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Released by: Mondo Macabro
Released on: November 16th, 2004.
Director: H. Tjut Djalil
Cast: Tonya Offer, Amy Weber, Kristin Ann, Joseph Cassano
Year: 1992
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Dangerous Seductress - Movie Review:
While fleeing from the fuzz, a group of would be diamond heist masters crashes into a creaky old cemetery. When the cops don't let up and the thieves end up in a wreck, the blood from a wounded arm lands on the ground and causes some severed fingers to reanimate. To make matters worse, lighting hits from out of nowhere and the ground opens up to reveal a skeleton which soon takes on the form of a foxy lady in amongst the smoke and bad colored gel lights. This woman is the Queen of Darkness, and she demonstrates this by decapitating a dog (and a very fake one at that).
From here the movie jumps to the good ol' US of A, where Susan, a lovely blonde American girl living it up in California, is celebrating her anniversary with her husband who gets the bright idea of raping her and punching her in the head. She soon has her fill of his machismo and heads to Indonesia to stay with her sister Linda for a while until things get back to normal. When one of Linda's friends gives her an ancient book on local mysticism, it isn't long before Susan pokes her head in where it doesn't belong and she ends up summoning the aforementioned Queen Of Darkness when Linda heads off on a high fashion photo shoot one night.
The Queen Of Darkness possesses Susan (you can tell cause she starts dressing slutty and all of a sudden has a tattoo) and using her new host body heads out into the city to pick up dumb guys and kill even dumber teenagers at while. Of course, this can't go on and so a local wise man will soon have to put an end to it all, with some help from the local law enforcement agencies. In the meantime though, there are lots of flying heads, crazy light shows, strange glowing body parts, and most importantly, lasers. Lots of lasers.
While there is plenty of trashy action in the film, there are also a lot of scenes where nothing really happens at all. Plenty of out of place night club, fashion shoot, modeling and dancing scenes are scattered throughout the film, which makes things a little jarring when contrasted against some of the more explicit moments of violence that are also in the same movie. In short, it feels weird - but I mean that in a good way.
It all comes together in the deliciously delirious way that trash fans love. Glow in the dark nipples, buckets of gore, bad eighties fashion (despite the fact that this was shot in the nineties) and cringe worthy dialogue that sounds stilted, forced, and very inopportune. This all adds up to lots of fun for everyone, especially fans of lasers. The theme song, which plays over the opening credits, is sure to have you up dancing, and the rest of the score, full of synth cues and the like, is equally terrible which means that it works perfectly in the film.
Dangerous Seductress - DVD Review:
The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is good but not quite great. There is some mild print damage present and some of the colors look a little bit washed out. That being said, anyone familiar with Indonesian horror/exploitation films knows that for some reason or another they almost always look like that. What's important is that there's a lot of detail present in the picture and that there aren't any serious issues with edge enhancement or compression artifacts.
The English Dolby Digital 2.0 track sounds nice and clean with some decent bass response and a few distinct moments of channel separation. Dialogue is problem free and the background music and sound effects are mixed into the track at the appropriate levels and don't overshadow anything. There are no subtitles or closed captioning options on this release.
Extras?
First up is an interview with the director of the film, H. Tjut Djalil. Clocking in at roughly a quarter of an hour, he gives us a good feel for the Indonesian film scene and discusses not only the making of Dangerous Seductress but some of his earlier films as well, and goes into a fair amount of detail about some of the problems he ran into with Lady Terminator, as well as his take on the horror genre in general.
Steve Prouty, the effects man behind the wonderful reanimated fingers sequence, gives a four minute commentary that plays over the opening cemetery scene. He's keen to discuss his Indonesian effects work, as well as his later work done in the US on TV shows and feature films alike. Prouty is also given an interview as well, in which he discusses more of the same.
Rounding out the extra features are an essay on Indonesian exploitation films, a biography on Djalil, and the familiar Mondo Macabro promo reel.
Dangerous Seductress - The Final Word:
Dangerous Seductress is exactly what you would expect from Djalil. Pretty girls running around getting into trouble with a uniquely Indonesian twist make for plenty of unintentionally hilarious moments and more schlock than you can shake a laser snake at.
