Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁɑ̃ ɡiɲɔl]: “The Theatre of the Big Puppet”) – known as the Grand Guignol – was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris (at 20 bis, rue Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialized in naturalistic, usually shocking, horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil), to today’s splatter films. The influence has even spread to television shows such as Penny Dreadful.

Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was founded in 1894 by the playwright and novelist, Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for naturalist performance. Méténier, who in his other job had been a chien de commisaire (a person who accompanied prisoners on a death row), created the theatre in a former chapel, the design keeping many of the original features, such as neo-Gothic wooden panelling, iron-barred boxes and two large angels positioned above the orchestra – the space was embellished with further Gothic adornments to create an atmosphere of unease and gloom. With 293 seats, the venue was the smallest in Paris, the distance between audience and actors being minimal and adding to the claustrophobic nature of the venue. The lack of space also influenced the productions themselves, the closeness of the audience meaning there was little point in attempting to create fantastical environments, the illusion shattered immediately by the actors breathing down their necks – not that there was any room on the 7 metre by 7 metre space for anything much in the way of backdrops.

The Guignol from which the theatre and movement took its name was originally a Mr Punch-like character who, in the relative safety of puppet-form, commentated on social issues of the day. On occasion, so cutting were the views that Napoleon III’s police force were employed to ensure the rhetoric did not sway the masses. Initially, the theatre produced plays about a class of people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, criminals, street urchins, con artists and others at the lower end of Paris society, all of whom spoke in the vernacular of the streets. Méténier’s plays were influenced by the likes of Maupassant and featured previously forbidden portrayals of whores and criminality as a way of life, prompting the police to temporarily close the theatre.

André de Lorde

By 1898, the theatre was already a huge success but it was also time for Méténier to stand to one side as artistic director, a place taken by Max Maurey, a relative unknown but one who had much experience in the world of theatre and public performance. Maurey saw his job to build on the reputation the theatre already had for boundary pushing and take it to another level entirely. He saw the answer as horror, not just the tales of the supernatural but of the realistic, gory and terrifying re-enactments of brutality exacted on the actors, with such believability that many audience members took the plays as acts of torture and murder. Maurey judged the success of his shows by the number of audience members who fainted, a pretend doctor always on-hand to add to the pretence.

The writer of the majority of the plays during this period was André de Latour (later de Lorde), spending his days as an unassuming librarian, his evenings writing upwards of 150 plays, all of them strewn with torture, murder and what we would now associate with splatter films. He often worked with the psychologist, Alfred Binet (the inventor of the I.Q. test) to ensure his depictions of madness (a common theme) were as accurate as possible. Also crucial to the play’s success was the stage manager, Paul Ratineau, who, as part of his job, was responsible was the many gory special effects. This was some challenge, with the audience close enough to shake hands with the actors, Ratineau had to develop techniques from scratch, ensuring that not only were devices well-hidden but that the actors could employ them in a realistic manner, without detection. A local butcher supplied as much in the way of animal intestines as were required, whilst skilfully using lighting helped to make the scenes believable as well as aiding the sinister atmosphere. Rubber appliances made suitable spewing innards when animal’s were not available and several concoctions were devised to simulate blood, ranging from cellulose solutions to red currant jelly. Actual beast’s eyeballs were coated in aspic to allow for re-use, confectioner’s skills employed to enable the eating of the orbs where required. Rubber tubes, bladders, fake blades and false limbs were also used to create gruesome scenes, though on occasion these did prove hazardous – reports detail instances where one actor was set on fire, one was nearly hanged and yet another was victim to some enthusiastic beating from her co-star, resulting in cuts, bruises and a nervous breakdown.

