Horror Express: Cinta Terlarang [‘Forbidden Love’] (Pitradjaya Burnama, 1995)

Though it dates from somewhat after the ‘70s-’80s glory days of Indonesian horror/fantasy cinema, the opening of Pitradjaya Burnama’s ‘Cinta Terlarang’ certainly makes good on his nation’s proud history of maniacal cinematic insanity, as two women wearing translucent white dress shirts over their sensible white pants descend the steps leading to a cobweb-shrouded, blue fog-drenched subterranean altar chamber.

It turns out that Ratih (Lela Anggraini) and Nita (Welda Hidayat) are here to exact black magickal vengeance upon the father of Ratih’s unborn child, who has refused to claim the child or even marry her (the swine!)

Conveniently, all the gear they need for this task is neatly stored in a box which they extract from inside a smoking, blue-light emitting coffin, including both an ancient grimoire and some rather fetching ceremonial leotards and matching cloaks, which they promptly change into, as the scene is inexplicably intercut with footage of dancers writhing in a neon-drenched night club.

Right on cue, the reverb-y voice of an apparent demonic entity chimes in, telling them, “your spite of love will be the foundation of our alliance”. A black rooster is duly slaughtered (in long shot, and I believe the effect is faked, thank god) and its blood dripped onto a photograph of the witches’ intended victim. (1)

Clearly, this kind of threat to the patriarchal order cannot be left unchecked, and so, outside the witches’ lair, a bunch of men armed with machetes and clubs have assembled, apparently taking orders from Ratih’s shady, white-haired boyfriend, and another fellow who seems to be acting as his occult advisor.

After gaining access to the altar chamber, shady boyfriend belatedly attempts to take the gentlemanly route, apologising to Ratih for his prior conduct and offering her his hand in marriage. Evidently though, it’s a bit late for that, and the girls are having none of it, responding to his overtures with suitably miffed “HMPH!”s, before - brilliantly - they strike martial arts poses and begin enthusiastically beating the living daylights out of loverboy and his henchmen, employing their new-found supernatural fighting prowess in the process.

In the course of the ensuing melee however, Ratih regrettably ends up getting decapitated by the falling lid of the blue-lit coffin. “You’re mean and cruel,” her still conscious severed head spits at the assembled males. “Await my revenge!”

“I will come back after 13 full moons,” Ratih’s now-disembodied voice continues as Nita grabs her bloody noggin and makes a flying, wire-assisted exit, “and I will bring the sacrificial blood of three male virgins! Remember that! Remember that!”

At which point, I sat back and offered praise to whatever unholy deities preside over the unruly world of Indo-horror, for once again allowing the genre’s efforts to hit that perfect sweet-spot of bloody, fantastical craziness I so crave in my cinema viewing.

Meanwhile, at Jakarta’s famed Cleopatra Executive Discotheque (the signage is fucking amazing) - which we have been randomly cutting to throughout the preceding sequence - another, rather confusing, storyline begins to unfold. 

This involves a chap named Andre (Sonny Dewantara, sporting a mighty ‘tache), who is arguing with his girlfriend over the paternity of their unborn child.

As Andre’s girlfriend storms off, never to return, Nita watches pensively from the bar, whilst a woman named Lola (top-billed Sally Marcellina, in a fetish-y combo of lace and leather) reacts to cut-away shots of a black cat, and contemplates a bloody tampon she lifts from a bin in the bathroom. (2)

At the end of the night, Andre (who later turns out to be the son of Ratih’s white-haired boyfriend) goes home with Lola (who may or may not be a prostitute - it’s a little unclear). Before they can get it on though, Lola falls asleep, and - apparently being a more chivalrous soul than his conduct thus far would tend to suggest - Andre gently tucks her into bed and calls it a night.

Back in the witches’ realm however, Nita is now poised over her scrying bowl, as Ratih’s spectral head looms from the shadows pleading for reincarnation. And so, a black cat is dispatched to Lola’s residence, and, we presume, a rather vague form of possession-based vengeance is about to be enacted!

The first fruits of this malediction are reaped the following night, during a truly uproarious scene in which Lola, at the behest of the sleazy, quasi-pimp type guy who seems to control her activities at the night club, goes home with a musclebound dude named Randy. 

At the height of their passion, after she has spent quite a long time sensually rubbing her face around Randy’s knees (which I suppose must be as far as local censorship at the time permitted these things to progress), Lola announces, “now it is time for me to suck your blood”! After transforming into a vision of Ratih, complete with her purple ceremonial garb, proceeds to send Randy reeling with a set of bloody gashes scratched across his face. 

