Imam Tantowi
1982/83
Hell Raiders is a great title. A few films share that same name because it's so good. For this one in particular, the Indonesian titled Pasukan berani mati, Hell Raiders seems to be its dubbed counterpart. I've seen it translated as Soldiers Are Willing to Die, and Google translate tells me it's Death Squads. All pretty nice titles in my book. There may be a few versions out there, but this dubbed version I watched was just over two hours, which syncs up pretty well with the original Indonesian language track version. IMDB claims it's an hour and forty minutes, so who knows if that exists even.
And speaking of its length, Hell Raiders could certainly use some trimming. It's a pretty serious tale, and a real one at that, based on Indonesia's war against the Dutch empire for their independence, but it's still pretty standard Indonesian action fare for the time. Rapi films was primarily known for their exploitation style filmmaking, but they definitely go all out for this. There's plenty of explosions, military vehicles, and loads of extras that perish in the fighting that comes.
However, at two hours there's a lot of padding, because while the budget's bigger they still can't manage to blow up enough military camps or frankenvehicles for that duration. In between you get a lot of characters introduced and some inner turmoil emotion, all of which is whisked away due to sporadic light humor and the exploitative action you crave.
A lot of familiar faces, like Barry Prima (The Warrior series), Dana Christina (The Stabilizer, Rambu), Dicky Zulkarnaen (Virgins from Hell, The White Crocodile), and many others, so while Hell Raiders isn't always raiding Hell, there's still enough to be entertained by, like slingshots to the face, arrows in the neck, exploding fishing boats where bodies go flying, and even a sacrificial bombing that sends a head flying. Not essential stuff, but definitely enough to like.
Pictures at some point, otherwise this is just sitting in draft hell.
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