Jungle Virgin Force (Indonesia, 1983)

The opening narration to Jungle Virgin Force gives us some idea of what it might be like if the already overly-verbose, smugly paternalistic narrator of a 1950s faux-anthropological exploitation film -- like, oh, Gregg G. Tallas's Prehistoric Women, say -- were allowed to expound unchecked, and as such deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

"In Southeast Asia there are vast, unexplored jungle areas inhabited by native tribes whose lives are untouched by civilization. And on one small island there dwells a tribe so isolated that it has never made contact with other jungle tribes of that region. Their language is so ancient that it cannot be understood by any other people of the world. Their lives are primitive, and they worship gods and powers long forgotten by the rest of mankind. In recent years, there have been many stories told among these tribes' people about a mysterious woman of the jungle who many claim to have seen from time to time. There are many debates about the mystery woman. Is she an intruding menace who should be hunted down and destroyed, or could she be a goddess come to bless her people with her protective presence among them?"

What plays out on screen as all of this nutritionally dubious thought food is being ladled out is a pretty standard nudie cutie scenario involving a group of woman in leopard print fur bikinis doing a leisurely striptease before going for a naked frolic in a nearby lake. All of these women's naughty parts, I should point out, have been fogged over -- perhaps at the behest of Indonesia's strident censorship board -- a circumstance which some of this film's reviewers on the IMDB have found very upsetting. However, like any Indonesian exploitation film worth its salt, Jungle Virgin Force perversely compensates for its lack of nudity by being exactly the type of movie that you would think would be loaded with nudity. Gratuitousness, I'm delighted to report, is the go word here -- this being, after all, a film in which red leather hot pants are deemed appropriate attire for a woman undertaking a lengthy expedition through uncharted jungle.

Anyway, as one might suspect, our narrator has not shot his wad with that sermon-length opening salvo, and so continues, as such narrators will, to describe in detail things that can clearly be seen taking place on screen as they happen. Yes, narrator, I can see that the skinny dipping cave women are now being attacked by an alligator. And I must concur with your observation that said alligator is in turn being attacked and subdued by that very same mysterious jungle woman that you were just yattering on about minutes ago. Oh, and by the way, narrator, what you did not mention is that this Sheena-like jungle heroine is played by Indonesian action starlet Lydia Kandou, who has already received more than her fair share of coverage on 4DK this month by way of having also starred in the previously reviewed Darna Ajaib.
The mysterious jungle woman, we soon find out, goes by the somewhat mystery-dispelling name of Jelita, and the skinny dippers are so grateful to her for rescuing them that they take her home and announce to the rest of their tribe that they are making her their god. This does not sit well with the tribe's high priest, as it well might not. After all, the very fact that the tribe has a high priest suggests that they already have a perfectly good set of gods and religious beliefs -- even if those beliefs sometimes involve a bit of cannibalism. Because of this rift, a bloody battle ensues, and the women of the tribe are driven away by the priest and his horned foot soldiers. The men then hang a "He-Man Woman Haters Club" sign over the cave entrance and begin giving free reign to their cannibalistic ways -- which is a fanciful, but in essence accurate representation of what we men get up to when left to our own devices, free from the civilizing influence of y'all bitches.

Then, as the narrator goes off on a "but are we modern city folks any more civilized than these so-called savages? ARE WE?" riff, we are whisked away to Jakarta, where we learn that the narrator is actually a college professor, and that his narration is simply him verbally preparing a group of his students for an expedition they are about to take to the very island on which all of the action he has just been somewhat preposterously describing as it took place took place. Amazingly, these students are actually awake and paying attention, which suggests heavy Vivarin habits on their parts, no doubt fostered by the need to sit through countless of this man's lectures. "Bla bla bla ANCIENT MAGICS", he says. "Bla bla bla DEVIL'S TRIANGLE bla bla CANNIBALISTIC RITES." Oh and, "Ignore anything you might hear about the tribe having a PRICELESS TREASURE."
Amazingly, these students -- among whom are red leather hot pants girl, hot headed guy who wants to shoot everything, hunky guy, and girl whose name I think is "Maserati" -- seem perfectly willing to ignore the treasure. Fortunately, there is another group of bad kids who want to do the opposite of ignoring it, and who are also convinced that the pro-ignoring-the-treasure kids can show them where that treasure is so that they can find it and very actively not ignore it. This leads to all kinds of stunt-filled fights and a great dumb car chase involving pyramids of oil barrels sitting in the middle of the road for no reason and a conveniently located, skull-and-crossbones covered shack filled with dynamite just waiting for a car to crash into it so that it can blow up.
Soon both groups arrive on the island and, after enduring some boilerplate "perils of the jungle" -- white rapids! snakes! pointy sticks! -- have alerted both the cannibal tribe and Jelita to their presence by way of hot headed guy's shooty-ness. Carnage follows, and while the spectacle of callous city folks being torn apart like fresh baguettes by savages with a taste for flesh makes clear that Jungle Virgin Force is inspired by grim Italian grue-fests like Cannibal Holocaust, its treatment of the subject comes across more like an Archie Comics adaptation of same. And, of course, this being an Indonesian film, this all gets discarded in the end for a crazy mystical battle between the evil high priest and the group of exiled women, who have all since become imbued with cartoon-assisted magical powers thanks to the benign intervention of a powerful sorceress and some 80s rock video choreography.

