Serbuan Halilintar (1982)

... aka: Batas Impian Serbuan Halilintar

... aka: Lightning Strike

... aka: Special Silencers

... aka: Thunderbolt Invasion

Directed by:

Arizal

When I first did a brief capsule review for this title back in 2009, I noted, "...this seems like something Mondo Macabro might be interested in releasing." Now here we are well over a decade later and, lo and behold, Mondo Macabro will finally be releasing Special Silencers on Blu-ray here in just a few weeks! It will join their slowly growing catalogue of Indonesian titles that currently also includes QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC (1981), Mystics in Bali (1981), THE WARRIOR (1981), THE DEVIL'S SWORD (1984), VIRGINS FROM HELL (1986), LADY TERMINATOR (1989) and Dangerous Seductress (1992). Though a poor-quality English-dubbed VHS copy (sourced from an old Dutch tape) has been available for quite some time now online and on torrent sites, Mondo's Blu-ray will be the film's very first official U.S. release.

Evil, power-mad Gundar (W.D. Mochtar) is willing to do whatever it takes, even abstaining from sex to "purify" his soul and murdering whoever gets in his way, to become the head of the village of Kulon. Problem is, that role is already occupied by the wealthy and well-liked Hamid (Darussalam), who plans on soon passing the torch off to one of his relatives... and there are plenty of them in line! Included are his brother, Harun (Malino Djunaedy), his daughter, Yulia (Eva Arnaz), and his beloved nephew, Dayat (Herman Pero), whom he has raised as his own since he was a young boy. In order to destroy that family dynasty and seize control, Gundar has hatched a plan using some magical pink "Pati seeds" he's acquired. Well, he didn't actually acquire them so much as he stole them!

In a brief flashback, we see Gundar karate chop his monk grandfather and then steal his "special silencers," which have differing effects depending on who takes them. If one has a pure heart and is spiritually centered, like the monks are, they can be used to make the person who possesses them invincible to weapons and sharp objects. However, if they're slipped into an unsuspecting Regular Joe's food or drink, or if someone rotten eats one, there's another complication - a rapidly-growing tree begins sprouting in their stomach, ripping them apart! Gundar lost a limb in the process of stealing them when gramps hacked his leg off with a machete, but he's hoping it was all worth it.

Gundar's equally depraved right hand man, Gumilar (Dicky Zulkarnaen), has already managed to infiltrate Hamid's inner circle by landing a job working as his clerk, which enables him to slip a seed into Hamid's coffee. The village leader suddenly falls to the ground and dies after two branches tear through his chest.

Soon after, Yulia, who's been away at college in Jakarta, and her uncle Harun, are headed to the village when their jeep breaks down. Riding into town on his motorcycle at around the same time is Hendar (Barry Prima), a former classmate of the nephew. When he stops to help them, he and Yulia are instantly smitten with one another, just as Prima and Arnaz are instantly smitten with one another in nearly every other film they appeared together in, just as the two were smitten with each other in real life since they'd eventually marry, though smitten isn't always a permanent condition, so the two would eventually divorce. Stranded while waiting for a bridge to be repaired and waiting for Hendar to retrieve help, Yulia and Harun have their attempt at a peaceful picnic ruined when Gumilar shows up and sneaks seeds into their chow when nobody's looking. Harun ends up eating them with the expected results.

Most of the rest of the film is wall-to-wall action, with our heroes barely having the time to catch their breath before they're jumping into their next fight scene, usually against Gundar's seemingly never-ending stockpile of thugs. Though the editing and choreography is uneven, these scenes are still very entertaining, elaborately staged and fun to watch, featuring lots of high kicks, punches, flips, various martial arts moves (Prima himself has a background in tae kwan do) and incorporating spears, logs, pipes, nets, swords, sickles, axes and other props for a little variety. One of the most memorable scenes finds Prima fighting off the bad guys while on top of, and underneath, a moving truck as they attempt to stab him through the cover tarp with a machete!

