Followers of this blog may have guessed that I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Rhoma Irama. Rhoma is one of the most popular singers in Indonesia, and he has been for the past 30 years. I’m probably not going too far if I say he’s the Indonesian Elvis. Unfortunately he has been known to criticise other entertainers on moral grounds. He claims that his music and films have always promoted proper morals and are a positive influence on people to do the right thing. I’m not so sure about that.
I have watched a couple of Rhoma’s films. While they are mostly tedious and predictable, I have always found at least one scene which has astonished me for its unintended humour. There are also parts which show aspects of Indonesian life which have already faded into the past, but influence the way people live today.
So I have taken upon myself the task of reviewing all of Rhoma’s films and selecting the ‘best of the worst’ for your amusement and enlightenment.
I have taken the first clip from the movie ‘Badai di Awal Bahagia’, made in 1981. It’s the opening scene and we’re already started in with the sex and violence. A carload of randy youths stops to ‘help’ what they perceive to be a damsel in distress only to find that they’ve been set up to be robbed. According to Ana, the action takes place on the Puncak Pass, for many years the only road from Jakarta to Bandung. My memories of the Pass are of interminable traffic jams as I joined hordes of people fleeing Jakarta on the weekend for a night in the relative coolness of Bandung. Ana says that at the time the film was made only the wealthy could afford cars and so the road was relatively quiet. Today the road is quiet again, there is a new road leading to Bandung with more lanes and not so winding and dangerous.
As I’ve said a few times before, most crime in Indonesia is not confrontational. Criminals prefer to be stealthy than violent. So in this case, I guess the criminals have bit off more than they can chew as they have to deal with a carload of men instead of just one or two. So we get to watch our first fight scene for this film. And very stagey it is. I’m not sure why the lady throws away her knife just as she orders the skinny guy to give her the keys and papers to his car. Then they both move to a nice patch of clear ground to fight in - how sporting of them!
We don’t have to wait long before Rhoma shows up. Somehow his wife knows that it’s a robbery instead of just a fight. Anyhow, Rhoma is too late to save the skinny guy from being stabbed so instead he has a conversation with his wife while the skinny guy stands dying at their window begging for help. Rhoma gives a look that says ‘don’t bleed on my car’ while he struggles to take his jacket off. I don’t know what the point of the jacket is, when it seems its sole purpose is to be taken off and thrown away, instead of being e.g. wrapped around an arm to protect it from the knife that his enemy is wielding. Look for a glimpse of Rhoma’s high heeled shoes. I’m sure it was just the fashion of the day, but Ana was highly amused to see a guy wearing stiletto heels, and fighting in them. We’ll see more of them in future clips.
The first baddie loses his knife, then instead of attacking him from behind, he goes to the back of the queue of people waiting to attack Rhoma one by one. Rhoma somehow unbalances the two baddies but then instead of following up on his advantage, chooses to demonstrate some slow motion kung fu moves. That doesn’t matter though, as it isn’t long before his own gang shows up and the mob attacks the baddies four to one.
Rhoma allows his guys to continue beating the baddies into a pulp until the police arrive. That is actually the most realistic part of the scene. It’s quite common for a crowd to beat a criminal they have caught to death if he isn’t quickly rescued by the police. There are many clips on youtube showing criminals being beaten by mobs or showing the wounds they received before they were rescued from the crowd. Even people who are unaffected by the criminal’s activity will join in the mob, hoping to get a punch or kick in. It’s an unsavoury part of the Indonesian psyche, maybe an anthropologist can explain it. I’ve heard it said that it’s because the society is so repressive, people look to joining a crowd for the permission it gives them to lash out at something… anything.
We get some eye candy for the girls when the policeman shows up, even though he almost falls over getting into the shot. Indonesian cops don’t wear tight fitting uniforms like that anymore, and most of them don’t have the figure for it anyway. The scene closes with Rhoma’s buddy telling him that they fought those baddies a while ago. Wait… what?! ‘Fought them a while ago’? How many fights does Rhoma and his buddies get into? So many that Rhoma doesn’t even remember who he fought with? What kind of people are these who are getting themselves into so many fights? So, our Rhoma is a bit of a sadist, enjoys getting into a fight on a Saturday night. Not exactly the sort of person who should be teaching religion to others, now, is he?
We’ll bring you another scene from this film soon, it only gets crazier.
Ana has kindly made a transcript of the scene, first in Indonesian, then the English translation:
BAHASA INDONESIA
Victim 1 : Boy, Boy, minggir dulu Boy. Ada bidadari! [bidadari literally means angel, but it refers to a pretty girl / hot chick]Victim 2 : Mana tuh?
