Macabre (2009)

The horror cinema of Indonesia is probably one of the most imaginative and surreal parts of the movie industry. Both India and Thailand is getting close, but Indonesia is unique. Since many years deeply rooted in local traditions and legends and with tons of very goofy, spectacular, violent and cheap horror experiences, from Suzzanna and Barry Prima to modern cheese-cinema like the works of Rizal Mantovani (Taring and Jenglot Pantai Selatan). Macabre is based on Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto's Dara, a short movie who also became a part of the anthology movie Takut: Faces of Fear (produced by Brian Yuzna), as usual under their combined name "The Mo Brothers". Macabre is very different from most other Indonesian horror movies I've seen because it ventures a dark and more serious territory, on the surface inspired by American slasher cinema - but with a visual style and violent punch from the French neo-gore cinema of later years.

A young newlywed couple, Adjie and Astrid, together with three friends, decides to go on a roadtrip and leave big city Jakarta for a while. As the evening comes a heavy rain starts and they nearly hits a young woman, Maya, who stands in the road. She's been robbed and as the nice folks they are they drive her home...where Dara awaits them. She's is the strict, stiff and unemotional mother of Maya, like a female robo-replica from the fifties - and it won't last long until our heroes understands that's something is terribly wrong and they all are in danger.. but then, of course, it's way too late!

Don't shy away from this movie just because the familiar set-up. This is a superior movie in every way possible compared to it's American modern counterparts. Macabre actually dares to have interesting and sympathetic characters, which hurts even more when they're killed and with a family of psychos that's so much more scary because of their lack of emotions. Except the basic concept  I never thought of American slashers when I saw the movie, instead I saw modern French horror movies. The atmospheric lighting, the stylish sets, the unpredictable characters. Even if not much explanations is given there's several really interesting clues that adds to a back story that I hope will be more examined in a sequel. It's also connects back to vintage Indonesian genre cinema, with the root to all evil based in the Dutch colonizers of Indonesia.

Shareefa Daanish is a new Suzzanna and the character of Dara is already a favourite of mine. Her original performance, with a deep slow voice, robot-like movements and shark eyes is stunning and scary, and fucking freaky. She owns the movie, even if her whole "family" is great in their own perverted, psycho way. I could watch Shareefa kick ass all day long and I sincerely hope she will play Dara at last once more, because she's so good at it.

If you want gore, blood and random graphic violence you've come to the right place. Macabre is a very bloody movie without being Schnaas-boring or cutting away to fast like most American "graphic" horror movies. This is French stuff, and if you've seen Inside, Martyrs, Frontier(s) etc you know what I mean. The effects is a mix between CG and practical stuff and most of it works very good. But the magic lies in the actors and the editing who helps every murder scene to be more painful than it really could have been with lesser talented people involved.

Macabre is a violent and nasty horror movie with the same quality as the French classics and with a stylish and modern twist on Indonesian horror cinema. It's a welcome addition to my collection and I think most of you would appreciate it. It's available uncut from the UK, so go get it before Dara gets you!

Amphibious 3D (2010)

I hope Brian Yuzna one day write his memoires, because he's a director/producer who really fought all his life to make genre cinema, and only that. Some stuff was bad and some stuff was really good. After a sejour in Spain together with Fantastic Film Factory he took his bags and went even more far away and ended up in Indonesia, of all places in the world! After producing the anthology movie Takut (2008) he found some Dutch investors and made his most ambitious film in years, Amphibious3D! And... what the hell happen? This was released in 2010 and still not good distribution! I mean, if every crappy SyFy Channel movie gets a blu-ray release, why is this one totally forgotten? Distributors, do your fucking job and give this a fat release!

Michael Paré plays the grumpy Captain Jack Bowman, who works in Indonesia, taking every job he can find to get some money. Marine biologist Skylar Shane (Janna Fassaert) hires him to go out on an expedition to find prehistoric fossils. Out on the sea they bump in to some of Jack's old buddies, a gang of smugglers pretending to be fishermen. They have their base on an old house sitting on top of a wooden platform. But something has awoken in the sea, and Progeny one of the smugglers - a little boy - has supernatural powers and taking revenge on the death of his friend by controlling a huge underwater scorpion! Well, you can guess what happens next...

