Sumpah Orang Minyak (Singapore, 1958)

To the degree that any Western cult film enthusiast is aware of the legendary Malaysian bogey known as the Oily Man, it is most likely by way of the Shaw Brothers' 1976 Hong Kong production The Oily Maniac. In that film, Mighty Peking Man director Meng Hua Ho wrestled that eerie bit of folklore into something resembling a more sleazy take on Swamp Thing, complete with about 500% more nudity and sexual violence. As a result, those familiar with that film might be taken aback by the comparatively delicate take on the subject found in Sumpah Orang Minyak (in English: Curse of the Oily Man), an earlier take on the legend from Shaw's Malaysian division.

Of course, much of the difference between Sumpah Orang Minyak and The Oily Maniac arises from the span of nearly twenty years that separates them. But I also can't help thinking that the former's relatively stately and reverent tone is in part the result of it being a star vehicle for the phenomenally beloved Malaysian performer P. Ramlee, who also scripted and directed the film, in addition to contributing to its music. As mentioned in my review of his Tiga Abdul, Ramlee's stature as a musician, actor and all around creative dynamo has lead to him becoming an institution in his homeland, and, as such, it's inevitable that any monster picture in which he took the titular role would be handled with more gravitas than your average tossed-off creature feature.

Here Ramlee plays Si Bongkok, a disfigured hunchback who, as the movie begins, finds shelter with a kindly old batik maker (Idris Home) after being pursued through the night by a gang of village ruffians. It is not long before the batik maker sees that within Si Bongkok's pitifully twisted form rests a gentle and artistic soul, and not much longer before his business is booming thanks to the hunchback's beguiling designs. None of this, sadly, changes the fact that Si Bongkok is routinely brutalized and tormented by the people of the village, especially by the aforementioned gang of ruffians, who are lead by a surly character named Buyong (Salleh Kamil).

Things come to a tragic head when Afida (Sri Dewi), the comely young daughter of the village elder, stands up to Buyong in Si Bongkok's defense. A town festival at which Si Bongkok attempts to show his gratitude to Afida by presenting her with a portrait he's painted only proves to be another occasion for Buyong and his cronies to further humiliate him. Fleeing the scene, a tearful Si Bongkok loudly curses his fate, ushering in a long sequence that's a captivating triumph of naive surrealism and grade school theatrics.

Si Bongkok's lamentations reach the ears of the Orang Bunyan, who, in Malaysian folklore, are a race of forest dwelling supernatural beings akin to elves or goblins. As the sky opens above him, the Orang Bunyan Princess arrives in a kind of land-faring boat to usher him back to her world. There, the King of the Orang Bunyan presents him with a great book from which he can choose one wish. Si Bongkok chooses to be beautiful, and the King asks in exchange that he vow never to succumb to wrath or boastfulness in his dealings with his fellow humans, otherwise the deal will be off. From there, it's only a matter of Si Bongkok bathing in a magic fountain, after which he emerges as beloved Malaysian musician and performer P. Ramlee, who, to be honest, is a pretty good looking dude.

Of course, once back in the human world, it quickly proves too difficult for the now easy-on-the-eyes Si Bongkok to resist telling the assembled villagers to go fuck themselves. In the ensuing melee, Afida is killed by a blade intended by Buyong for Si Bongkok, and after a dramatic, storm-swept brawl, Si Bongkok kills Buyong in retaliation. Not surprisingly, this is seen as a violation by the Orang Bunyan King, who quickly appears to render Si Bongkok invisible for eternity. Fortunately, good old Satan, always eager to set things back on an even keel, is also on hand, and appears before Si Bongkok, offering him a magic ring that will make him once again manifest to the eye. And once that ring is donned, Old Scratch proves good on his word -- though what Si Bongkok becomes visible as is the cursed Oily Man.

The Oily Man, in both tale and popular representation, is pretty much everything that his name advertises: a guy covered from head to toe in greasy black oil. Though -- in Sumpah Orang Minyak, at least -- he is also shown to have the ability to dematerialize, walk through walls, and leap great distances. As far as his visual presentation in the film, it's simply a matter of dressing P. Ramlee in a black body stocking and painting his entire head with some kind of shiny black makeup. Thankfully, the Orang Minyak, much like the Krasue, is another one of those Southeast Asian cryptids so bizarre and unsettling in its very conception that not even the most threadbare representation can completely rob it of its capacity to disturb.

