Queen of Black Magic (1979)
[+]
(Foreign Titles)
Nomination Year: 2011
SYNOPSIS: Murni is an independent woman. She doesn't need a man to make her happy. She also gives up her virginity a little too quickly when her boyfriend Kohar promises to marry her. He probably would have married her, except that the village chief's daughter fell for him -- so he marries her instead.
Strange and bizarre problems plague the wedding, and the general conclusion is that bad magic is afoot. Kohar blames Murni, so they burn her house down and throw her off a cliff. She is saved by a mysterious hermit who teaches her magic so that she can have revenge on the townspeople.
Murni has a bit of revenge, and is satisfied. But the townspeople are freaked out now, and they kill Murni's mother. Stupid stupid townspeople. Murni resumes her revenge. It's not really a rampage -- can rampages be slow and deliberate? In the process of this gradual rampage, she kills Kohar.
Murni's magic is powerful, so the townspeople are happy when a holy man comes to town. He finds their mosque in disarray and sets about fixing it up. Before long, he has the villagers praying to Allah again, as they should be.
Murni falls for the holy man, and they make plans to run away together. The hermit manipulates Kohar's widow into putting moves on the holy man. The holy man resists, but Murni is suspicious. She attacks him, at which point he reveals that he's actually her long-lost brother (this is the one and only time that we hear his name, which I neglected to write down).
His faith is enough to break Murni's magic. At which point, the hermit intervenes. Turns out that he was a rival of the village chief -- many years ago. The entire movie was his plot to destroy the chief, and the entire village. "Of course," the chief says. "I should have known right away that it was you!"
Murni and the holy man join forces to defeat the hermit, but the effort kills Murni.
The moral of the story? Women should be less independent, more subservient. I guess that's to be expected from a late-70s Indonesian horror film, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
Strange and bizarre problems plague the wedding, and the general conclusion is that bad magic is afoot. Kohar blames Murni, so they burn her house down and throw her off a cliff. She is saved by a mysterious hermit who teaches her magic so that she can have revenge on the townspeople.
Murni has a bit of revenge, and is satisfied. But the townspeople are freaked out now, and they kill Murni's mother. Stupid stupid townspeople. Murni resumes her revenge. It's not really a rampage -- can rampages be slow and deliberate? In the process of this gradual rampage, she kills Kohar.
Murni's magic is powerful, so the townspeople are happy when a holy man comes to town. He finds their mosque in disarray and sets about fixing it up. Before long, he has the villagers praying to Allah again, as they should be.
Murni falls for the holy man, and they make plans to run away together. The hermit manipulates Kohar's widow into putting moves on the holy man. The holy man resists, but Murni is suspicious. She attacks him, at which point he reveals that he's actually her long-lost brother (this is the one and only time that we hear his name, which I neglected to write down).
His faith is enough to break Murni's magic. At which point, the hermit intervenes. Turns out that he was a rival of the village chief -- many years ago. The entire movie was his plot to destroy the chief, and the entire village. "Of course," the chief says. "I should have known right away that it was you!"
Murni and the holy man join forces to defeat the hermit, but the effort kills Murni.
The moral of the story? Women should be less independent, more subservient. I guess that's to be expected from a late-70s Indonesian horror film, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
Kevin Hogan