If you go into this movie expecting an original story with amazing dialogue and characters from a Scorsese movie - then you can turn around and watch something else. But if you want - and appreciate - a good old monster movie this is the movie for you. First of all, I love the setting in Indonesia, deeply connected to local believes and traditions and some beautiful locations. Most of the movie is set on the house/platform-thingie, but the set design is excellent and never takes away the illusion of being stuck somewhere at sea.

The monster is BIG, so it's nothing that hides around in the house killing people. It mostly uses it's tail to impale baddies, or just rip them apart. Or stick it in the head of some ugly mother... or cut and decapitate! Yeah, Amphibious delivers on the gore and blood-front and I for one is very grateful for that. This is not a bloodless SyFy production! I love the mix of practical effects and CG and even if I've seen better animations in cheaper movies, the scorpion looks great and fits the style of the movie.

Compared to Yuzna's two last movies in Spain, Beneath Still Waters and Rottweiler, this is actually a very slick movie. The other two had scripts that desperately tried to be something different, something unique - but failed miserably! It was also obvious that Yuzna didn't put his soul into the stories and the end result was boring like hell. Amphibious 3D is a lot more fun. The simple storyline and few locations gives Yuzna an opportunity to shine with his visual talents and work a little bit more with the actors. I would say this is Yuzna's best movie since 1998's Progeny (and even The Dentist 2 from the same year).

Now I just wish this movie got distribution, everywhere. I would love a blu-ray for example! I'm sure a lot creature feature fans out there would love to give this is a spin more than one time!

Jenglot Pantai Selatan (2011)

Rizal Mantovani is back with yet another silly monster-romp from Indonesia. The last one I saw was Taring, a jungle-style version of The Descent that was quite OK but mostly an excuse to show supermodels in peril (which happens to be one of my favorite genres, some day I will write an article about that!). Jenglot Pantai Selatan is more or less an eighty minute long excuse to show a lot of cleavage. Or to be more specific, an eighty minute long excuse to show half-naked people being killed by the most bizarre monster I’ve seen in a long time: the Jenglot!

So what the heck is a Jenglot? First of all, it’s a mythological creature that’s very popular in Indonesia. Just google it and you’ll see the legend is very much alive up to this very day. To make it simple, it’s more or less a supernatural pet to magicians who practices black magic. It’s a small deformed version of a human, often with long claws, sharp teeth, skin like a newborn rat and quite hairy! It also has a tail and human ears. Cozy!

In this cinematic masterpiece we follow a bunch of twenty something kids who goes to a hip beach party to drink, dance and maybe get some action. And the girls shows their cleavage and the guys show their fit torsos. But this time they have bad luck, because a gang of Jenglots – belonging to a weird, smoking, bearded man who can be invisible to some people – decides to eat everyone that gets close to the water and yeah… everyone near the beach!

I would lie if I claimed Jenglot Pantai Selatan to be a masterpiece, because it’s not. Like Taring it’s a cheap monster-movie with sexy women and cute guys getting attacked eaten by very strange monsters. It’s not even that gory, but bloody and show some gory aftermath. The most gory scene is when one of the Jenglots burst through the chest of one of the characters. But don’t let this stop you from enjoying this piece of trash, because it’s fun trash.

The monsters themselves are cheap and strange, and I think they even put either a monkey, or a cat or a small dog inside the monster-suits in a couple of scenes. They have big human ears, pig-noses and looks god damn ugly – but fun! They also have long tails with something that looks like a human hand on the end. I mean, wtf?

It starts kinda slow, but like in every good SyFy production this also has at least one killing every tenth minute and when there’s not monsters it has half-naked people to look at instead. It’s cheap, shot on digital video – but it looks professional – and sometimes like a better soft porn flick – but uses the low budget in a creative way. I hate low budget movies that don’t show anything when the only thing they can offer is blood, monsters and nudity. Jenglot Pantai Selatan at least tries to give us as much as possible and only that makes it worth watching.

It’s nice to see that Indonesian genre cinema still lives. Give it a try!