Then, she goes one better by sucking his very life-force (represented by a kind of post-production laser beam) directly out of his brain, before plunging her fist into his chest and eviscerating him with her bare hands. Blimey! 

To western eyes and ears, ‘Cinta Terlarang’ will seem ‘80s to a fault, in spite of its mid-90s release date. Hazy, diffused lighting provided by blinding blue spotlights is filtered through smoke and translucent, billowing curtains, along with gleaming neon and the best chrome / glass / silk interiors the production could manage.

The bedroom sets within which much of the action takes place often look as if they’re under water, such is the quantity of blue light pulsing through their windows, and thumping electro-pop and wistful, Tangerine Dream-esque synth jams dominate the soundtrack.

Though there is no actual nudity (again, presumably due to diktats of local censorship), implied sexual content is fairly strong, and almost every frame of the movie features at least one woman wearing some form of impractical, kinky lingerie. (Seriously, the costume designer(s) must have had the time of their lives on this one, and the results are remarkable.)

In this regard however, it’s worth noting that the ill-fated Randy also strips down to his Y-fronts and does a sweaty erotic dance at one point, whilst a subsequent hunky victim of Lola/Ratih also gets stripped and tied to the bed, so - props are due to the filmmakers for making a rare attempt at equal opportunities titillation, I suppose.


In spite of all the mad supernatural horror stuff I’ve described above in fact, the prime intention here was presumably to ape the style of the then-ubiquitous erotic thrillers emerging from the USA in the wake of ‘Basic Instinct’ - a conclusion supported by the (very sparse) promotional materials for the film which can be found online,  featuring images of clinching couples and nothing to suggest this is actually a horror movie. 

And indeed, this is largely the direction the film takes during its middle half hour, possibly with a side dish of TV soap opera thrown in for good measure. A garish approximation of high gloss eroticism takes precedence, whilst a love triangle plot line develops involving Andre, Lola and… Nita, who, in civilian life, it transpires, is actually Lola’s possessive lesbian lover!

Amidst the lengthy stretches of melodramatic relationship talk which result from all this however, director Burnama at least has the good sense to keep the witches’ cauldron boiling, as Ratih and Nita instigate further occult outrages, claiming that aforementioned pimp guy as Lola/Ratih’s second victim, and also undertaking an unsuccessful spectral assault upon Andre’s Dad’s house.

(The latter, incidentally, fails largely as a result their insistence on utilising billowing silk and flying vases as their sole weapons, leading to Ratih’s spirit being buried beneath a glowing flower pot on the lawn, trapped by an ‘antidote talisman’ which the occult advisor guy has told him Andre’s Dad to bury there!)

Just to further confuse the film’s genre identity meanwhile, there are also a number of decently choreographed martial arts fight scenes, suggesting that perhaps Burnama secretly wished he was helming a full scale action movie. (Perhaps the influence of sexed up Hong Kong action movies like ‘Naked Killer’ (1992) and ‘Robotrix’ (1991) can also be detected here?)

Naturally, this is all to the good in terms of the film’s overall entertainment value, and the scenes in which the thoroughly bad-ass Nita lays waste to gangs of machete-wielding goons in her slo-mo, silk-flowing splendour prove especially awesome, even incorporating some fairly elaborate HK/wuxia style wire-work in places. (3)

In a sense, I can see a similar methodology at work here to that guiding H. Tjut Djalil’s classic of Indo-horror/action insanity, ‘Lady Terminator’ from 1989. 

With that film, Djalil didn’t seem able to simply make a straight rip-off of ‘The Terminator’, instead switching out the sci-fi elements in favour of an insane, quasi-feminist black magickal possession story. By the same token, Burnama seems to have been unable (or unwilling) to make a standard erotic thriller here without spicing it up with… an insane, quasi-feminist black magickal possession/revenge story (and indeed, some kung fu). For this excellent decision making, we can all offer him our gratitude.

Having said that though, in visual terms, ‘Cinta Terlarang’s ultra-garish ‘80s bad trip splatter-horror aesthetic is actually probably more closely aligned with Djalil’s later ‘Dangerous Seductress’ (1992)… but yes, that one also goes pretty big on the insane, quasi-feminist black magickal shit as I recall, so the point still stands.

Though ‘Cinta Terlarang’ is evidently working on a lower budget than Djalil’s films - and is, comparatively speaking, less ambitious in its craziness as a result - all of this helps illustrate why I believe that pre-2000 horror films from Indonesia are always worth checking out, even when, like this one, they don’t quite manage to entirely achieve their potential.

