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CAPSULE: THE HUNGRY SNAKE WOMAN (1986)

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Petualangan Cinta Nyi Blorong

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DIRECTED BY: Sisworo Gautama Putra

FEATURING: , Advent Bangun, George Rudy, Nina Anwar

PLOT: A criminal seeks out the Snake Goddess (also called the Snake Queen), who promises him wealth if he kills three women, drinks their blood, and eats their breasts, but instead, at the instigation of a rival Snake Woman, he betrays the Snake Goddess by sticking a pin into her neck while making love, changing her back into a snake.

Still from The Hungry Snake Woman (1986)

COMMENTS: Mythology is weird, but mythology seen through the eyes of exploitation film directors is even weirder. Hungry Snake Woman feels at least loosely connected to feverish legends from the Indonesian jungles, but it adds a lot of sex, blood, and kung fu. It cares not a whit for logic, dropping plotlines as if they were squirming scorpions and rushing off to the next diversion.

This is the kind of movie were it’s tempting to give a simple recap of the plot, but it’s probably better to let the viewer discover the madness for themselves. Still, running through a few of the highlights should be enough to pique your interest. We can’t pass up the major spoiler, because it’s too tempting: the Snake Goddess literally turns the film’s antagonist into Dracula at one point—not into a generic vampire, but the public domain Count himself, complete with black cloak, plastic fangs, and cheesy bat-transformation. The only alteration from the traditional template is that he now dines on the breasts of maidens after drinking their blood. It’s also worth noting that, indicative of the script’s short-attention span, our intrepid antihero quickly abandons his bloodsucking role after getting rudely stomped on the foot by a potential victim. Also keep an eye out for a menacing stock footage giraffe, incongruous day-for-night shooting, sex with a snake, centipede vomiting, and an Indonesian mullet. And kung fu. And a chainsaw. It’s that kind of movie. Hungry Snake Woman has everything a film fanatic could ask for, except for purpose or meaning. As one of the characters says midway through, “If you ask me, this doesn’t make much sense.”

Despite its indifference to logic, its mediocre acting, and its general cheapness, Hungry Snake Woman has some genuine visual appeal. The special effects are chintzy—usually just editing to make things disappear and reappear—but the costuming, makeup, set design, and lighting are superior, verging on sumptuous at times. The Snake Queen/Goddess glitters in her bejeweled regalia; her harem girls tantalize in their sheer chiffon tops and colorful bikini bottoms; and the Snake Woman looks dramatic painted head-to-toe in mottled green. The Snake Goddess’ entrance, levitating in front of her cave wall like a sexy Buddha, is imposing. These points of visual interest suggest divine grandeur, when things on the ground otherwise get totally absurd.

Suzzanna (who plays a double role here) was a huge horror star in Indonesia and is credited onscreen before the title appears; she was 46 when this was released, but still looks glamorous (and even has a nude scene, though shot at distance). The Hungry Snake Woman is actually a sequel to 1982’s The Snake Queen, which is essentially lost (although you might be able to track down a low quality VHS copy). I suspect you won’t miss anything by not having seen the first one. The Mondo Macabro Snake Woman Blu-ray is restored in 2K and looks fantastic, with vibrant colors and no visible damage. The voices on the English dub sound familiar from Hong Kong movies of the period; subtitles are also available, but this is the type of schlock that actually benefits from a dub job. And a six-pack.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a 1986 Indonesian stunner that fits right in with some of [Mondo Macabro’s] essential weird world staples like Mystics in Bali and Alucarda… it involves plenty of macabre and grotesque imagery (including a bit of animal mistreatment, mainly some scorpions), but it flirts with fantasy and comedy as well when it isn’t just utterly unclassifiable surrealism.”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (Blu-ray)

The Hungry Snake Woman [Blu-ray]

The Hungry Snake Woman [Blu-ray]
  • The world Blu-ray premier of a wild Asian horror movie!
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Capsules

CAPSULE: FRECKLED MAX AND THE SPOOKS (1987)

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Pehavý Max a strašidlá

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DIRECTED BY: Juraj Jakubisko

FEATURING: , , Ferdinand Mayne, Gerhardt Karzel, Martin Hrebeň, Barbara De Rossi, Jacques Herlin, Mercedes Sampietro, Flavio Bucci, Milan Lasica, Julius Satinsky

PLOT: Orphan Max ditches the traveling circus and ends up at a castle just as Victor Frankenstein is preparing to animate his new creation, “Albert”; Count Dracula, water and fire spirits, Igor, the White Lady, and the Wolfman also haunt the premises.

