Sumpah Pontianak, aka Blood of Pontianak (Malaysia, 1958)

Hey, pretties, why slaver over the next Karloff or Lugosi retrospective when you can build your own alternative pantheon of classic monsters from those based on Southeast Asian folklore, such as the Oily Man, The Krasue, or Sumpah Pontianak's Pontianak. Shy away from them, if you must (go ahead; they're gross!), but I will not stop singing their praises until they have their own cartoon on Nick and appear on every lunchbox and pencil case in the country.

Sumpah Pontianak is the third and final in a series of films based on the female vampire the Pontianak that were produced during the late 50s by Cathay Keris, the Singapore branch of Hong Kong's powerhouse Cathay studio. Sadly, the first two films in the series appear to be lost, but someone clearly loved Sumpah Pontianak, as the existing VCD sports a handsome transfer, albeit an unsubtitled one. Well, you can't win 'em all. Fortunately, I had the omni-lingual Braineater's fine review to steer me into safe waters.

First off, kids, I don't know how to put this, but the Pontianak is one butt fugly woman. In this case, she is Comel, as played by Maria Menando, who has a hunchback and a pretty smashed up face, like you're looking at it pressed to the windshield of a speeding car.  The earlier films tell how she is a foundling raised by a sorcerer who, as an adult, avails herself of a beauty potion. It works, turning her into a beautiful woman, but, as a turd in that particular box of bon bons, she also gets turned into a Pontianak -- or vam-pyre, as some would call it. Apparently at the end of the second film, she is deprived of her ability to transform herself by some yokels who stick a nail in her neck.

Sumpah Pontianak begins with a bereft Comel wandering the countryside and encountering her share of hostile bumpkins, who, as bumpkins are won't, are quick to raise up torches and form mobs against anything that smells of the other worldly. Among these hicks are a young comedian Mat Sentul, ten years before his appearance as Mat Bond, and a singing satay vendor played by a guy named Wahid Satay, who, according to Braineater, specialized in playing singing satay vendors. This might make Sumpah Pontianak an effective appetite stimulant if you like satay, or are a ghost with hole.

Comel's pathetic pleas for understanding fall on deaf ears, as the villagers waste no time in stringing her up and tormenting her in various ways. Meanwhile, a host of supernatural happenings take place: The satay gang are spooked by a ghost voice that sounds like Yolandi from Die Antwoord and Comel raises a male vampire by removing a stake from its heart. At the same time, a series of  exsanguination murders makes it all the more difficult for Comel to convince the gentry that she means them no harm.

Directed, like the other two films in the series, by B. Narayan Rao, Sumpah Pontianal gains a rich, classic horror movie atmosphere from the moody contributions of cinematographer Laurie Friedman (one of a number of Western names among the crew) and composer Zubir Said, who has to compete with a lot of jaunty songs about satay. Also benefiting the production greatly is the heartrending performance by Maria Menado, who really drives home the tragic dimensions so typical of these cursed females spirits in Southeast Asian folklore.

Parallel to Comel's woeful sojourn, we see that of her beautiful young daughter Maria (Salmah Amad), who is wandering the forest in search of her long thought dead mother. This, like a ghost busting Goldilocks, puts her constantly in peril at the claws of a Puff n' Stuff like menagerie of plush beasties, first and foremost a combination toucan/salamander thing that is apparently the real culprit of the murders. Others include an unfriendly Cro-magnon man and, finally, a furry, bat-like gentleman who whisks her away to his lair. Fortunately, some hapless tormentors accidentally remove the nail from Comel's neck, allowing her to transform into the hag-faced Pontianak and take off into the night sky like Superman. What follows is a rousing kaiju battle that is somewhat at odds with the sombre tone of pretty much all that has proceeded it.

So, in the end, the Pontianak series offers poor Comel some karmic reward for all of the hardship she's endured -- no longer a shunned outsider, but an unorthodox superhero whose powers separate her from the rest of small minded society by degrees of, not just ghastliness, but of virtue and bravery. That cartoon on Nick may not be too far off.

Cinderella and Her Little Angels (Hong Kong, 1959)

 

Confronted with a film like Cinderella and Her Little Angels, one has cause to wonder just how many of life’s cruelest unpleasantries could be smoothed over by the warmly familiar conventions of the romantic musical comedy. Parodies like The Producers and Cannibal! The Musical, after all, not only mine the absurdity of setting real life atrocities to a jaunty musical score, but also highlight that form’s ability to defang and co-opt such horrors. Thus it’s not unthinkable that such a production could get our toes tapping to the sadly commonplace yet no less grim spectacle of child labor and sweatshop peonage.

