DEVIL'S SWORD (Indonesia)

TO BURN THE SUN (Indonesia, 1981)

Feeble Troma re-title: Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters 2

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The zombies at Troma released TO BURN THE SUN as a sequel to their Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters (aka THE FIGHTERS) VHS and used the same retitle with a "2" at the end but needless to say this is not a sequel at all. The film was directed by Arizal (STABILIZER, LETHAL HUNTER, and many more) and it was actually made the year before THE FIGHTERS. It does however star Eva Arnaz and Barry Prima who were also in THE FIGHTERS (and it's a highly entertaining film too).

Fortunately, Troma left the original English dubbing as it were in the original export version. The Troma release is out on a fullscreen video tape in the UK and US but there's no DVD. I also have the Malay VCD in my collection and from memory I'm pretty sure the Troma tape is uncut (only the title card is different). However, the version to watch comes yet again from our friends in Greece where it's out on a letterboxed VHS (and yes I'm the happy owner of that tape!).

TO BURN THE SUN review from Trash-online:

More Indonesian insanity in this ultra-rare film by Arizal. Indan (Eva Arnaz) is captured by the killers of her father and is forced in a life of decadence and prostitution. Her fiancé manages to track her down and takes her with him. Her grandfather teaches her martial arts. The time comes when she is capable enough to face her tormentors... This is a truly bizarre creation which has a little bit of everything: over the top action, martial arts, melodrama, rape & killings, snake attacks, atrocious Indonesian disco, synthesizer and even country (!) music numbers and even a couple of gory bits. Plus the disastrous dubbing work that is expected from these films! It just has to be seen to be believed! From the maker of FINAL SCORE and LETHAL HUNTER! We carry a nice & clear, uncut and widescreen print. Probably the most bizarre female revenge movie ever made.

VHS / France / fullscreen / French dub / no subs
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THE FIGHTERS (Indonesia, 1982)

Feeble Troma re-title: Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters


Here's the Greek cover for the highly entertaining Indo movie THE FIGHTERS directed by Jopi Burnama (who also did RAMBU aka The Intruder) and starring Eva Arnaz and Barry Prima. The retards at Troma re-dubbed the film and made it into a "funny" comedy (I fail to see the comedy) and cut a big chunk out of it as well. This version came out on VHS. It was later re-released on a DVD which includes both versions. The cover of the Greek VHS shown here is of a superior video version that not only carries the original Indonesian English title, The Fighters, but which is also letterboxed. It was on eBay in October, 2009 and someone (a member of Cinehound, LOL) won it for the insane price of just over $200. I made what I believed was quite a bid but obviously it wasn't enough. :(

VHS / Germany / fullscreen / German dub / no subs
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PRIMITIVES (Indonesia)

VHS / Denmark / letterbox!!! / English dub / Danish subs

BLOODY VENGEANCE (Indonesia)

Original title: DARAH PERJAKA

VHS / Greece / FS / English dub / Greek subs

VCD / Malaysia / FS / Indonesian audio / no subs

Crazy Indonesia: "From fighting in the streets to fighting in the sheets"

Trailer for the Indonesian colonial war movie DAREDEVIL COMMANDOS (1985) starring Barry Prima, from Rapi Films.





The cover scans are both Danish. The cover text reads: "An exiting 5 star action movie from the inhumane war hell of the jungle", haha. Five star film!? o_O

The amazing THE WARRIOR series from Indonesia

Mexican lobbycard for THE WARRIOR

If you have never come across any of the JAKA SEMBUNG films starring Barry Prima you have been missing out on some WILD cinema!! The Jaka Sembung series, or THE WARRIOR as it's known in English, is a series of totally awesome and highly entertaining adventure films from Indonesia. Gory adventure films I might add! In short the series deal with the historical freedom fighter Jaka Sembung who fought the Dutch imperialists when they occupied Indonesia until fairly recently. A rather amusing detail is that one of the markets where the films have been most widely distributed on video is actually Holland. Indonesia's old scurge. :-D

The first film is THE WARRIOR (original title: Jaka Sembung Sang Penakluk) from 1981. It's directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra and stars Barry Prima in the lead role as Jaka Sembung. Also Eva Arnaz and Dana Christina are featured. Just like Barry Prima they starred in tons of genre films in the 80s. Barry Prima stars as the main character thru out the whole series. 

Here's a trailer for THE WARRIOR:

Fortunately, THE WARRIOR is easy to get hold of as it has been released on a spiffy wee disk by those gents from Mondo Macabro, Pete Tombs and Andy Starke's videolabel. The first film is also out on a handful of different video releases, both in Greece, Holland, and the UK. There are also versions dubbed into other languages such as German. Beware of the UK tape as it's cut. It's missing no less than 31 seconds!!!

