Godaan Siluman Perempuan (1978)

... aka: Siluman Perempuan (Demon Woman)
... aka: Temptation of the Demon Woman

Directed by:
Ackyl Anwari

Here's some more ultra-obscure Indonesian weirdness. This one's based on a ghostly figure in Southeast Asian folklore called Penanggalan / Penanggal; a word that literally means “detach,” which are also referred to as Hantu Penanggal (or “detached ghost”). These bloodsucking creatures are typically created via black magic spells and curses and appear to be normal human females during the day. By night, however, their heads detach from their bodies, complete with stomach and entrails dangling beneath them, and fly around causing havoc. This being is common throughout Asian folklore and is known by many different names and with slightly altered mythology depending on the region in question. Elsewhere in Indonesia it is called a Leyak or Palasik. In Thailand it is called a Krasue. In Cambodia it's an Ap. In Mayalsia it's a Balan-balan. It's the Philippines it's a Manananggal. The two best known films (which aren't well known at all unless you're a big cult movie fan) featuring these creatures are the Indonesian production Leák aka MYSTICS IN BALI (1981) and the Hong Kong / Taiwan co-production The Witch with Flying Head (1982). There have been some more recent offerings as well, like the Thai productions Krasue aka Demonic Beauty (2002) and Krasue Valentine (2006).

The wonderfully animated Sofia W.D. (who went on to play the Leák Queen in the aforementioned Mystics in Bali and also appeared in the Suzzanna vehicle Queen of Black Magic) stars as an old, ugly Penanggalan named Siluman (a word that translates to “demon”). Siluman is an extremely powerful, entirely evil, cackling, fetus-feasting witch with crazy hair and over-sized plastic fangs. Not only can she detach her head and send it after people (notably pregnant women whose fetuses she sucks directly out of you-know-where), but she can also shoot out her eyeballs to spy on others from afar, make animals do her bidding, disappear and reappear at will and transform into a younger, beautiful woman. The immature and non-religious Ban (Fadly), who lives on a modest, secluded farm with his pregnant wife Karta (Rina “Hassim” / Hasyim) and their young daughter Marni, sets out on foot for the local village to get some food. Siluman, who's been spying on his family and wants their upcoming baby to “be my dessert!” transforms into the lovely young Sumirah (Doris Callebaute). Sumirah calls forth her legion of cobras to attack her so that she can meet Ban when he rescues her.

After laying a sob story on the naive young farmer about how she's been kicked out of her former home, Ban agrees to let her stay in a shack on their property. With a wave of the finger, Sumirah transforms the shack it into a luxurious, fully-furnished home and later turns it into a heated pool and even a disco club! It doesn't take much effort on her part to entrance and then seduce the family man, which leaves his perplexed wife wondering why he's not returning home at night. Sumirah starts out nice, giving Ban medicine for his wife, having sex with him, helping him win money and saving him from thugs who attempt to beat him up, but that soon changes when she starts planting ideas in his head and possesses him. She convinces him that his wife and brother-in-law Mario (El Koesno) are conspiring against him and plotting to poison him. In an enraged trance, he smacks his wife around and tries to stab Mario with a knife, so they cut a chicken's throat and dribble fresh blood into his mouth to break the spell. Things only get worse from there.

Gradually, Ban is transformed into a drunken, wife-and-child beating brute with sometimes green, glowing eyes who pukes up maggots and bloody worms, pushes villagers around and bites off bottle caps with his teeth! When his wife catches him with Sumirah, the two ladies get into a hair-pulling cat fight and Ban ends up taking his new mistress' side. He demands a divorce but his brother-in-law won't hear of it, especially since he and Karta are living on his family's land. After conveniently running into a white-robed shaman who exorcises the demon from within, Ban returns home with a clear head and catches the witch doing a little maintenance on her “pretty” head that was scratched during the fight with the wife. Now wanting to get back on the path of the Lord, Ban seeks out the shaman, who gives him a necklace that he's supposed to hang on his door for seven days and nights to keep the witch away. Unfortunately, Siluman is able to send a raven to remove the necklace, sneaks in, sucks out Karta's fetus and then kidnaps Ban and takes him back to the shack. Having finally gotten her “dessert” why she continues to terrorize the family is pretty much anyone's guess.