Sidang Dara Dedemit (2000)

Sometimes I’m just too lazy to even try writing a review, especially if the movie is to crazy or strange to write down in words. It has happen before and now it’s time again. Let me introduce Sidang Dara Dedemit which seems to be one of several movies, episodes, about a beautiful woman and her bald gay spirit friend. This bald guy is played by Ozzy Syahputra, who’s a famous actor and singer in Indonesia.

It’s a mix between scares and comedy – mostly comedy – and some utterly bizarre characters. It’s cheap, dirty and very silly. But even without subtitles it’s hard to be bored by it. There’s plenty of extremely cheap video effects, dwarfs and the fog machine is working hard to create atmosphere in something that could have been a daytime soap opera but with monsters and ghosts!

Anyway, this is very entertaining and I will try to find other episodes so I can tell you more about the adventures of Si Manis Jembatan Ancol and Ozzy!

But I will let the screenshots talk instead, here you go:

Taring (2010)

From legendary production company Rapi Film (Queen of Black Magic, The Warrior, The Devil’s Sword and tons of other cult classics) comes a new latex-filled night of terror, Taring! Shot in the jungles of Indonesia and a cast of über-slim photo models with tons of make-up and couple of guys thrown in for the sake of being meat, this is a mix of typical Indonesian folklore, The Descent and every movie with photo models in peril! Hardly a masterpiece, but well worth watching.

A new day for our anoretic superstars, a new location – this time in the dangerous Werenggi forest! Perfect place, beautiful scenery – but also haunted and forbidden for children and pregnant women to enter! The locals almost run away in fear when they realize that bloodshed will come, but our street-smart shallow crew of fashion-experts just does not care. After a day of photography the night comes, and also the nasty creatures of the forest…

Taring is a good-looking production, low-budget but ambitious. Shot on HD and with a cast of cute actors and actresses. The cast is actually not bad. They are likable and have some depth. The typical gay make-up artist (“Cici”) is not too irritating and it has some character-twist which works better that it should. But it’s not a fanastic movie, it’s just a by-the-book people-getting-eaten-by-monsters which has a slightly more exotic setting then the normal US produced DTV movie.

It’s never determined if the monsters are some kind of mutated people or demons, or ghosts – but they really look cool. Slim, long hair and naked, with glowing eyes in the dark and big teeth. Sometime they walk on all four with their back facing the ground (just like the deleted spider walk in The Exorcist). They reminded me of the Swedish supernatural being Näcken (a water spirit) because of their fondness for sitting on a rock staring at their victims at first.

As usual the weakest thing with a movie like this is the generic plotline and maybe a bit sloppy editing/directing during a few of the horror scenes. One clip with a creature is used a couple of times for example. What they really succeed in is the darkness surrounding the camp, with creatures looking at them from the the bushes and trees. The gore is a bit up and down in quality. It’s latex all the way through, but cheap and maybe not that detailed. But it’s still bloody and quite graphic, lots of intestines and spurting blood.

Taring is a fun movie, never boring and gory. I’m sure fans of newer and older Indonesian genre cinema will appreciate this movie from Rapi Films!

Merantau (2009)

Merantau is a rite of passage in Indonesia, when a young man leaves his home to see the world and maybe learn something in the process. Here a young man leaves his home and kicks ass for most of the time. Not a bad way to spend his time, I guess? Merantau is directed by Welsh documentary filmmaker Gareth Evans, but it’s far from gritty and realistic. This is basically the typical Thai action film with Tony Jaa (country boy goes to town and gets in trouble), but with far more depth and drama. Nothing bad with that, but I guess most of us (including me) will watch it only for the action.

When Yuda (Iko Uwais) comes to Jakarta to teach Tiger Silet, a local martial arts, he finds himself out of a job and with no place to live. After running into a prostitute while chasing her little brother who just stole his wallet, he suddenly gets involved in the nasty, nasty Ratger (danish actor Mads Koudal), a baddie who deals with human slaves and likes to fuck as many prostitutes as possible. He’s also a brutal fighter. Anyway, Yuda decide to save this girl from her slavery and is suddenly the most chased man in Jakarta. Good for him that he’s a master in ass-kicking!

