awhile and started making big budget lesbian vampire films starring the likes of Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. Gay men received no such mainstream treatment as they were too busy being made the butt of jokes in crude comedies or shown suffering and dying of AIDS in depressing dramas during the 1980s. That makes Love Bites, which features all gay characters whose sexuality is never really made into a big issue (it just is), a little soft-core man-man action, lots of full frontal male nudity and other things meant to appeal primarily to a gay male audience, one of the only films of this type from this entire decade. Of course, it had to be made with next to no money but, hey, it's cool that someone at least bothered.

Out of the gate, I gotta give the filmmakers credit for even getting this out there at all. Though there was certainly a market for gay X-rated films back then (and there was already at least one hardcore gay vampire film called Gayracula [1983]), a soft, non-porn gay romantic vampire comedy had to have been a hard sell. Growing up in a small town, none of the video stores I grew up visiting ever would have stocked a title like this... at least not on the main shelves where they'd put straight or lesbian soft-core vampire films. Chain stores also wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. I'm assuming this probably ended up in adult book stores and the adult section of video stores though it's no more a "porn" than any other R-rated horror / exploitation film with female nudity.

Aspiring vampire slayer Jake Hunter (Tom Wagner) has actually never run into, let alone killed, a bloodsucker. Still, that doesn't stop him from thinking about, talking about and obsessing over vampires night and day, and plastering his apartment with vampire / horror movie / Duxorcist posters. Such preoccupations don't help his love life any, however, as he can barely get creatures of the night off the brain long enough to pay attention even when a potential suitor (played by gay porn actor Erich Lange) strips buck naked and is crawling all over him. His date sighs, "You're real cute. You're real nice. But you're real weird!" before making a quick exit. Nonetheless, Jake has bigger fish to fry. There have been recent vampire sightings in West Hollywood that he plans on investigating. He loads up a duffel bag with wooden stakes, a mallet, a bible and a crucifix and is off.

Jake breaks into a remote house where he (rightfully) suspects the vampire lives. He's first greeted by the flamboyant, country-accented Leslie (Christopher Ladd); who's a bit abrasive, a bit annoying, a bit flirty and more than a little bit sassy, but underneath it all eventually proves to be good-hearted. He also has most of the film's best lines. When Jake first meets him and suspects he's a vampire, he thrusts a cross in his face, to which Leslie responds, "Oh please. That fire and brimstone shit went out with Tammy Faye Bakker!" Turns out that Leslie is actually a hustler or, as he likes to call it "a gentleman of easy availability," who's been lured to the home under false pretenses. The home's owner; the tall, blonde and handsome Count Damien Vincent Sanders née Vladimir (Kevin M. Glover, who also wrote and produced), and his sniveling, bug-obsessed, black-clad manservant Manfield (Bernard Barnes Jarvis), who clearly takes make-up and styling tips from Robert Smith, eventually show up.

During their brief conversation, Jake (who at first pretends to be a lost strip-o-gram) and the Count take a liking to one another, which starts Jake on the path to reconsidering his vampire busting hobby. But before things can progress any further, the still-scared Jake sneaks Leslie out of the house. The following day when they assume Damien will be asleep, they break into the home again and find him peacefully resting in his coffin. However, Jake finds himself unable to go through with staking him. Yes, folks, he's fallen in love. And the feeling is mutual for the 347-year-old ("... and still getting carded") count, who hasn't had sex nor felt love for centuries. After learning more about the bloodsucker, including that he doesn't associate with other vampires and doesn't actually kill people (he only visits blood banks or takes enough from willing donors to sustain himself), Jake finds himself willing to give love with the undead a chance. I mean, he's an outcast. And the vampire is an outcast. So why not, right? But just how will the Count react when he discovers the contents of Jake's duffel bag?

It's obvious that this was made with very little money. For starters, it's shot-on-video. And then you'll notice very few outside shots and location changes. The sets are barely dressed and they try to make up for that using some basic colored lighting. It's extremely talky. There are only five people in the entire cast and no special effects whatsoever. In many ways, this resembles an 80s porn flick or perhaps some poorly-filmed off off off Broadway play. The only possible ways to try to make up for most of the above is through a solid cast and script. Well, surprise. This film has both. There's an appealing, earnest lead performance from Wagner, a pretty good count in the 6'6" Glover and Jarvis is amusing in the Renfield role. However, Ladd's rapid-fire stream of one-liners and enthusiasm manage to steal the show. Glover's script is also fairly well written. Though this includes a few social issue nods (about "fag bashing" and such) and takes a turn for the more serious toward the end, there are lots of genre in jokes and clever, amusing lines in here. The developing friendship between polar opposites Jake and Leslie is also surprisingly charming. I laughed quite a bit watching this, which is more than I can say for a lot of vampire comedies I've seen with 10 times the budget.

 

Glover and Jones had previously made the home invasion horror VENUS FLY TRAP (1987), which was also shot-on-video, campy and filled with nudity (including numerous women, along with the men), though not as well written. Massacre Video, who handled the DVD release of Venus in 2015, has also recently released this title. It's remastered from the original video source and comes with audio commentary from Glover and director David DeCoteau. I watched the VHS version so I can't vouch for the film's upgrade in quality. Not to be confused with yet another romantic vampire comedy called Love Bites, which was released the following year and starred Adam Ant.

★★1/2