The actors themselves were not especially unusual – they were performers taking work wherever it came. There were a few stars of note – Paula Maxa (born Marie-Therese Beau)  became known as “the Sarah Bernhardt of the impasse Chaptal” or, if you prefer, “the most assassinated woman in the world”, an appropriate claim for an actress who, during her career at the Grand Guignol, had her characters murdered more than 10,000 times in at least 60 different ways and raped at least 3,000 times. Maxa was shot, scalped, strangled, disemboweled, flattened by a steamroller, guillotined, hanged, quartered, burned, cut apart with surgical tools and lancets, cut into eighty-three pieces by an invisible Spanish dagger, had her innards stolen,  stung by a scorpion, poisoned with arsenic, devoured by a puma, strangled by a pearl necklace, crucified and whipped; she was also put to sleep by a bouquet of roses and kissed by a leper, amongst other treats. Another actor, L.Paulais (real name, Georges) portrayed both victim and villain with equal skill and opposite Maxa in every one of their many performances.  He once commented that the secret to the realistic performances was their shared fear. The actress Rafaela Ottiano was one of the few, perhaps even only, original actors in the theatre to transfer to the Big Screen, appearing in Tod Browning’s Devil Doll (1936).

At the Grand Guignol, patrons would see five or six plays, all in a style that attempted to be brutally true to the theatre’s naturalistic ideals. These plays often explored the altered states, like insanity, hypnosis, panic, under which uncontrolled horror could happen. Some of the horror came from the nature of the crimes shown, which often had very little reason behind them and in which the evildoers were rarely punished or defeated. To heighten the effect, the horror plays were often alternated with comedies. Under the new theatre director, Camille Choisy, special effects continued to be an important part of the performances. Many of the attendees would barely be able to control themselves – if they weren’t fainting, they were quite possibly reaching something approaching orgasmic fervour, private booths being extremely popular to allow some privacy for their heightened emotions. On occasion the actors were forced to come out of character to reprimand more excitable audience members. Some particularly salacious examples of plays performed include:

Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations, by André de Lorde: When a doctor finds his wife’s lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor’s brain.

Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous, by André de Lorde: Two hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a young, pretty fellow inmate out of jealousy.

L’Horrible Passion, by André de Lorde: A nanny strangles the children in her care.

Le Baiser dans la nuit by Maurice Level: A young woman visits the man whose face she horribly disfigured with acid, where he obtains his revenge.

Jack Jouvin served as director from 1930 to 1937. He shifted the theatre’s subject matter, focusing performances not on gory horror but psychological drama. Under his leadership the theatre’s popularity waned; and after World War II, it was not well-attended. Grand Guignol flourished briefly in London in the early 1920s under the direction of Jose Levy, where it attracted the talents of Sybil Thorndike and Noël Coward, and a series of short English “Grand Guignol” films (using original screenplays, not play adaptations) was made at the same time, directed by Fred Paul. Meanwhile in France, audiences had sunk to such low numbers that the theatre had no option but to close its doors in 1962. The building still remains but is used by a theatre group performing plays in sign language. Modern revivals in the tradition of Grand Guignol have surfaced both in England and in America.

Grand Guignol was hugely influential on film-making both in subject and style. Obvious examples include Prince of Terror De Lorde’s works being used as the basis for D.W. Griffith’s Lonely Villa (1909), Maurice Tourneur’s The Lunatics (1913)  and Jean Renoir’s Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). Others clearly influenced include the Peter Lorre-starring Mad Love (1935), Samuel Gallu’s Theatre of Death (1967), H.G. Lewis’ Wizard of Gore (1970) and Joel M. Reed’s notorious Blood Sucking Freaks (1975). More recently, More recently, Grand Guignol has featured in the hit television series, Penny Dreadful. The 1963 mondo film Ecco includes a scene which may have been filmed at the Grand Guignol theatre during its final years – as such, it would be the only footage known to exist.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

We are grateful to Life Magazine for several of the images and Grand Guignol website for some of the information.

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I Spit on Your Grave: Vengeance is Mine – formerly I Spit on Your Grave 3 – is a 2015 horror film directed by R.D. Braunstein. It stars Sarah Butler (from 2010’s I Spit on Your Grave remake), Jennifer Landon and Gabe Hogan. Meir Zarchi, who directed the 1978 original as Day of the Woman, is the executive producer.

The CineTel film, which is currently in post-production, has been acquired by Anchor Bay Entertainment for US distribution.

Plot teaser:

After joining a rape survivor therapy group, Angela begins targeting the men who attacked its members. One by one she exacts vicious justice, but is she “Avenging Angel” or “Murdering Psychopath”?

