Nearly unknown in the United States, Suzzanna Martha Frederika van Osch — better known as Suzzanna — was crowned the queen of Indonesian horror.

The youngest of six Javanese-Minahasan-Sundanese-German-Dutch children born to singer Johanna Bojoh and actor Willem Van Osch, Suzanna started acting in 1958, winning a contest to appear in Usmar Ismail’s Asrama Dara. By the end of the 1960s, she was married to actor Dicky Suprapto — who this film gets into, as he left her and would not grant a divorce — and then, by 1972, she was the most popular actress in the country. Her film Bernafas dalam Lumpur had a frank depiction of sexuality that was incendiary in its home country, leading to it being banned.

Suzanna’s real fame came from her horror films. With long black hair and a terrifying stare — sort of like an Indonesian Barbara Steele — Suzzanna played frightening villains in a series of movies that thrilled and also frightened audiences. She also kept the appearances of magic up in the stories of her personal life, as some claimed that she prayed to a “lady of the sea” and that she drank jasmine flowers to remain young. Or that story that when she made Nyi Blorong that the wig of snakes that was placed on her head was calm whenever it was near her.

Her death — said to be from diabetes complications — in 2008 was just as mysterious as the life that she led, to the point that some claimed she was murdered.

What she leaves behind is a career filled with many movies playing women done wrong. That’s apparent in nearly every actress’ career. Where she differs is that once the act has been done to her, she returns and gets her comeuppance. Sure, her back may be leaking and leeches could be pouring out of them. But then she’d affix that stare at her enemies and found a dignity that many women done wrong in cinema never attain.

Directed by David Gregory, this documentary combines clips of her most famous films with interviews with family members, colleagues, filmmakers and historians. What emerges is exactly what should from a film like this: a burning desire to seek out all of Suzzanna’s films and devour them with the magical appetite she used to chow down on 200 satay sticks and an entire vat of soup in Sundelbolong.

Suzanna: The Queen of Black Magic is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including a conversation with director/co-producer David Gregory and co-producer Ekky Imanjaya, as well as a trailer.

You can order this set from Severin.

The title of this movie means “prostitute with a hole in her” and comes from Indonesian myth. It refers to a dead sex worker who has either given birth inside her grave or had a child that was born through a hole in her back that is concealed by her long black hair. Wearing a long white gown, this vengeful spirit castrates men and takes children to replace the one that she has lost.

Directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra, this stars Suzzanna, the Queen of Indonesian Horror. She plays Alisa, who learns during her wedding reception that her new husband Hendarto (Barry Prima!) must go out to sea. As she waits alone, she decides to take a job as a model for a clothing store. To her horror, she learns that it’s really from her old boss — back when she was a call girl — Mami (Ruth Pelupessi) and Rudy (Rudy Salam), the scummy owner of the store who attempts to assault her.

As she runs from this, she’s forced off the road as a stationwagon is broken down in the middle of it. Four thugs and Rudy soon emerge to attack her, raping her multiple times. She gets no justice from the courts and a doctor refuses her when she tries to get an abortion, so when she tries to do it herself, she ends up dying, as her maid Bi Ijah (Marlia Hardi) finds her in a pool of blood, along with a fetus.

When her husband returns home, he puts flowers on her grave that mysteriously appear on her bed. He also meets her near-twin, Shinta, who is truly her and able to transform into a cat. Now comes revenge.

The revenge! Trees falling on men, a scumbag impaled by the tombstone of the woman he put on this path, even hands emerging from a wall to kill someone.

How classic is this movie and its lead? When it was remade in 2018, it — and the main character — were retitled Suzzanna: Bernapas dalam Kubur in tribute.

You will believe a ghost can eat all the food and drink all the soup in a restaurant before everything she has consumed drains from the hole in her back. You will hear “Night on Bald Mountain” many times. And your mind will be destroyed in all the best of ways.

Sadly, this is a film that perhaps speaks just as much to our world today as it did when it was made, across the world and forty years ago. A woman cannot get justice in any traditional way, much less rid herself of a child born through sexual assault. Only the supernatural and the other world can give her what she deserves.

Sundelbolong is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including Hantu Retribution, a featurette on the female ghosts of the Malay Archipelago and the short film White Song.

You can order this set from Severin.

As the All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 set takes us throughout not just the world of folk horror but our world itself, it lands in Thailand with Nang Nak, which is based on the legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong.

