Multicultural appeal of Pontianak films in the golden age of Singapore cinema

• Main Author: Tay, Hui Yi
• Other Authors: Michael Yeo
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::History
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/165265
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Golden Age of Singapore cinema lasted from the 1950s to the 1960s. During this golden age, Singapore was dubbed the “Hollywood of Southeast Asia,” with hundreds of films released over the few decades. Horror was one of the most well-received genres of that era. One of the most successful was the pontianak films. The pontianak is a Malay mythological creature, but the films were also well-received by non-Malay patrons. An advertisement featuring the original 1957 Pontianak film which sparked off the horror genre in Singapore was written fully in Mandarin, and the film was also dubbed in Mandarin and Cantonese. This paper aims to examine the multicultural appeal of the pontianak films. This paper arguesthat the conventions that appeared in the pontianak films during the golden age of Singapore appealed to the masses as they contained elements familiar to people of all ethnicities living in Singapore. That is, with the adoption of Hollywood monster tropes, the representation of societal anxieties, and the films’ horror-comedy genre. This will be done by analyzing several pontianak and Hollywood monster films, discussing Singapore’s historical context of that era, and examining the psychology behind the appeal of horror films.