Srigala (1981)

1981 – Srigala/“The Fox” (Rapi Films)

Director Sisworo Gautama Putra Cinematography F.E.S. Tarigan Music Gatot Sudarto

Cast Barry Prima, Dorman Borisman, Lydia Kandou, Rudy Salam, Siska Widowati, Mieke Wijaya

Fred Anderson’s review from his Ninja Dixon blog:

From the director of Indonesian classic The Warrior, comes Srigala - which more or less is a copy of the first Friday the 13, but without the backstory of the mongoloid child and with a golden treasure instead! Why not? And it also has Barry Prime, which automatically makes it a cool movie even if it's not that good.

A bunch of teenagers (or something) goes to a lake to camp, swim and have fun. But they're not alone there. Three treasure hunters, one of them is the manliest of man - Barry Prima - are seeking after a golden treasure on the bottom of the lake! But someone is watching them, a person dressed in black and with an urge to kill, kill, kill! He (or she) takes them down one by one... until there's one final girl left. Will she survive? Will Barry Prime show off his muscles? I'm sure you can guess!

First of all, this is not a bad movie. Sure, it completely lacks originality, but still looks fine - especially in the night-scenes. Lots of atmosphere and beautiful jungle locations. I saw it with out subtitles, and had no problems following the story and character developments. It's not much of a horror movie from the beginning (the first victim, before the credits, it's a very silly looking man with moustach and small, small swimming trunks - but after that we have more of an ordinarly thriller for an hour or so, with a cool and stunt-filled boat-chase and a couple of nice explosions.

It's first in the last half hour that it actually becomes a 100 % copy of Friday the 13th. Scene for scene is ripped off, but I'm sad to say that most of the killings are very offscreen and not bloody at all. But this version (downloaded, ripped from a VCD) might be cut too, because the editing during the murder scenes was a bit strange. But if you can live with that, you'll see how the final girl takes shelter in a house, someone throws her boyfriend through the window, she escapes, runs into a woman that tells the backstory and then is the killer herself! Another nice cat fight here (mixed with some martial arts), our heroine kills the murdered and wakes up in a boat where someone is dragging her into the water. All this is looks good and is well made, but of course never reaches the tension like in the original movie. In a weird sequence they also seem to imitate slow-motion! Which looks completely silly, but a fun touch to the cat fight.

Another bonus is a lengthy dream sequence where the main girl is dreaming about four underwater zombies coming up from the lake to get her! Genius!

Srigala is of course crap, trash, whatever. But as many of these Indonesian movies it's also very charming and hard to dislike. Barry Prima (I can understand that he set a lot of hearts on fire, because he looks quite good here) is cool, and the rest of the cast is not bad at all. I also like the stolen Mike Oldfield-track that accompanies the last scene, not a bad choice at all.

It's not out on DVD and is probably very hard to get on VCD, but if you want something silly and fun, go for Srigala next time you want to download some entertaining Asian film that you never seen before.

Fred Adelman’s review from his Critical Condition Online website:

Here it is, folks: An Indonesian version of FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980). Since this film isn't dubbed or subtitled in English and my Indonesian is a little rusty, here's what I can make out: Three treasure hunters go to an abandoned camp in the woods (the sign reads "Siru Angsana") and use scuba gear to dive for submerged treasure in the adjoining lake. Their hunt is put in jeopardy when two women, Nina and Kristy, and their male friend, Bonno, decide to use the lake as a vacation getaway. When Nina nearly drowns while swimming in the lake, one of the treasure hunters (Berry "Barry" Prima) saves her and it's not long before a romance develops between them, which pisses off his stern boss. When Kristy hooks up with Johan, the othe young treasure hunter, their boss gets even more pissed off. What the six people really have to worry about, though, is the mysterious killer dressed in black (complete with black gloves and ski mask) who is watching their every move. The mystery killer disrupts the treasure hunters' next outing on the lake by trying to run them over in a power boat, even throwing dynamite into the water! Prima (his character's name in unpronouncable, so I'm just gonna call him "Prima") gives chase in his boat, which results in the mystery killer crashing the power boat into the jagged rocks on shore, the boat exploding into a fireball. The three treasure hunters recover a huge wooden crate from the lake and when they open it, all they find is a rotting human body, which they intend to turn over to the police the next day (Nina has a nightmare that night that three corpses rise from the lake, carry her to the crate, then throw her in it and close the lid). A bad thunderstorm blows in which forces Nina, Kristy and Bonno to abandon their tent and stay with the treasure hunters in the cabin. It's at this time that the shit hits the fan. When Kristy goes to take a shower, the killer splits her head open with an axe. The killer then slams Bonno's head under the hood of a Land Rover and then uses the Land Rover to run over the Boss. Johan gets speargunned and Prima gets impaled with a pitchfork. All that is left is Nina, who gets a visit from another female friend, who turns out to be the killer (she's the Mrs. Vorhees of this film). She relates a story to Nina (told in flashback) about her involvement of the murdered body in the crate and how she tried to cover it up by putting the body in the lake. Since the body has been discovered, she has no choice but to kill everyone who saw it. She then goes after Nina with a machete, but Nina fights back and defeats her attacker with a machete blow to the heart (I guess the filmmakers couldn't afford a decapitation).

This slow-moving horror film, directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra (PRIMITIVES - 1978; THE WARRIOR - 1981), takes forever to get moving and when the killings finally happen, Putra pulls away instead of showing the violence, which is strange considering the graphic bloodshed shown in his other films. Kristy's death by axe is only shown as shadows on a wall, Bonno's head-crushing is viewed only in a long shot and when the Boss is run over, we only see a close-up of his face with blood coming out of his mouth. Though we do not actually see Barry Prima (THE DEVIL'S SWORD - 1984; REVENGE OF NINJA - 1984) get killed, we do see his body impaled on a pitchfork later on. As with most Indonesian exploitation films, there are a couple of "What The Fuck?" moments, one of them being when Nina and Kristy begin fighting each other like two kung-fu masters (complete with exaggerated sound effects) for no apparent reason that I could discern (again, I don't speak the language, so I could have missed something). That scene does set up the finale, where Nina takes on the mystery woman. I dare you not to laugh at Nina's sudden changeover from victim to victor. After being uncerimoniously slapped around and abused, she then takes a martial arts stance and proceeds to beat the crap out of her attacker and then stabs her in the heart just to make sure we know she means business! The ending is a scene-by-scene steal of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH shock coda, complete with Nina in a canoe out in the middle of the lake, the police waving her in and a Jason-like creature jumping out of the water to grab her out of the canoe, all while a faux Harry Manfredini score plays on the soundtrack! If you don't mind derivative filmmaking and can watch a film in a strange language with no English help, SRIGALA (when translated, means "Fox") may be worth a few chuckles. Just don't go in expecting the graphic bloodletting normally associated with films from Indonesia, because you will be disappointed. It's not exactly dry, but it's not as wet as it should have been since it was made made for Rapi Films, Indonesia's premiere purveyors of sleazy entertainment. Also starring Lydia Kandou, S. Parya, Siska Widowati, Dorman Borisman, Rudy Salam and Meike Wijaya. I couldn't make out any other credits because the fullscreen print I viewed was severely cropped and projected dead-center, cutting off all the credits on both ends (the film's title only shows "IGA" on-screen!). Video label unavailable.