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.

★★★

Lin tou jie (1988)

... aka: 林投姐

... aka: Revenge Ghost of the Tree, The

... aka: Revenge of the Ghost of the Tree

... aka: Revenge of the Tree Ghost

... aka: Sister Lin Tou

Directed by:

Shan-Hsi Ting

Weepy servant girl Mai Hsiu (Feng-Chiao Yen) shows up to a temple late at night praying for her masters and mentioning some kind of "homicide scandal". We then immediately zip into flashback mode to see just what she's crying about in this Taiwanese ghost tale with a period setting. Master Hsi Ping Wu (Shao-Wei Sun) and his wife Hsu Yuen (Szu Shih, in her final film role) are a wealthy, though charitable, couple who do right by their servants and appear to be in good standing in their community. Hsu Yuen even takes it upon herself to educate local hooligans about Buddhism in her free time to help them change their ways. Returning from a long business trip away, Master Wu brings along an amiable new friend; Chuan Chow (David Chiang), to stay with them.

Chuan turns out to be quite the smooth operator. When gangster Liu San (Te-Sheng Wang) shows up demanding money for his Japanese boss about a shipment of camphor (a waxy substance extracted from an evergreen tree of the same name found in East Asia) they never received, Chuan concocts a bogus tale about the merchandise being damaged to drive him away. A young lady, claiming to be Master Wu's now-pregnant lover, and her brother then show up demanding money. This gives Chuan a chance to show off his formidable martial arts skills by kicking the brother's ass and having the two of them thrown out. However, Madame Wu isn't fully convinced her husband didn't actually have an affair with the girl. Still, Chuan has quickly established himself as a welcome and trusted addition to the family.

However, not is all that it appears to be. Chuan, who's secretly plotting against the family, wants Wu's money, property and everything else in his life. Mr. Ito (Kuang-Ning Lin), a corrupt local politician who's conspiring with him, is cool with that as long as he gets the wife in their bargin. After plying him with sake, Chuan gets Master Wu to sign an important paper allowing him to collect a debt for him but in reality opens the doors for him to steal money. Master Wu's dedicated servant Yau (Cheng Ku) tries to warn him about funds disappearing, but he won't hear of it as he's convinced his new friend is the bee's knees. Wu then accompanies Chuan out of town and ends up falling down drunk at a brothel. This gives Chuan the opportunity to have him murdered. He's stabbed in the heart and his body is tossed over a bridge into some crocodile-filled waters. A dismembered leg is found the following morning and a piece of clothing identify it as belonging to Wu.

Immediately after his death, Madame Wu is visited by her late husband's ghost. Doors swing open, wet footprints form on the floors and the place on the bed where the master slept is soaked. She also spots his reflection in a mirror and in a framed portrait. Because rumors start circulating around the village about Chuan still living in their home, Hsu Yuen kindly asks him to leave. He then produces a forged deed with her husband's signature letting her know that he's now the owner of the property. One thing leads to another and Yau the servant takes his own life. Madame Wu then plots to kill Chuan herself, but his goons pin her down on the bed, smother her with a pillow and then take her body into the forest and hang it from a tree. Chuan probably should have reigned in his murder count because he now has not one, not two but three potential ghosts who'll be looking for revenge.

Madame Wu's mournful ghost soon materializes. She really only wants what's best for her three young surviving children, who are constantly at risk from Chuan, who can't decide whether he wants them all killed or merely shipped off somewhere else. Servant girl Hsui, her fiancée Ah Wan (Ya-Tung Sun) and Ah Wan's mother, Auntie Liu (Yin-Shang Liu), all team up to assist the ghost by finding the children and hiding them. The mother, a blind bakery owner who has psychic powers, can "see" the ghost at all times when others cannot and uses magic spells to strike out at the bad guys, who have since transformed the formerly respectable Wu household into a gambling den / whorehouse. Chuan hopes to counteract this by hiring an evil priest (Feng Tien) to help keep the ghost from enacting her revenge. Spell papers, laser-shooting magic mirrors and a "soul sucking sword" are included in their arsenal.

Apparently based on a famous and oft-filmed folk tale, the first half of this is bogged down by endless overwrought melodrama (lots of crying, wailing and suffering!), though this eventually finds its footing in the second half. The ghostly revenge is highlighted by the usage of a "Lin Tao Tree" (the same one Madame Wu was hung from), which has mystical powers. The ghost's soul becomes linked to the difficult-to-destroy tree and also grants her some tree-related powers, like the ability to hurl giant, boulder-like "fruit" at people, using a smaller fruit to trip someone and make them fall to their death, etc. Madame Wu also uses her vine-like hair like a noose to strangle someone, several characters are forced to slit their own throats, a body explodes when it falls in water and the statue of some god called Emperor Kwan (played by Shan Charng) comes to life as a giant to assist our ghostly heroine.

Seemingly completely forgotten, this has been readily available for quite some time on Youtube and other websites, yet has not even managed to generate the five votes needed to register a score on IMDb, nor has it been rated a single time on Letterboxd (though I'll be changing that here shortly). Because of that, I went into this expecting cheap and terrible... but that's not the case here at all. While this is certainly uneven it terms of story and pacing, it's also surprisingly well-directed and handsomely produced. Colors are vivid and there are good sets, costumes and art direction, plus the lighting, camera angles and shot framing are nice throughout. The soundtrack is also good. Then again, it should be since most of it was stolen from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET! I actually wouldn't even mind revisiting this some day if a remastered version with proper English subtitles ever turns up.

I was only able to find a couple of releases for this one. The first is a VHS from South Korea (above, left) and the second is a 2005 DVD from Central Motion Picture out of Taiwan. Seeing how the latter doesn't come with English subs and the widescreen version I watched had them, there had to have also been a release or two in Hong Kong as well. 

The director made a number of other genre films, including the anthology BLOOD REINCARNATION (1974), the difficult to find The Seven Coffins (1975), the likewise hard to find Love in the Twilight Zone (1977), the ghost comedy Host for a Ghost (1984) and a pair of Joey Wang vehicles: SPIRIT LOVE (1989) and (his most widely viewed genre film) The Beheaded 1000 aka The Executioner (1991).

★★1/2