I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu is a forthcoming 2016 horror thriller written and directed by Meir Zarchi.

Press Release:

37 years after the release of the controversial 1978 cult classic I Spit On Your Grave, Camille Keaton has reunited with director Meir Zarchi to reprise her role of Jennifer Hills in its direct sequel, I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu.

I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu is the only sequel that shares characters as well as continuity with the original 1978 motion picture Day of the Woman aka I Spit On Your Grave.

Following her brutal rape, Jennifer wrote a best-selling account of her ordeal and of the controversial trial in which she was accused of taking the law into her own hands and ruthlessly killing her assailants. In the small town where the rape and revenge took place, the relatives of the four rapists she killed are furious that the court declared her not guilty and resolve to take justice into their own hands.

The original I Spit On Your Grave was inspired by Meir Zarchi’s experience with a victim of rape. After stumbling upon a teenage girl in a park in the aftermath of a violent assault, Zarchi began to imagine how a woman in this situation might fantasize about revenge. Moreover, he wanted to depict to the audience the real horrors of rape.

In this new chapter, Jennifer Hills is joined by her daughter Christy (Jamie Bernadette) as well as a variety of new characters, including Maria Olsen who plays the role of Johnny’s wife, the gas station attendant Jennifer castrated; Jim Tavare in the role of Herman, whose son Matthew was hung by Jennifer, as well as by actors Jonathan Peacy, Jeremy Ferdman, Holgie Forrester, Roy Allen and Alexandra Kenworthy.

“I always envisioned Camille Keaton returning to continue the saga of Jennifer Hills,” said Zarchi. “Getting together with Camille to film the sequel was a surreal, deja-vu-like experience”.

Produced by Terry Zarchi and Jan O’Connell, I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu is currently in post production.

IMDb | Image thanks: Horror Domain

Related: I Spit on Your Grave (1978) | I Spit on Your Grave 2 | I Spit on Your Grave: Vengeance is Mine

Kappa (河童, “river-child”), alternatively called Kawatarō (川太郎, “river-boy”), Komahiki (“horse puller”), or Kawako (川子, “river-child”), are a yōkai (a class of supernatural monster) found in Japanese folklore, and also a cryptid.

Their name comes from a mixture of the word “kawa” (river) and “wappo”, an inflection of “waraba” (child).  A hair-covered variation of a kappa is called a Hyōsube (ひょうすべ). There are more than eighty other names associated with the kappa in different regions which include Kawappa, Gawappa, Kōgo, Mizushi, Mizuchi, Enkō, Kawaso, Suitengu, and Dangame. Along with the oni and the tengu, they are one of the most well-known yōkai in Japan.

Kappa are similar to Finnish Näkki, Scandinavian/Germanic Näck/Neck, Slavian Vodník and Scottish Kelpie in that all have been used to scare children of dangers lurking in waters.

It has been suggested that the kappa legends are based on the Japanese giant salamander or “hanzaki”, an aggressive salamander which grabs its prey with its powerful jaws.

Kappa are typically depicted as roughly humanoid in form, and about the size of a child. Their scaly, reptilian skin ranges in colour from green to yellow or blue. Kappa supposedly inhabit the ponds and rivers of Japan and have various features to aid them in this environment, such as webbed hands and feet. They are sometimes said to smell like fish and, as you might imagine, are accomplished swimmers.

The expression kappa-no-kawa-nagare (“a kappa drowning in a river”) conveys the idea that even experts make mistakes. Although their appearance varies from region to region, the most consistent features are a turtle-like shell, a face resembling a monkey, a beak for a mouth, and a plate (sara), which is a flat hairless region on top of their head that is always wet, and which is regarded as the source of their power. This cavity must be full whenever a kappa is away from the water; if it ever dries, the kappa will lose its power, and may even die, according to some legends.

Another notable feature in some stories, is that the kappa’s arms are said to be connected to each other through the torso and able to slide from one side to the other. While they are primarily water creatures, they do on occasion venture onto land. When they do, the plate can be covered with a metal cap for protection. In fact, in some incarnations, kappa will spend spring and summer in the water, and the rest of the year in the mountains as a Yama-no-Kami (山の神, “mountain deity”). Kappa are believed to speak the Japanese language and be curious about Mankind and their ways.

