AKA: Golok Setan
Country and Year: Indonesia (1984)
Director: Ratno Timoer
Starring: Barry Prima, Advent Bangun, Enny Christina, Gudhi Sintara, Kandar Sinyo

Review By: David Austin
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

If what the movies teach is true, I want to move to Indonesia. Apparently the entire country is populated with snake queens, crocodile men, witches with removable heads, and armies of busty biker babes in pleather. Indonesian film studio Rapi Films experimented with a lot of different genres during its heyday, including ninja-sploitation (The Warrior and the Ninja), women-in-prison films (Virgins from Hell), and war epics (Hell Raiders). The Devil’s Sword clearly aimed to ride the coattails of 1982’s mega-hit Conan the Barbarian, combining it with the formula that made their indigenous sword and sorcery series The Warrior (Jaka Sembung) so successful – wild costumes, over-the-top violence, and martial arts courtesy of Barry Prima. Finally, the filmmakers overlaid the proceedings with a prog-rock synth score guaranteed to remind you that the film was made in the ‘80s.

All is well in old Indonesia until the predatory (and horny) Crocodile Queen decides she wants Sanjaya, the engaged son of a local village headman. The Queen (Gudhi Sintara) lives in a vast cave under the water with an army of crocodile men and chunky servant girls, and a pit full of starved male sex slaves. When the village defies her, she sends warrior Banyu Jaga (Lo Lieh-a-like Advent Bangun) to kill every last villager until they give in, which he proceeds to do with great abandon. Banyu Jaga is by far the most fun character in the film – he flies around on a giant rock scowling, beheading villagers with his twin hooked swords and reveling in his own evil.

While Sanjaya and most of the villagers are complete wusses, his fiancé (played by Enny Christina) is not willing to give up her man without a fight and takes on Banyu Jaga with her all-purpose umbrella. She’s tough, but not as tough as Jaga. Fortunately, that’s when local wandering hero Mandala (Barry Prima) shows up on the scene. Mandala defeats Banyu Jaga but is unable to prevent him from abducting Sanjaya. After visiting his master (Kandar Sinyo), who was injured by the treacherous Jaga, and learning of the all-powerful Devil’s Sword which was forged from a meteorite, Mandala teams up with Enny Christina (her character’s name is not used in the English dub) to rescue her husband from the Crocodile Queen. Meanwhile, Jaga’s newly league of Evil Warriors isn’t working out so well – the first motion at their meeting, carried unanimously, is in favor of killing each other.

The special effects, by Indonesian master El Badrun (Mystics in Bali), are the highlight of the film. Time and again, El Badrun has shown himself a master at making the most out of a miniscule budget. Here, his centerpieces are a papier-mâché Cyclops whose eye appears to be a motorcycle headlight, a rotating statue that fires off laser beams and contains a functioning flamethrower and, of course, the crocodile men. Some of these fellows are merely dirty underground dwellers wearing tattered crocodile skins, but others wear full-blown croc heads and crocodile skin chest-pieces that leave their human arms uncovered, the better to swing their enormous serrated swords. They are also able to leap clear out of the water using the power of reverse photography.

The art design is also perfect for what it is - my favorite prop was the Crocodile Queen’s white, stuffed alligator chaise, upon which she indulges in interminable soft focus and softcore liaisons with her captives. Of course, this being Indonesia, nudity is generally out of bounds, though there is a surprising profusion of naked behinds. I think they may have been permitted by the censor because they are not really anything that anyone would go out of their way to look at. Fortunately for us all, Banyu Jaga does not drop trou.

Barry Prima, the half-Dutch, half-Indonesian star of countless local action films, acquits himself well as Mandala. Prima could really fight - his battle scenes with the crocodile men and Banyu Jaga are amateurishly choreographed but full of energy, much like those in Turkish films of the period but with actual martial arts skills. However, here he is somewhat overshadowed by the other colorful characters, including Banyu Jaga, a witch who can detach her head from her body (perhaps using the same out of body kung fu from Young Taoism Fighter), Red Snake King (a snake-style fighter who uses poison), a Charon-like boatman, and a villain who actually uses the infamous Flying Guillotine! This nifty device, essentially a razor-lined beekeeper’s helmet that adepts fling onto enemies’ heads before neatly popping them off, rarely makes an appearance, but when it does, it is always cause for celebration. The Shaw Brothers made a series of flying guillotine films with Lo Lieh, Chen Kuan-tai and Chen Ping in the mid-‘70s, and Jimmy Wang Yu made the weapon the centerpiece of his mind-bogglingly odd Master of the Flying Guillotine (see full review here). After its brief day in the sun, the flying guillotine pretty much disappeared so it was quite a pleasant surprise to have one of the Evil Warriors wielding one (Johnnie To also revived it briefly in 1993’s The Heroic Trio, where Anthony Wong gleefully uses one to terrorize a train station). .

Recommended? Fans of fantasy cinema like Conan and Tarkan will enjoy The Devil’s Sword a lot. One warning – unlike Virgins from Hell, this film is filled with some seriously unattractive people, and I’m not talking about the Crocodile Men.

If you like this, you might like: Tarkan vs. the Vikings, Virgins from Hell, Mystics in Bali, Conan the Barbarian, Beastmaster, Hercules and the Haunted World

DVD DETAILS

DVD Production Company: Mondo Macabro (www. mondomacabrodvd.com)
Release Date: June 27, 2006
Run Time: 101 Mins
Extras: Essays, Encounter with Barry Prima, trailer reel
Buy: Buy the Devil’s Sword DVD!

Mondo Macabro has done its customary nice job on this release. The Region 1 DVD of The Devil’s Sword is presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio in a remastered anamorphic print. The picture quality is not perfect but quite good. The film is presented with an English dub.

Mondo Macabro has included several interesting essays by Pete Tombs, including one about the film, one about Barry Prima (which reveals that Prima recently has a resurgence playing an Indonesian counterpart to Mrs. Doubtfire!), and one about the history of enchanted swords in Southeast Asian popular culture. Also included is the increasingly raunchy and fun Mondo Macabro trailer reel, and the original English-language trailer for The Devil’s Sword. This chunk of period ballyhoo is definitely worth checking it, at least for lines like, “A wicked queen pursues her insatiable lust for men.”

The best extra is the aptly-titled featurette, An Encounter with Barry Prima. Tombs (or a member of his team) cornered Prima at a hotel bar one morning and the result is genuinely uncomfortable to watch. A twitchy, strung-out Prima hunches over in his wife-beater, giving increasingly paranoid answers to his interviewer’s innocuous questions. Prima gives the strong impression that he might flee or attack at any moment. I hope he has it together now.

© David Austin

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