Victim 3 : Wah.. Ayo Boy kita mundur, Boy [Boy in this case is the name of the character]Victim 1 : Sendirian lagi
Victim 2 : Aduh, Kayaknya mobilnya mogok tuh
Victim 3 : liat belakang dong…ayo terus, terus, hop
Victim 1 : 36, 28, 38
All victims : hahahaha
Robber 1 : Jangan bergerak
Girl : Hey serahkan kuncinya lengkap dengan STNKnya
Victim 2 : Ternyata perempuan kuntilanak, kau
[STNK = Vehicle Registration Number]
[Kuntilanak = ghost of pregnant woman, this type of ghost often takes revenge on men]
Rhoma : Rita, buka chanel, ada perkelahian di hadapan kita
Rita : Kelihatannya ada perampokan Kak rhoma
Rhoma : Break-break-break-break-break, Juliet Zulu 09 Bravo, Bravo hotel, Bravo Hotel Juliet, ada perkelahian di km 40 apa berita ini bisa di copy, begitu? Lanjutkan ke polisi
Victim 2 : Ahh… Bung, tolong bung, kami dirampookkkkk
Rhoma : Teruskan
Rita : Break-break-break-break-break disini Juliet Zulu 09… (faded out)
Crowd : Cepat! bung sini Bung! Bung, Bung pegang! Tonjok aja!
Robber left behind : Eh tunggu.. tunggu…
Rhoma : Adi, cukup!
Police : Ini pelakunya?
Rhoma : Betul
Rhoma’s friend : Rhoma, dia kan orang yang pernah ane tonjok di Granada
Rhoma : Oh ya? hmm kalo gitu, temennya bonang?
[ane (Betawi-Arabic expression for aku / saya) = I]Rhoma’s friend : Bener, emang dia…
Rhoma : hmmm… (Rhoma looked at them with disgust) 
ENGLISH…
Victim 1 : Boy, Boy, pull over Boy. There’s a hot chick!
Victim 2 : Where?
Victim 3 : Wow.. Come on, Boy. Let’s go back, Boy
Victim 1 : She’s alone
Victim 2 : Oh my, her car is in trouble.
Victim 3 : Look behind you…go reverse, go, go, go, stop.
Victim 1 : 36, 28, 38
All victims : hahahaha
Robber 1 : Don’t move
Bad girl : Hey, give the key complete with the car’s ownership papers.
Victim 2 : You! Kuntilanak b**ch!
Rhoma : Rita, open the frequency. There’s a fight in front of us.
Rita : It seems like a robbery, Kak Rhoma
Rhoma : Break-break-break-break-break, Juliet Zulu 09 Bravo, Brabo Hotel, Bravo Hotel Juliet – There’s fighting at the km 40 marker – can you copy this? – follow this through to the police!
Victim 2 : Ahh… Bro, help Bro! We are robbed…
Rhoma : Continue paging
Rita : Break-break-break-break-break here is Juliet Zulu 09… (faded out)
Crowd : Quick! Bro, over here Bro! Bro, hold him Bro! Just beat him up!
Robber left behind : Hey, wait up… wait up…
Rhoma : Adi, enough!
Police : Is this the bad guy?
Rhoma : Yeah
Rhoma’s friend : Rhoma, he is the same guy I’ve beaten up in Granada.
Rhoma : Really? Uhhmm… one of Bonang’s men?
Rhoma’s friend : Yup, he is…
Rhoma looked at them with disgust
Indo Exploitation Films: Special Silencers
The special silencers referred to in the title of this movie from 1981 are the magic pills which the bad guy uses to kill the young man in this scene. The bad guy sneaks the pills into his lunch after the girl (Eva Arnaz) leaves it to join him at the river. This couple don’t seem to enjoy doing things together. After he leaves her at the river bank, it seems that she takes a pee! Well, that’s a natural thing to do, but I’ve never seen it in a movie before. That’s actually one way Indonesians tend to differ from Westerners – they think nothing of giving prosaic factual information about things which we shroud in euphemism. The little fight scene was quite irrelevant, just thrown in for the audience’s amusement, I suppose.
Why he would choose to picnic in a spot without any shade, you would have to ask the director. Anyhow, the guy gets his reward for not waiting for his girlfriend before he starts his meal. As you can see, branches emerge from his stomach while blood spouts everywhere.
The punchline comes right at the end of the clip: ”she fainted before she could eat anything”. As if seeing her boyfriend writhing on the ground with bloody sticks coming out of his stomach would not put her off her food! Why the baddie couldn’t kill her while she was lying fainted on the ground – well, that’s another ‘why’ question, logic is irrelevant in a film like this.
Interestingly, this film was first released in English, as you see in this clip. It was released to the Indonesian market a couple of years later. That was a time when some Indonesian producers tried to break in to the Englsh-speaking market. It’s a shame they weren’t able to continue.
There is in fact an Indonesian superstition about people putting wires and things magically into other people’s stomachs. The most bizarre recent example occurred only a couple of years ago:
This lady, a kindergarden teacher, claims that wires grow out of her stomach. Her sister tried to cut them off, but she says they retreated into her tummy when they saw the scissors coming. The claim is that someone has put a curse on her to make these wires grow. I suspect that she is merely an attention seeker and she’s been sticking the wires in herself. This is supported by the lack of additional reportage about her on the internet for the past couple of years since she went public with her problem.