Kappa are usually seen as mischievous troublemakers or trickster figures. Their pranks range from the relatively innocent, such as loudly breaking wind or looking up women’s kimonos, to the malevolent, such as drowning people and animals, kidnapping children, and raping women. Victims of the latter crime who gave birth to offspring were said to have buried them alive due to their repulsive appearance.

As water monsters, kappa have been frequently blamed for drownings, and are often said to try to lure people to the water and pull them in with their great skill at wrestling.They are sometimes said to take their victims for the purpose of drinking their blood, eating their livers or gaining power by taking their shirikodama (尻子玉), a mythical ball said to contain their soul which is located inside the anus (don’t shoot the messenger!).

Even today, signs warning about kappa appear by bodies of water in some Japanese towns and villages where there have been historical reports of their sightings. Kappa are also said to victimise animals, especially horses and cows; the motif of the kappa trying to drown horses is found all over Japan. In these stories, if a kappa is caught in the act, it can be made to apologise, sometimes in writing. This usually takes place in the stable where the kappa attempted to attack the horse, which is considered the place where the kappa is most vulnerable.

It was believed that if confronted with a kappa there were a few means of escape: Kappa, for one reason or another, obsess over being polite, so if a person were to gesture a deep bow to a kappa it would more than likely return it. In doing so, the water kept in the lilypad-like bowl on their head would spill out and the kappa would be rendered unable to leave the bowed position until the bowl was refilled with water from the river in which it lived. If a human were to refill it, it was believed the kappa would serve them for all eternity.

A similar weakness of the kappa in some tales are their arms, which can be easily pulled from their body. If their arm is detached, they will perform favours or share knowledge in exchange for its return. Once the kappa is in possession of its arm it can then be reattached. Another method of defeat involves the kappa and their known love of shogi or sumo wrestling. They will sometimes challenge those they encounter to wrestle or other various tests of skill. This tendency is easily used against them just as with the bow, by encouraging them to spill the water from their sara.

They will also accept challenges put to them, such as in the tale of the farmer’s daughter who was promised to a kappa in marriage by her father in return for the creature irrigating his land. She challenged it to submerge several gourds in water and when it failed in its task, it retreated and she was saved from the promised marriage.Kappa have also been driven away using their aversion to variously, iron, sesame, or ginger. It is possible to distract a kappa by offering it their favourite food (more-so even than child flesh) cucumbers – this has even led to  a kind of cucumber-filled sushi roll named for the kappa, the kappamaki. By carving your name and birthdate on a cucumber, they will steer well clear of you.

In May, 2014, the British ‘newspaper’, The Daily Mail, reported that the remains of a kappa, shot in 1818, were to be put on display in Japan.

Read the ludicrous story here

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

‘Revenge can be a bitch’

Even Lambs Have Teeth is a 2015 American exploitation revenge horror thriller written and directed by Terry Miles. It was produced by Liz Levine and Adrian Salpeter of Random Bench.

The film, which has been likened to Hard Candy, debuted on October 1, 2015, at the 6th annual Mile High Horror Film Festival. It is released on DVD in the UK on 13 June 2016 by Matchbox Films.

Main cast:

Kirsten Prout (My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 3; Joy Ride 3; Captured), Tiera Skovbye (Forever 16; Spooksville; Liar, Liar, Vampire), Michael Karl Richards (Supernatural), Craig March (They Nest; Dead of Night), Garrett Black, Jameson Parker, Christian Sloan (Blade: The Series; Black Christmas; The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1).

