Today I learned that “Yesterday” is the most covered song of all time, and let it be known that I despise that song. It’s saccharine garbage and I won’t stand for it. The only song I hate more is “Satisfaction,” which happens to be the second most covered song of all time. People need to cover something else, anything else. Enter Indonesian director Susilo S.W.D, who instead of covering “Love Me Tender” (the third most covered song of all time, for fuck’s sake what is wrong with people), decided to cover Hellraiser instead.
A man is surrounded by candles and fiddles with a cursed trinket. You are 100% positive something evil is about to be summoned. And indeed, something—someone—does get summoned. The guy gets flayed and turned into a goopy, neon monster. Stop-motion, bloody skeletons and organs come together to form a neon skinless man. He is basically wearing his body inside out. Poor Frank. You really shouldn’t mess with cursed objects.
Frank asks his old flame Julia to help—specifically to murder. “Every drop of blood puts more flesh on my bones.” So, she abides. She lures men back to the house and kills them because, as we all know, love makes you do crazy things.
Now at this point you’re thinking, hold up, isn’t this the plot to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser? And you’re right, it is. Roh is an Indonesian cover of the 1987 classic, only this one’s a little hornier, a lot more melodramatic, and much less slick. However, it’s just as ambitious. Like the best covers, Roh puts its own spin on the original, but still sticks to the main riff. While we don’t get Pinhead, we do get a badass woman with a perm and sunglasses and a blue man who breathes fire. All this in a tidy 75 minutes.
The best covers take something that’s already iconic and somehow turn it into something even bigger, like Whitney’s “I Will Always Love You” or Aretha’s “Respect.” Covers are the bedrock of low-budget international cinema; this is how we have Terminators from Indonesia and Hong Kong and Freddy Kruegers from India and Mexico. Then we have Turkish Rambo, Turkish Spider-man, Turkish Captain America, and Turkish Batman. They all capitalized on something that was wildly successful and profitable in the States and tried to replicate it in their own countries and cultures. And while you can never catch lightning in a bottle twice, it doesn’t mean you won’t be successful. Roh is enjoyable precisely because it’s a great cover of Hellraiser, but it’s got uneven pacing and some moments of goofy comedy, which is par for the course in low-budget Asian horror from the 80s. If you didn’t know the plot to Hellraiser you may find the film a bit uneven and downright confusing. But anyone familiar with Pinhead and his crew of Cenobites will enjoy the Indonesian cover and appreciate the artistry, ambition, and shortcuts.
The third most covered song is “Billie Jean,” which doesn’t even make sense. Get a grip, people, go raise hell instead.