The shaman then sends Karta to see a crippled old beggar (“H. Sjamsuddin Sjafei” / Syamsuddin Syafei) who's actually some kind of witch doctor. Before he'll help her, he insists that she first take a bite of his wounded, maggot-infested leg (!!) Why? Well, it comes in handy later on when Siluman scratches her husband's chest and she pukes up green slime that instantly heals the wound. The wife and the beggar / witch doctor manage to chase the witch off, but she has other plans in store for the family. First, she turns Mario's wife (“Waty Siregar” / Emawati Siregur) into a cat and impersonates her. After unsuccessfully attempting to seduce Mario, she transforms back into the ugly witch, shoots him with her fingernails and then turns him into a goat. The beggar and Siluman then square off for the final battle which includes lots of cheap laser effects, fire, nets, a giant butcher knife, hair used as a rope and the witch's fingernails growing about five feet long and catching on fire. With the evil defeated, the shaman shows up to deliver the moral of our story: “If you embrace religion, this kind of thing will not happen again.” Ha!

This horribly edited, ridiculous yet never boring horror-fantasy schlock also features music stolen from numerous other films (including The Omen and The Visitor), tambourine-playing drag queens instigating a fight at a gambling parlor, two men forced to punch each other out because of a spell, sped-up fight sequences, someone really getting bitten by a snake and noodles being turned into worms. Unfortunately, there's also cruelty and death dished out to several animals. In one scene, a poor tailless cat gets snatched up, smacked in the face repeatedly, waved around and then thrown right onto the floor. During another overlong scene, the witch doctor unleashes his mini-army of mongooses onto some cobras, who proceed to chew them to bits. Those scenes are anything but fun to watch and put a damper over what is otherwise a pretty amusing and silly film.

Also in the cast are S. Parya (who also did the special effects), Baun Gazali, Karsiman Gada, artist Bokir and comedic actor Darto Helm (from Tuyul), who is prominently featured on the posters despite only appearing briefly as a drunken gambler. Naturally, this never saw the light of day here in the U.S., nor in most of the rest of the world. It's so obscure it's currently not even listed on IMDb and I could find no DVD, VCD or VHS covers for it. The version I saw was recorded from a broadcast on the Indonesian UHF station Surya Citra Televisi (SCTV) some time in the 90s.

★★

Troma's War (1988)

... aka: Club War
... aka: 1,000 Ways to Die
... aka: War

Directed by:
Michael Herz
"Samuel Weil" (Lloyd Kaufman)

Since the 80s became more and more conservative as the decade progressed, violent action movies featuring flag-waving American meat-heads (usually with military training) going overseas to kick evil foreigner ass became all the rage. An excellent dipstick to gauge where the decade headed was the Rambo series. The initial entry in the franchise, 1982's First Blood, took place in America and dealt with a disrespected, forgotten drifter war vet who's forced into action after being victimized by abusive and corrupt police officers in a small Washington town. This film was clearly made with anti-war commentary in mind, particularly in regards to the neglect and poor treatment of our soldiers after they've served. On the other hand, the later Rambo sequels (released in 1985 and 1988), threw lead character John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) into third world countries and asked audiences to cheer him on as he blew away countless Vietnamese, Afghani and “Commie” bad guys. Audiences also flocked to theaters to see Arnold Schwarzenegger take on pesky Central and South Americans in Commando (1985) and PREDATOR (1987) and Chuck Norris taking on the Vietnamese in three Missing in Action films and Lebanese and South American terrorists in two Delta Force films. And there were plenty more where those came from.

A number of directors offered up a counter balance of sorts to the action heroism of the above films (which some felt not only tastelessly glorified war but also were pushing a right wing blind patriotism agenda during the Reagan Era), including Oliver Stone with Platoon (1985), Stanley Kubrick with Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Brian De Palma with Casualties of War (1989); all of which made war out to be what it truly is: ugly, depressing, often utterly pointless and dehumanizing for all parties involved. Since the 80s saw plenty of shoot-em-up war action movies as well as plenty of serious war dramas, it seemed like the perfect time for a war movie spoof. After all, there was plenty to poke fun at and who better to tackle such delicate subject matter than Troma, the folks behind The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke 'em High? Well, actually, I can think of quite of few people who'd have been better suited but considering no one else at the time would even think of making a movie like this, Troma's War is what we get.

