I asked him, "Have you ever wanted to take a shit, but it wouldn't come out?"
“Of course I have,” he said.
So I said, "Look like you're trying to take that shit."
Strain your face that way.
When I give the signal,
turn around and act scared.
Welcome to Foreign Film Club.
VICE's guide to creative, outrageous, and unexpected cinema
around the world.
In this series we'll introduce you to
filmmakers working far from the major industries
making films for their own audiences, on their own terms
and developing a unique cinematic language in the process.
In this episode, we look back at Indonesian exploitation cinema
of the 1980s. In which genre films
mixed outrageous gore, imaginative low-budget visuals,
charismatic B movie acting to delirious effect.
The New Order era in Indonesia is defined as the phase
between 1966 and 1998.
In which military strongman, General Suharto ruled the country.
While any direct criticism of the corrupt regime
was strictly prohibited, the government relaxed
censorship laws for exploitation films.
In response, genre filmmakers relished the freedom
to violate the boundaries of taste and common sense
in ways that helped them cope with the repression of daily life.
The golden age of Indonesian pulp cinema
lasted for almost 20 years and then ended abruptly in 1997.
Our guide to the world of Indonesian exploitation cinema
is Joko Anwar, a director who's part of a current new wave
in Indonesian film.
And who grew up loving the exploitation film's of the 80s.
He met us at the Grand Theater,
formally one of Jakarta's premiere movie palaces.
Now a ruined shell of its former glory.
Well, I was born in 1976.
The society at the time was very into films.
I remember going together with my neighbors,
my friends, and my families watching Indonesian films.
It was the best time of my life.
You can see from the screen it was massive
love for the craft or whatever it was.
And massive effort to please the audience.
At that time, it was not easy to produce film that has serious tone.
Especially when it involves politics.
Most of these film makers thought that they just could produce
genre films.
In which the censorship was not that tight.
They can put violence.
High quotient of blood and gore.
Sexual innuendos.
And sometimes, they can put nipples also.
But, back then, there were no Islamic groups pressing
any movies to be taken down from theaters.
Most of these films are produced by Rapi Films and Soraya Intercine Films.
Rapi Studios was the biggest and most prolific
of the Indonesian genre studios.
Which created between 50 to 60 films during its apex in the 1980s.
Usually budgeted around $150,000 to $200,000 dollars
some of which were released on the international market.
The company was founded by Gope Samtani and his brother,
sons of an Indian family that had been successful
in the textile industry.
I was interested in films since my school days.
I used to go to the studio to see the shooting and so on
that made me decide, that's my business.
In 1968, we started Rapi Films.
In '71 we did our first production.
Indonesians, you know, they believe in black magic,
they believe in mystics.
So, even though they feel scared after they see the movie
they still want to watch it.
We always show that good always conquers evil.
The Indonesian priest type of man will read the verses of Quran
and try to drive away the ghost.
His throne includes the heavens and the earth.
He is never weary of preserving them.
He is the sublime, the tremendous.
Imam Tantowi is the foremost screenwriter
of the New Order exploitation era.
Over the course of his career, he wrote more than 30 scripts
and directed 18 films.
Winning the Indonesian version of the Oscar
for both screenwriting and directing.
I have been writing screenplays since the 70s.
I wrote mystical films like Ratu Ilmu Hitam,
and action films like Jaka Sembung,
which is famous for a flying severed head
that reconnects to the body.
The producers at Rapi were open to any idea.
As long as it made sense and appealed to the wider audience,
they would most likely approve it.
Our audience were always lower-middle class people.
They were the ones who would watch these kinds of films.
They use materials that are not
usually used for special effects in films.
Like, chicken feathers or stuff that they can find very easily
in Indonesia.
And this created a spectacle, entertainment that was very
outrageous for the audience at the time and people loved it.
As art director, El Badrun
was responsible for the outrageously gruesome special effects
were a calling card of the genre.
Today, his visual effects workshop is still operational,
creating props for TV soap operas.
Lets go check out the props.
We're making weapons today.
Both real and fake ones.
Look!
Smoke!
This is what happens when you heat it up too much.
You can place the blunt end of a spear here.
It can also be applied here.
It would look like the spear went through.
In one of the scenes in Ratu Ilmu Hitam,
one of the main actors, Alan,
had to pull his head all the way back,
to make it invisible when the camera angle is low.
Then I mounted a fake head with rubber latex on him.