Needless to say, Satan's gift of turning Si Bongkok into an objectionable mass of grease does not come without a price attached, and that price is that Si Bongkok must now rape 21 virgins within the course of the next week -- a task which Si Bongkok sets too with surprising alacrity (perhaps in part due to the fact that the film has exhausted about eighty percent of its running time before introducing its titular menace). This sets up an interesting contrast to the markedly more lurid Oily Maniac, in which the Oily Man is depicted as an avenger -- rather than a perpetrator -- of wrongs, including rape. However, it is Ramlee's version that hews more faithfully to the fabled original, a figure so identified with rape that it appears that even real world rapists have on occasion adopted his guise.

Certainly, Si Bongkok's final rampage does much to undo the goodwill that Ramlee has, over the course of Sumpah Orang Minyak's preceding 90 minutes or so, worked to generate toward him as a Quasimodo-like tragic figure. But I also suspect that Ramlee did so in fealty to his source material. While The Oily Maniac, like any exploitation film worthy of the name, strove to, wherever possible, turn that source into grist for evermore gratuitous displays of tits and blood, Ramlee uses it as a means by which to express his respect for the culture that both created it and, to some extent, him.

And, in this, Ramlee does a fine job, creating a film that is at once dense with mournful atmosphere and elevated by moments of dreamlike lyricism. (His musical contributions -- which, as in Tiga Abdul, are engaging and beautifully sung -- add a lot in this last regard.) In the end, Sumpah Orang Minyak may not provide the course thrills of The Oily Maniac, or the visceral jolt of other Southeast Asian horrors, but, in its own hypnotic way, it offers rich rewards nonetheless.

Tiga Abdul (Singapore, 1964)

In Malaysia, P. Ramlee is an artist of such stature that he has buildings and institutions named after him. (Yes, that’s plural.) He rose to fame as a singer, instrumentalist and composer in the late 40s, and soon thereafter became a star on the big screen, adding the title of director to his formidable list of accomplishments only a few years later. Tiga Abdul (or 3 Abdul), a 1964 production from Shaw Brothers’ Singapore-based Malay language division, shows the multi-talented Ramlee firing on all cylinders, acting both as star and director, while also singing musical numbers that he wrote and arranged for the film.

Based on a traditional Malaysian folk tale, Tiga Abdul takes place in a fictionalized, time warp version of Istanbul in which everyone wears 60s fashions but still buys and sells slaves in the marketplace. It also appears that every man to a one is born with a fez attached to his head. With most films in which a guy in a fez appears, you could describe him as “the guy in the fez” and feel secure in the fact that you have been sufficiently specific, but, in the case of Tiga Abdul, that would quite literally describe every man who appears on screen. Furthermore, while none of these men are shown sleeping, I imagine that, if they were, they would be shown wearing their fezzes. If not, someone might notice that they are all Southeast Asians who look nothing like what most people’s idea of a Turk is. In short, Tiga Abdul is a real fez-apalooza.

Anyway, Ramlee plays Abdul Wahub, the youngest of three brothers who are all named Abdul. As the film repeatedly strives at the expense of all subtlety to make clear, Abdul Wahub is the most virtuous of these brothers. He is even at one point shown wearing a white suit in conspicuous contrast to their black ones, and is frequently shown gazing reprovingly upon their greedy, hedonistic antics. This, while effective in establishing the elder Abduls’ lack of character, also comes very close to presenting Abdul Wahub as being a bit on the priggish and judgmental side. Luckily, this impression is mitigated somewhat when we see Abdul Wahub in the music shop he owns, rocking out on the electric guitar with pseudo-Turkey’s fez-wearing version of The Ventures.

