1979 - Directed by Liliek Sudjio
Starring Suzzanna and W.D. Mochtar

Filled with lo-fi special effects and some jaw-droppingly silly dialog (“A ghost can’t appear so early in the morning.”?!?), this is yet another film from Indonesia that makes me happy that Mondo Macabro continues to fearlessly churn out these great DVD’s for films that I’d never have discovered otherwise.

Deep in preparations for a wedding, a small countryside village is suddenly plagued with bad omens and ill portents, signifying that black magic is being used in the area to sabotage the festivities.  The groom to be is a guy named Kohar (who all my interweb searching has yet to turn up in connection to an actual actor’s name, so forgive me if you can’t track down his entire filmography for you) and his blushing bride is the daughter of the village elder; the wedding is something of a political move that’s meant to secure his family’s position in the area.  The threat of black magic rumbling through the locals, a witch doctor is brought in to investigate, but is quickly struck down by the offending ‘black magic’. This brings questions to mind about the difference between the witchdoctor and whatever ‘black magic’ that might be plaguing the locals, but what the fuck do I know, I’m not Indonesian.  Kohar seizes on the situation and brings up a jilted lover to the West, who he ‘suspects’ could be trying to ruin his nuptials as revenge for his moving on to a new lover.

The girl in question is Murni (Suzzanna), who has meanwhile broken down to her mother and confessed that she’s been led astray by a man who subsequently dumped her.  Cue the raving mob of Kohar’s cronies breaking in, grabbing Murni and dragging her into the night to punish her for her alleged evil.  They set fire to the house (with mom inside, no less!) and then throw Murni over a cliff to her death. 

Except they don’t.  There’s a Hermit (Mochtar) conveniently hanging around the base of the cliff, so when Murni comes tumbling down, he catches her as if that’s the very reason he was standing there in the middle of the night, and we eventually learn that this line of reasoning isn’t too far off.  As the Hermit nurses her back to health, Murni relates her tale of jilted love in form of a flashback, in which she and Kohar get busy in a remote hut in a field, where she utters the line “This isn’t where I wanted to give up my virginity...”, just  as a water buffalo strolls by in the foreground.  This moment that almost made me spit up soda, the water buffalo really caught me off-guard.

Cue the training montage as the Hermit trains her to take her revenge as the Queen of Black Magic, which evidently involves lots of back-flips on a trampoline by the light of the full moon.  The Hermit begins their revenge plot by making Kohar impotent using what looks like a voodoo doll, hitting him where he lives.  Murni is spotted in the village, which begs the question ‘why the hell would you go into this village that threw you over a cliff?’, as it appears to be compromised of about 100 people at most and they’re sure to recognize you?  Two of Kohar’s cronies attempt to warn him that Murni is still lurking about locally, but she makes short work of them, and while she racks up a deathtoll amongst the locals who wronged her, her mother (who barely survived her house fire) confronts Kohar publically about her daughter’s death.  This naturally leads to mom’s death, because how can you keep the peace of your newlywed life with old women constantly accusing you of killing their daughter at every turn?

The Hermit stirs Murni’s desire for vengeance when he informs her of the death of her mother, and then a holy man arrives in the area that will complicate Murni’s life even further.

The film is loaded with numerous instances of cheap effects, silly plotting and the like, but as with Mystics In Bali, this just careens forward, never giving the viewer time to get bored and sucking you along in the wake of its’ good intentions.

This genre of film is a lot of fun if you know what you’re getting into, as the overall cheapness is outweighed by the outlandish storylines and wild twists.

Give it a rental.

7/10