A slick product of Hong Kong’s Cathay studio, Cinderella and Her Little Angels tells the story of Xiaolin (Umetsugu Inoue favorite Peter Chen Ho), a shy tailor employed by a swanky Hong Kong clothing shop. Xiaolin is smitten with Danning, a girl from the local orphanage, but has yet to work up the nerve to make his move. Fortunately, the shop has a mannequin that bears an uncanny resemblance to Danning on which he can practice, which isn’t creepy at all.

And why would Xiaolin be familiar with a girl from the local orphanage, you may ask? Well, that, apparently, is where all of the shops garments are made, with Danning basically serving as a cheerfully trilling galley master, urging her fellow orphans –- hunched to the task of sewing away with fingers both tiny and teenaged -- ever forward in their arduous labors through the power of uplifting song. A sample lyric:

You are sewing and I am packing
If you aren’t quick, you can’t get things done
Don’t look around, hurry up, hurry up
Even with no sleep we must try our very best

Danning is played by Linda Lin Dai, a versatile actress whose fame at the time enabled her to work as a free agent for both of Hong Kong’s titans of Mandarin language cinema, Cathay and Shaw Brothers. In 1961 she would sign a contract with Shaw, entering a period in which she would break the record for most awards for Best Actress received at the Asian Pacific Film Festival. Sadly, her suicide in 1964, at the young age of 29, would cement her legendary status, initiating a period of public mourning that saw her funeral inundated by thousands of fans.

And, indeed, Lin Dai’s beauty and charm are hard to miss in Cinderella and Her Little Angels, making it no surprise when Xiaolin’s boss, upon setting eyes on Danning during one of her rare visits to the shop, beseeches Xiaolin to recruit her as a model for his upcoming fashion show. This is a decadent proposition for the modest Danning, but wary of the underfunded orphanage’s desperate need for renovation, she relents, hoping to cover the costs with her modeling swag. Less easy to convince is the orphanage’s conservative headmistress, Madame Kong (Wang Lai), who ultimately must be kept in the dark about Danning’s moonlighting by means of a variety of comedic ruses, most of which somewhat preposterously involve Danning’s aforementioned mannequin lookalike.

Danning, needless to say, proves to be a natural as a model. And the fashion show, accompanied by sung narration from and off-screen chorus, is the clear centerpiece and highlight of Cinderella and Her Little Angels. The salt of Hong Kong, as presented in the film, are not too receptive to the distinctly Western peculiarities of modern fashion, as exemplified by Madame Kong, who calls the “Brigitte Bardot” style sample gown that Xiaolin brings to her “weird”, refusing to have her charges participate in its manufacture. Thus the fashion show sequence seems manifestly intended as a primer for the film’s audience, and as such bears all the hallmarks of a society in the throes of transition, with all of the deep ambivalence that that entails.

This last, I assume, explains why the otherwise chirpy ditties delivered by those unseen singers contain some couplets that seem both perversely and hilariously judgmental. Of a kimono it is said, “Westerners are naughty. They treat it as nightgown.” And, as for another stylish -- and relatively conservative -- evening ensemble:

Look at this new coat
It’s exciting with chest and arms exposed
Modern people like to be sexy
They love to expose their body

Composed by Yao Min, Cinderella and Her Little Angels’ songs, though delivering some harsh medicine, are relentlessly upbeat in tone. And dammit if, along with the winsome performances by the film’s leads, they don’t contribute to it being one of the most charming musicals about cheerful orphans conscripted into forced labor that I’ve ever seen. Toward the end, the singing becomes virtually wall to wall, with the songs providing an ongoing narration describing things that we’re already clearly seeing take place on screen. And if you had any doubt about how things ultimately turn out:

The Wild, Wild Rose (1960)

Big thanks to David Wells over at Movie-Fan Princess for turning me on to the 1960 Cathay production The Wild, Wild Rose. The film is a loose update of Bizet's Carmen that's rich with film noir atmosphere, its action playing out against the backdrop of a smoky nightclub in modern day Hong Kong. Having only seen Cathay superstar Grace Chang previously in Air Hostess--where she played a nice girl who really, really wanted to be a stewardess (even if she did at times fail to be mindful of her service attitude)--I found her lead performance here to be a revelation. It's a ferocious portrayal that starts out in classic femme fatale territory but reveals more complexity as the story progresses. The music, which includes some reworkings of songs from the original opera, is also excellent. Highly recommended.