Not only is there plenty of action, amusing moments and a genuinely bizarre plot, there's also a heaping helping of blood and gore. The scenes featuring the seeds at work, with branches popping out of stomachs and mouths accompanied by large quantities of gushing blood are memorable, and the special effects themselves are surprisingly good, especially for an older Indonesian film. We also get impalements, eye gougings, hacked off limbs, animal attacks, a very catchy synth score from Gatot Sudarto and lots of other goodies.

Mochtar and Zulkarnean were frequently typecast as bad guys in these things, but it's easy to see why. Both are a joy to watch and seem to be having a ball playing sleazy, evil assholes who takes great pride in all of their heinous deeds! Zulkarnaen (also great in the aforementioned Virgins from Hell) especially seems to be having fun as he rapes a virginal fisherman's daughter (Enny Beatrice) and then laughs in her face, causing her to commit suicide, and then climbs a tree and dumps a bag of poisonous snakes over a rival's head as he rides by on a bicycle. Both he and Mochtar also get to oversee the memorable finale where they torture our heroes with snakes, rats, whipping, bear traps, stinky shoes (!) and even a giant saw blade. The cast also includes Indo genre regulars Eddy S. Jonathan as the main henchman (who smokes a lot of weed) and an uncredited Husin Lubis as a healer.

What most have seen up to this point, the English-dubbed Dutch VHS from Delta Video, was in very poor condition, had the company logo frequently pop up on screen, had jagged editing cuts and blurred out nudity during the rape scene. What I just viewed is the restored version that was recently released in Indonesia. While this version looks a hell of a lot better than the Dutch VHS, it still has the same abrupt cuts and blurred nudity and the two releases have the same exact running time of 86 1/2 minutes. I'm not sure if the Mondo Macabro Blu will be longer, contain any new scenes or be truly uncensored, but I'll come back here and do a comparison once it hits the market. I'm also really looking forward to seeing their new box art since all of the older art for this title sucks. (Update: Added this below and it is indeed much, much better artwork as expected.)

The release year for this is often listed as 1979, though the copyright date in the opening credits is 1982 and all Indonesian film sources also say 1982. Ironically enough, this potential error traces back to the 1997 book Mondo Macabro: Weird & Wonderful Cinema Around the World written by British author Pete Tombs, who's one of the co-founders of distributor Mondo Macabro.

* Going to add another brief note here that the actual release year for this is still not entirely known as of this writing. My hunch of 1982 comes from both the Indonesian sources and the film coinciding with the debut of a certain cast member.

★★★

Fall of the House of Usher, The (1950)

Directed by:

Ivan Barnett

When I think of classic British horror made prior to mid-50s Hammer Studio dominance, two films immediately come to mind: the highly influential anthology Dead of Night (1945) and The Queen of Spades (1948), a fantastic adaptation of the Alexander Pushkin short story of the same name. While those two efforts were each made with top talent and decent budgets for major studios (Ealing Studios for Night and Associated British Picture Corporation for Queen), this rough-around-the-edges early Poe adaptation has none of that luxury. Instead, this is an extremely rare example of a truly independent genre film made completely outside of the studio system by amateurs at a time when this seldom ever happened. Very few of the people involved in this particular production went on to do much of anything else in film. The director, for instance, has a few other credits (mostly industrial films and shorts) but none seem to be available anywhere, while only one person in the cast was ever seen again. As such, that turns this into a real curio item regardless of its shortcomings.

The film's freestanding status also likely explains both its obscurity and its patchy distribution history. According to the Turner Classic Movies website, this was shot back in 1947 and registered for copyright in 1948 yet would not be released until two years later. Supposedly, it ran for just one week at a single theater in London in 1950 before being pulled. Originally rated H (a 16+ rating standing for "Horrific"), it would later be cut for theatrical showings in 1955 and 1961. These must have been very limited reissues because I could not find a single theatrical poster for the film.

