Ghost with Hole (1981)

One of my all time favorites.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Pale female spirits with long dark hair are big business in Asian horror films, but it's not a new trend. We have one here, right at the beginning of the '80s, terrorising Indonesians in much the same way that her modern-day variants do these days in the likes of THE GRUDGE and RING. The Sundel Bolong ghost, though, is very much an Indonesian tradition all in itself, a real-life spirit that has provided inspiration for countless film-makers throughout the decades. Teamed with Indonesia's favourite female horror starlet, scream queen Suzzanna, and you have a film that was a guaranteed success.So it was with some enjoyment that I sat down to watch this as a Western viewer, with absolutely no understanding of the Indonesian language and no dubbing or subtitles to help me. My verdict? GHOST WITH HOLE is a pretty effective little chiller that hardly sets the world alight, but instead provides plenty of macabre moments for fright fans. It IS a bit on the slow side, however; the first half is all set-up, with the scenes of ghostly vengeance – the ones we've been waiting for all along – mostly saved for the climax. So we're stuck with incessant dialogue, melodramatic acting, and Barry Prima wasted on the sidelines just before he found success in THE WARRIOR. Perhaps acknowledging Prima's athletic prowess, the producers shoehorn in an unrelated fight scene involving him battling numerous goons which is great stuff but the only action you'll find here. I found the colourful costumes and use of classical music to be great bonuses when watching. They stopped me getting bored.The film as a whole has a bright, almost cartoonish feel to it; everything's slightly larger than life, and it proves effective. The same goes for the supernatural hijinks. The ghost has a festering wound on her back and kills her enemies by impaling them on tombstones and other sundry ways, all of them imaginative. Towards the movie's end, victims are thrown on power lines and chased by severed arms in a spectral highlight. There's also the shocking appearance of a flying ghost head trailing guts, made famous in the cult classic MYSTICS IN BALI. It has to be seen to be believed, and the bright red gore effects are certainly just that: effective. Even the ping-pong-ball eyeball shocks of earlier moments are effective because of their sheer outlandishness.In the end, though, this film's charm is mostly down to starlet Suzzanna. Playing it straight for the most part, despite a crazy make-up job, she's altogether creepy and disturbing, in parallel to her fragile pre-death scenes. She's clearly having a ball with all this and her central presence holds the film together, a rotting mortar keeping hold of the surrounding bricks. GHOST WITH HOLE is an Indonesian classic; to the Western audience, it's little more than a supernatural slasher, but it IS a film laced with originality and verve.