A Tromaville Airlines plane crash lands right off the coast of a seemingly-uninhabited island near Cuba. Many are killed, but the survivors gather together on the beach and try to figure out what to do. Though the majority of these people are outright obnoxious to start they strangely become almost likable by the end. The closest thing we have to central figures in this group are the shirtless Taylor (Sean Bowen), who's a smart ass but basically a nice guy, and Lydia (Carolyn Beauchamp), an uptight, tough girl feminist. There's also mysterious British spy / blowgun assassin Marshall (Steven Crossley), racist, sexist, homophobic and violence-loving Vietnam vet Parker (“Michael Ryder” / Rick Wasburn), flamboyant punk singer Sean (Alex Cserhart) and his all-female band “The Bearded Clams” (Aleida Harris, Mary Yorio and Susan Bachli), blind vegetarian Jennifer (Lisa Petruno), Jewish widow Dottie (Jessica Dublin), single mother Kim (Brenda Brock) and her baby (Lisbeth Kaufman), priest Father Brown (Dan Snow), Wall Street broker aka corporate slime Roger Kirkland (Patrick Weathers), fat guy Cooney (Ara Romanoff), feisty Latina Maria (Lorayn Lane Deluca), cancer-stricken, one-armed Hardwick (Charles Kay-Hune), a prissy male flight attendant, a neurotic woman and others. Yes, that's a lot of people to keep track of but at least everyone has their own individual quirks.

Almost immediately, the gang notice some heavily-armed soldiers patrolling the woods but this isn't a military rescue mission looking for them. The island is instead home to a multi-ethnic and multicultural group of terrorists, who've gathered there from all over the world with one goal in mind: to “make American crumble.” They plan on infiltrating the U.S. and causing as much destruction as possible from coast to coast, which includes setting off car bombs, infecting citizens with AIDS and poisoning every major water supply. The group is working hand-in-hand with republican politicians (Ha!) in the U.S. who are helping to fund their little organization and want to freak out the population and destabilize the country in order to line their own pockets, increase their power in Washington and help out their corporate buddies. Gee, sounds like the George W. Bush reelection campaign all over again.

Ludicrously believing the plane crash survivors are actually commandos sent there on a mission to destroy them, the terrorists set out to hunt them down, but our band of heroes prove to be tougher and more resilient than they expected. This leads to lots of lengthy, laughably violent battle scenes that include lots of gunfire and explosions and death by snake, quicksand, neck snapping, gutting and harakiri, a crossbow arrow to the crotch, a tongue ripped out, mutant Siamese twins cut in two, ears cut off and fashioned into a necklace and literally hundreds of extras being shot, stabbed and blown to smithereens over the course of the film. This is exactly what you'd expect from Troma taking on the war genre. It's fast-paced, noisy, crude, gory, zany, filled with violence and T&A, sometimes very funny and clever but at other times painfully stupid and irritating. One thing it's not is boring.

 

Not all of this works and the film suffers mostly from several incredibly tasteless “gags” that simply aren't funny (like a woman getting raped by an AIDS-infected man covered in puss-oozing soars) and some hideous overacting. Especially awful are the bad guys, including a training camp colonel doing one of the worst Schwarzenegger impressions imaginable and an incredibly annoying, snorting, pig-snouted military base commander. Subtle this ain't.

At 3 million dollars, this remains Troma's highest-budgeted in-house production to date. It was originally called Club War (also the release title in Germany) and played at numerous international film festivals; even winning a critic's award at Fantasporto in 1990. However, it wasn't financially successful as a theatrical feature and had to recoup its budget on home video. The cast also includes Pericles Lewnes (who was in charge on the special effects along with William Jennings) and Troma regulars Rick Collins and Joe Fleishaker.

★★1/2