A gorgeous woman named Nak once lived on the banks of the Phra Khanong canal with her husband Mak. As he went to battle in the Kengtung Wars, she died giving birth to their child. When he returned from the battles that he barely survived, he found her waiting for him as a ghost. Despite the warnings of others, he lived with her until learning the truth, running in fear as she attacked the villagers who she felt drove him away.

In some versions of this story, the monk Somdet Phra Phutthachan defeats Nak by confining her spirit in the bone of her forehead, which he keeps on his waistband. The Thai royal family was said to still own this magical relic and Admiral Prince Abhakara Kiartivongse, Prince of Chumphon and the father of the Thai navy, also claimed that he had this occult object in his possession.

Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr, this is the thirteenth and by no means the final adaption of this legend. It moves the story forward in time, as Mak (Winai Kraibutr) fights in the Siamese-Vietnamese War, so it takes place in the 1830s. When he returns, he lives with Nak (Intira Jaroenpura) and their child, as the villagers never told him that she died.

Anyone that tries to tell Mak the truth dies at the spectral hands of her ghost. Mak discovers the truth as she drops a comb and her ghostly arm extends longer than it should (the legend often claims this happens when she drops a piece of fruit). Even after her home is exorcised and burnt, Nak still rages.

Buddhist monk Somdej Toh — the most sainted monk in Thailand’s history — finally convinces her to stop and that she will be reunited in the afterlife with her husband and child. He then cuts the center of the forehead of her corpse open, allowing her spirit to leave, and creates a talisman from it that ends up being in the possession of Prince Chumbhorn Ketudomsak, just as the royal man claimed.

As I have gone from spirit land to spirit land through this set, I have seen how many civilizations have tried to make sense of the unknown, which would be love and death. This story sets forth the notion that one of these does not always stop the other.

Nang Nak is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an audio commentary by Mattie Do, director Of The Long Walk, and Asian gothic scholar Katarzyna Ancuta, an interview with director Nonzee Nimibutr and a trailer.

You can order this set from Severin.

On an island in the middle of the ocean, the fishermen ensure that everyone has enough to eat by giving the gods their daughters, throwing them into the sea. All of them do this except for Muthana (Al Farhan), who saves Hayat (Hajjar), making her an outcast.

Twelve years later, as her mother becomes pregnant again, there’s a chance she can become part of the village and her family, but a boy is born. She’s taken to the water again and yet escapes, ending up a fisherman herself on the boat sailed by Amer (Ashraf Barhoum).

The older sailor doesn’t know what to make of the woman with scales on one foot; what are we to make of the villagers who have been eating mermaids, the very daughters they tossed into the ocean, reborn?

Directed by Shahad Ameen, this black and white Saudi film is bleak. But isn’t the world getting darker for women over just the last few weeks? The men are free to sail the open waters while the women hide indoors, praying that their child may either feed the village as part of their death or that their next child be a man. I’ll think about this film for many days to come.

Scales is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including a conversation with director Shahad Ameen and producer Rula Nasser moderated by filmmaker/author Kier-La Janisse, a trailer and the short film Kindil.

You can order this set from Severin.

Kim Ki-young made horror films after studying to be a dentist and making propaganda movies. His 1960 movie, The Housemaid, is considered to be one of the best Korean films ever. Today, filmmakers like Im Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook proclaim his films like Woman of Fire, Insect Woman, Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death and this movie. When Youn Yuh-jung won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Minari, she brought up Kim Ki-young in her speech and said that he was a genius.

There’s an island in legend called Parang where the men die after they reproduce, leaving behind a country of women. Marketing manager Seon Woo-hyeon (Kim Chung-chui) has named a new resort after this place and plans a boat trip to the island that inspired it for the media but journalist Cheon Nam-seok (Choi Yun-seok) refuses to go as he believes that Parang is real. After the two go for a drink, Cheon Nam-seok disappears and Seon Woo-hyeon is blamed for his death. To clear his name, he goes to Parang to discover what it’s really like.

Imagine what happens when he finds a pagan society that is run by women, all of them the widows of men lost to the sea. Chun’s past is strange, as his father disappeared after first seeing the island, his mother committed suicide after being taken advantage of by an exorcist and the exorcist’s daughter stole money so he could escape the island, if not his deadly destiny. As for her, she was tied to rocks on the beach and left to die.

There’s so much mystery in this that the central murder no longer matters. There’s a strange shaman, women desperate to be with child, a water demon, pollution, necrophilia and so much more. This isn’t a sit back and relax movie. It must be devoured and explored.