Still from Freckled Max and the Spooks (1987)

COMMENTS: At first glance, the clunkily-titled Freckled Max and the Spooks hits all the marks as more-than-decent family entertainment, with a plucky orphan who falls in with a bevy of misfit monsters, leading to wacky adventures. Those of a certain age (OK, 60+) may be reminded of the Saturday morning show “Monster Squad” where the “Love Boat”‘s Fred Grandy solved mysteries with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman. Young Frankenstein and 1972’s The Girl on a Broomstick are also similar in tone. Freckled Max‘s comedy isn’t quite as broad as those, but there is a fair amount of slapstick, mainly involving Martin Hrebeň’s monster Albert, in a performance that’s sort of a proto-Jason Segel. A slight element of European bawdiness intrudes from time to time, but the characters have an underlying sweetness—as well as a bittersweet sadness, notably in the backstories of Igor and The White Lady. As Count Dracula tells Max, “When someone ends up alone, he turns into a ghost.”

Freckled Max is stacked with a cast of stellar actors: Lindfors, Constantine, Mayne (who also played a vampire in The Fearless Vampire Killers), and familiar faces from Italian (De Rossi and Bucci) and Czech cinema (Lasica and Satinsky) cinema. If there’s one criticism about the film, it’s that you wish that you could spend more time with the characters. Freckled Max is a drastically reduced theatrical version of a 7-episode Czech miniseries, “Frankenstein’s Aunt” based on a book by Allan Rune Petterson. That it holds up as a satisfying viewing experience even in its truncated version is a testament to the skill of everyone involved.

Juraj Jakubisko was an acclaimed director (1969’s Birds, Orphans and Fools) who, like most of his contemporaries who remained in the country after the post-Prague Spring crackdown, fell into disfavor. When allowed to make films, their projects skewed towards non-problematic fare: documentaries or family-friendly subjects like fairy tales. Jakubisko did a magical realist miniseries, “The Millennial Bee” (1983, based on a novel by Peter Jaroš), which also got a reduced theatrical version, and the feature The Feather Fairy (1985, based on the Brothers Grimm tale “Mother Hulda” and starring .)

Restored by the Slovak Film Institute, Freckled Max gets its first ever U.S. Blu-ray release via Deaf Crocodile in limited and standard editions. Extras include a commentary by Samm Deighan and a visual essay “Frankenstein’s Faster” by Ryan Verrill and Dr. Will Dobson. Deighan digs into the differences between the mini-series and movie while Verill and Dobson examine the source material. The disc also includes interviews with director of photography Jan Duris, assistant director Petra Galkova, and director of the Slovak Film Institute Rastislav Steranka; a short (5 minutes) behind the scenes featurette; and “Portrait of a Film Director,” a 45 minute documentary about Jakubisko. The limited edition comes in a slipcase with art by Beth Morris and a booklet with essays by writers Walter Chaw and Stephen Peros.

The full miniseries got a DVD release in Germany (“Frankenstein’s Tante”), but with no English subtitles. It is not currently on any streaming services. However, the curious, motivated, and bilingual might find a Spanish language version (“La Tia de Frankenstein”) out on the interwebs.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a surreal fantasy film that’s reminiscent of Federico Fellini and Terry Gilliam.”–Michael Den Boer, 10K Bullets (Blu-ray)

Freckled Max And The Spooks [Blu-ray]

Freckled Max And The Spooks [Blu-ray]
  • Director Juraj Jakubisko's Gothic horror comedy about an orphan who hides out in Frankenstein's castle with a lovable rogues' gallery of monsters
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FELIX THE CAT: THE MOVIE (1988)

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DIRECTED BY: Tibor Hernádi

FEATURING THE VOICES OF: David Kolin, Chris Phillips, Maureen O’Connell, Peter Newman, Alice Playten

PLOT: When Princess Oriana is kidnapped by the sinister Duke of Zill, only Felix the Cat and his magical bag of tricks can save the day—so long as his arch-frenemy The Professor doesn’t interfere.

COMMENTS: It’s fun to imagine a Sunset Boulevard scenario wherein Felix the Cat hearkens back to better times, angrily reminding anyone who will listen that, back in his heyday, he was bigger than Mickey Mouse. He’d go on about how he moved so much merchandise in the silent era, but faltered when talkies came in. How he got his groove back when television snapped him up, jump-starting his career with a voice, new supporting characters, the introduction of his iconic bag of tricks, and an insidiously infectious theme song. How the lack of a deep-pocketed studio to protect him and dust him off every so often (like that infernal mouse had) left him floundering, and how his chief animator and owner of his copyright, Joe Oriolo (and later Joe’s son Don), struggled to keep Felix in the game with ever-growing levels of desperation, including a bizarre misguided attempt at a live-action series and even a Baby Felix cartoon made exclusively for Japanese television. And here’s where Felix would ball up his fist and pound it on the table, lamenting that if anyone knows him at all today, it’s as a clock.

