Streaming on Shudder: The Queens of Black Magic (1981 - 2019) - Reviewed

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Around the 1970s and 80s, Indonesia showed its face on the international film stage in the form of a new kind of horror film: black magic.  Starting around 1971 with Birth in the Grave followed by the 1981 floating head freakout Mystics in Bali, the spooky and often disgusting subgenre often consisted of a vengeful sorceress wreaking supernatural metaphysical havoc on the townsfolk living nearby.  Touching on Shamanism with a lot of emphasis on either gangrenous sores forming on a person’s body or their mouths start vomiting insects, snakes and worms, the subgenre is indigenous to Indonesia and to the rest of the world tends to look and feel positively batshit crazy.
 
One of the most notable examples of the genre came in 1981 with the beloved The Queen of Black Magic (Ratu Ilmu Hitam).  Directed by Liliek Sudjio and starring actress Suzzanna as the film’s “protagonist”, the horror venture produced by Rapi Films who would become regular purveyors of the black magic genre represented one of the grossest and most unforgettable examples black magic had to offer.  Moreover, it cemented the black magic subgenre in the hearts of cult horrorphiles around the world over as distinctly Indonesian and from nowhere else. 

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Co-starring Mystics in Bali actor W.D. Mochtar, the film takes place in a remote Indonesian village where a woman named Murni (Suzzanna) is accused of witchcraft and tossed over a cliff to her death, or so we think.  Rescued by a mysterious elder (Mochtar), he nurses her back to health and begins training her in the arts of practicing black magic.  She is instructed to master the art in order to avenge herself upon her tormentors in increasingly vile and disgusting magical ways.  Unbeknownst to Murni, her new coach has other plans for his newly formed Queen of Black Magic.
 
Loaded with a cacophony of vile and revolting visual effects including heads exploding, heads detaching from the body to fly around, puking up of snakes and worms and more than a few unexpected plot twists along the way, The Queen of Black Magic proves to be a quintessential black magic shocker.  Dealing in themes of revenge, patriarchy and the gulf between freedom and enslavement while also simply serving up buckets of chum and insect filled puke, The Queen of Black Magic intends to unnerve and disgust. 

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Though like Mystics in Bali which came out within the same year, both films are remembered for their wackiness due to cultural disconnection between Indonesia and the rest of the world.  In other words, you have to have grown up in Indonesia to really understand why these bizarre otherworldly vistas conjured up by black magic are frightening.  While there’s much to divulge from black magic horror which also found its way into Taiwan in the same year with The Devil, the genre remains misunderstood and only the brave few with strong stomachs have attempted these cinematic barf bags. 
 
Some near forty years later, commemorating the film’s anniversary as well the company’s history, Rapi Films in 2019 commissioned a remake of The Queen of Black Magic.  This time the film directed by Kimo Stamboel and written by Joko Anwar functions as a quasi-sequel of sorts involving three families who venture out to an orphanage to pay their respects to the elder who raised them, not knowing the orphanage is home to a cavalcade of dark and deadly secrets.  While retaining the core themes and elements of horror of the original, this new Queen of Black Magic has clearly studied the wisdom of the New French Extreme horror movement in stark bloody contrast to what came before.

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Beginning quietly as the family descends upon the orphanage before a car accident strands them in the area, the film utilizes grisly CGI effects which tests the gag reflexes as hard as they can be.  Scenes of possessed figures spitting up centipedes and worms, a woman tearing centipedes out of her arms and face, a woman slicing her neck and arms up like an apple are among the many visceral horrors unleashed in what is frankly a souped up gutcruncher version of the 1981 horror classic.  The film even has the audacity to inflict violence against minors including a horrific vista of a schoolbus of children whose eyes have been torn out and/or sewn shut.
 
What was nice about this new mean-and-mad remake which descends as close to Hell on Earth pandemonium and suffering as any Indonesian black magic film has dared to go is that it features many callouts to the original including but not limited to an end-credits montage of still photos from the 1981 classic.  Seeing both films back to back illustrate how the tropes of black magic horror never changed but how they’re portrayed onscreen to exude fear and repulsion represent a new black magic horror genre of the future.  For those who never understood why black-magic horror was terrifying to Indonesian audiences, now you have a chance to learn why. 

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Visually speaking both films were shot in panoramic 2.35:1 widescreen though one will notice a vast difference between the hastily restored original 35mm film footage of the original and the crisp pristine slickness of the newer digitally photographed remake.  Though the settings are the same and both films are spoken in their native language, the techniques and technology have advanced upon what came before and while there’s something to be said about the horror of having an actor really put bugs and worms in their mouth, the newly CG rendered versions of the same kind of scene are no less revolting to see.
 
As with Mystics in Bali, the original Queen of Black Magic ends abruptly before we’ve had time to adjust our minds to what happened.  Moreover, everything in the 1981 film happens in real time whereas the horrors of the 2019 film are in past tense waiting to come back to haunt our cast of innocent bystanders.  Makeup effects in the new one are also strong with some moments that were white-knuckle hair raising to watch, though some will still prefer the physicality of real makeup effects seen in the original.  Thematically speaking they tread similar ground but the newer film is arguably more palatable to international audiences, using a more broad approach to telling its story.

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Both films are currently available on the Shudder streaming service and make one Hell of a double bill, giving both polar opposites of the horror spectrum from within the same distinctive subgenre.  For what it is worth, both films complement one another though clearly the makers of the new film have boundless respect for the 1981 film and what it unleashed upon world moviegoers.  While many have regarded black magic horror as a bygone era or a blip on the cinematic radar, what we’ve learned with this new positively horrific remake is that black magic horror is alive and well and cannot be stopped from giving us unshakable visceral nightmares.

--Andrew Kotwicki