Special Silencers (1982)

Original title: Serbuan Halilintar

This is based on the original Indonesian cut of the movie.

Criminal mastermind – the subtitles say so, so it must be true – Gundar (Dicky Zulkarnaen) and his evil nephew are attempting to take control of a village in the Indonesian countryside. To achieve this goal, the village mayor as well as the mayor’s brother, a cop en route from the city, need to die. Because nobody here is into regular assassinations, the villains poison their victims with a red pill that makes a mass of roots burst from their bodies.

Mayor and brother are easily despatched thusly, but the cop’s daughter Julia (Eva Arnaz) escapes this fate by chance and through some pretty nifty martial arts skills. Directly before her father dies, Julia also meet-cutes strapping young Hendra (Barry Prima), who quickly puts his considerable fighting prowess into the service of punching villains with and for her.

In most regards, Special Silencers, directed by Arizal, is pretty typical for an Indonesian martial arts movie starring Barry Prima: the fights are vigorous, well choreographed – if typically not on the level of comparable Hongkong films – and decidedly on the bloody side; there’s a romance element that feels somewhat more serious than in many another martial arts film; the villains are truly hissable.

Also there and accounted for is a pretty incredible synth soundtrack (I believe only partially needle-dropped) that helps make even the most normal fight feel a bit weird, and a certain sense of strangeness.

Despite that inspired and inspiring roots-based murder method – so good the film repeats the effect again and again – the strangeness level is a bit low for an Indonesian movie, for while there are some nods to black magic, and a bit of dubious but fun poison animal action, most of the fighting here lacks the bigger gimmicks you’d find in something like a Jaka Sembung film. That’s a complaint in so far as this lack of the more extreme bits of exploitation movie value robs Special Silencers of the chance of becoming  mind-blowing instead of just being a well-made and highly entertaining example of Indonesian martial arts cinema of its era.