Dangerous Seductress ( H. Tjut Djalil, 1995)

I don't know 'bout you, but the super-long car chase/shoot-out that opens Dangerous Seductress better have a decent pay off, because that was seven of the most painful minutes of cinema I have ever endured. Sure, it's seven painful minutes of hyper-insane Indonesian cinema, but there's only so much H. Tjut Djalil (Lady Terminator) can bring to car chases and shoot outs (two of the most overplayed tropes in movie history). Of course, given that this review is currently in the process of being hatched, it should come as no surprise that the film delivers on so many levels. And begins to do so immediately after the pink getaway car belonging to three jewel thieves crashes in front of the Jakarta mansion belonging to Linda (Kristin Anin), a blonde fashion model. While the police do their best to collect the mangled body parts that litter the crash scene, a severed finger manages to allude them. And you know what that means? Right, the finger is absorbed by an ancient compact mirror, and then burrows itself into ground. After some mild rumbling, a skeleton emerges. Slowly but surely, the skeleton begins to grow flesh. Eventually the skeleton transforms into... "The Evil Queen."
   

   
Don't worry, I'm sure nothing bad will happen. I mean, so what if there's a "dangerous seductress" loitering on the front lawn of the suburban Jakarta mansion belonging to a blonde fashion model? Just as long as a Guinean anthropologist doesn't give the blonde fashion model a book about Indonesian mysticism for her birthday, and just as long as the blonde fashion model's blonde sister, Susan (Tonya Lawson) doesn't decide to read from the book out loud while standing in front of a mirror, everything should be fine.
  

   
However, things don't turn out fine, now do they? Or do they? Unless you're proponent of heterosexual men and their equally heterosexual penises, everything actually will be fine. You see, when everything I stated earlier does happen, this leads to many deaths within Jakarta's burgeoning douchebag community. Boo-hoo? I don't think so.
   

   
And like said, it all happens thanks to a weird con-flux of events. In a way, you could blame Susan's asshole rapist of a boyfriend. While "The Evil Queen" is drinking dogs blood on Linda's Jakarta front lawn, Susan is trying not to get raped by her asshole rapist boyfriend on the dining room table. Thanks to the shoddy quality of the table (it collapses under the weight of the violence), Susan manages to escape.
   

   
Desperate for help, Susan turns to her sister in Jakarta, who is celebrating her birthday with her husband Bob (John Warom), a decent human being with suspect taste in blazers. Inviting Susan to stay with her in Jakarta, Linda helps her battered and bruised sister recover (her attack was extremely brutal).
   

    
It's when Linda goes to Bali for a photo-shoot and leaves Susan all alone that things begin to go nuts. Now, I don't know what compelled Susan to read that book on Indonesian mysticism aloud like that (I didn't get a strong likes to read books vibe from her). But nonetheless, the passages she reads lead to her becoming the unwitting pawn of... "The Evil Queen."
  

   
Was I annoyed that Susan's post-possession dress-up montage was three minutes shorter than the obnoxious car chase/shoot-out that opens the film? A little. That being said, I think most people, well, most sane people, will agree that Susan's dress-up montage is fucking fantastic. Seriously, I lost track of how many different outfits she tries on.
   

 
She even tries on red stockings!!!
   

   
Eventually settling on a little black dress, Susan hits the streets in search of sustenance. And by "sustenance," I mean douchebag blood.
   

   
I know it says that this film was shot in the mid-1990s. But everything practically oozes the mid-1980s. Maybe it's because Jakarta was a little behind when it came to keeping up with the latest fashions. Or maybe Jakarta circa 1995 is just plain awesome. Either way, the scenes in the nightclub contained everything I look for in a good club sequence.
    

   
(You mean fashion-forward leggy floozies and synthesizer music?) Exactly.
  

  
This place was crawling with fashion-forward leggy floozies.
 

   
And there's no better leggy floozy than Susan herself. A thousand times hotter than her sister, Susan and her sturdy legs and ample breasts make short work of the heterosexual men in this joint.
   

   
Settling on a lanky fuck in grey bikini briefs, Susan allows this oily twerp to escort her back to his boat so that she can extract his blood. Using a fishhook at first, Susan ultimately decides to use the spiky heel on her shoe to withdraw his... crimson nectar. Yum.
   

   
While I feel bad using the term "douchebag" to describe what are essentially man-shaped globs of yuppie scum, those three guys Susan lures to a meat locker on the outskirts of town were definitely douchebags. Again, using her sturdy legs and ample breasts, Susan manages to score three bodies worth of blood for... "The Evil Queen."
    