Io Island is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an audio commentary by archivist and Korean film historian Ariel Schudson and Dr. Hyunseon Lee On Shamanism in Korean visual culture. There is also a short, The Present.

You can order this set from Severin.

I’ve often discussed waiting to see a movie until the time is perfect.

That’s what I had done with this film, a movie in which musician Paul Bergson (Peter Firth) searches for the Master Flautist (Orla Pederson), a supernatural creature who is planning to destroy our planet.

Directed by Jamil Dehlavi, this was amazingly released on home video by Vidmark, and I can’t even imagine people who just picked it up at the video store making their way through it without preparation.

During a concert, Peter has visions of the end of the world. At the time, an astronomer (Suzan Crowley) discovers patterns on the surface of the sun caused by a volcano in Turkey, which is where Peter came from. He goes back and discovers that his mother was stoned when he was a child and that he has a mute, deformed brother (Nabil Shaban) who is still alive, and is brought to civility by the woman, just in time for the fire breathing djinn who is the Master Flautist to possess her and have her sexually assault Peter. And oh yeah, she goes and spawns in a hot spring, spewing forth blood and fish eggs. Later, she buries a moth and as it is born, she dies in Paul’s brother’s arms as he breaks his silence and screams.

The brothers do what they must: they perform a flute and baritone concert that floods the caves and kills the Master Flautist.

Can you imagine the folks who rented this five movies for five nights for five dollars? Blood in the water, a skull eclipsing the moon, Islamic demons, full frontal male and female nudity, passages from the Koran…I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie like this, a nearly wordless film with images that break your mind and one of the heroes has osteogenesis imperfecta and would go on to play Sil on Doctor Who.

It starts with this quote from Jelaleddin Rumi: “In the rhythm of music a secret is hidden; If I were to divulge it, it would overturn the world.” Rumi also wrote, “Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.” and “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

Allow this movie into your life sooner than I did.

Born of Fire is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an interview with director Jamil Dehlavi, an archival interview with Nabil Shaban, a lecture on the cinematic world of Jamil Dehlavi by Dr. Ali Nobil Ahmad, director Dalia Al Kury examining the role of the djinn in contemporary Arabic culture, an interview with Syeda Momina Masood on the roots of Pakistani horror and a trailer. There are also two short films, Towers of Silence and Qâf.

You can order this set from Severin.

Haida is the language of the Haida people, which is spoken only in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of Canada and on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. This endangered language, which once had 15,000 speakers, has just 24 today. Today, nearly all Haida people use English, but there are efforts to revitalize this language before its too late.

Edge of the Knife — SG̲aawaay Ḵ’uuna in its true native tongue — was made with input from Haida Gwaii residents and University of British Columbia professor Leonie Sandercock with the goal of preserving and teaching the language. The budget was raised with the help of the Council of the Haida Nation, the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm Canada and this was created primarily by indigenous people, including the co-directors, a mostly amateur crew and the Haida cast, who were taught to speak Haida at a two-week training camp, as none of them could have a conversation in the language before making this.

Directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, this is all about the legend of the Gaagiixiid, a monster who becomes consumed by hunger. As two families gather to fish, Adiitsʹii  (Tyler York) causes the death of his best friend Kwa’s (Willy Russ) son Gaas. He runs into the woods to hide, overwhelmed with guilt. Somehow, he survives the harsh winter and becomes the Gaagiixiid. The families return to try to bring his old self back, but Kwa wants retribution.

There’s nothing like this movie, which is at once an educational lesson that will preserve and teach Haida to future generations, but also a film shot with a small budget in a rough location, using words that have never been filmed before. That alone requires a watch. That it’s a well-made movie with an interesting legend in its soul makes it worth telling others about.

Edge of the Knife is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including commentary with directors Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, a feature on making the world’s first Haida-language feature film and two shorts, Haida Carver and Nalujuk Night.

You can order this set from Severin.

Before this, I don’t think I’ve watched many Finnish movies before, much less one with a werereindeer, which I didn’t even think was something. You learn something new every day and movies help you do it.

At the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, this movie won Best Fairy Tale film from a Jean Cocteau-led jury. I also didn’t even know there was a Best Fairy Tale award.

This is probably the only movie out there based on pre-Christian Finnish mythology and Sami shamanism, so enjoy it. Mirjami Kuosmanen — the wife of director Erik Blomberg; she sadly died young from a brain hemorrhage — plays Pirita, a bride who misses her husband Aslak while he’s away herding reindeer.