And I told him to wiggle around like this
And then he pulls his fake head off.
You can see the rubber glue stretching out.
The fake head falls off
as we pump fake blood out of his neck.
Those were our techniques back then.
Lower-middle class people loved movies with
violent, bloody, disgusting, and horrific elements.
It was their form of entertainment.
We made all kinds of crazy gimmicks
such as blood splattering or veins bursting.
Sometimes we'd make fetuses with terrifying monstrous faces
exploding out of stomaches.
They had sharp fangs.
That was exactly what attracted the audience.
They loved it.
They were scared but they loved it.
I saw many kung fu films
but they did not have outrageous violence like in Jaka Sembung.
And they put everything they could.
They gouge eyes,
they cut limbs and everything.
Burn it to the ground.
The new order era created its own cinematic icons,
of which taekwondo martial artist Barry Prima,
was one of the most unexpectedly charismatic and beloved.
Among with other Rapi productions, he starred in the seminal
New Order exploitation classic, Jaka Sembung, or The Warrior.
I met the era's biggest male star, Barry Prima, when I was still an assistant director.
I was the one who discovered him
and turned him from a small city thug into the capital's biggest action star.
He knew nothing about acting.
I didn't train him through the complex Stanislavski acting method or whatever.
In a later interview, Barry claimed that he never made a good film
because the scripts had always been bad,
and the budgets too low.
Though he also recalled enjoying his time as an actor.
Barry’s co-star in his second film was Suzzanna,
the Horror Queen of Indonesian Cinema.
An acclaimed actress who often inhabited the role of witches,
spirits, and demons with otherworldly detachment.
Even now there were no comparison to her.
She was really able to put her own style,
she did not imitate any characters from the west.
So, even though we saw her as a ghost character,
but she always shows fragility so we can relate to her.
Forgive me.
I've killed all the people who crushed our happiness.
Her off-screen affinity for the occult
only deepened her mystical aura.
She had love for mystics.
When she shot the film, she used to go to this room.
That was dedicated to the lady of the seas to get the blessings.
I remember she used to eat jasmine flowers and other unusual stuff.
It was her way of warding off potential rival stars.
Working with her felt like working with a true prima donna.
Suzzanna appeared in over 40 films
before passing away in 2008 at age 66.
Rapi studios released at least 20 films
on the international market that were dubbed into English,
and incorporated the efforts of variably talented American actors.
Their biggest hit, Final Score, in 1986.
Could be considered the peak of Indonesian exploitation cinema.
People were amazed, we could sell this Jaka Sembung.
We changed the title to The Warrior,
and we could make good sales to foreign countries.
We could sell for America, North America,
then we could sell for Germany, Italy, all over Europe, Asia.
Everywhere was sold.
No, please!
Bobby says hello, too.
Some of them were bought by American distributors,
screened in underground cinemas.
But, not because of the high quality,
but because of the unique quality of it.
But then after that again, we were hit with the crisis,
the dollar from 2,000 shot to 16,000 rupiah.
The Asian financial crisis of 1997
destroyed several industries
and wiped out much of the disposable income
of the Indonesian lower-middle class.
Coupled with the rise of free to air television,
which featured a glut of imported programming,
it lead to the rapid decline of popular Indonesian cinema.
At that time, Indonesian audiences could see
that there were many good films that they could watch on TV for free
and they began to question,
why did they have to watch Indonesian films?
It all fell apart. Our film industry collapsed.
They think filmmaking can be done lazily,
so little effort, the least effort they put in.
They no longer cared about the audience.
We all know how it turned out.
We had to start all over again and regain the trust of our audience.
Instead, I switched to the TV industry
which is full of absurdities.
I've now done thousands of TV episodes.
Today, I'm just living out the final years of my life
After two decades of sporadic output,
2017 seems to have marked an unexpected resurgence
of Indonesian film. With ticket sales up by 23 percent.
And a new wave of young filmmakers creating personal,
artistic films, some of which even directly reference
the joyful creative madness of their forefathers
in the New Order exploitation cinema.
Movies like The Warrior and Jaka Sembung series,
Suzzanna's films,
all of these films, they are very endearing.
My second film, Kala was actually my love letter to exploitation cinema
from the '70s and '80s in Indonesia.
The ending was pretty much borrowed from
martial art films in the '80s.
Where you could see a heroine holding a big sword
and smashing everybody.
So, this is like a reminder of
the golden age of Indonesian cinema.