Speaking of which, the pedant in me demands that I state that ‘Cinta Terlarang’ is fairly incoherent in logical, thematic, emotional, and even spatial, terms, but honestly - does it matter, when there is so much pure, wild, diabolical fun here to enjoy?

On a more depressing note meanwhile, the existence and rediscovery of wonderful films like this one also causes me to reflect sadly on the way in which a nation whose popular cinema was once overflowing with unashamed lesbian love, implied oral sex, vampiric flying heads, kung fu battling witches and leather-clad Lady Terminators laying waste to neon-drenched nightclubs, has, in more recent years, regressed to a state in which media portrayals of homosexuality are effectively outlawed, sex outside of marriage has recently been criminalised, and women are increasingly facing harassment for venturing outside without full face-covering.

Oh well. For now, let’s all close our eyes tight and/or cue up ‘Cinta Terlarang’ and return for 80-something minutes to wild and carefree days of… 1995? I know - who’d have thought it, right?

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(1)Curiously, the demonic entity in ‘Cinta Terlarang’ is addressed by the witches as “Eyang”, which the internet informs me means “grandparent” in Indonesian, perhaps suggesting some kind of diabolical ancestor worship is going on here?

(2)It is only after watching the film several times, and writing this review, that I’ve finally realised that, rather than just being totally inexplicable, that bit with the bloody tampon is perhaps meant to imply that Andre’s girlfriend is not actually pregnant, thus excusing him of being an arsehole when he refuses to believe her? If so, this plot point is… not very clearly explained, to put it mildly.

(3)Given that Nita possesses such impressive fighting prowess whilst in her witch-y incarnation, I’m curious why another scene finds her (in her day time / ‘jilted lesbian lover’ guise) hiring a bunch of male goons to beat up Andre whilst taking no part in the assault herself, but… NEVER MIND!

Random Paperbacks: Trailer Camp Woman by Doug Duperrault (Bedside Books, 1960)

Another example of a ‘60s US sleaze paperback recently discovered on these shores - I scored this one at a car boot sale in Peckham, no less.

Though pretty boilerplate stuff in terms of concept and content, the cover art here is way above average (albeit poorly reproduced). Unfortunately, it resides permanently in the “artist unknown” category on the Greenleaf Classics web archive (which is about as comprehensive a reference on this stuff as exists anywhere).

Bedside Books were an early exemplar of the multiple imprints which flourished as part of the wider Greenleaf Classics empire, effectively flooding the market with ‘adult reading’ throughout the ‘60s. According to the aforementioned archive, at least 110 books were published under the Bedside banner between 1959 and 1963.

‘Trailer Camp Woman’ is actually a re-print - it was first published, with different artwork, by Beacon Books in 1959, if anyone cares. An online review on goodreads.com states that it reads like the work of the ubiquitous Orrie Hitt, and I’m content to take their word for it.

Probably more interesting in this case however is what I discovered when I first skimmed through the book’s pages;

Oh boy.

Immediately, my mind conjures up an image of the lair of some debauched early ‘60s pervert, his stash so glutted with (then rare and illicit) pornographic photos that he’s taken to tearing them up and using them for bookmarks.

Or, perhaps a more likely possibility, could the book’s former owner have been a transient person or serviceman, carefully stashing their, uh, ‘favourite’ dirty picture somewhere where it wouldn’t be found?

Either way, I’ll keep it where I found it - preserving the sordid mystery for whoever ends up taking ownership of ‘Trailer Camp Woman’ once I’m obliged to part with it.

Deathblog: William Friedkin (1935-2023)

“I have no regard for and no knowledge of the value of money, I'm not saying that’s a virtue, just a fact. For me, the greatest thrill in the world, the only thrill, is getting 20 seconds on the screen that really gases you.” - William Friedkin, early ‘70s

And so, after saying farewell to Kenneth Anger a few months ago, we mark the departure of another bad tempered, uncompromising, fiendishly inspired director whose work succeeded in turning American film culture upside down and shaking the hell out of it.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise when someone passes away at the age of 87, but, Friedkin always seemed like one of those guys who’s just going to keep on banging away forever.