Plot:

Two young women are terrorised by a group of small town psychos but then take their revenge…

Reviews:

“With a lack of tension and low-feeling stakes, you’d think Even Lambs would be really, really dumb. It’s not. It’s clever without feeling like it’s trying too hard and it all just works … Even Lambs reaches a nice balance of human horror, dark comedy, and violent revenge flick. Usurping expectations while delivering a rowdy crowd-pleaser is a tough one. Even Lambs does it well.” Patrick Cooper, Bloody Disgusting

Buy: Amazon.co.uk

“Katie and Sloane use their physical power to escape and then go on a Tarantino-esque style revenge killing spree on the corrupt individuals that inflicted sexual violence on the girls … Overall, the film was a fun watch full of gore, revenge and witty moments of comic relief.” Matthew Candelaria, Met Media

” … what exactly is the point of a rape-revenge movie that neither shows the rape nor the revenge? Skirting over those elements leaves the viewer asking why they even bothered making the damn thing, and just who they made it for. Yes, of course rape is an unpleasant subject matter, so it’s entirely understandable that some filmmakers and actors might feel uncomfortable taking it on. But if a cast and crew are not willing to push both their audience and themselves beyond their comfort zone, then they really have no business trying to make exploitation.” Ben Bussey, Brutal as Hell

“The deaths are all warranted, and surprisingly, creatively awful, but you don’t focus on the violence, as much as you focus on the glorious revenge for the two young women. It’s fun, even if it is murder, which is something that isn’t easy to do. You applaud the ladies for being creative. You cheer for them when they tease their victims.” Jason, Delve

“Well made and well directed for the most part. Some of the acting is eh, but I could get past it. The real problem with this movie is that is it trying so hard to be a revenge exploitation film, but you hardly see any of the atrocities that call for revenge. And the revenge that does take place in the film has already been done before.” Hal Jarvis, Letterbxd

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Coming Soon: new and future releases

Scars of a Predator is a 2017 American horror film written and directed by actor Andy Troy (When the Devil Comes), making his feature debut. It stars Ed Heavey, Danielle Harper and Tina Krause.

William Arnold raped and murdered four women. The law did not punish him. But sometimes there are worse things than prison…

Main cast:

Ed Heavey (Death House), Danielle Harper, Tina Krause (The Fappening; Psycho Sisters; Vampire Vixens), Amelie McKendry, Genoveva Rossi, G. Paul Salvetti, Vinny Vella, Lori Spano, Kenneth Carrella, Jasmin St. Claire (Bite School; Swamp Zombies; Army of the Damned), Ken Kushner, Lauren Michele, Cecilia Black, Cara D’Adamo, Marko Caka.

IMDb

‘An eye for an eye… A tooth for a tooth… A foot for a foot…’

3 is a 2017 rape revenge horror thriller written, co-produced and directed by Lou Simon (All Girls Weekend; HazMat; The Awakened; Agoraphobia). It stars Todd Bruno, Mike Stanley and Aniela McGuinness.

A man and a woman kidnap the latter’s rapist in order to extract a confession, but how far will they be willing to go for justice?

IMDb | Facebook | Official website

Interview with writer-director Lou Simon

What inspires you as a filmmaker?

Being able to play with an audience’s emotions – from setting up expectations about what is going to happen, to twisting the story in another direction, to have them feel all the emotions of a scene (especially if that emotion is fear).

Where did the idea of 3 come from?

It started with a simple picture posted by Aniela McGuinness, who plays the role of She. Aniela had a double mastectomy after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She proudly posted pictures of her scars on social media. It made me squirm, because I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose the one thing that makes us most obviously women. As if cancer wasn’t dark enough, it reminded me of a rape/murder story where the woman’s nipples had been cut out. The rest of the story came to me in spurts over months.

Photo by Enrique Tubio

Why is telling this story so important to you?

Rape is a cancer in our society and the statistics are daunting. Nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped and as many as 321,500 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States. And 1 out of every 10 rape victims is male. The emotional scars sexual assault leaves on its victims stay with them for a lifetime. There’s been a rise in cases where rapists have received a slap in the hand for committing rape, while the victims have been vilified for being “too sexual.” There had been laws put in place to protect rape victims from that type of persecution, but somehow, we seem to be taking steps back in the progress that had been made.

What was the most challenging part of making this film?

As always, the biggest challenge was the size of the budget and the limited days of filming.  To make a feature film in a couple of weeks is so hard. This script, in particular, had a lot of dialogue for the actors to memorize. I was also afraid that for 3 actors in one location, it would be slow and uninteresting. Hopefully, there are enough turns in the story to keep the audience engaged throughout.

What was the most unique situation you faced during production?

