User Reviews

Power-mad Gundar (Dicky Zulkarnaen) karate chops his monk grandfather and steals his "special silencers;" little orange pills which have different effects depending on who takes them. Somehow they help monks with their meditation, but they can also make the person who possesses them invincible to weapons and sharp objects. And if they're slipped into some unsuspecting person's food or drink, there's another complication - a rapidly-growing tree begins sprouting in their stomach, ripping them apart! Gundar conspires with his right-hand man Gumilar (W.D. Mochtar) and their large mob of thugs to use the pills in a plot to overthrow the mayor of the village. After successfully slipping the mayor some silencers, resulting in his death, the two learn they must also knock off his possible successors, relatives and anyone else who might get in their way, including the mayor's assistant, brother (a cop), nephew and daughter. Strolling into town on his motorcycle right as things are getting nasty is Hendar (Barry Prima), who was a classmate of the mayor's nephew Dayan, and also takes a liking to his daughter, Julia (Eva Arnaz). He teams up with the two of them to put a stop to Gundar and his cronies, and the rest is basically wall-to-wall action. In fact, our heroes barely have time to take a breath before they're jumping into their next fight scene.

Thankfully, the action scenes are well-done, 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 lots of spears, logs, pipes, nets, swords and other props brought in for a little variety. One of my favorite scenes finds Prima fighting off the bad guys while on top of and underneath a moving truck. Not only is there plenty of action, but there is also a welcome helping of the red stuff. The scenes featuring the pills at work, with tree branches popping out of stomach's and mouths, are really bloody, and the special effects themselves are surprisingly good. The good guys (and girl) are likable enough to get you in their corner, while the bad guys are adequately scummy, complete with their own torture chamber where they get to terrorize victims with rats and snakes! There's also a very catchy synthesizer score from Gatot Sudarto.

I think people into martial arts flicks and Asian horror of the period would get a real kick out of this one, but unfortunately it's a very difficult film to find. The version I saw was from a company called Delta Video out of the Netherlands, who made sure that their company name popped up on screen at least five times while I was watching this. It was English-dubbed and with Dutch subtitles, with the nudity in a scene where a virgin is raped fogged out. There's no official DVD release as of this writing, but hopefully that will change. If you can find it anywhere in the meantime, I recommend giving it a try!

A typically insane Indonesian exploitation flick, SPECIAL SILENCERS has all the standard trappings of your everyday crime-cum-thriller: there's a bunch of villagers at the mercy of an evil, ambitious man; a high-kicking hero and heroine who use martial arts skills to battle the villains; and even some cheesy attempts at romance and comedy. In fact, in many ways this is a straightforward action flick from the motorbike-riding floppy-haired hero to the conniving bad guys and tortured buddies. But wait for it, here's the twist: in a sickening spin on that famous ALIEN scene, the bad guy has little pills (the special silencers of the title) which he feeds to his enemies, causing roots to bloody burst from their stomachs and instant death to ensue! Special effects are rubbery as can be but far from rubbish, and liberal sprays of bloody gore push this into horror territory time and time again.

As the wooden hero, Prima is typically athletic; he's whipped, hung upside down and ambushed by the villains over and over again. His martial arts are simple and hard-hitting and my favourite sequence sees him hiding inside a barrel, cutting the legs off baddies as he rolls along! There's another weird twist with the invincible bad guy who can only be killed with bamboo, making for a bloody climatic battle between hero and foe.

Much of the film consists of action and stunts, and they're pretty well-staged. I give the date of this movie as 1979, and, if so, it could provide an inspiration for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, as Prima hangs underneath an enemy truck as they attempt to crush him – just like Indy and that truck in the Spielberg hit! Of course, this film might not have been made until 1981, we'll never know, so most probably it's just a rip-off. The film's heroine, Arnaz, also kicks backside all over the shop, so there's plenty of spectacle for fight fans and villains chewing scenery with relish for those who love drama. Production values are low but there's no mistaking the drive and energy which fill every frame and there's something lovable about a movie which pulls no punches and just gets on with the job. Oh yeah, did I mention the guy who falls head first into the circular saw blade?