Perhaps the last thing you expect to see in a adaptation of a story first published in 1839 is the sight of a car driving down a road, but this is the first of many deviations from Poe's original story. The modern opening - with an elder gentleman at a club plucking the Tales of Mystery and Imagination compilation off a shelf and reading the Usher story to some of his pals - is merely used as a bookend. We're then off to the mid-19th Century period setting, with the unnamed narrator character from the story, here called Jonathan (Irving Steen), taking a long horse ride through the country toward the gloomy, remote Usher mansion. Jonathan has received a letter from his former childhood best friend, Roderick Usher (Kaye Tendeter), asking for both his assistance and his companionship.

Upon arriving, Jonathan is greeted by the family physician, Dr. Cordwell (Vernon Charles), who immediately tells him he's just entered into a miserable home and to turn around and leave while he still has the chance. Ignoring him, Jonathan moves on to the study where Roderick awaits with a neurotic, sad sack tale that would have most sane people running for the nearest exit. Depressed Roderick speaks of an inherited "family evil," a nervous affliction of the senses that includes only being able to stomach the blandest food, eyes feeling tortured by even the faintest of light and all sounds, aside from stringed musical instruments, being horrible to the ears.

Madeline (Gwen Watford), Roderick's sister and sole companion for many years, also suffers from a mysterious ailment, though hers is cataleptic in nature and finds her slowly wasting away in her bedroom. That may, or may not, have something to do with her being regularly served some mysterious fizzy cocktail that may, or may not, actually be poison and may, or may not, be the doing of the brother or the doctor or the butler, Charles (Gavin Lee), or perhaps some combination of the three. As for what's going on there, the filmmakers never even bother to tell us! Dr. Cordwell eventually comes clean and tells Roderick the sordid history of the home, which takes a major turn away from the original Usher story.

After finding out his wife was having an affair, Roderick and Madeline's father confronted them in a temple hidden past some marshland on the estate grounds. He chained up the lover, beat his wife and then decapitated the lover, but not before he was able to first place a curse upon the family. As a result of seeing her lover killed, the Usher family matriarch went mute and insane... but she's still alive and living in the temple, which also happens to house an ancestral torture chamber with a rack, chains, hangman's noose and other torture essentials. There, the ghoulish-looking mother (Lucy Pavey) keeps her deceased beloved's head on an alter and, though usually "harmless enough," will go into a murderous rampage if anyone attempts to touch the head.

Seeing how the curse is likely also responsible for the ill health of the surviving Usher children as well as the rapid deterioration of their home, Dr. Cordwell comes to the conclusion that the only way to end it is to incinerate the lover's head. Yet, actually getting to it is another story! When he, Roderick and gardener Richard (Antony Powell-Bristow) attempt to restrain the mad Lady Usher, she comes at them with a knife and then kills Richard after he steps on a bear trap (!) Afterward, she escapes the temple, makes her way to the house, sneaks inside via some catacombs and scares the hell out of Madeline, who expires shortly thereafter. This then goes the Premature Burial route as Madeline rises from her grave (we're unsure whether she's a ghost or has been driven mad by being buried alive) and heads out after her sibling.

Incredibly stiff acting, dull characters, terrible editing, a confusing plot structure (I'm pretty sure this went into flashback mode at some point but I could never quite tell where!) and a director who doesn't appear to have a clue how to generate suspense or set up a shock scene would seem like the death knell for something like this. Then again, there's this film's wonderfully dreary atmosphere, which is only enhanced by its more primitive technical aspects. The photography (by the director himself), art direction, lighting schemes and use of shadow and silhouette are really the saving graces here and help to create a palpably gloomy aura that does justice to Poe even if the newly-added subplots do not. This also has a few genuinely spooky moments, most of which center around the creepy mother character.

IMDb claims this was released on VHS by Sinister Cinema but they actually only carried the 1966 version starring Denholm Elliott made for the British TV series Mystery and Imagination, not this version. Though I don't believe this has ever been given a legitimate home video release, it's available for streaming on the BFI website (which is blocked to U.S. users unfortunately) and was occasionally run on TCM. A better quality print exists than what my screen caps would indicate, but I watched the version currently up on YouTube.

★★