[International title “War Victims”, also released as “Day Of The Escape”, “War Prison Camp Series 4” and “War Victims Of Kamp Tawanan Wanita”; released in Spain as “Vítimas da Guerra”]
Director “Jon Bierium”/Jopi Burnama Writers Piet Burnama, Raam Punjabi Producer Raam Punjabi Cinematography H. Asmawi Music Gatot Sudarto
Cast Marissa Haque (Amelia), Boy Tirayoh, Mangara Siahaan, Farida Ciptadi, Jeffie Sani, Ivina Anwar, Avent Cristy, H. Usman Effendi, Lina “Bodiart”/Budiarty, “Watty”/Emawati Siregur, Indah Fadjawarti, Emmy Husein, Loli Temple, Baby Silvia, Torro Targeno, Anen Widjaya, Welan Gerung, Djoko Warok, Henky Nero, Simon P.S., Esther Sumampou, Ita Agusta, Yetti Loren, Sherly Sarita, Eva Widowaty, Ratih Moortry, M. Yusuf, Irmanaty, Leni Menado, Grace Suwandi
Some may view this as a standard Indonesian sleaze epic, but they would only be partially correct. This film actually makes a strong political statement about patriotism and the willingness to suffer greatly for your cause. During World War II, an Indonesian girl named Amelia (Marissa Haque) is sent to an all-female P.O.W. camp, run by brutal Japanese soldiers, after watching her rebel opposition boyfriend get riddled with bullets by the Japs. Once at the camp, she and the other women are subjected to sadistic torture and sexual abuse by the male guards. Amelia, who is pregnant, loses her baby during one such torture session, but she refuses to give up hope (She says, "Freedom must be earned. We must be willing to sacrifice everything else in our life for it."). When the Allies bomb the camp from the air (and accidentally kill one of the women), a visiting Japanese General theorizes that one of the female prisoners must be a spy (it's Amelia) since the camp is also a secret ammunition depot (One of the female prisoners steps out of formation, rips open her blouse and shows the General her hideously deformed breasts, the product of the camp's torture techniques. The General is so disgusted by what he sees, he orders her to be shot! His orders are carried out immediately.). Amelia is raped the next day by the camp's most brutal guard, Sgt, Tukigawa. When she reports it to the camp's commander, Nokamura (the only Japanese soldier here depicted as having anything close to a conscience), he tells Amelia that without corroboration, there's nothing he can do. When two of his guards are killed by mistake (one is shot and killed by his own buddy when his gun discharges accidentally), Nokamura has no choice but to force the women to stand in the blazing sun with no water. One of the women goes mad with heatstroke and is shot dead trying to escape by climbing over the camp's barbwire fence. Amelia and most of the women come up with a plan for escape and attempt it one night when Nokamura is away (He's actually at headquarters pleading for better treatment of his prisoners!). They fail miserably, as some of the women are shot, one is attacked by a huge snake, another steps on an explosive boobytrap and some are electrocuted on the camp's fence. Amelia then becomes Nokamura's lover, which pisses-off the rest of the female prisoners. Is Amelia simply pretending until the right time comes along for her to strike or is her love for Nokamura real? It seems it's a little of both, as Amelia ends up pregnant with Nokamura's baby, but when the rebels storm the camp and free the women, Nokamura commits hara-kiri rather than being captured. Once again, Amelia is left alone and pregnant, only this time she can raise her child in freedom.