You might be thinking to yourself: Is anyone trying to stop Susan's reign of righteous terror? Well, there's this cop. But he seems more interested in hassling Linda, who he thinks might have stole some jewels from the corpses of the jewel thieves. But other than that, it looks like Susan and... "The Evil Queen" are pretty much in the clear as far as achieving their goals. Which is, I think, to restore... "The Evil Queen" to her original glory. And with Susan, a walking, sort of talking blood bag in heels, on her side, they should be unstoppable.
  

   
Of course, since not many movies openly promote the advancement of evil, I'm totally sure someone is going to come along to fuck up their plans. In meantime, however, we can relish in how close Susan came to undermining heterosexuality in Jakarta. Think about it. All she needed to do was kill two or maybe three more guys, and women throughout the city would have been free of unwanted harassment for, like, forever. Okay, maybe not forever. But a solid two weeks for sure.
   

   
It should go without saying, but Dangerous Seductress delivers the brain-sick and then some. The film is sexy, gory and the special effects are... uh, let's just say, they're uniquely Indonesian. Personally, I would have trimmed the opening car chase/shoot-out scene and done the same to Linda's Bali scenes; don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the bikini modeling scenes, it's just that the parasailing stuff was tedious. But other than that, the film is a glorious piece of trash.

  

Mystics in Bali (H. Tjut Djlil, 1981)

Bad fashion continuity, floating head cunnilingus, female armpit hair, impromptu Indonesian thigh tattoo inspection, or cackling Leák Queens, which topic should I open my long-awaited review of Mystics in Bali, an epic tale, based on the novel, "Leák Ngakak" by Putra Mada, about black magic, overly curious white people (they ruin everything) and human-pig hybrids? Well, as for "bad fashion continuity," leave that subject to the nitpickers who seem to get off on pointing out errors and goofs in movies. What else does it say there? "Floating head cunnilingus." Yeesh. I have a strong feeling that this is the topic that most people gravitate towards when attempting to discuss this movie, and I can't say I really blame them for doing so. If you're thinking to yourself, what about female armpit hair? All I have to say is, what about it? While I enjoyed the cackling Leák Queen, I don't think cackling, whether it be by a Leák Queen or a non Leák Queen, is really my forte. You know what that means? C'mon, don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, it's the only one I haven't mentioned yet. That's right, impromptu Indonesian thigh tattoo inspection is my drug of choice. Oh, and make sure to stand clear because I plan on abusing the hell out of this particular drug over the course of this mostly futile exercise.

Let's examine the contents of this so-called drug before we begin, shall we? "Impromptu," the act of doing something that is not planned or rehearsed. And you could definitely classify the act of inspecting the lead characters thighs as not planned or rehearsed. I mean, how many Indonesian men with faint mustaches get up in the morning and say to themselves: I can't wait to inspect the thigh tattoo on my white American girlfriend that was put there the previous night by the elongated, electrified snake-tongue belonging to an elderly Leák Queen? Not many, I assure you.

"Indonesia" is an archipelago made up of around 17,500(!) islands. And the name "Indonesia" comes from the Greek words Indós and nèsos, which mean "island," I think.

A "thigh" is, well, I don't really have to explain what a thigh is, now do I? A "tattoo" is a mark people get embedded in their skin; the person drawing the tattoo is usually covered in tattoos as well. And an "Inspection" is the act of reviewing an object in a meticulous manner.

It should be said, though, the thigh tattoo Catherine (Ilona Agathe Bastain) gets in Mystics in Bali isn't your average thigh tattoo. In other words, it's not a blue butterfly or a rose on fire inked by some dirtbag with a rockabilly haircut. Uh-uh, the tattoo Cathy gets on her thigh will enable her to perform black magic.

However, in order to apply the thigh tattoo that will enable her to perform black magic, she must first remove her skirt. Even though the Old Leák Queen (Sofia W.D.) clearly enunciates the phrase, "remove your skirt," Cathy just stands there with her long yellow skirt still on. In order to expedite the skirt removing process, the Old Leák Queen tells Cathy again to "remove your skirt." However, this time, the Leák Queen says it in a louder voice.

It's not that Cathy didn't hear the Old Leák Queen tell her to remove her skirt, it's just that Cathy isn't sure she wants her skin to be marked by an elderly witch with a taste for blood. Put yourself in Cathy's shoes, would you blindly agree to have one of your luscious thighs marked by an elongated, electrified snake-tongue? Think about it, you don't know what she's going to put on there -- it could be a picture of a naked Lee Iacocca riding an openly homophobic tractor for all you know.