The fact that Lydia Kandou's female Tarzan character ends up getting pushed aside somewhat by the rest of Jungle Virgin Force's silly goings on is an indication of just how generous the film is in its hokeyness. In other words, folks whose expectations have been primed by other Indonesian exploiters like Lady Terminator and Virgins From Hell should find plenty to holler about here. The gore is plentiful and ridiculous, but also weirdly imaginative, including, among other things, spontaneous disembowelings and a "magic fire" that turns a woman's body into a pool of pulsating soup. And if it's hilarious English dubbing you want, well, let's just say there's a scene in which a man with a giant spear driven through his midsection is asked "are you okay?", and that the cannibals on more than one occasion are heard to say "Mabooga! Mabooga! Mabooga!"

Darna Ajaib (Indonesia, 1980)

It used to be that there were two types of Filipino popular cinema. There were those films made by men like Bobby Suarez and Cirio Santiago with an eye toward international distribution, and those Tagalog language productions intended primarily for the entertainment of the local audience. I think it's safe to say that both Dolphy's wacky spy movie and superhero parodies and the Darna movies rest securely within the latter category.

Still, it's not all that surprising that love for Darna seeped beyond the P.I.'s borders. After all, the Filipina superheroine has been a popular favorite here at 4DK for some time now. Thus we have the 1980 Indonesian film Darna Ajaib, the first example I've come across of a Darna film made outside the Philippines.

Darna Ajaib (or, as Google Translator parses it, Darna Wonder Girl) was directed by Lilik Sudjio -- who previously helmed the maggot-ridden Queen of Black Magic, starring Indonesian horror queen Suzzanna -- and stars Indonesian model-turned-actress Lydia Kandou in the title role. Kandou had made her screen debut just a year earlier at the tender age of seventeen, and would go on to star in such top grade Indonesian trash as Jungle Virgin Force and Five Deadly Angels. Nonetheless she seems to be as, or even more, well known in her home country for her controversial marriage to Muslim actor Jamal Mirdad (Kandou is a Christian), and the couple's subsequent ten year struggle to have that marriage legally recognized. So I imagine that, for those with an interest in religious freedom in Indonesia, she's a bit of a superheroine in her own right.

Not surprisingly, Darna Ajaib offers a somewhat different take on Darna than those Filipino productions starring Vilma Santos that were just wrapping up around the time of its production. Not only does it play pretty fast and loose with the whole Darna mythos, but Sudjio's obvious comfort within the horror genre also insures that it is instilled with a much higher level of flat out creepiness than we're used to seeing. And, of course, there's also a generous infusion of the Indonesian mysticism that somehow seems to find its way into pretty much every Indonesian exploitation picture. This is, after all, the country that somehow managed to fuse a female-fronted Terminator cash-in with the tale of an ancient, man-hating sea sprite.

In that spirit, Darna Ajaib kicks off with a spontaneous pregnancy and proceeds, in very short order, to the subject of said pregnancy giving birth to a snake with a human head. Yikes! When this woman's husband comes home and tries to capture the snake baby -- presumably to flush it down the toilet -- he is kicked to death by a giant caveman who appears out of nowhere. Meanwhile, in another part of Darna Ajaib's obviously very twisted world, another woman is giving birth to an apparently normal baby, albeit concurrent with the passing of a green comet over her house and the blossoming of a mysterious white flower outside her window.

Both of these offspring grow up to be apparently normal children with special hidden powers. In the case of Maria (Dian Ariestya, I think), that special power involves her being a creepy little girl who turns into a snake and kills people when she gets angry. In the case of Darna, it's the ability to run like the Six Million Dollar Man and twirl bad guys around her head like a sack of wiffle balls -- and later, upon clutching an amulet hanging around her neck, to transform into a flying, costumed superhero version of herself. Circumstances eventually conspire to place Maria and Darna in the same school together, and by the time they reach high school -- when the main portion of Darna Ajaib's action takes place -- they have become total BFFs.

During this early portion of Darna Ajaib, we're treated to a couple of musical numbers, including a sorrowful lament sung by the younger version of Maria. Despite the initial appearance that Darna Ajaib is going to be a full fledged musical, this exposition through song is dropped entirely for the remaining half, which is for the best, really. The staging of these musical numbers just isn't very interesting, to the point where they could be in essence described as, respectively, "Sad song sung by freeway guardrail" and "Disco song sung in car".

Maria is indeed portrayed as something of a tragic figure here, and, as such, we see -- between instances of her losing her temper, turning into a snake and killing people -- evidence of her struggling against her evil impulses. Nonetheless, it is clear that a confrontation between her and Darna is inevitable. And things are helped along in this regard by the fact that both Darna and Maria share the same love interest in the form of High School chum Dodi (Dony Nurhadi). Eventually, the giant cave man, who Maria addresses as "Papa", makes a reappearance -- or at least his floating, disembodied head does -- to give Maria her marching orders, which I think have something to do with getting a hold of Darna's magic amulet. (As you've probably already guessed, this film had no English subs.)

After this, Maria's already considerable creepiness hits critical mass:

Finally, Darna is forced to have a weird superwoman to snake-girl heart-to-heart with her erstwhile gal pal, after which she does battle with the giant cave man, impaling him on an electrical tower in a scene pretty clearly inspired by the earlier, Vilma Santos fronted Darna and the Giants.

Even without subtitles, Darna Ajaib is a hugely enjoyable example of world pop cinema hybridization, engagingly mixing good-natured Pinoy superhero goofiness with an equal amount of lowdown Indonesian freakiness. While Lydia Kandou can't match the perky charisma of Vilma Santos (or the perky everything else of Anjanette Abayari), she's still an appealing presence, and shows evidence of the very combination of guilelessness and good sportsmanship that carrying such a vehicle requires. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that she, or anyone else, ever made a repeat attempt at bringing this version of Indo-Darna to the screen. Nonetheless, the existence of Darna Ajaib has raised hopes in me of finding other indigenous versions of Darna created by other non-Filipino film industries. Right now, my money is on the Turks.