Maybe that can be the scenario for Felix’s next feature. For now, we’re stuck with this one, probably his thirstiest bid at a revival. Felix is a simple character, a monochromatic feline with a classic stretch-and-squash movement and a seeming immunity to misfortune. But to wring 80 minutes out of him, it’s essential to complicate, complicate, complicate, first with a prologue presenting a proto-CG version of Felix’s disembodied head, then by launching an elaborate plot to save a fairy-tale kingdom from an evil overlord, with a panoply of odd characters including a heavily rotoscoped princess, a gun-toting yokel, a host of psychedelic wildlife, and an army of robot trash cans led by what appears to be an ape with a bubble for a head.

The animation, from Hungary’s Pannonia Studio, is wildly erratic, veering from elaborately detailed landscapes and imaginative creature designs to obvious looped animations and jumpy movement. Case in point: Princess Oriana is sometimes shown in the kind of fine detail one associates with the Disney Renaissance, but then is seen in a herky-jerky, poorly drawn style one associates with direct-to-truck-stop mockbusters. But even at its best, the animators’ work is undercut by a script that spends inordinate amounts of time on exposition and setup, forcing the artists to vamp to fill time. In fact, Felix the Movie is almost allergic to anything that stays focused on the plot. The vile Duke is supposedly seeking to conquer the kingdom as revenge against the Princess, but instead of showing us his schemes, we watch him make her do interpretive dance. Numerous scenes are dedicated solely to watching one cartoon beast or another go about their business, even while we’re aware of an impending danger happening somewhere way offscreen. Even the musical numbers seem completely separate from the proceedings, such as a showcase for a family of foxes who have nothing to do with anything, or an extended dance break for a pair of rat/lizard hybrids. (This latter sequence lasts for more than two minutes, almost 3% of the film’s runtime.)

Adding to the muddle is the decision to include two of Felix’s foes from the TV series, the nefarious Professor and his hyper-nerdy nephew Poindexter. They have the potential to throw another obstacle in Felix’s path, but they spend most of the film trailing behind their quarry and end up helping once they finally catch up. One presumes they represent the movie’s attempt to cater to Felix nostalgists, but they’re meaningless to the young, adventure-hungry kids who are the most likely audience for this kind of thing. The movie aims for everyone and hits no one.

Given how uninterested it is in anything logical and linear, it’s fitting that the movie just sort of stops, with Felix saving the day by throwing a book at a giant robot. (That’s literally the whole solution. Deus ex libro. He doesn’t even use the bag of tricks.) Felix the Cat: The Movie should have been a chance for the once-famous feline to get his groove back, but the film never finds a way to let him be the hero he once was, and it doesn’t have a solid idea of what it wants to do instead. So somebody buy the old guy another drink and let him rant and rave about his cruel fate. He deserves another shot at the big time, and this ain’t it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The original Felix cartoons were always surreal in some way, but not in a studied manner, more of an organic, natural development out of the character’s quirks and goodnatured ingenuity. Here, however, there is an attempt to plonk him down into a world that is already weird, almost a post-apocalyptic version of a fairytale land that suffers too many digressions into strangeness for its own sake without furthering the plot… You can see it entertaining the very young who are not aware of Felix’s history, but as a tribute to him it falls flat when it really could have been any generic character starring here: he doesn’t even take off his tail and use it as a cane.” Graeme Clark, The Spinning Image

(This movie was nominated for review by Jayzon. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

FELIX THE CAT The Movie DVD (USA Format) 2003

FELIX THE CAT The Movie DVD (USA Format) 2003
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Capsules

CAPSULE: THE GOLDEN FERN (1963)

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Zlaté kapradí

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DIRECTED BY: Jiří Weiss

FEATURING: Vít Olmer, Karla Chadimová, Daniela Smutná

PLOT: When a lazy and amorous shepherd steals a golden fern bough from deep in a malevolent forest, a mysterious young woman appears begging him to return it lest dire consequences befall him.