But don’t be fooled by the trailer (something you obviously can find on YouTube), Merantau takes it’s time introduce characters, set the mood and feels like a serious drama for quite a while, until Yuda can’t control himself and beats the shit out of a stripbar filled with henchmen. Then it’s bascially action until the last fifteen minutes of the movie when it turns to drama again, which works better than it sounds. The fighting is very spectacular and the style is very organic, very natural. It’s like watching something unreal, something animated. Uwais is obviously a very skilled fighter, and he’s quite a good actor too (this is his first part, he was a truckdriver before getting this part) and if he gets a good agent who can take care of his career he can be something big.

The endfight might be a letdown for you who expect something big in the style of a Tony Jaa-movie, this is just two baddies fighting with our hero on a flat area – but what a fight! This is poetry in fighting, a perfect example how to use fantastic choreography to create something stunning and beautiful. The stunts when people are falling are well-made, but often using wires – so the impact never looks as hard as in the HK-movies from the eighties, or the new wave of Thai action. But it’s not that stunts that’s important in this movie, it’s the fighting – and the fighting is top-notch.

... and if you want to see blood, this is the movie for you. Not in any extreme ways, but there's a squib-scene which literary covers the walls of an elevator with blood - and it's getting quite nasty int he end too. Just so you all know.

I also want to mention Mads Koudal, the actor playing the baddie. Often in Asian movies the western actors are quite bad, or at least they overact like hell or are there to fill out the story. The character of Ratger is one motherf**king nasty man, evil to the bone – and evil with a depth, something he shows to his brother in the movie. They have some kinda physical abusive relationship, and still love each other to the last drop of blood. Mads is a great bad guy, one of the best I’ve seen in the genre for quite a long while, and makes something special from a character that could have been just another meatbag in the history of foreign baddies in Asian movies.

Merantau is a great movie, with great locations and excellent directing. We’re impressed in the House of Ninja Dixon and hope to see more from Iko Uwais and Gareth Evans very soon in the future!

Samson dan Delilah (1987)

For the love of Satan, how many outfits can a woman have? Suzzanna, as the evil Delilah, has one new outfit for each scene in Samson dan Delilah, and with that ridiculous wig she looks like a slimmer version of Miss Piggy! Yes, Samson dan Delilah is a very weird Indonesian take on the biblical story of Samson with his curly hair and super strenght. Here played by the talentless Paul Hay, a man who gets his bodybuilding-resume in the pre-credits! He looks like the retarded offspring of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Izzard.

Anyway, it’s more or less the same story that we learned and loved since kindergarten. Except this time Samson chops an evil Cyclops in two pieces, makes Suzzanna imitate fellatio on a banana and then licks her thighs clean from syrup! One of the baddies is a man with an upside-down moustache and we also are treated to some eye-tits.

Yes, this, Samson dan Delilah, is crazy motherfucking wacky Indonesia in full bloom. The fights are absurd and colourful (everything in this movie is colourful) and the gore is over-the-top and with a lot of spraying blood. Of course we’re getting some fun magic, including a self-repairing magician! The comedy goes from stupid to just childish, but it’s impossible to dislike this movie. Everyone seem to have a lot of fun, especially Suzzanna who really is wild here, and even Paul Hay is fun to look at, even if he can’t fight and is very, very stiff during the rest of the action scenes. But I’ve seen worse.

The French DVD is in widescreen and uncut, but only with French language. Still, this is – what I know – the best version out right now and believe me, it’s easy to understand this even if they don’t talk English or the lack of subtitles in the same language. It’s also very cheap!

I have no idea what to write more about this fantastic movie, so here’s some screenshots! Enjoy!

Perjanjian Dimalam Keramat (1991)

I've actually spent a lot of time watching great movies (even masterpieces) the last couple of days. Wonderful stuff, maybe movies that changes lifes. So I have idea why I need to force you to spend some time with Perjanjian Dimalam Keramat (I had to copy that titel, because it's impossible to remember the spelling) instead of, for example, Village of the Eight Gravestones. But this is a special movie. It's Indonesian, it starts the great fantastic and amazing Suzzanna... and is a rip-off on the worst Elm Street-movie ever, Renny Harlin's snooze-fest part A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master! But hang on, because this is a lot of fun... and I can say without any shame that this is a much more entertaining movie!

