Movie Review: QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC

aka RATU ILMU HITAM
Directed by Liliek Sudjio
Indonesia; 1979

Do you have that tired haunted feeling? Are you seeing snakes, skeletons, maggots in the bean sprouts? Have you been fasting for five days, and yet it still goes on raining?
Don’t look now, friend, but you’ve been bewitched!

The wedding between bastard playboy Kohar and the daughter of the Village Chief has been called on account of devil’s rain. And after the local witch doctor determines that the evil spirit comes from the west, he is promptly raised in the air by unseen hands and repeatedly slammed into the ground until dead. Things are getting serious, and folks are demanding answers. Kohar remembers a girl, Murni, who was once in love with him and who happens to live just west of the village. That’s it! She’s jealous that he is getting married to someone else, so she’s using black magic to plague his betrothed and ruin his special day! No second opinion or proofs of purchase required, it’s gotta be her, and she must be destroyed.
Kohar leads an unruly gang of men to Murni’s home where he slaps the shit out of her mom, and sets their shanty on fire with mom inside. Then the gang takes a kicking and screaming Murni and throw her off a fucking cliff.
That’ll learn ‘er.

After bouncing a couple of times, Murni’s fall is broken by an old man who catches her and takes her back to his place where he nurses her back to health. Murni recounts her horrible ordeal, but insists she isn’t responsible for cursing anyone. Even though Kohar said he loved her, robbed her of her virginity in a rice field, with roaming bison as an audience, telling her “It was bound to happen sooner or later, so what difference does it make where it happens? One place is as good as another when you’re in the right mood.” Even though he dropped her like a hot chakra to marry some brat with money, she’s innocent. Why, she doesn’t even know black magic. The old sorcerer convinces Murni that she’s been wronged to the point of being justifiably revenged, and if she won’t do it for herself, then she should do it out of gratitude for him for saving her life. Murni’s training in the black arts commences, which includes nude mid-air flips off a trampoline in the moonlight, having hot blood poured on her head, and getting her bangs trimmed.
Now she’s ready.

Murni’s revenge on those who tried to kill her is made manifest through death by a deadly bee swarm, gory body part explosions, turning water to quicksand, babynapping, good ol’ fashioned tree-hanging, and-- get ready-- forcing Kohar to rip his head from his body with his bare hands so that it can fly through the air and bite people on the neck! YEEEEHAAAW!
But there’s a stranger in town. A holy man from the city with big ideas. And here’s where things start to get really fucked up...

Starring the lovely Suzzanna, this Rapi Films release is smooth & fast-paced, and doesn’t hold back when it comes to gruesome spectacle. A perfect double feature “opening act” to a film like THE BOXER’S OMEN. I especially dug the short scene where Murni tries to breast feed the baby she stole, and ends up enjoying it a little bit more than a wannabe mommy should.
I don’t know where she thought the milk was gonna come from, anyway, seeing as how she’s never given birth.

Two things THE QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC taught me:
“A ghost can’t appear so early in the morning!”
“It’s impossible to prove black magic because it leaves no evidence.”

You betcha.



Review by Scott Wallis!