While I totally thought that Cathy was right to exercise caution. At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that it's time to remove your skirt. You heard me, Cathy. Remove your fucking skirt! I'm sick and tired of waiting. Don't make me come out from behind these bushes and make me remove it myself.

All white people are interested "exotic cultures," and Catherine Kean is no different in that regard. On the other hand, all straight men like pussy, and Mahendra (Yos Santo) is no different in that regard, either. Combine Cathy's interest in "exotic cultures" with Mahendra's love of pussy and you're looking at a situation fraught with consequences of a fucked up nature.

Do you think if Cathy wasn't an attractive woman who looks amazing in shorts that Mahendra would be so gung-ho to help her meet a Leák master? I don't think so. Sure, he tries to warn her that messing around with the Leák brand of black magic is quite dangerous, but deep down inside he knows that she will totally have crazy naked sex with his Balinese ass if he helps her.

After some fake hand-wringing, Mahendra finally agrees to arrange a meeting between Catherine and a Leák master. Of course, the meeting is set to take place in the middle of the jungle at night. But don't worry, the brightness of Cathy's yellow shirt (sprinkled with green and pink squares) will help them see in the dark. Noticing someone twirling in the distance, Cathy and Mahendra hear the Old Leák Queen's trademark laugh for the very first time. I don't know how Cathy and Mahendra managed to keep it together after hearing that laugh, 'cause I would have lost my shit big time if I heard that laugh in a real world setting.

Sporting long grey hair and even longer fingernails, the Old Leák Queen agrees to teach Cathy all about Leák black magic. In order to finalize the deal, the Old Leák Queen offers to shake Cathy's hand. Proving that the Old Leák Queen has a sense of humour, she leaves one of her hands behind. (Huh?) Leák masters, as we'll soon find out, can remove their body parts at will, and the Old Leák Queen does this with her hand, which crawls away when Cathy throws it on the ground. As it crawls away, the Leák Queen lets out another laugh.

They meet again the following night, only this time, the Old Leák  Queen is hiding behind some bushes. This is the scene where Cathy gets her thigh tattoo. It apparently gives Cathy a taste of the Old Leák Queen's power. In exchange for this taste of power, Cathy and Mahendra bring her jewels and a few jars of blood.

Instructed to come alone next time, Cathy is given a special skirt and a cloth with spells written on it. In the meantime, Cathy asks Mahendra to decipher her thigh tattoo (to her it's just mumbo-jumbo). Mesmerized by their creamy smoothness, Mahendra seems hypnotized by her American thighs. But Mahendra manages to tell her what the tattoo means. (And that is?) Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I have no idea. You try paying attention to the presentation of pertinent plot points when Ilona Agathe Bastian is standing near the middle of a room wearing nothing but a tropical themed red bikini and a devilish smile. It's nearly impossible.

In my favourite non-thigh inspecting scene, Cathy and the Old Leák Queen, who are both dressed the same, dance and laugh together to this synthy-sounding music. (Am I crazy, or did Cathy and the Leák Queen just turn into pigs?) No, you ain't crazy, man. That totally just happened.

During another meeting, the Leák Queen borrows Cathy's head for a short while. (Hold on, borrowing heads, turning into pigs, what's going on here?) Just go with it. You see, what makes Mystics of Bali so great, besides the eerie atmosphere and the close-up shots of women's thighs, is the story is based on a real Balinese folklore. Anyway, the reason the Leák Queen needs to borrow Cathy's head is because she needs more blood, specifically the blood of an almost new born baby. In the film's most disturbing scene, Cathy's head (which has lungs and other various organs attached to it) devours a pregnant woman's baby just as she's about to give birth.

At first, I thought she was performing cunnilingus on the pregnant woman. But when I saw that the pregnant woman's baby bump was slowly shrinking, I quickly realized that she wasn't licking pussy, she's eating the pussy's baby.

A floating head ate my baby! Sure it did. Tell it to a judge, honey.

Alarmed by what Cathy is turning into (a floating head for hire/unwitting disciple of the Old Leák Queen), Mahendra asks his uncle Machesse (W.D. Mochtar) for help.

