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.

★★★

Pengabdi Setan (1980)

... aka: Bila Dia Datang (When She Comes)

... aka: Mereka Kembali - Pengabdi Setan (They're Back: Servants of Satan)

... aka: Satan's Slave

... aka: Servant of Satan

Directed by:

Sisworo Gautama Putra

If you're a regular visitor, you already know I'll sit through a fuzzy, blurry, washed out, pixelated, too dark, too bright, scratched and otherwise heavily-damaged film with a screwed up aspect ratio taken from a crappy former VHS rental or cheaply pressed VCD with no subtitles granted these are obscure films we're talking about, there's not much information about them online otherwise and nothing better is available. And that's typically the case with older Indonesian genre films. Of the around 150 horror films made there between 1950 and 1990, only a small number of these have been restored. An even smaller number than that have been restored and released with English subtitles. So what a pleasure it is to see this one available as a beautiful, pristine-looking print in English. Hopefully distributors start picking more of these up and remastering them because there are a lot of entertaining little treasures just waiting to find a wider audience.

As far as Satan's Slave is concerned, the first version that was available here in America was a bootleg of the 1987 Japanese VHS release from Sony Exc!ting. Naturally, this release was in full screen, didn't have English subtitles and wasn't in the best of condition but it was all we had for several decades. However, this became a rare older Indo genre film to become available on DVD with English subs when BCI / Deimos picked it up for distribution in 2008. Joko Anwar remade the film under the same title in 2017, which was a big box office success (one of the highest grossing films in Indonesian history) and won numerous awards at film festivals. That prompted a 2020 Blu-ray release of this original from Severin Films. All of the above was enough to make this one of the easiest-available and most-viewed pre-1990 Indonesian genre films there is.

Mawarti (Diana Suarkom) dies, leaving behind her grieving husband Munarto (W.D. Mochtar), college-aged daughter Rita (Siska "Karebety" / Widowati) and younger teen son Tommy (Fachrul Rozy). Shortly after the funeral, Tommy is visited Salem's Lot-style by a pale, white-eyed woman in a flowing white gown who looks suspiciously like the dead mother and comes tapping on his window late at night. She leads him out into the woods where the two have a brief conversation about something but when he wakes up the next morning he remembers nothing. While the dad is able to bury himself in work and the daughter is able to run around with her boyfriend Herman (Simon Cader) and go to disco dance parties and such, poor Tommy has no real means of distraction and seems to be taking his mother's death the hardest. One of his friends recommends he visit a fortune teller to restore some hope in his future. Tommy ends up seeing a blind clairvoyant in sunglasses, who forecasts doom for him and his family in her cards. She recommends he study black magic in order to defend himself if need be.

Soon after, things start going to hell. A mysterious woman starts calling the home, asking for Tommy and then hanging up. The doorbell rings but nobody's there. Doors and gates open, close and / or lock by themselves. Tommy starts behaving strangely, gets nosebleeds, starts reading books on black magic (and horror mags!), tries strangling his sister and seems entranced much of the time. He also has an amazing nightmare where he's led down a white tiled corridor to a sacrificial altar by a red-robed Satan and guys wearing rubber monster masks. After seeing several ghosts lurking around, Rita suspects something evil is afoot. Her boyfriend notes that since her family isn't particularly religious and they don't pray on the regular, they may have left themselves open to dark influences. Though he says that jokingly, that's precisely what's happening.

Looking for a new woman to run the household, Munarto calls an agency and requests a housekeeper. The woman who shows up, Darmina (Ruth Pelupessi), is the same sinister woman who was posing as the fortune teller and has already led Tommy astray into the world of the black arts. Soon after Darmina's arrival, she's revealed to be an evil witch who chants at an altar with a smoking cauldron, candles and a skull. Asthmatic handyman Mr. Karto (H.I.M. Damsyik) is found hanging dead in the utility shed and then Herman dies in a motorcycle accident. After Rita is tormented by Herman's bloody ghost, the father relents and brings a shaman (Adang Mansyur) in to exorcise the evil spirits. That doesn't work out as expected when he's chased around the room by flying glass shards and then killed by a chandelier!

Darmina, who eventually gets crazy eye make-up and impressive teased hair, uses her powers to bring both Karto and Herman back from the dead, then heads to the cemetery to resurrect the mother's corpse. She and the three zombies then lay siege on the home and attempt to kill the family. Islamic ulama / cleric Kiai (Doddy Sukma), who kept showing up throughout the film attempting to warn the family only to be ignored, pops in just in time with an army of torch-carrying prayer warriors to help.

This is slower-paced, more atmospheric, much more serious (there's almost no comedy) and not nearly as jarring when it comes to things like editing and continuity than most other 80s Indonesian genre films I've seen. It's also somewhat better-made, with decent acting, camerawork (by F.E.S. Tarigan) and special effects (by S. Parya, who also has a small role) and a nicely subdued synth score from one-time composer Gusti Anom. The film was rare for its time in utilizing Islamic spiritual beliefs over Christian or Buddhist but the heavy-handed moralizing about the importance of religion / praying gets to be a bit much at times. This essentially functions the same way fire-and-brimstone preachers do: ironically enough, trying to scare audiences into religious servitude, which is basically just trading one kind of slavery for another!

I've read numerous places that this is a virtual remake of, or was heavily inspired by, Don Coscarelli's Phantasm and I'm scratching my head trying to figure out where the hell that all came from. Aside from a few minor similarities like both having a young male protagonist and there being a graveyard, fortune teller and motorcycle riding, the two films have virtually nothing in common. The most blatant borrowings are that one Salem's Lot copied scene I already mentioned and The Omen (the ulama showing up at the father's office to warn him; activities of the sinister woman who shows up from a nanny agency with her resume, etc.)

★★1/2