We were filming in an unfinished basement that looked a lot like a cave. One of the nights, it rained for hours out of nowhere.  It hadn’t been forecasted at all.  The next morning, the basement was flooded, along with a lot of our equipment.  The rain had also caused the outlets to trip the breakers, and the entire house lost power.  We lost half a day, bailing water out of the basement.

There was also the issue of the unfinished floor in the sunroom. When we went to look at the house during pre-production, the floor had been removed, but we were assured that it would be done the next week. Almost 2 months later, we arrive and the floor was still unfinished. We had to put a layer of plywood and then put furniture over that.  The floor was like a trampoline when you stepped on it, and where the plywood finished, there was a direct drop to the basement beneath the house – about 8 feet below. I held my breath for 2 days of filming that no one would fall through.

Talk about your method and/or any extraordinary or unusual aspects about your creative process.

What seems to shock people the most is my ability to write scripts in a very short time. I can usually write a script in about four days. 3 was probably the most unique experience yet in that I had not even written the script when we started pre-production.  In fact, I didn’t write the script until about a month and a half before principal photography.  It was all in my head, but I hadn’t sat down to write it yet. When I finally sat down to write it, in the back of my head I kept thinking “how about if I get writer’s block for the first time and now I have this film completely set up?” Thankfully, I wrote it in 3 days, so it all worked out.

“3 relies on the performance of three outstanding characters. Why did you cast these three actors in particular?

I had worked with Todd Bruno in my film, HazMat, and we always talked about working together again. In fact, he helped me produce 3. Aniela McGuinness had been in two of my previous films, and I had written the role of Annie in All Girls Weekend specifically for her, but then came her cancer diagnosis and she had to vow out of the project. I told her that I would write a new role for her one day once she was better, and I’m glad that it happened sooner than even we expected. She’s cancer free now, so this was a good way for her to come back to acting. Mike Stanley was actually the only person I hadn’t worked with before, but it turned out that he fit in perfectly with the rest of the cast and crew.  Most of us have worked together before so we’re like a family. We quickly adopted Mike, and for better or for worse, now he’s one of us.

You are a very prolific director with five features in five years under your belt. What is your recipe for productivity?

Every time I say that I’m going to take time off, my mind wanders off into another story and I start all over again. Creativity feeds our soul, so I’m sure that most filmmakers would do the same if they had the financial resources to do it. I was very lucky to be in a position in life where I could get investors for my first film.  When HazMat did well, I have been able to use that to get them to continue investing in future projects. I have a very good relationship with my investors, because they know how hard I’ll work for them and how I take my job very seriously. For me, this is a business, and I make decisions on what is best for the investors, not for my ego.

What’s next for you?

“3 will start the film festival circuit this year, and then we’ll starting international sales at AFM in November.

I am developing both a sci-fi script that my company will be filming at the end of the year, and I’m co-producing an action script with another company that will probably be in production next year. Both have a lot of suspense, so although I’m taking a break from horror, they’ll still share some elements with my previous films. I’m not stepping away from horror, just want to challenge myself to try other genres as well.

What are you still looking for?

I’m always looking for investors. All indie filmmakers should always be pitching. My main goal with 3 now is to take it to as many film festivals as possible. We got distribution so early on for the last 2 films that I didn’t submit to many festivals. This time, I’m going to take my time and enjoy it. There’s nothing more rewarding than to watch the film with an audience, and you only get that experience at film festivals.

IMDb | Facebook | Official website

The Orang Minyak is one of a number of Malay ghost myths. Orang Minyak literally means oily man in Malay.

According to one legend, popularised in the 1956 film Sumpah Orang Minyak (The Curse of the Oily Man) directed by and starring P. Ramlee, the orang minyak was a man who was cursed in an attempt to win back his love with magic. In this version, the Devil offered to help the creature and give him powers of the black arts, but only if the orang minyak worshipped him and raped twenty-one virgins within a week. In another version it is under control of an evil shaman or witch doctor.

According to legend, in the 1960s the orang minyak lived around several Malaysian towns. The orang minyak of the 1960s was described as human, naked and covered with oil (supposedly to make it difficult to catch). However, there were also stories of the orang minyak where it was supposedly supernatural in origin, or invisible to non-virgins, or both. The mass panic has also led to unmarried women, typically in student dormitories, borrowing sweaty clothes to give the impression to the orang minyak that they are with a man. Other defense supposedly include biting its left thumb and covering it in batik.