What ensues is a flaming ball fight (giant fire balls collide in the night sky in an attempt to attain dominance over one another), the Old Leák Queen gets makeover and becomes the Young Leák Queen (Debbie Cinthya Dewi), mice vomit happens, female armpit hair rears its lickable head, a meeting where the village elders discuss the seriousness of the floating head situation takes place, neck wound toothpicks are employed (one's that are specially designed to prevent vampiric floating heads from returning to their bodies), an electrified black magic kung-fu showdown, and, of course, lot's of laughing. It should go without saying, but if you were to take away the Old Leák Queen's signature laugh, this film would lose a sizable chunk of its appeal. Mwahaha!!!!!

Lady Terminator (H. Tjut Djalil, 1988)

Any thoughts you might have had about enjoying the perks of the fertilization process have long since passed, all you want to know is the exact location of your semi-precious wang. Your chances of reattaching it are pretty slim, you just want to know why a night of spontaneous intercourse has turned into a bloodstained nightmare. Such are the thoughts careening through the heads of those who have the misfortune of being straddled by the reincarnated Queen of the South Sea, the gun crazy, peckish pussy wielding protagonist in Lady Terminator, a giddy violence and sex-filled film from Indonesia. Yeah, that's right, Indo-fucking-nesia! Similar to Liquid Sky, in that a new wave woman kills men with her unruly cunt, the woman in this film uses both her damp privates and the mayhem-creating ferocity that only a fully loaded assault rifle can provide to dispatch the men in her life. Riddling the bodies of countless men and a handful of women with an inordinate amount of lead, while at the same time, causing men to spew torrents of crimson blood from their genitals (sorry ladies, this gal is strictly a shaft splitter), the chick doing the majority of the terminating throughout this mentally challenged romp will make lovers of possessed women in leather tremble with a partially misguided brand of off-kilter joy.

It's always been a dream of mine to be penetrated by bullets that have come from a gun fired by a woman. Now, you're thinking to yourself: "What's the difference? A bullet's a bullet. It doesn't matter who fires it." True, the wound it causes might be the same, but psychological intention of the person firing it is completely different. You see, a man is always penetrating stuff (your average man thinks about making or filling a hole every ten seconds), a woman, on the other hand, rarely gets the chance to penetrate anything. Sure, they pierce their ears, some of them play in the LPGA, and a precious few are allowed to wear strap-on dildos every other Saturday, but the opportunity for them to make a hole or fill an already existing one is sporadic at best. My point being, the erotic possibilities for bullet wound copulation are off the charts.

Female gun sex is the wave of the future, and in 1988, filmmaker H. Tjut Djalil (credited here as Jalil Jackson) was somehow able to see into this future. Using what he saw, his mind unleashed Lady Terminator (a.k.a. Nasty Hunter) onto the world. Enjoy the sounds of the ocean waves crashing onto the shore during the film's opening, because the sound of uncontrolled gunfire, men's torsos being bathed in crotch blood, and a cheeky jean skirt not being hiked up are the only things you'll be hearing for the next eighty-five minutes.

Underneath the crashing waves, they're used to live a mystical queen (the aforementioned Queen of the South Sea), a shapely regent with an insatiable hunger for cocks and grapes, and a real thing for emerald eye makeup and transparent clothing (the greener, the better). Swept away during a volcanic eruption a hundred or so years ago, the queen's legend lives on within the minds of the Indonesian people, and, apparently, in the mind of Tania Wilson (Barbara Anne Constable), an American student from Pasadena who is writing her thesis on the man-devouring monarch. Warned by a crusty librarian and a skittish boat captain to stay away from the queen's underwater domain, the curious young woman, bolstered, no doubt, by the uncompromising darkness of her black bikini, dives headfirst into the murky deep.

After some mild meteorological weirdness, Tania finds herself tied to a bed, her arms and legs fastened with green fabric. While struggling with her restraints, Tania notices something enter the space in-between her sweaty flesh-folds. It's in that moment we say goodbye to Tania, the inquisitive scholar, and say hello to the Lady Terminator, killer of everybody, particularly unarmed bystanders and jean skirt wrangling desk sergeants named Betty. Walking ashore in the semi-buff (all that stands between the tasty attractions dotted along her delicate undercarriage and the warm night air is a white thong), the reborn Tania acquires some clothes from some punks hanging out on the beach (the punks loose their penises) and an Uzi from a hotel security guard (an encounter that leaves him without a penis as well).

All she needs now is a pair of leather pants (preferably a pair with laces down the side), some pointy boots, an emerald tube-top, and she should be ready to carry out her mission in style. Which is to kill the ancestor of the man who stole the queen's magic eel dagger one hundred years ago (he yanked it out of her girly-box during forced congress). It turns out the ancestor is a young woman named Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker), a bourgeoning pop star with a sane love for lively sweater dresses and brightly coloured headbands.