Suzzanna and a guy that looks very androgynous is a happy family with two cute kids and a big nice house. One night a couple of bad guys enters the house and massacres the whole family and their staff, bloody of course! Why? I have no idea, but there's a guy with glasses that obviously wants to take revenge for something, or steal their ground or take over some company. But beware! The spirit of Suzzanna is taken over by another spirit, a dead prisoner with a Freddy Krueger-glove - and now Suzzanna has the glove and starts her gory revenge on the killers, one by one...

Okey, this is actually the only movie you need to watch this week. Really. I'm not kidding you. Not that it's forgotten masterpiece or anything, but it's so damn entertaining that I wish it could have a proper widescreen special edition with commentary track by Suzzanna's ghost! What don't work is the part after the massacre, which is maybe... 25 minutes of talking, something that probably is a lot funnier with subtitles. But the rest, yeah, that's fun! Suzzanna - all dressed in pink, with bullet holes sprayed all over her, and a Freddy Krueger-glove goes on a rampage in a very funny wicked way. She seem to enjoy the part a lot, and do it totally over-the-top - and it works so well. All the kill-scenes (I guess, it was a while since I watched Renny Harlin's movie) is copied here, and is cheaper and not on a dream, which makes them very strange. It's not overly gory, but there's couple of very bloody scenes (the scene when a person is transformed to an insect is here, but this time it's a crab!) and always a lot fun visual solutions to the sequences.

More scenes that you will recognize is the beach-stuff when the gloves comes up on the beach like shark underneath the sand and a much cheaper version of the Freddy-in-motorcycle sequence. To my delight the martial arts in the end is quite good, though it's quite visible that it's two male stuntmen in female clothes that do the fighting.

Perjanjian Dimalam Keramat is a very charming and fun rip-off, has some gore and a Suzzanna in top-form. This is a must for lover of Indonesian exploitation and you weirdos that need a new twist on the Elm Street-saga!

Srigala (1981)

From the director of Indonesian classic The Warrior, comes Srigala - which more or less is a copy of the first Friday the 13, but without the backstory of the mongoloid child and with a golden treasure instead! Why not? And it also has Barry Prime, which automatically makes it a cool movie even if it's not that good.

A bunch of teenagers (or something) goes to a lake to camp, swim and have fun. But they're not alone there. Three treasure hunters, one of them is the manliest of man - Barry Prima - are seeking after a golden treasure on the bottom of the lake! But someone is watching them, a person dressed in black and with an urge to kill, kill, kill! He (or she) takes them down one by one... until there's one final girl left. Will she survive? Will Barry Prime show off his muscles? I'm sure you can guess!

First of all, this is not a bad movie. Sure, it completely lacks originality, but still looks fine - especially in the night-scenes. Lots of atmosphere and beautiful jungle locations. I saw it with out subtitles, and had no problems following the story and character developments. It's not much of a horror movie from the beginning (the first victim, before the credits, it's a very silly looking man with moustach and small, small swimming trunks - but after that we have more of an ordinarly thriller for an hour or so, with a cool and stunt-filled boat-chase and a couple of nice explosions.

It's first in the last half hour that it actually becomes a 100 % copy of Friday the 13th. Scene for scene is ripped off, but I'm sad to say that most of the killings are very offscreen and not bloody at all. But this version (downloaded, ripped from a VCD) might be cut too, because the editing during the murder scenes was a bit strange. But if you can live with that, you'll see how the final girl takes shelter in a house, someone throws her boyfriend through the window, she escapes, runs into a woman that tells the backstory and then is the killer herself! Another nice cat fight here (mixed with some martial arts), our heroine kills the murdered and wakes up in a boat where someone is dragging her into the water. All this is looks good and is well made, but of course never reaches the tension like in the original movie. In a weird sequence they also seem to imitate slow-motion! Which looks completely silly, but a fun touch to the cat fight.

Another bonus is a lengthy dream sequence where the main girl is dreaming about four underwater zombies coming up from the lake to get her! Genius!

