The Warrior (1981)

A Major Disappointment

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

If you ever have to see one Indonesian movie in your life, THE WARRIOR would be a pretty good example of the genre as a whole. Packed with insane martial arts and action, tons of gore, sprinklings of sex and sadism and a period-set plot, THE WARRIOR (based on a popular Indonesian comic book) is a real crowd-pleaser of a film which helped to catapult star Barry Prima to fame. Two sequels followed offering up much the same mix of horror and action but THE WARRIOR is the first, and a film that has to be seen to be believed. The notoriously stroppy Prima, an European-looking leading man, makes the role his own and invests it with dynamism and heroism, if not charisma.The plot isn't really what's at stake here, consisting of typical good guys vs. bad guys stuff with an outcome you can easily predict. It's what happens along the way that holds the attention. The film opens with Prima, a slave, escaping from his Dutch captors and leading the villagers into a revolt. A psychopathic, brutal, almost indestructible bounty hunter arrives on the scene, stunning the Dutch with his bull-fighting and fire-breathing activities (!). They send him on a mission to kill Prima, but he ends impaled through the mouth with a spear instead. The Dutch then turn to darker methods to capture Prima, employing a voodoo priest to bring the decapitated body of an evil wizard back to life.What follows is the film's most macabre moment - the coffin rises from the earth and out of it the headless corpse. The wizard's head then also returns to life and levitates back on to the body. Seeking Prima out, the wizard fights Prima with powerful invisible magic and the warrior is captured and thrown in a Dutch prison, where he is crucified to a wall just like in a certain scene in THE BEYOND and with no less gore. To make matters worse, his eyes are gouged out by metal rods leaving him gored and in agony. Prima calls down the power of his god to give him strength and after painfully pulling the nails from his hands, he tears down the wall and leads a prison revolt.The real highlight of the movie is Prima's battle with the reanimated wizard. First he cuts off an arm, then a leg, and then the head of the zombie wizard, resulting in blood spurts all other the place. Incredibly the wizard is able to reattach his severed limbs with surprisingly good special effects work, until he is finally chopped in half in the air and his two halves impaled on swords like kebabs. A fantastic (in both senses of the word) battle, imaginative and excellently realised, what more could you wish for? Well there is more; we have scenes of deadly LEAVES killing people (where else would you see THAT?), people levitating and flying in the air like in a Hong Kong film, plenty of gore, violence, torture, blood, and general brutality, some comic relief and romance for those who like that kind of thing. THE WARRIOR: an Indonesian epic which remains unforgettable to those lucky enough to have seen it.

The star of this Indonesian film Barry Prima is on record as hating every film he ever made, complaining that they are all trash. That maybe so but for the most part they are entertaining trash. This film is exactly that, entertaining trash of the highest order.This is the first of a series of films with Prima as Jaka Sembung, a hero known as the Warrior. Sembung is an Indonesian native who fights against the colonial Indonesian government for the freedom of his people. He is a real pain and as the movie opens he has been captured by the authorities. Instead of killing him they send him off to work in the quarry breaking rocks. His captivity doesn't last long and he's soon back leading the forces of rebellion. The government is desperate and is reduced to hiring great warriors to try and capture and kill Sembung. Eventually they are further reduced to having a powerful voodoo priest resurrected for the task.I really like this movie a great deal, its just 90 minutes of action and magic and the perfect thing to unwind with after a long day at work since it requires very little from the view except acceptance. This is the type of movie that popcorn was invented for.Certainly by no means a well made movie (the fights occasionally appear staged and the make up is low grade) that makes up for pretty much all its short comings in its go for broke, through everything in but the kitchen sink attitude. This movie just keeps piling on the complications as it goes along and if you tune into its wave length there is nothing better. (I even didn't mind its ""Rah Rah! Go Indonesia attitude" which was used to inspire pride in native Indonesian audiences, but to my eyes at least showed a seriousness of cause lacking in most action films)A word of warning.Despite the films lesser make up effects this is still a bloody movie. Lots of people are shot and killed, there are decapitations, eye gouging, people are graphically crucified and lots of blood flows. Its gruesome. Still if you can get past the blood its a fun movie.9 out of 10 (minus one because its slows a bit in the middle for exposition). Worth a couple of bags of popcorn and several glasses of soda.

Indonesia is a country in turmoil. The people are poor and oppressed by the Dutch Government. However one hope remains in the form of rebel leader Djaka Semboeng. His rebels and his famous fighting ability inspires the people to hang on. Van Shramm, the Dutch representative in Java offers a reward for the death of Semboeng and employs a mighty warrior, the invincible Kobar, to go after him. One short fight later Kobar is dead and Van Shramm turns to a magician for him. The magician resurrects the deadly of enemy of Semboeng, Kieten, to take revenge. Kieten faces Semboeng and defeats him - Semboeng is imprisoned and blinded by the cruel Van Shramm. However Van Shramm's daughter has fallen for Semboeng and frees him. Semboeng again faces Kieten and is overcome by his magic - finally being turned into a pig before escaping the prison! A kindly magician returns Semboeng to his human form and teaches him new skills that he will need as he prepares to face Kieten for the final time.This is a very cheesy martial arts film. The story is not as complex as it sounds, the camera shots are very 1970's - in short this is the sort of film that should come to mind when you imagine a dubbed martial arts movie from that period. The film is very very cheesy - it's hard to describe, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to watch.The camera constantly zooms in on people's faces to register their surprise - it's quite funny for most of it! Also the camera is used to hit tricks - like the main character is shown jumping off the ground, and then cuts to a shot of him flying through the air, it's not believable but it's often unintentionally hilarious! Also the acting is of a very cheesy variety - the fighter Kobar near the start of the film is a perfect example of the wonderful hamminess that's in this film - the terrible American dubbing in the version I saw didn't help the actors at all! The only performance that's a bit out of tone with the film is the character of Semboeng. He comes across as too self righteous and takes himself too seriously, at some points he even comes across as a Christ-like character (despite being a Muslim) in terms of what he says - at one point he is even paraded through the streets before being nailed to the prison wall, crucifixion-style. Semboeng takes a bit of the fun out of the film as he really is too sombre for this type of thing - but his fights are good!The fights are generally ok - not great but ok. The effects are very cheap and nasty - they're surprisingly gory for the time, but the use of dummies and rubber effects make some scenes look very cheap and amateurish. One visual effect worth seeing is the huge overbite on the evil wizard - those are some big teeth!Overall it's a film of it's time - it's very cheesy and pretty cheap, but it's quite interesting in it's own way and quite funny if you're in the mood for it.

This Indonesian film belongs to the strangest obscure oddities of film history. It offers a wild mix of Action, Fantasy, Horror and Epic, with the title character Jaka Sembung, maybe the most vulnerable super hero ever put on celluloid.Although the production values are laughable compared with almost any American production, the film delivers good entertainment and never becomes boring. The action scenes are trashy, the sometimes astonishingly gory special effects are cheap but effective, and the dramatic story boosts plenty of unintentional humor to make this pic a thoroughly funny experience that certainly bares cult potential.