Kala Malam Bulan Mengambang

This is one of the rare few local movies I watched and I found it to be quite a treat. Parodying the film noir of the 40s and 50s, Mengambang opens up with a typical heroic scene of Saleh, Rosyam Nor, an ex reporter, narrating the story of his life. Donning on a P. Ramlee-esquire garb his destination takes a series of turns when he discovered a skeleton with a keris attached to its hand that punctured his car tire.

Everything mysterious, bizarre, cliché and cool can be found in this movie. The humor comes in the form of a Tauke Hotel, David Teo, a bevy of sexy and enigmatic girls and Saleh's personal recount of the town he is stranded in where the disappearance of one too many people becomes too obvious.

Presented in the good old black and white hey days of classic films, with witty scripting and artistic cinematography, Mengambang begins with so much promise of being an excellent movie. What falls short is the anti climax created by the denouement somewhere in the middle of the story. From then on it becomes a little too tedious as though a new storyline has been negotiated in altogether.

Although it did maintain some quirky spoofs which are still hilarious, it could have been a better fare had the second half been considerably edited. Mamat Khalid, famed for his Zombie Kampung Pisang, Tipah Tertipu and Man Laksa, wrote and directed this amusing feature.

I have watched far too many Malay movies, and most of the movies I saw were mediocre movies, with shallow scripts, poor storyline, and movies that banked on accomplished actors & actresses to sell tickets rather than making a sincere effort to create a good movie without emphasizing on selling movie tickets too much. I almost promise myself that I would not spend my money and time watching another Malay movie ever again. That's how much I despised Malay movies! But as and English proverb says, do not despised anything too much as one day maybe you will like it someday in the future. The same goes to me. Me being so skeptical with the Malay movies only led me to watch this movie. It was a coincidence really as I did not know I'd be seeing it. There was no hype about this movies, with local newspapers and movie critics did not write much about the movie. Out of curiosity, I said to myself that I have to watch this movie, and to judge it myself about it.

What strikes my attention the most is that this movie is made in black-and-white. I made some searching and found out that this is the first black-and-white movie since 1974. That was some twenty years ago! The props is carefully done, with meticulous details in finding the appropriate props that matched the scenery in Malaya in yesteryear. And the fact that Mamat Khalid has managed to do it is a feat in itself. Kudos to him as the producer, the production crews and to the sponsors for believing in the project and in making the movie as good as possible.

'Kala Malam Bulan Mengambang' is a dark comedy horror film. Whilst it does not have laugh out loud jokes, it does have many one-liners and double meaning jokes that will tickle you funny bones. And as a movie that only dwells in making stupid jokes and slapstick humor, this film manages to deliver a good dose of jokes and providing some social critics in it. Very hard to be made, but this film has not only made it, it made it look very good. Kudos again.

A full core of 10 out of ten, for making me believe that all is not lost in Malay film industry, and for making me believe that there is more good Malay film to come. Kudos to Mamat Khalid as well for his brave attempt in making black-and-white dark comedy.