Srigala is of course crap, trash, whatever. But as many of these Indonesian movies it's also very charming and hard to dislike. Barry Prima (I can understand that he set a lot of hearts on fire, because he looks quite good here) is cool, and the rest of the cast is not bad at all. I also like the stolen Mike Oldfield-track that accompanies the last scene, not a bad choice at all.

It's not out on DVD and is probably very hard to get on VCD, but if you want something silly and fun, go for Srigala next time you want to download some entertaining Asian film that you never seen before.

Blind Warrior (1987)

When you least expect it a movie finally lives up to it's hype. Blind Warrior is the movie and I can recommend it wholeheartedly! This was the last in the Indonesian Warrior-franchise, the first one was of course The Warrior with Barry Prima, and I wonder if Mondo Macabro wouldn't have sold better if they started with Blind Warrior instead of the first one? Because here we have everything you want, and a little bit more.

The Blind Warrior, let's call him BW, wanders around in the countryside rescuing people from other (evil) people. The evil leader of the country has a habit of sacrificing virgins (they don't say that, but we all know!) to a big evil god. But what the people don't know is that the women survives this and is doomed to be fucked by the evil leader in some kinda stone-bathtub with little.. polystyrene... balls? Sounds ok anyway. But a young woman don't want to marry the evil leader, and of course her whole village is slaughtered by the evil army... and BW, our man, comes to rescue! (that was six "evil" by the way).

Ah, you know how it is. The stories in these Indonesian adventure-movies are often very thin. It's the basic crap about good vs evil, people in funny costumes and huge amounts of gore. Yes, but more on that later. I read reviews that claim that the first hour is kinda slow. Maybe it is, but it still has to massacres and a couple of minor action-scenes, clumsy fights mostly - you know where they just stand and wait in line to get killed. But this first hour works fine, and story works and not so much unnecessary scenes. It's just basic, competent storytelling. The whole movie also has a big feeling to it, which makes it look more expensive than it actually is. The baddies lair is especially impressive with that enormous statue in the middle. Cool.

But the thing that will make all of you wanna see this movie is the gore and splatter. Because if you just wait a little bit, and look beyond those first bloodless (but exciting) fights, you will get your reward in the last half hour. Here we have some very cool splatter-stuff! Lot's of impalings, cut throats, three decapitations, some different kinds of body-rippings and a lot more. A lot of graphic stuff here, and even if it's cheap and cheesy, it's well worth the wait. Blood-spurts for whole the family! Did I mention all the big explosions too? There's a lot to love in this flick.

I have a DVD-release of this. I guess it's a bootleg, it says Terror-Vision in the beginning and has both an English and a German language track. The quality is VHS, but it's quite good anyway. You see everything and it's uncut. Fullscreen too, and during one scene Japanese subtitles shows up. But it's a great DVD anyway, and the quality is good enough until some kind human out there releases a 3-disc special edition.

The Terrorists (1986)

The Terrorists is hardly the glory of Indonesian filmmaking, but it's still a nice trashy mix of not more than three different genres!

First it starts as a lowbudget version of a big budget Hollywood-film. Terrorist attacks plagues the world (which means a lot of cheap miniatures getting blown up) and a local gang of bad guys uses this fear to create their own attacks and steal some money (or whatever) at the same time... which means a little bit martial arts and a car-chase...

... that ends inside a hospital! And here the movie continue like a pre-Die Hard, pre-Hard-Boiled, action movie where the terrorists takes hostages in the hospital. But of course there's two men who can stop them, one of them is Barry Prima! So he goes in, shoots a lot and one of the bombs goes of...

... and suddenly we have a cheap version of Towering Inferno! People trapped in the fire, on the roof, people falling to their death and the firemen tries hard to rescue everybody! And at the same time the last terrorist goes around like Al Pacino, screaming and wawing with a gun! Until he get's shot down and the movie is over.

Barry Prima has more of a cameo, and the movie barely hangs together. The stars are more the bad guys actually! It's a cheap knock-off on big budget action with cartoonish backprojections and an idiot storyline. But it works quite fine anyway, and is never boring - except during the end where some of the fire-stuff goes on way to long.

Classic obscure trash for a trash-generation! Long Live Barry Prima!