TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
R C
Like the other reviewer, I watched White Alligator Queen without the benefit of translation; but, while amused, I wasn't quite as impressed by it. There's plenty of weirdness, certainly, if that's what you're after, but also stretches where not much of interest occurs, and the bulk of the bizarreness comes during the last third of the film.Most of the special effects are of the chintzy, rubbery variety, probably on par with American schlock of the 1950s. There are a few genuinely gruesome moments, however, with worms and gore, so squeamish viewers are forewarned.Newcomers to Indonesian fare are directed to Queen of Black Magic or Lady Terminator first. If you've already seen all of the other Indonesian titles offered by Mondo Macabro, however, and still find yourself wanting more, White Alligator Queen is available if you know where to look.Note: The other reviewer mentions a musical sequence that wasn't present in the version I watched, so it may be that there are different cuts of varying degrees of surrealism floating around out there.
Soup Kitchen
This movie really had it all. Perhaps it's just my complete lack of cultural reference points in Indonesian society, but my ignorant Western ass was truly left bewildered and astounded waiting to see what would happen next in this bizarre film. It starts with a young couple in the woods, the woman pregnant. She gives birth into the lake, twins, one of which is a little baby and the other of which is a poorly constructed crocodile puppet thing. At this point, two thugs come along and proceed to slaughter the young couple, but not before a little bit of martial arts action. The thugs steal the couple's jewel, which has some sort of mystical power over crocodiles.At this point we flash forward several years into the future, and there are these two guys providing slapstick comic relief. They reminded me of nothing so much as an Indonesian version of the guys from Dumb and Dumber. They goof off, then we see that some lady is now controlling the crocodiles to kill various people, and occasionally we cut to crocodile world, where a queen rules who looks like a picture from an Indonesian religious pamphlet. The two criminals from the beginning come back, and some guy with a mullet sneaks around with the lady on earth who can control crocodiles. Later, he is lured to his death at the hands of some crocodiles. Then there is an egg which explodes into gore and maggots, like a disgusting little grenade, but the two goofy Dumb and Dumber lookin'-ass muhfuhkahs who it explodes on choose to break out laughing instead of recoiling in abject horror, which seems to me to be the reasonable thing to do in such a situation.Every new scene ups the bizarre ante. There were no subtitles, but it didn't really matter. The human baby that was born in the opening sequence shows back up, and his twin brother, a little baby crocodile, comes to him in the middle of the night and leads him to the river, where he is about to jump in before his foster parents show up in the nick of time to save him. But then the little kid is run over by a motorcycle in a targeted assassination. Apparently, the people who the bad guys killed in the beginning, the little kid's parents, are crocodile royalty or something. Who knows? It's pretty gory at times. There is one love scene where the crocodile lady pulls out the guy she's screwing's pubes as part of foreplay. At the end, the bad guys die, one of them at the hands of a giant living tree, like the one in Lord of the Rings, except way cooler. Then the crocodile royalty couple from the beginning of the movie come back to life, but their kid, who got run over by the motorcycle, is still dead. There is also one genuinely really good musical number, which kind of resembles a Bollywood song. All in all crazy fun.
