Time was, vast rafts of lunatic movies from far-flung ports used to flood into the drive-ins and grindhouses of the 1970s. They were savored by a peculiar cult movie mindset-fans of such stuff were not indiscriminate. They knew what they liked and sought it out-craziness, gore, nudity, and more craziness. The shuttering of the sleaze-house theater circuits meant that such films and their fans needed to seek out new venues for their hookups.

For years, Pete Tombs had written loving chronicles of foreign madhouse cinema, in books like Mondo Macabro. Eventually he realized that it was not enough to merely advocate on behalf of obscurata, he needed to help these lost gems find their way back up from the depths. Thus was Mondo Macabro the DVD label born, and so now we have them to thank for a gorgeous DVD edition of the 1979 Indonesian horror opus Queen of Black Magic ("Ratu Ilmu Hitam," if you want to be precise). Naturally, it looks and sounds better on DVD than it ever would have in a drive-in.

Chances are, you already know if this is your bag. Either the words "Indonesian horror" quickened your pulse, or they did not. If, however, you need more enticement to make up your mind, we can flesh out some additional details: structurally, this is very similar to a Shaw Brothers kung fu flick, in which our hero(ine) is driven into exile by an evil force, joins forces with a master of the arcane arts of revenge, and returns to settle scores. Add to that the female-empowerment revenge stories popularized by Pam Grier and her peers-although the heroine's grievance here is a retrograde relic of pre-feminism. Murni (played by Indonesian superstar Suzzanna) reluctantly gives up her virginity to a creep who dumps her and marries someone else. To conceal his crime of deflowering the young maid, the jerk accuses her of witchcraft and leads an angry mob to kill her. Miraculously surviving the witchhunt, Murni concludes that the only response is to learn black magic and return to take vengeance on the village. Astounding: the proper reaction to being wrongfully accused is to then go and commit the crime to... uh... I'm sorry, I don't get it either.

Aiding in this vendetta is the aged master of black magic, living in a hovel on the outskirts of the village, played by WD Mochtar, a respected mainstream Indonesian actor. Apparently it is standard practice that if you've been coerced into surrendering your purity, the next thing is to go hang around naked with the first grizzled geezer you find. The training scenes of Hong Kong chop sockys find bald guys spinning poles and hitting each other; Queen of Black Magic treats us to the sight of a nude lady learning how to spew smoke from the top of her skull.

Mind you, this "nudity" is just suggested, not graphic. This is after all a Muslim horror movie. When Murni's revenge starts to get out of hand, a passing Islamic holy man happens by the village and uses his spiritual gifts to combat the supernatural threat. You've surely seen movies about religious figures fighting the Devil, but when it's an Imam fighting the Devil in what appears to be Dagobah, the visual motifs of such a combat spin far afield of anything in any Exorcist knock-off.

While the oddly chaste approach to sexual titillation keeps the proceedings on this side of an "R" rating, the gore sequences make up the difference. The bloody special effects are never especially convincing, but are consistently entertainingly outrageous. In the wildest moment, Murni bewitches a victim into ripping his own head off with his bare hands. As his topless corpse spews grue from the neckhole, the severed noggin starts flying around (!) biting people.

Queen of Black Magic is a farrago of laugh-out-loud moments (some of them the result of the awkward dubbing, some not) and striking images of violence (beating David Cronenberg's 1981 Scanners by a few years). The anamorphically-enhanced transfer is sharp and colorful, features only the English subbed soundtrack, and is presented with some useful and interesting behind-the-scenes information.

For more information about The Queen of Black Magic, visit Mondo Macabro. To order The Queen of Black Magic, go to TCM Shopping

by David Kalat