Reputed sightings of the orang minyak, or events later ascribed to it, have continued with reduced frequency into the 2000s.

In 2005, there were cases reported of rapists covered in oil roaming around, armed with knives. 

In 2012, the residents in Kampung (Village) Laksamana, in Gombak, Selangor Malaysia claim to have seen and heard the orang minyak around the vicinity of the Pangsapuri Laksamana and Jalan Laksamana 1. The village had been buzzing with sightings of the two paranormal creatures for the last 10 days.

This creature, in its general nature, behaviour and supposed origin would seem to be very similar to the Grease devil of Ceylon.

The legend has appeared in a number of films, including:

Sumpah Orang Minyak (1956), directed by P. Ramlee

Serangan Orang Minyak (1958), directed by L. Krishnan

Oily Maniac (1976), from the Shaw Brothers, directed by Meng Hua Ho

Orang Minyak (2007)

Pontianak vs Orang Minyak (2012), directed by Afdlin Shauki

Wikipedia

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1931 American Pre-Code horror film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fredric March. The film is an adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), the Robert Louis Stevenson tale of a man who takes a potion which turns him from a mild-mannered man of science into a homicidal maniac. March’s performance has been much lauded, and earned him his first Academy Award.

In a London of fog and gas lamps, capes and canes, kindly Dr Henry Jekyll (pronounced by the entire cast to rhyme with ‘treacle’, correctly according to Stevenson) attends a lecture to his adoring contemporaries where he announces that he has discovered that Man’s very soul is split between the good, the desire to love and perform good deeds and the bad, where Man succumbs to his baser instincts.

Whilst walking home through Soho with his colleague, Dr. John Lanyon (Holmes Herbert, The Invisible Man), Jekyll spots a bar singer, Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins), being attacked by a man outside her boarding house. Jekyll drives the man away and carries Ivy up to her room to attend to her. Ivy begins flirting with Jekyll and feigning injury, but Jekyll fights temptation and leaves with Lanyon.

Unable to convince his beloved Muriel’s (Rose Hobart, later seen in Tower of London) father Brigadier General Sir Danvers Carew (the equally splendidly monickered Halliwell Hobbes) that a quick wedding would be preferable to the year he insists upon, Jekyll continues his experiments in his personal lab, waited upon by his faithful servant, Poole (Edgar Norton from Dracula’s Daughter and Son of Frankenstein), eventually developing a potion which he elects to test on himself.

Transforming into a quasi-Neanderthal, dubbed Mr. Hyde, he continues to swagger around the upper class haunts of Victorian London but with unabashed bravado and bestial relish, gatecrashing the club Ivy frequents and seducing her in an extremely unsubtle manner.

Imprisoning her in her own room at a boarding house, Hyde torments and abuses Ivy but as the potion’s effects wear off, Jekyll realises hid absence has done his chances of marrying Murial no favours, he leaves Ivy temporarily, vowing to teach her a lesson if she attempts anything silly. Convincing his future father-in-law that his absence is completely out of character, the marriage finally receives his blessing and a large party is organised to make the announcement public. He sends Ivy £50 by way of apology, prompting her to visit the mystery benefactor and falling for him once again. Alas, Jekyll has been taking increasingly large doses of the potion and upon having a momentary ‘dark thought’, he again transforms into his alter-ego, against his will, even more hideous than before.

Returning to Ivy’s lodgings, he reveals he and Jekyll are one and the same and after some more brutality, he goes the whole hog and murders her. With Lanyon now wise to what is going on, Hyde inevitably ends up at Murial’s house, attacking her and the rest of the household, killing her father in the process. With the police on his tale, Hyde and Jekyll struggle to come to terms with who holds the upper hand – is it too late for Jekyll to make amends?

The film was made prior to the full enforcement of the Hay’s Production Code and this should come as no surprise. The film bristles with sexuality, with barely veiled nods to rape and sexual violence and with the two leading ladies revealing plenty of leg and not a little cleavage. When it was re-released in 1936, the Code required 8 minutes to be removed before the film could be distributed to cinemas. This footage was later restored for the VHS and DVD releases.