WAR VICTIMS (a.k.a. KAMP TAWANAN WANITA) will find no favor with Japanese viewers thanks to their depiction here. All the Nippons, besides Nokamura, are portrayed as maniacal laughing rapists who view the women in the camp as disposable playthings to be used, abused and then killed with hardly an afterthought. The scene where Nokamura leaves the camp to plead with his superiors for humane treatment of his female prisoners, only to be rebuffed, shamed and then told that these women are nothing but cattle and are the spoils of war for the Japanese soldiers to rape, cements the film's political agenda. Director Jopi Burnama (FEROCIOUS FEMALE FREEDOM FIGHTERS - 1982; the amazing THE INTRUDER - 1986), working with a script written by brother Piet Burnama, doesn't skimp on the sleazier aspects of P.O.W. life (there's rape, humiliation, whippings, hangings and brandings), but there's more to this film than sleaze. Burnama shows what it really means to suffer for freedom (most Americans could learn something here), even if the beginning of the film is a little overblown, where we hear a bombastic narrator say, "War is a thrilling and glorious thing only to those that have never experienced it in reality!" and he then goes on even longer giving us examples why! The film closes with the same narrator saying, "And this is war! A Hell on Earth! Will the madmen of the world ever learn this lesson?", followed by a stream of children dressed in white walking across the landscape while "The Beginning" is flashed on-screen. A little heavy-handed? Yes, but it does make it's point rather effectively. The script has a little more meat on it's bones than most Indonesian genre films, but it doesn't sacrifice those ingredients we've come to expect from out friends in the Far East: Namely, outrageous pieces of oddball dialogue ("You're a horse's ass, Mr. Stallion!"), graphic violence (bodies explode; a woman has a sword hammered through her torso while she is tied-up) and nudity. Worth searching out. Also starring Boy Tirayoh, Mangara Siahaan, Farida Ciptadi, Jeffi Sani, Ivina Anwar, Advent Cristy and H. Usman Effendi. This was once available on VHS in the U.S. from Video City Productions with the nudity optically fogged. The print I viewed was sourced from a Greek-subtitled VHS tape which, in turn, looks to have been sourced from a Japanese print since all the nudity is optically fogged-out and a black band covers the bottom fifth of the screen, blocking out the Japanese subtitles and superimposing the Greek subtitles overtop them!
[International title “The Fighters”, also released on German VHS as “Mad Fighters”; re-released in the US by Troma Films as “Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters”]
Director Jopi Burnama Writer Deddy Armand Producer Dhamoo Punjabi
TROMA VERSION Director Charles Kaufman Writers Charles Kaufman, Joey Gaynor Creative Consultant Straw Weisman
Cast Eva Arnaz (Bambi – Troma version only), Barry Prima (Barney – Troma version only), Ruth Pelipessi, Yustine Rais, Leyla Sagita, Wieke Widowati
Bill Gibron’s review from the DVD Verdict website:
Okay, here's the story with Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters. The movie begins with some Asian women wrestling. There's a kid filled with sickness coughing up a lung while watching the match on TV. And then…well, then some more Asian people talk about diseases and one of the actresses discusses making money as a grappler. Then…the mob, or Yakuza, or some Eastern version of the mafia…the syndicate, that's right, the syndicate shows up and they control all the wrestling in Malaysia, or wherever we are and…it's Indonesia, that's right. Well, the crooks threaten people. So an Amer-Asian man helps the main female fighter to…um…fight. And then there is some more fighting. There is a subplot involving gambling or some manner of match fixing, and then we learn that the little boy from the beginning of the film needs a major medical procedure or his brain will explode, or something. All the while the syndicate is trying to control the sport and business with hired goons and…oh yeah! Right! There's also an undercurrent of unspoken lesbianism in the female mat world (imagine that) since a weird woman leader of a rival gang of wrestlers keeps giving our leading lady big moon eyes. A character or two gets tortured and there is a sex scene and…what was the name of this movie again? I think I've forgotten.
Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters is one of those movies that is so blatantly incomprehensible that you could watch it a hundred times with pad, pencil, and several copies of Asian Actors Illustrated and you'd still find yourself swamped in dead-end plotlines, strangely circular dialogue, and the random insertion of scenes into the story for no other reason than their sexual or action/violence content. You think David Lynch's Lost Highway is confusing? Still scratching your head over that metaphysical gross-out art piece known as Begotten? Those stylized puzzlers have nothing on this Indonesian conundrum. Obviously, the movie portends to follow the familiar formula of a skilled athlete rescuing her ill brother from certain death by playing within a corrupt but financially viable system. But occasionally, the movie throws this foundation out of focus by highlighting weird suggestions of potential girl-on-girl grinding, introducing incomplete ancillary character backstories, and editing action scenes with a bushido blade. On the Hong Kong scale of successful chop sockey cinema, this rates right below The Adventures of Milo and Otis for fun kung fu fighting, and your average Russian cattle porn has more linear narrative threads. The girlie wrestling is as suggestive and sexual as having a boil lanced, and just when you think you've got everything correctly figured out, another cracked curveball comes meandering over the frame to flummox you all over again. Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters, besides having nothing to do with liberty or rage, can't figure out if it wants to be a wrestling pic with kickboxing or a kickboxing flick with women in unitards. Either way, it's boring, bland and baffling.