Unfortunately, the Mondo Macabro release is the only DVD of any of the films in the series. :-( Mondo Macabro were considering to put out the four sequels which would have been amazing not least since the last two films have never been released outside of Indonesia/Malaysia, nor have they ever been dubbed or subtitled into English. However, unfortunately the MM's DVD hardly didn't sell at all! According to Pete Tombs (from his posts on Cinehound message board) many "fans" were happy enough with downloading the film (illegally) from torrent sites. It's terrible to think that because of this we may never see proper DVD releases of these sequels.

Here's my VHS from Holland (English dub / Dutch subtitles)



The second film in the series is THE WARRIOR AGAINST THE BLIND SWORDSMAN (original title: Si Buta Lawan Jaka Sembung). Directed by Dasri Yacob, 1983. The film was released on VHS in Greece, Holland and the UK. The UK tape is cut by 5 seconds. Check out the trailer here:

As the title suggests Jaka Sembung teams up with the blind swordsman character (it's a slightly odd title as they're actually not fighting each other but teaming up against the oppression!). The blind swordsman later returned in the spin-off sequel simply entitled THE BLIND WARRIOR (more on that later).

And here's my Dutch VHS cover for the film (English dub / Dutch subs)



The last English dubbed THE WARRIOR sequel (unless you count the spin-off as a sequel) is THE WARRIOR AND THE NINJA (original title: Bajing Ireng Dan Jaka Sembung). Directed by H. Tjut Djalil (1983) who also directed LADY TERMINATOR, MYSTICS IN BALI, and many more. Some sources claim THE WARRIOR AND THE NINJA is aka The Warrior 2 but my Dutch VHS release clearly labels THE WARRIOR AGAINST THE BLIND SWORDSMAN as films #2. But whether the two films were swapped around in some territories I don't know. But my gut feeling tells me it's merely a fuck-up by fans who didn't spend enough time on their research.

EDIT: After I wrote this article and originally posted it on my other blog it has come to my attention that there's a good chance THE WARRIOR AND THE NINJA is indeed film #2 in the series. It doesn't matter that much though in regard to viewing enjoyment as they're totally unrelated in their plot lines.

Here's the trailer for THE WARRIOR AND THE NINJA:

And here's my Greek VHS release which is the one to go for as it's letterboxed. There's also a letterboxed tape from Australia but finding that one is probably more rare than getting laid at a dike slumber party (to coin an old Damon Foster joke). Unfortunately, all the video versions I've seen are too dark during the night scenes. The best version (during the night scenes) is actually the Malay VCD where you can see what the bloody hell is going on, LOL. Unfortunately, it's in Indonesian, it's fullscreen, and pixelates all over the place. There are als Dutch and UK releases. Amazingly enough, the UK tape is uncut according to the BBFC. :-O



The last two sequels are BERGOLA IJO , dir: Arizal (1983) and JAKA SEMBUNG DAN DEWI SAMUDRA, dir: Atok Sugiarto (1990). None of them have English titles and I haven't been able to find any trailers for them, nor do I have any scans of the VCD covers. But anyway, regardless of how rare these films are (apart from #1) or that two of them aren't in English, if you enjoy wild and crazy movies then you really ought to check out the JAKA SEMBUNG / THE WARRIOR series.

And finally, the bastard 6th film in the series; the spin-off sequel THE BLIND WARRIOR (original title: Neraka perut bumi) in which the blind warrior character from THE WARRIOR AND THE BLIND SWORDSMAN makes a return. Directed by Ratno Timoer in 1987. Timoer also did THE DEVIL'S SWORD (also released by Mondo Macabro, and highly recommended!) and many more. 

In contradiction to the "real" THE WARRIOR sequels this was actually released on DVD - twice even!! In the UK and Germany (both DVD's carry English and German dubs). Unfortunately both DVD's are long out of print but at least you have to chance of getting a copy from a friend. There was also a German dubbed VHS. And an English dubbed VHS was released in Hong Kong (with Chinese subs). If you can find a copy of that video you're one lucky fellar cos it's very rare.

The German VHS which basically uses the same cover as for the German and UK DVD releases.
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There's no trailer for THE BLIND WARRIOR on YouTube (EDIT: there is now! See below) so here's a clip from the film instead. It's... over the top - as is the entire series!!! You should try and find them.

UPDATE 24.102023: I've just discovered that somebody has uploaded a trailer for THE BLIND WARRIOR (actually, they did it three years ago!!). Thanks to "Dirty Kunst Video" on YouTube!

THE WARRIOR AGAINST THE BLIND SWORDSMAN and THE WARRIOR AND THE NINJA are available from Far East Flix (yes, they are boots off Dutch video tapes). The picture quality equals VHS quality.

SPECIAL SILENCERS (Indonesia, 1982)

Indonesian title: SERBUAN HALILINTAR



[TEXT TO COME!!!]

Director: Arizal
Starring: Barry Prima, Eva Arnaz

Version used for this review:
ZDDmedia DVD-R bootleg (UK) sourced from English dubbed/Dutch subtitled VHS released in Holland.



I was gonna review this film first but incidentally Todd over at the excellent "Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill" blog just reviewed it so I might pull that review back a while. For his review go here.



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