Vid Review:Penjak Silat-Serak by Victor de Thouars

Joined
Nov 26, 1999
Messages
176
This one's a turkey.

Depressing because Guru Victor de Thours is for real; if it had been done by a fraud it would have been less disheartening.

What's wrong with it? Well it's badly organized, repetetive,contains useless filler,sincere but boring.

Also while VDT's command of English leaves much to be desired. He speaks clearly and with a very slight accent, that's not the problem. If you can count all the times he uses the word "basically",then I basically think that Turtle Press should basically give you a grand prize of all their tapes, basically for free.

Guru Inosanto makes a guest appearance. VDT breaks a coconut with his hand and a baseball bat with a roundhouse shin kick,(Kajukenbo experts, eat your heart out) THE world famous Indonesian drum/ finger cymbal orchestra bongo and ching their way into your heart and approximately 10 min. of the tape(maybe it was less; sure felt longer with the close-ups) Application of knife defenses was too fast for the knifer or the audience to follow.

Unless your VCR has a slow motion feature, you're compelled to see every Silat tape made and have money to burn. (Hope I can get a refund from the store) then,basically, pass on this one.

A pity since Guru Victor deThouars is an accomplished master.

OK Dave, time for your review on Pendekar's Paul de Thouars' tapes. I pray they're better.
 
Overall, I agree with your review. Although, the one part of the tape which I did enjoy was the demo of several Silat techniques by Guro Inosanto.

~Kev
 
Sad but true! This was also perhaps the first(?) Silat tape out, so maybe that accounts for some of it, but it was a shame to see someone good hampered by lack of direction. The tapes had that "ok, what do we film next" kind of feel to them so common to early videos.

Pete Kautz
 
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