Personality-wise, he was... abrasive, to say the least. I’ll admit that I’ve increasingly started to find interviews and commentaries with him painful to sit through in recent years, but -- he sure could get shit done. And he continued to get it done too, fighting to get provocative and divisive material up on the screen right to the bitter end (for better or for worse). He could easily have just rested on his laurels in his later decades, played the Hollywood game and taken it easy; but such was not his way, and at the very least we got unsettling films like ‘Bug’ (2006) and ‘Killer Joe’ (2011) as a result.

Ultimately in a case like this though, what can you say, except: look at the work.

‘Sorcerer’ is a serious contender for my favourite film of all time. Every time I see it, I’m just stunned by the sheer intensity of the imagery Friedkin managed to get onto the screen. It is awesome, in the original / primal sense of the word.

But, on some days, ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’, ‘Cruising’ and ‘The French Connection’ could all easily make it into my all-time top 10 too – a trio of superlative crime films, all perfect examples of Friedkin’s stated preference for what he modestly called “off-kilter action-adventure movies”, each of them leaving genre/audience expectations dead in the gutter as they explore uncomfortable, liminal realms, mapping out both the disintegration of the line separating crime from the law, and the disintegration of individual identity itself.

And yes, I’ll even grudgingly admit that ‘The Exorcist’ is pretty flawless in technical terms, even though its heavy-handed literalism and self-serious attitude has always left a bad taste in my mouth.

Meanwhile though, away from the provocation and self-immolation, there was another Billy Friedkin out there too, wasn’t there? The classicist golden age Hollywood devotee who made odd, old-fashioned pictures like ‘The Brink’s Job’ and ‘The Night They Raided Minsky’s’? Is anyone going to sing his praises, before the moment passes? Well, I’m not going to, but someone probably should.

Friedkin is deserving of a much longer, more in-depth tribute, of course, but what else can you say at this point -- a great loss to cinema. RIP.

Random Paperbacks: Stranger in Town by Raoul D’Orque (Unique Books, 1967)

A rare example of a ‘60s U.S. sleaze paperback snagged in the wild here in the UK, I recently picked this up at Oxfam of all places, for a bargain price presumably reflective of the fact that the binding and spine are absolutely shot.

I mean, as if they actually expected anyone to read it! The cover art by Bill Alexander is the big draw here, and I’ll freely admit to staring at its warped, weirdo beauty for far longer than is healthy.

Though the artist’s intention was probably for our attention to be focused on the figure of the innocent (white-haired?) nymphet being assaulted by a jumpsuit-clad dominatrix immediately after stepping off the bus in the Big City, my focus instead keeps getting drawn back to the male figure on the left, with his Clint Eastwood scowl, jaunty neckerchief and fragile, elongated hands, clutching at the victim’s pasteboard suitcase.

Is he working in cahoots with the dominatrix, or has he just scuttled round the corner, drawn magnet-like by the opportunity to snatch some luggage? (“Yoink!”)

Either way, the demented cartoon world created by Alexander in this one mad vignette is sublime; the implicit idea that moral standards in America’s cities have collapsed to such an extent that a buxom, mid-western lass can’t even make it out of the bus station without getting clobbered by perverts and ripped off by rat-men… and the unspoken promise that, if you’re enough of a freak to be checking out a volume like this, you should probably find this prospect exciting, and hit the mean and sticky streets in search of flesh forthwith. Yowza!

I’ve always felt you could draw a direct line between this kind of sleaze paperback artwork, the more highly regarded/subversive fetish illustration which was its contemporary cousin, and the similarly ugly/beautiful atmosphere conjured up (albeit in more self-aware fashion) by ‘90s comic artists like Dan Clowes and Charles Burns - and indeed, clicking through to the above-linked ‘This is Horror’ story on Bill Alexander reveals that his long and varied career touched on all these areas, and plenty more besides.

A rare example of an African-American commercial artist, Alexander began his career in the ‘40s, illustrating the labels of 78rpm records by cats like Roy Milton (see some examples here), before helping to create “arguably the first black superhero strip”, ‘The Bronze Bomber’, which appeared in the Los Angeles Tribune from 1941-43. (Sadly, all artwork from this strip appears lost - for more detail, see the Wikipedia entry for Alexander’s contemporary Gene Bilbrew.)

After seeing service in WWII, Alexander seems to have moved on to paperback covers and S&M / fetish illustration through the ‘50s and ‘60s, including work for the legendary Irving Klaw, before achieving renown of a different order through his covers for the Eerie Publications line of horror comics in the 1970s - for more on which, I’ll refer you back to the This is Horror article, which is a great read.

As to the book itself, this appears to be the sole volume credited to the supremely named Raoul D’Orque -- and if I was ever looking for an alias to use for anonymously checking into hotels or making pornography, I think I just found it.