The secret of the transformation scenes was not revealed for decades (Mamoulian himself revealed it in a volume of interviews with Hollywood directors published under the title The Celluloid Muse). Make-up was applied in contrasting colors. A series of coloured filters that matched the make-up was then used which enabled the make-up to be gradually exposed or made invisible. The change in color was not visible on the black-and-white film. The effects are not advanced as those of 1940’s The Wolf Man, nor as ageless as 1932’s The Invisible Man but they are nevertheless remarkable.

A disgracefully uncredited Wally Westmore’s make-up for Hyde — simian and hairy with large canine teeth — influenced greatly the popular image of Hyde in media and comic books. In part this reflected the novella’s implication of Hyde as embodying repressed evil, and hence being semi-evolved or simian in appearance. The make-up came close to permanently disfiguring March’s own face. Westmore later helped create the similarly beast-like inhabitants of Island of Lost Souls. The characters of Muriel Carew and Ivy Pearson do not appear in Stevenson’s original story but do appear in the 1887 stage version by playwright Thomas Russell Sullivan.

John Barrymore was originally asked by Paramount to play the lead role, in an attempt to recreate his role from the 1920 version of Jekyll and Hyde, but he was already under a new contract withMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Paramount then gave the part to March, who was under contract and who strongly resembled Barrymore. March had played a John Barrymore-like character in the Paramount film The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), a story about an acting family like the Barrymores. March would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance of the role.

When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer remade the film ten years later with Spencer Tracy in the lead, the studio bought the rights to the 1931 Mamoulian version. They then recalled every print of the film that they could locate and for decades most of the film was believed lost. Ironically, the Tracy version was much less well received and March jokingly sent Tracy a telegram thanking him for the greatest boost to his reputation of his entire career.

The film also makes better use of music than most other horror films of the 1930’s, including the celebrated studio of Universal. Beginning with the portent of Bach’s Fugue in D Minor, it shows Jekyll as an accomplished organist, the soundtrack making use of this diegetic tool. Miriam too plays the piano, whilst Ivy, of course, sings, the musical world of the good in contrast with the guttural grunts and hissing of Hyde. There is also a rare use of song in an early horror film, Ivy’s ‘theme tune’ “Champagne Ivy”, actually being an adaptation of the 19th Century music hall song “Champagne Charley”.

It was to be March’s only role in a horror film, though it was enough for him to claim the Oscar for best actor (tying with Wallace Beery in The Champ). Though his slightly simpering Jekyll make grate somewhat, his Hyde is a miraculous performance, energetic, twitching and frothing at the mouth with lust and vigour. His almost gymnastic feats in the film’s finale are a thing of wonder. As Hyde once taunts Ivy: ” I’ll show you what horror means!”

Daz Lawrence, HORRORPEDIA

Other reviews:

“Ostensibly a remake of the Barrymore silent, it is really a much more vigorous and innovative work, and a whole lot sexier as well. The later Spencer Tracy version also strived for a sense of eroticism, with mixed results, but this film achieves it.” John McCarty, Psychos: Eighty Years of Mad Movies, Maniacs, and Murderous Deeds, St. Martin’s Press, USA, 1986

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Büyü aka Dark Spells is a 2004 Turkish horror film directed by Orhan Oğuz based on a screenplay by Şafak Güçlü and Servet Aksoy. It stars Ece Uslu, Özgü Namal, İpek Tuzcuoğlu, Okan Yalabık, Nihat İleri and Dilek Serbest.

The film was a surprise box office success, even though it received very poor reviews and is currently ranked #53 in the IMDb’s Bottom 100 movies of all time.

A group of archeologists enter a village that is seemingly cursed by its past. They ignore the warnings of the locals, but soon after they arrive, terror strikes. Weird bugs come out of flames to bite Cemil, Ayadan is raped by an invisible force, babies are heard crying in the air, and more unnerving incidents occur. After the unexpected murder by decapitation of Cemil, the group finally band together to try to take on the evil forces lurking around every corner…

Wikipedia | IMDb

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