When the wealthy father of the three Abduls dies suddenly without leaving a will, the eldest Abdul, the grasping Abdul Wahab (Haji Mahadi), is charged with divvying up the inheritance. Likely because Abdul Wahub so obviously hates both of them -- but also because they only care about money, while Abdul Wahub cares about art and music and feelings and stuff -- elders Abdul Wahab and Abdul Wahib decide to split the old man’s vast fortune in assets between themselves, leaving Abdul Wahub with only their father’s rundown mansion to show for his filial devotion. At the same time, an unscrupulous friend of their father’s, Sadiq Segaraga (Ahmad Nisfu), has his own eyes on their newly acquired fortune, and goes about getting it by launching his three attractive young daughters at the boys like so many hourglass-shaped, heat seeking missiles.

Both of the older brothers fall head over heels for these lovelies, and it is only the upright Abdul Wahub who sees through the ruse, greeting the tentative advances of Segaraga’s youngest daughter Ghasidah (Sarimah) with nothing but scorn and reproach. Soon the elder Abduls are approaching Segaraga and asking for his daughters’ hands in marriage, at which point the old trickster springs a contract on them that stipulates that, once married, they can never become angry, lest they should forfeit all of their assets to him and be sold into slavery. The two foolishly agree to this and the wedding bells chime, after which Segaraga, quite unsurprisingly, makes a dedicated project out of making them angry as quickly as possible, first by denying them access to anything beyond the aroma of food, and then by barring them from the marital bed. Needless to say, it’s not long before both are penniless, on the block, and up for sale to the highest bidder.

Soon after these developments, Abdul Wahub’s father appears before him in a dream. Now, given that Tiga Abdul has up to this point exhibited a sort of fanciful, fairytale-like quality, you might expect this to be the juncture at which things will take something of an enchanted turn. But in a surprising display of fiscal pragmatism from beyond the grave, Dad instead advises young Abdul to pay a visit to his lawyer. Once done, this lawyer informs Abdul that, in addition to the domestically accrued fortune that his brothers have inherited, Abdul’s dad also had overseas assets of even greater value, all of which now belongs to him. Now having reaped the huge cash rewards that are the right of any truly virtuous soul, Abdul Wahub sets about scheming with the lawyer to win his brothers’ freedom and deliver Segaraga his comeuppance.

This scheme will ultimately involve Abdul Wahub marrying Ghasidah and then turning her father’s contract back against him, with the result that, after a number of convolutions, Abdul Wahub will end up turning just about everyone involved into human chattel and buying them for himself. He does this, of course, so that he may ultimately free them, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t first harangue them about how awful they all are. The moral of this age old fable, then? Don’t fuck with Abdul Wahub. Oh, and? Get a lawyer. It’s basically like a folk tale written by an MBA.

As a lead actor, Ramlee gives a competent but not especially charismatic or developed performance here, which leads me to suspect that, for his audience, his status as a beloved entertainer was a suitable stand-in for characterization. His musical contributions to the film, furthermore, give us a solid idea of just why that might have been. Ramlee’s tunes are so beguilingly melodious, and the manner in which he sings them –- when he takes the lead -- so relaxed and agreeable, that I ended up wishing that he hadn’t been so stingy with them, and had instead provided more than just the three. Especially nice is the film’s devilishly catchy theme tune, which is sung by Ramlee’s wife, Salmah “Saloma” Ismail, who appears in the delightfully modish credit sequence, singing in split screen as the titles roll beside her.

As for his talents behind the camera, Ramlee’s directorial hand is not flamboyant, but sufficient to get the story told on the obviously limited budget that was provided. It’s becoming apparent to me that the Shaw Brothers’ Malaysian productions were nowhere near as lush as those made by their Hong Kong division, and here that’s evidenced by the preponderance of tiny sets and matte painted exteriors. Still, Ramlee nonetheless manages to conjure up an appropriate, “fractured fairytale” atmosphere with the application of mischievous cartoonish touches and visual puns. He also keeps things moving along briskly, which, with a story that is so obviously grinding inevitably toward a predetermined and all-too-clearly visible moral conclusion, is always welcome.

Having seen Tiga Abdul’s toe-tapping credit sequence on YouTube, I was hoping for it to be an exotic 60s time capsule with cultish appeal. What I got instead was a modest little film with an abundance of quirky charm. I also, as mentioned above, got more fezzes than I could ever have imagined seeing onscreen at one time. Nonetheless, you don’t have to be an enthusiast of traditional Ottoman headwear in order to appreciate this one. But if you are, you might want to wear yours for the viewing.