Rather than trying to provide a plot synopsis or similar, I’ll just hit you with this scan of the novel’s opening pages:

I realise coherence wasn’t a big concern for authors of single draft roughie sleaze books or their publishers, but still - there’s something fairly awe-inspiring about the idea that a manuscript which descends into gobbledegook within its third sentence can still go to print unaltered.

Just imagine the Burroughs-esque cut-up mayhem and made up words (‘matine’?) which might unfold across the following 150 pages, and shudder with misplaced ecstasy.

Oh, and - you see that ‘UB’ logo stuck in the middle of the above cover, like a sticker on an apple or something? That’s not actually a sticker on the book, it’s printed on. Someone must have artlessly slapped it onto Alexander’s original artwork whilst setting it out for printing.

This practice seems to have been standard operating procedure not only at Unique Books, but across all the associated imprints operated out of Buffalo, NY during the ‘60s by frequently indicted Times Square porno/sleaze entrepreneur Eddie Mishkin. (Also see: ‘After Hours’, ‘First Niter’, ‘Nitey Night’ etc, all of which used near-identical typography, and frequently featured the work of fetish-affiliated artists like Eric Stanton and the aforementioned Gene Bilbrew.)

I wonder, incidentally, whether Eddie Mishkin was any relation to Andy Milligan’s producer / nemesis William Mishkin, who was based out of nearby 42nd street, and frequently worked with other Mishkin brothers on assorted dubious enterprises? My sole reference on such matters, Jimmy McDonough’s essential Milligan biography The Ghastly One, ain’t telling, but either way, the spider’s web of subterranean cultural connections uncovered by my visit to Oxfam grows...

Random Paperbacks: Appointment in Paris by Fay Adams (Gold Medal, 1958)

From a distance, the uncredited artwork for Fay Adams’ Gold Medal paperback original ‘Appointment in Paris’ looks like a pretty respectable, atmospheric cover for a suspense or mystery novel. (1)

Give it a second look though, taking a bit more time, and you’ll start to realise it’s actually a pretty rushed piece - sketchy, lacking detail. Then you’ll clock that left arm, and you’ll never be able to unsee it.

And in fact, ‘Appointment in Paris’ isn’t a suspense or mystery novel at all, in spite of the cover’s moody lighting and suspenseful pose.

Instead, it’s a thoroughly old fashioned, lightweight romance / coming-of-age sort of affair, in which a young American debutante spends a summer in Paris under the tutelage of a wise old Aunt, gets mildly shocked by the somewhat forward customs of French society and becomes involved in some (reassuring chaste) romantic entanglements, in a variation on the same formula which is apparently still packin’ ‘em in on Netflix over sixty years later.

Or, is it..?

The plot thickens when some quick searching online reveals that Fay Adams’ only other published work (in book form anyway - unsure if she sold any stuff to magazines/periodicals) appears in the 2005 anthology Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels, 1950-1965.

Widely offered for sale online as an e-book, ‘Appointment in Paris’ is often noted as forming part of the ‘Classic Lesbian Pulp Series’, and the cut-and-pasted plot synopsis reads as follows:

'Primarily set against the backdrops of Paris and the French countryside, and taking us back in time to the year 1936, Appointment in Paris tells the story of a young girl named Havoc. Hattie, as she is also known, is having a difficult time living under the strict watchful eye of her aunt. She wants to strike out for adventure on her own. One day she meets Marcelle, a woman older than she, in the hallway of their apartment building. Neither can ignore the spark of attraction that flames between them and before long they are hopelessly head over heels in love.'

I’ve got to say, this is news to me, as, having skim-read the book, I didn’t get any inkling of same-sex romance at all. In fact, the final chapter finds the heroine weighing up the relative virtues of her male French ex-lover and her newly acquired American husband, whilst wishing a tearful goodbye to her Parisian best friend, who is also now happily married.

Such a conclusion doesn’t exactly speak of a ground-breaking work of lesbian fiction, you’d have to admit. But, what we instead have here instead I suppose is a sobering reminder of an era in which non-hetero relationships remained such a taboo that they could only be addressed in almost entirely sub-textural terms, even in the context of a below-the-radar pulp paperback. How things would change, just a few short years later.

Oh, and yes - the heroine of this book is indeed named Havoc, which is pretty amazing. 

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(1)My usual painstaking research - ie, a quick google search - has left me unable to turn up an artist credit for this cover, but as ever, please just drop us a line if you have any leads.