Stabilizer, The (1986) Review

“The Stabilizer” VHS Cover

Director: Arizal
Cast: Peter O’Brian, Craig Gavin, Gillie Beanz, Dana Christina, Harry Capry, Kaharudin Syah, Mark Sungkar, Yenny Farida, Linda Husein, Herman Pero
Running Time: 93 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Indonesian action maestro Arizal had a busy year in 1986. Not only did he set Chris Mitchum loose on the streets of Jakarta to raise hell in Final Score, but he also launched the career of walking growth hormone Peter O’Brian. Legend has it that the innocent New Zealander arrived in Indonesia on vacation, as many New Zealanders do, and it just so happened that producing partners the Punjabi Brothers where in the airport at the same time. Captivated by how his tightly curled perm and bulking frame gave him the appearance of Rambo (well, at least in their eyes), sensing an opportunity to seize the moment, they approached him to appear in a movie. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, minor history at least. I’m sure most reading this will have no idea who Peter O’Brian is, and that’s probably a good thing. He stayed working exclusively in Indonesia, and his filmography of 8 titles peaked with his second leading role in The Intruder (made the same year), which fully took advantage of his apparent Rambo resemblance by casting him as – wait for it – Rambu. For those wondering, yes, it’s also a remake of Stallone’s iconic killing machine. For his debut role though, he takes on the title character of The Stabilizer, a no nonsense American cop who travels to Indonesia on the trail of a criminal kingpin that killed his fiancé.

As it turns out, the kingpin (Craig Gavin, The Intruder) is also behind the kidnapping of a local scientist, who’s created something called a Narcotics Detector. What exactly this detector does is never really explained, but all the bad guys seem pretty panic stricken about its existence, and threaten things like electrocution if the scientist doesn’t spill the beans. Thankfully the scientists daughter (Dana Christina, The Warrior) is an avid reader of Silat instructional manuals (and also kind of resembles a sexy female version of Sammo Hung), so has been blazing her own trail of chaos against the bad guys. Without going into too much further detail, basically O’Brian, his partner (Gillie Beanz), the scientists daughter, and a local Indonesian cop (Harry Capry, Daredevil Commandos) team up to take down Gavin and his crew of drug pushers.

As with any Arizal flick, what ensues is plenty of fighting, machine gun fire, explosions, and more vehicle stunts than you can shake a stick at. The Stabilizer is the kind of movie which opens with a motorbike crashing through the window of a laboratory, for little other reason that it looks pretty damn cool. It’s a kind of logic that’s difficult to argue with. O’Brian is fantastic, although not for any reason that could be classed as intentional. His awesome Brian May style perm takes on a life of its own during the fight scenes, bouncing around like a lump of Jello on a plate, and he’s dubbed by a deep voiced American that makes every line he speaks sound like he’s narrating a trailer.

His vocabulary ranges from hilariously spiteful – if there’s a sentence which involves mentioning Gavin’s name, it’s always preceded with a “that son of a bitch…”, “that bastard…”, or “that motherf*cker…” – to just plain monosyllabic. At one point he’s surrounded by armed gunmen, to which he yells completely poker faced, “Bullshit!” Kudos has to go to his fiancé as well, who has a framed picture of him on her bedroom wall, taking aim with a gun adorned in black sunglasses and a fishnet t-shirt. If I ever decide to get a self-portrait, I’ll be taking a screenshot of this scene for reference. On the plus side though, it has to be mentioned that he appears to do most of the action and stuntwork himself, from hanging off a helicopter, to one laugh-out-loud shot that cuts to a close-up of him being hit in the face with a projectile piece of cardboard tubing.

Gavin himself also makes for a worthy villain, burdened with a limp from when he was shot by O’Brian in a previous encounter, his weapon of choice is a pair of spiked cleats on his shoes, marking him as someone you wouldn’t want to have accidentally stand on your foot. His villain’s mansion comes complete with a dwarf butler, and his own personal floozy, who appears to be aroused by having beer poured onto her torso. I’ve made notes to try this later. The Golden Triangle gang he presides over may consist of a rotatable bunch of Indonesian stuntmen, but a guy decked out like Mr. T particularly stands out, and the fact that some of them wear (literal) Golden Triangle earrings is both as stupid and hilarious as it sounds. Some gangs have secret tattoos, other secret greetings, these guys have to have their ears pierced and wear not-so-secret jangly triangular earrings.

While the action in The Stabilizer doesn’t reach the insane levels of Final Score, it’s debatable if anything could. To that end, the number of warehouse scuffles and car chases easily meet the expectations one goes into an 80’s Indonesian action movie with. Stuntmen get thrown around and through tables/walls/shelving units (and anything else breakable in sight), plus at one point both O’Brian and a poor lackey go crashing through a floor together, more than 15 years before Ong Bak! Dirt bikes are also featured heavily (as with any Arizal flick), with O’Brian proving that it’s possible to jump a dirt bikes front wheel into someone’s face, bounce off it, and carry on riding. Was Rambo ever that bad ass? What I enjoyed most about The Stabilizer though, was the level of equality shown in the punishment dished out between the heroes and the villains.

At one point, Gavin and a lackey are both on dirt bikes with a rope tied around O’Brian, resulting in him being dragged along the ground in a painful looking stunt. While most movies would frame such cruelty as something only the villains would contemplate inflicting on someone, a few minutes later when Gavin is attempting to get away, O’Brian and the daughter both get on dirt bikes, pick up the rope and proceed to do the same thing to him! Other painful highlights include death by a grass strimmer (forget about Tiger on the Beat’s chainsaw fight, what other movie has a fight with a grass strimmer!?), and a scene in which the Indonesian cop brandishes a flame thrower, ruthlessly toasting every bad guy in sight. It begs the question of what came first, The Stabilizer or Aliens?

The finale goes for a mass vehicular mayhem approach, with speedboats, jeeps, dirt bikes, and even a helicopter being thrown into the mix. For those that have seen Final Score and thought the scene with the helicopter was ridiculous (it is), The Stabilizer gives it a run for its money, challenging all that we know about gravity while also bringing a big smile to my face. It even incorporates a scene that has O’Brian fist pump the air by himself, because if no one is around to celebrate your victory, it doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t right? Kudos to Arizal for also giving the ladies just as much to do as the men, as the bad guys have to contend with both O’Brian’s partner, the scientist’s daughter, and the jaded floozy. Maybe I’ll hold off on that beer pouring technique for now.

Amongst the madness there’s a shot of a man’s arm crease, filmed in such a way to make us believe it’s a butt crack, and not one but two scenes of guys eating lizards alive (animal lovers are best to look away during these parts). Throw in an awesome theme song (“Staaa-biliiii-zerrrrr”), endlessly quotable dialogue (“The shoes Peter, watch out for the shoes!”), and a speedboat which comes fitted with torpedoes, for an action movie fan it’s almost impossible not to enjoy The Stabilizer. While movies like The Raid, Headshot, and Buffalo Boys are giving Indonesian action cinema a new lease of life in recent times, it’s important to remember that before any of the current batch of talent came along, there was the man known as Arizal. For a taste of his explosive style and tough talking heroes, The Stabilizer is definitely as good a place to start as any.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10