Unfortunately, her less famous best friend just happened to wearing a necklace similar to hers when the Lady Terminator came looking for her at the mall and paid the ultimate price (trendiness can get you killed). Unaware of her of friend's fate, and still wearing the necklace (the Lady Terminator uses it to track her), Erica performs her non-threatening brand of synth-rock at a local club. Luckily, just as the Lady Terminator is about to embed many caps in her amazing ass, two cops in the audience intervene to save her. Even though they fire multiple rounds in her general direction, nothing seems to phase the tenacious assassin. It's almost as if she is impervious to bullets.

Begrudgingly excepting his offer to "come with me if you want to live," Erica grabs Max McNeil's hand and is ushered out of the club, which, by now, is filled with dead Australians, broken glass, and spent shell casings. The cocksure American (played by Christopher J. Hart), who, for some strange reason, is working as a homicide detective in Jakarta, takes Erica to police headquarters.

As expected, the determined terminator of living things with curly black hair (think Fran Lebowitz trapped at a haircare symposium for the visually impaired) shows up by plowing her car through the building's entrance. Emerging from her wrecked vehicle carrying an M-16, the lethal lady asks one of the wounded guards about Erica's whereabouts. Unhappy over that the fact that the guard's answer is slurred by the blood that has accumulated in his mouth, she unloads a bullet shower on him for what seemed like an eternity (after she's finished peppering him with bullets, she kicks his lifeless corpse for good measure).

This wanton display of ammo mismanagement is an excellent precursor for the type of havoc we are about to be privy to, as the amount gun-based violence that takes place over the next five minutes is an orgasmic, bullet-ridden free-for-all. An armada of hapless cops in urban camouflage, dozens of cowering lackeys, three lab technicians, and a smattering of secretaries all meet their demise at the hands of the Lady Terminator in this jean skirt jeopardizing melee.

An insincere moment of silence for the fifty-something police officers who died while trying to protect a pop singer, one who may or may not be wearing a garment made entirely out of denim.

In what is still her only film role to date, the stunning Barbara Anne Constable transforms herself into a cult movie icon the moment she grabs the leather jacket of an overconfident Jarkarta beach punk and casually tosses it over her shoulder. An unstoppable killing machine in the latter half of the movie, in the early going Barbara plays a less violent, but no-less determined version of her trigger happy alter ego. Playing another in a long line of head tilt enthusiasts named Tania, Miss Constable, sporting an orange tank top, glasses, and a long white skirt that had a tropical flourish on the front and back, and sounding like a cross between Dora the Explorer and Mae West, enters an Indonesian library in search of answers.

"I'm not a lady, I'm an anthropologist," and with that line, Barbara Anne Constable quickly establishes Tania as a woman not to be trifled with. Utilizing the smooth contours of her straightforward frame and the comprehensive splendour of uttered words simultaneously, Barbara has a short amount of time to prove that she is more than just a lady, I mean, an anthropologist, who excels at removing pricks with her vagina and filling people with holes they don't want, because after the Queen of the South Sea's eel dagger finds a new home, Tania does most of her talking with a gun and a sneer.

Now that Tania has been born-again as a relentless hit woman who doesn't say much beyond the sound of her eyeball plopping into a hotel sink (a hotel crawling with randy room-service waiters), the majority of the talking onus is placed on the shoulders of Max (Christopher J. Hart) and Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker). Unsurprisingly, the bulk of his dialogue revolves around hot dog-based small talk with his fellow J-town cops, while her chatter mainly centers around shopping, the price of fame, and conducting impromptu interviews with reporters with worthwhile eyebrows.

She's a dainty pop singer without parents, he's a rugged cop whose wife wanted him to quit the force–you know, so that they could open a restaurant in Minnesota–but instead she was raped and murdered by an ex-con, yet together they're able to put their pain in the past and fornicate under a large tree in the present.

Running from lady terminators all day is exhausting work, and so is writing about them, that's why I always drink Wink™ On top of being a cool and refreshing beverage, I find it that gives me that extra oomph I need, especially when I'm trying to allude the clutches of a properly motivated foe, or searching for a word that rhymes with discombobulate.

Special mention has to go out to Snake (Adam Stardust), one of Max's crime fighting buds. Everything from his hair (a reddish blonde mullet) to his blunt disposition (his favourite pastime is punching ponytailed strangers in the stomach) was, like the majority of the stuff in this film, a rich and frothy pile of pure awesome.

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