Census Bloodbath: Stop Messin' Round With Your Tricks

Year:
1981
Director:
Liliek Sudjio
Cast:
Suzzanna, W.D. Mochtar, Alan Nuary
Run Time:
1 hour 30 minutes

Plot: The Queen of Black Magic (originally Ratu ilmu hitam) follows what happens when villager Murni (Indonesian scream queen Suzzanna) is seduced by the playboy Kohar (Alan Nuary) and later dumped for Baedah (Siska Widowati of Srigala), the daughter of the village's headman. After Kohar and Baedah's wedding is magically ruined, Kohar accuses Murni of using black magic, provoking the other villagers into throwing her off a cliff.

However, she is rescued by hermit Gendon (W.D. Mochtar), who trains her in the very dark arts that she was accused of practicing. Later, she returns to the village to extract bloody, magical revenge. This happens around the same time that the santri Permana Sidik arrives in town, preaching to the villagers about how the power of Muslim piety can keep dark magic at bay.

Analysis: I debated for a long time about whether to include The Queen of Black Magic in Census Bloodbath at all. It is divided into three distinct half-hour chunks, and the middle third is really the only one that resembles a slasher movie at all. Eventually, I decided to write it up, for two reasons.

One: Like many regional slashers, the formula is inherently viewed through a different storytelling lens. While Queen of Magic blends melodrama and folk horror into the slasher formula, it's not really further afield from the subgenre than Hong Kong's kung fu slashers or India's musical slashers.

Two: I really liked the movie, and I wanted to write about it, so screw it.

Let's start by discussing the slasher bit, because that's why we're here, after all. Murni doles out a litany of some of the most creative and delightful supernatural slasher deaths you'll ever see, from the relative simplicity of hanging a man with a floating scarf on up to the gonzo grotesqueness of using voodoo dolls to straight-up explode people, making their veins bulge, giving them giant boils that expand and pop in bloody geysers, and so on.

The effects that bring all this to life are genuinely great, too. Whether the filmmakers are using magician tricks like making people and objects float or delivering gooey post-Savini gore, almost everything that they deliver onscreen is not only convincing, but often beautiful. In its own special way. 

Honestly, the filmmaking is very accomplished in general. For one thing, there is a breathtakingly gorgeous setpiece where Murni performs a black magic ritual on a clifftop in front of an exaggeratedly huge moon. But in the less phantasmagoric sequences, there is still a sense that the camera is being placed deliberately in a way that elevates the story.

Plus, the images are crisp and lovely, with an appealing color palette. Trust me when I say that you can never assume you're going to get this kind of thing from a 1980s slasher movie. Only a fool would be that optimistic after sitting through Sledgehammer.

The first and third acts can't really compare to the second, but the film's strengths do carry over into both of those sectors. They look great, and the overcooked melodrama plot that comes to the fore in those sequences is perfectly spiced (I won't go into detail, but I will say that my runner-up line for Champion Dialogue was "You're my brother and my lover.").

I can't say that I was overly thrilled when the plot turned to plodding religious moralizing (turns out it's just as boring in movies about Islam as it is in movies about Christianity), but for the most part the movie operates Exorcist-style, with the religious elements playing well with the horror elements.

Plus, Suzzanna lives up to her status as an Indonesian horror icon here. Her character is the anchor of all three segments, but she has a completely different set of feelings, motivations, and intentions in each one. It's a complicated role, and without her consistent characterization holding the story and the tone together, the movie would have instantly fallen apart. You need to be sympathetic to her throughout, but also disgusted by her choices enough that you're just the right amount of wrecked by the inevitable redeeming self-sacrifice that is the only possible way to be a violent woman in a religious film.

So, yeah. I quite liked The Queen of Black Magic. Spoiler alert, I'm ultimately going to give it a 7/10. But I was seriously considering an 8/10. My heart just wasn't in it. I think it's a hidden gem (at least in the English-speaking world), but maybe not a "rush out and see it right now" kind of way.

Killer: Murni (Suzzanna)

Final Girl: N/A, though plenty of characters survive

Best Kill: Even the worst kills in this movie are pretty great, but the best is probably Kohar's. It would have to be, right? Murni's revenge is prolonged and painful: After being smashed in the face with a magic egg, Kohar begins spontaneously bleeding. He is eventually is driven into an addled frenzy and tears off his own head in the village square!!

Sign of the Times: Although I don't exactly have a strong understanding of contemporary Indonesian gender politics, I imagine that this movie would have been a little more "good for her" if it was made in 2026.

Scariest Moment: During her wedding, Baedah has a vision of Kohar as a hopping skeleton and his groomsmen as rotting zombies.

Weirdest Moment: Mere seconds after taking Murni's virginity, Kohar is chomping on an ear of corn.

Champion Dialogue: “Kohar might die stupid, Sir."

Body Count: 10

1. Kamdi is repeatedly pounded into the ground by an invisible force.
2. Pungut is attacked by a swarm of bees.
3. Villager is voodoo-sploded.
4. Saijah dies offscreen.
5. Field Worker is drowned in a marsh.
6. Goatherd is telekinetically hanged with a scarf.
7. Kohar rips off his own head.
8. Villager #2 is magically lit on fire.
9. Gendon is voodoo-sploded.
10. Murni dies from expending too much power while already wounded.

TL;DR: The Queen of Black Magic is a technically accomplished, engrossing supernatural horror movie.

Rating: 7/10

Census Bloodbath: Big Bad (Capsule Review)

Year: 1981

Director: Sisworo Gautama Putra

Cast: Barry Prima, Lydia Kandou, Rudy Salam

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

Plot: A killer stalks a small Indonesian island and, one by one, kills off a group of men who are hunting for sunken treasure and a trio of camping teens.

Analysis: A note: Srigala AKA Wolf was only available to me in unsubtitled Indonesian, so some of the nuances of the plot were lost on me. However, considering that the film is quite obviously a rip-off of Friday the 13th, it wasn't too hard to guess at what was going on. 

Actually, let me backtrack. This movie was billed to me as a Friday the 13th rip-off, but other than some POV shots and a Crazy Ralph analogue, there wasn't much in the first 2/3 of the film to sell me on the idea of it ripping off anything other than Bay of Blood, which Friday was already doing. However, the second the kills start kicking in (right at the beginning of the third act, making the film preposterously draggy), it lurches into the Friday template so devotedly that I could have quoted the English script word for word. It copies everything, down to the random reveal of a middle-aged woman as the killer, the boring three-act chase scene that ensues, and even the closing scare gag. Thankfully they at least cut the seven minute scene of Alice making coffee, so they had one good instinct here.

However, copying the kills of Friday the 13th not only without Tom Savini but apparently without an effects team at all, is a no-go. The murders are all relegated offscreen, into silhouette, or achieved with the mildest smear of stage blood. It's an embarrassing dearth of interesting murder sequences, which were the one thing other than the score that propelled Friday into the stratosphere. The score of Srigala sucks too, come to think of it. At every turn, Srigala fails to capture the eminently copiable charms of the film it's trying to recreate.

Occasionally, some regionalisms sneak in to liven up the proceedings, like a completely unmotivated boat chase that is the most exciting moment in the entire film. Or the sequence where the girls are fighting over a hot dude and begin to go full kung fu movie, striking poses before leaping toward each other. But these moments are few and far between, and there's only so much that the studly Indonesian star Barry Prima in low-cut collars can assuage my pain during the rest of the leaden proceedings. 

Killer: Indonesian Mrs. Voorhees

Final Girl: Pink Girl

Best Kill: The guy who gets his head slammed in a car hood, because that's the easiest to accomplish with minimal special effects, and an incredibly relatable, flinch-inducing feeling.

Sign of the Times: While they failed to rip off most of Friday the 13th, they nailed those teeny tiny shorts that all the men wear.

Scariest Moment: Pink Girl has a dream that zombies emerge from the lake.

Weirdest Moment: Boss Man has a car bearing down directly on him, so he throws a rope at it.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 8

1. Scuba Man is killed offscreen.
2. Yellow Girl is axed in the head in silhouette.
3. Cuck Guy has his head slammed in a car hood.
4. Shirtless Scuba Guy is harpooned.
5. Boss Man is hit by a car.
6. Hot Guy is killed offscreen, presumably stuck with arrows.
7. Flashback Guy is killed offscreen.
8. Indonesian Mrs. Voorhees is stabbed in the chest with her own knife.

TL;DR: Srigala is a rip-off of Friday the 13th that is doing everything so demonstrably worse that there's no reason to watch it.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 618

CinemaBeach: The Meh of Mehing

The Act of Killing

Year: 2013

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

Cast: Anwar Congo, Haji Anif, Syamsul Arifin

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Personal anecdote time! The screening of this film that I went to in L.A. was also attended by Joshua Oppenheimer and executive producer Werner Herzog and I got a picture with him because I'm super cool and pushy.

He never smiles.

In 1965, a group of gangsters in Indonesia perpetrated a series of mass killings of communists and Chinese in the name of the government. Although the genocide has stopped, these people are still in power. In 2005, director Joshua Oppenheimer asked Anwar Congo, who himself murdered over a thousand people with wire, to recreate his killings onscreen for a film. The Act of Killing details the six year process of making the film, and the documentary allows us to see a mass murderer through his own eyes. So why does it feel so empty?

If we had been shown their movie – the final product, we could fully understand the scope of how much they do not understand about the torture they inflicted on countless human beings. If we had been shown a full documentary about the process and their antics (one of the gangsters frequently dresses in drag for comedic effect), we would have gained a similar understanding of the nature of evil and humanity and how they can coexist. Unfortunately, what we are shown is a meandering narrative with no real focus that hopscotches back and forth in time, presenting a recklessly uneven distribution of the two types of footage.With an increased emphasis on the documentary aspects in which the gangster friends goof around making their movie, the audience spends more time laughing at their antics than gaining any real emotional connection.

Now, this film hasn’t been critically lauded for nothing. There are many instances that give one pause, including an ex-gangster gleefully recounting the story of stabbing his Chinese girlfriend’s father, the actors pausing the recreation of a killing for the evening prayers, and a man using his own daughter as an actress in a torture scene and trying to calm her down after she bursts into uncontrollable tears. These men are truly incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions and whether it’s because they are truly evil or because they willfully delude themselves to try to avoid feeling guilt is up to the audience to decide.

Therein lies the film’s biggest strength. The Act of Killing deliberately provides no narration or opinion, allowing the viewers to come to their own conclusions. The film’s biggest flaw is not achieving the necessary emotional resonance by straying too far and too frequently into tangential side plots, like a gangster’s unofficial run for office. While it did expose the corruption in the system and the incompetence of the people in office, it is miles away from the film’s central focus.

Despite its flaws, the editing does have strong moments, especially with intercutting footage a gangster spending the day at the mall with his wife and daughter. My one fervent wish, though, is that we’d spent more time in the hallucinogenic dream world of Congo’s imagination. In a world of his own creation, we would be able to understand him on his own terms and The Act of Killing keeps the footage from his film mostly locked away. Without it, the film suffers from issues with overall coherence and gives us a lot of Indonesian history instead of making a sweeping emotional statement (for good or for bad).

There is one powerfully raw moment in which Congo viscerally reacts to the realization of the horrors he has inflicted upon others. This moment is like a sucker-punch to the gut and will stay with me for the rest of my life. That footage lasted for one minute in a two hour documentary.

The Act of Killing is well-intentioned and has a lot of potential, but mostly misses the mark. Here’s to hoping that the extended director’s cut on the DVD goes toward solving some of these problems, because that film could change the world.

TL;DR: The Act of Killing squanders its potential by focusing on irrelevant storylines in a meandering documentary narrative.
Rating: 4/10
Should I Spend Money On This? I don't think I know a single person that would be interested in this movie.
Word Count: 738