COMMENTS: If fairy tales have taught us anything, it’s that going into the woods at night can be dangerous. The Golden Fern ominously begins in medias res in a dark and moonlit forest. A handsome young man races through the trees; it seems like he’s running from someone, but then he stumbles upon a grove of ferns and triumphantly picks the largest frond. He’s immediately attacked by a flock of angry birds whose screeching fills the air. He fights them off and manages to escape back to his humble peasant’s hut, where he gloats over his trophy. Was this an admirable act of bravery or simply foolish bravado?

There are no easy answers in Weiss’ film, but when a sudden knock sounds at the door, the latter seems more likely. He opens the door and at first only a shadowy figure appears, barely visible in the distance. “Give it back,” a voice urges him. “Give back the fern.”

Our protagonist, Jura (Olmer), hesitates to comply. He wants to know who would command him. Eventually the speaker reveals themselves, and to his surprised delight, the forbidding figure turns out to be a very pretty blonde (Chadimová). This being a fairy tale, he’s not going to give back the fern unless she kisses him first. She continues to insist he must give it back, but he ignores her warnings, and she relents to his clumsy overtures.

What seems like a poor start to a relationship briefly becomes a romantic idyll. The girl, whom Jura calls “Lysanka” because she has no other name, falls in love with him. In her devotion, she steadfastly protects him from the ambiguous influence of the golden fern, which he, of course, fails to return.

Fern was made at the beginning of the , although Weiss represents an older generation than the young film makers who would make names for themselves as part of the innovative and rebellious movement that yielded the Canonically Weird gems The Cremator,  Daisies, and A Report on the Party and Guests. While not quite as anarchic and freewheeling, Weiss displays the absurdist and irreverent black humor that’s a common denominator among Czech directors. This is a pretty dark fairy tale; however, the only truly weird element is the fern itself (unfortunately glimpsed in action in only one scene). Half plant, half beast, and blossoming with mysterious flowers before sprouting a tentacular vine replete with talon-like thorns, this fern looks like a worthy adversary to a monster from one of ‘s cheapo creature features (and I mean that as a complement). In a suspenseful and creepy scene, Lysanka fights the fern in what becomes a battle of wills. She emerges victorious, the possessor of one of its golden seeds.

The clever mix of basic low-budget effects utilized throughout the film enhance the otherworldly atmosphere, and the black and white cinematography fits the ominous tone. Lysanka never explains where she came from or who exactly she is; her pleas on behalf of the fern make her initially appear as its ally, until it reveals itself to be an opposing force. Jura remains oblivious of the magical powers surrounding him, simply losing himself in Lysanka’s love and beauty.

After defeating the golden fern, Lysanka sews the golden seed into a seam in Jura’s shirt. When he gets drunk at a tavern and ends up shanghaied into the army, it spells the end of their affair. She begs him to never exchange the shirt for another. He promises he won’t, but it’s Jura’s inability to follow good advice that landed him in this dire situation in the first place.

The setting then shifts to the frontier of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, where the Empress’ forces are at war with the Turkish military. This second half of the film has prompted comparisons to  The Saragossa Manuscript , but Golden Fern never reaches levels of surrealism. After a somewhat minor act of courage (literally capturing a flag from the enemy), the general promotes Jura to officer.

While the upper ranks continue to ridicule him for his slow-witted peasant ways, Jura unwisely begins a flirtation with the general’s gorgeous and aloof daughter (Smutná). First inspired by the possibility that she’ll convince her father to release him from his military service so he can return to Lysanka, she predictably beguiles Jura into attempting a series of increasingly dangerous tasks.

Learning from a fortune teller how to capture the general’s daughter’s heart, Jura risks his life to infiltrate the enemy camp. When he’s caught half-dead and disguised as a Turk after completing his mission, his commanders immediately assume Jura has turned traitor. The general’s daughter coldly abandons to him his fate as the gears of military justice grind into action; laws which seem as cruel and arbitrary as the mysterious rules of the forest. Even in a world of magic ferns and fae spirits, people still kill each other, mock each other, and fall in love—human nature is both triumph and tragedy.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

Czech writer-director Jiří Weiss’s The Golden Fern is a dark and haunting fairy tale, albeit one that’s grounded in an earthy naturalism. Rather than lean heavily into the surreal, as these films often do, Weiss subtly weaves elements of the magical or miraculous into an otherwise straightforward narrative, thereby cannily introducing aspects of the uncanny.”–Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine (Blu-ray)

The Golden Fern [Blu-ray]

The Golden Fern [Blu-ray]
  • Czech director Jiří Weiss's breathtaking B&W fantasy about a stunning young forest fairy who falls in love with a handsome but selfish shepherd
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