So what does Troma do when they pick up this paltry poverty row reject? Do they simply offer it up as a sample of foreign filmmaking at its most flabby and say, "Sorry folks, but it is kinda stupid, huh?" No, what the do instead is make it a billion times more incredibly asinine by letting founder Lloyd Kaufman's brother Charlie take a What's Up, Tiger Lily? crack at comedying up the crap. Indeed, with the new "funny" overdubbed soundtrack he makes it worse! That's right, when it was simply a sloppy wrestling women movie with unfathomable narrative flubs, it was a forgivable cinematic fart. But when Charles Kaufman tinkers with the tale, he really lets one fly, and the stench spreads like a degenerative case of olfactory awfulness throughout your system. Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters, the dumber dubbed version, is a crude, lewd story of implied incest, infant penile dysfunction, and incredibly raunchy retorts. Kaufman's royal blue humor startles and soils you in a way that, at first, is mildly amusing, but over the course of 90 minutes grows crass and tasteless. For example, the made-up malady for the sick little boy in the film is some strange anatomical idea that his vas deferens runs from his testicles into his head. So he is not supposed to be aroused, lest his skull explodes with sperm. Hardy har har. I mean, the kid is like eight! If you don't think Chuck can draw out multiple gags out of that little bit of biology, you are dead wrong. In addition, crude crap and dick remarks are slathered on in overkill fashion, and just when you think the revelry can't get any more retarded, the male Ameri-Asian lead is turned into an Elvis impersonator, and a very bad one at that. Unfunny voices, near incomprehensible dialogue exchanges, and a plethora of bodily noises create a cinematic experience even more painful than trying to decode the original's intentions. You'll need a shower with real lava to cleanse your carcass of this crusty caca. Re-dubbing a movie has never really worked: Allen's Lily is limited, Kung Pow: Enter The Fist, is just cow dung, and without Godzilla or Mothra around to geek things up, there is no real reason to see or hear Asians speaking sans their natural language. It has been known to be funny in small snippets, but "the hilarious 'Tromatized' post-synchronization" on this film is a consistently flat failure.
As for the DVD offering from the mighty mad minds at Troma, Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters is fairly low grade. The image is mediocre, faded and full screen. The soundtracks swings between muddled and ear piercing. The introduction by Lloyd himself is entertaining, as usual, and the promotional material from Troma is always good for a laugh. Too bad the movie it's supporting is so stupid, in either format.
Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters is the kind of movie you'll watch hoping it delivers on its promising setup and title titillation. But the minute you've suffered through the un-dubbed dyspepsia of the original version or the complete vulgarity of the "reimagined" dialogue, you'll want to wash your brain out with Drain-o. No amount of broad butt kicking and/or gal-on-gal mat mambo can make up for the ridiculous, repulsive movie plot here, whatever it is.
What do you get when you cross an Indonesian women’s wrestling movie, Troma Entertainment, and an action star who talks like Elvis? You get one of the funniest redubs in film history… Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters! FFFF is the story of Bambi, an exceptional Greco-roman wrestler on her way to the top. Unfortunately her brother has come down with a fatal case of dickosis, a made-up ailment where a buildup of semen goes straight to your brain. The only remedy is surgery, or oral release by a hooker. It’s a shame, but I guess there aren’t any 10 year old prostitutes in the Philippines… I had heard differently!
Along comes Nathan, a trophy shop owner who is ready to help Bambi get the money she needs for her brother’s surgery. But being a trophy model is an unthinkable career, and Bambi not-so-politely declines all of Nathan’s advances. On the way home from an event, Bambi and her best friend Mia get in a little tussle and are aided by karate master and Elvis impersonator Barney. He is also a professional wrestling coach, and after a little persuasion he talks the 2 girls into joining an underground tag-team wrestling federation. As you can imagine a love story begins brewing between Bambi and Barney (who doesn’t love an Elvis impersonator). They are well on their way to making enough money for the surgery… but there is trouble brewing around every corner!
This is by far my favorite Troma movie, even if it is just a redub. I caught this flick on Cinemax in the late 80’s and it took me about 12 years before I could find the movie on VHS. There is some great action throughout including the female wrestling and some pretty good kung-fu scenes. But the real treat here is the comedy. Even though the words might not match up with the lips, the story Troma added to the scenes is just priceless! You get an Elvis impersonator, a talking snake from the ghetto, a girl who hums some of her scenes and a guy nicknamed Monkeyface… what is not to like!!! If you love Troma films, or really any kind of mindless comedy you need to check this film out. I have 2 words for you – Tuna Melt!
1983 - Kamp Tawanan Wanita (P.T. Parkit Films)
Fred Adelman’s review from his Critical Condition Online website:
