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.

★★★

Dejitaru Debiru Monogatari Megami Tensei (1987)

... aka: デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生
... aka: Digital Devil
... aka: Digital Devil Monogatari Megami Tensei
... aka: Digital Devil Story
... aka: Digital Devil Story: Goddess Reborn
... aka: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei
... aka: L'histoire du démon numérique (The Story of the Digital Demon)

Directed by:
Mizuho Nishikubo

In March 1986, Ayu Nishitani released the first in a series of novels that would eventually lead to this popular 1987 OVA release and an even more popular role playing video game series, originally made by Namco for the Famicom, which we Americans know as the NES / Nintendo Entertainment System. The initial 1987 video game was followed by a 1990 sequel and then really hit it big with the release of Shin Megami Tensei in 1992, which was followed by a boatload of other games; some numbered sequels, numerous subseries' (like Devil Survivor and The Demon Summoner) and a number of other spin-offs. The series is still going strong to this day, with especially big fan followings in Japan and North America. The latest entry is slated for release on the Nintendo Switch sometime in 2021. This video release is an adaptation of only the first of Nishitani's three novels and runs a compact 45 minutes. Surprisingly, despite the popularity of the video game series, there have been no other film adaptations. At least not official ones that I'm aware of, though a few titles like the 1995 anime Tokyo Revelation, are clearly heavily inspired by Shin Megami Tensei.

Yumiko Shirasagi transfers to the secluded Juusei Academy. Upon being introduced to the rest of her class, she instantly recognizes the dark, deadly serious and brooding Akemi Nakajima. However, when she attempts to engage him in conversation, he says he has no clue who she is, swats her away and adds that she'd be better off not even bothering involving herself with him. Still, Yumiko can't shake the feeling that she knows him from somewhere...

Late at night in the school's computer lab, which ominously has a "Do Not Open" sign posted on the door, Akemi and some of his friends are busy conducting a demonic "holy ritual" that involves Mars and the Moon being in opposition, Pluto and the Sun being in opposition, a pentagram on the floor and, of course, computers. Akemi talks about the "World of Atziluth" (highest of four worlds in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life) and asks for help from the "Electronic Beast Cerberus;" the hell hound from Greek mythology that promptly leaps right out of a computer to help defend the ceremony once called upon. They even have a willing guinea pig in the form of teacher Mrs. Obara whom Akemi assures has a nice enough body "to satisfy Loki." Being the inquisitive type, Yumiko sneaks into the room to spy on them but she's quickly sniffed out by Cerberus. Akemi then comes clean about what they're doing.

It turns out the group have somehow summoned a demon via computer but it's currently trapped inside the computer and thus can't do any real harm... at least not yet. Through a piece of head gear, Mrs. Obara is able to "have fun" (i.e. have sex) with the demon, but that's not enough for Akemi, whose ultimate goal is to find a way for Loki to materialize in the real world. The demon demands human sacrifices, which the increasingly more obsessed student is more than glad to help him with. After all, Loki is now his Master. After enough sacrifices, Loki is ready to enter our world.

Before long, Akemi is chanting "Kill! Kill! Kill!" while Loki does his thing at the school. During an amazing bit, a computer monitor spits out a pink glob that eats the entire student body, erupts into geysers of blood and then transforms into Loki. Students get sliced with razors, are beaten, have their crotches eaten and more and it's extremely difficult to tell after awhile what's a nightmare / hallucination, what's a flashback / something from a past life and what's occurring in present day. Compounding the confusion further are Akemi's red-tinted visions, which seem to be flashbacks about a girl named Kyoko who led him on then had her muscle-bound new boyfriend humiliate him and then brutally beat him up.

As far as Akemi and Yumiko's connection is concerned, he's been having a recurring nightmare about an old witch coming after him in a cave and believes she and Yumiko are one in the same. That turns out to be somewhat true, though Yumiko was actually Izanami, the goddess of both creation and death, in her past life. So there's that. Once the demon has them trapped, another goddess informs Yumiko of her lineage. She is then able to fight Loki off with lasers, free Akemi and fly him away from the school. When they come to in a misty forest, the fatally injured Yumiko dies and the only way to revive her is to take her through the mountains to Izanami's grave. Using a laptop, Akemi is able to summon the hell hound to help transport them. Loki, who has a red, glowing literal third eye that forms on his forehead, tracks them down.

Back at the school, the possessed Mrs. Obara sends the pink glob after bank employees, presumably so they can rob them, though this isn't specified or even followed through with. We then return to the forest, where Akemi is attacked by Loki yet again. He's rescued by the heavenly goddess who brings him, Cerberus and Yumiko's corpse up to outer space (!!) where she encourages him to "Break through the darkness." Loki shows up trying to kill them with his pink glob stuff, which the dog can ward off with his green breath (?!), and it all ends in a battle taking place either on a distant planet or in hell. It's nearly impossible to tell!

Beautifully, colorfully and stylishly animated, quite gory and with some interesting ideas scattered about, this also boasts a few wonderful individual scenes and surreal visuals but is a colossal failure when it comes to coherent storytelling. I guess that's what you get trying to cram as much of a novel into a 45 minutes anime as could possibly fit. This would have worked much better as a longer series instead of a standalone as it needed more time to explain its various plot points and try to tie them all together.

Outside of its release in Japan, there were releases in France, Spain and (an English subtitled version) in the UK on the Kiseki Films label. A soundtrack album was also available.

★★