She wants to ignite passion in her life and keep her husband home, so she visits a shaman. In turn, he turns Pirita — who was born of a witch — into a shapeshifting vampiric white reindeer. All she had to do was sacrifice the first thing she saw when she returned home, which ends up being the baby deer that her husband has brought her as a gift.

Now, she is irresistible to all men, men who she lures as the reindeer into the woods and then drains them of their blood.

The White Reindeer is the kind of magical movie that slowly finds its way into your mind and then takes a place inside it.

The White Reindeer is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including The Projection Booth episode about this movie, featuring Mike White with Kat Ellinger, author of Daughters Of Darkness, and Talk Without Rhythm‘s El Goro. It also has three short movies, A Witch Drum, The Nightside of the Sky and With the Reindeer.

You can order this set from Severin.

Manly Wade Wellman worked in so many genres — historical fiction, detective tales, Western stories, juvenile fiction, comic books, non-fiction, science fiction and fantasy — and had his stories become episodes of The Twilight Zone and Monsters but he’s best known for the fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains near the North Carolina he loved so much.

Perhaps his most beloved character is Silver John or John the Balladeer. He may be a simple country man who has just returned from Korean, where he was a sharpshooter, but he has a high degree of knowledge, mostly of the occult. He carries John George Hohman’s Long Lost Friend, a book of Pennsylvania Dutch spells, talismans and remedies. Most importantly, he has a guitar with strings of pure silver. There’s also some spiritual link between him and John the Baptist.

Beyond these stories being filled with the legends of the Carolinas, the songs that John sings throughout are all true. I love this quote about these tales: “Whereas Tolkien integrated Northern mythology into his mythos, and C.S. Lewis the European Fairy Tales of yore, Wellman’s stories are drenched in the folktales and songs of old Americana; the haunting stories of the slaves and the tall tales of the Revolution, strange beasts, witch-women and dark apparitions.”

Based on two of the Silver John adventures, “The Desrick on Yandro” and “O Ugly Bird,” this is nearly a portmanteau of many tales of John (Hedges Capers), as well as information on all manner of legends, including dowser Mr. Marduke (Severn Darden) explaining how important the devil is to Appalachian culture. Oh yes — a dowser is someone who uses a diving rod to find water, minerals or gold underground.

We also learn how John gets his silver stringed guitar from his grandfather (Denver Pyle) who decides to sing against the Defy, who is the devil around these parts. Their battle is so brutal that is literally breaks the film and ends with the devil triumphant, as American silver is not as pure as the money of the past.

Before John can outsing the dark one, he goes to a mountain where he meets Zebulon Yandro (Harris Yulin), whose grandfather once turned against a witch that he had been given gold by. He told her he’d be her lover for a year but took the treasure and ran to become an undertaker. Now that she still lives on the mountain and looks like a young, gorgeous girl (Susan Strasberg) but Yandro doesn’t get the good end of this deal. John does, as he’s pointed to the next stage in his quest, Hark Mountain, which is being mined by warlock O. J. Onselm (Alfred Ryder), followed by a sharecropper named Captain Lajoie H. Desplaines IV (Percy Rodrigues). Luckily, John has the help of Uncle Anansi (Chester Jones), who is related to the West African spider god.

Why does John help people who would sooner be afraid of him? Well, that’s just what he does. He’d probably be happier living with his woman, Lily (Sharon Henesy), sleeping in the warmth of the fire instead of outside in the mountains, getting to spend time with her and his dog Honor Hound. But heroes don’t get to make choices for themselves.

Directed by John Newland (who directed 96 episodes of One Step Beyond and the TV movies Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Crawlspace) and written by Melvin Levy, this takes a departure from the books by having John younger and way less sure of himself. It does have the benefit of “The Devil,” sung by Hoyt Axton, and that Hedges Capers was such a good singer himself. More for hippies than perhaps the audience for the books, this is still such a unique film, one I’d wanted to see for so long and quite pleased that it’s as magnificent as it is.

Who Fears the Devil is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including the alternate opening for The Legend of Hillbilly JOhn introduced by Severn Darden; audio commentary by Amanda Reyes; interviews with producer Barney Rosenzweig and actor and musician Hedges Capers; author David Drake remembers Manly Wade Wellman; occult historian Mitch Horowitz on the arcane texts of Wellman’s John The Balladeer stories and a trailer.

You can order this set from Severin.