Srigala

The Friday the 13th connection to this film is wildly overstated. This movie takes place at a lake, there's a cabin, and people die. Other than that, there's only really one plot point and one camera shot patterned off of Friday the 13th -- it's pretty far from a remake or a ripoff as a whole. That said, the purported connection got my attention, and that's probably the point. The movie was worth my time, and I fully forgive the marketing ruse.

We follow three bad guys diving for treasure in a remote lake. Barry Prima is one of the strapping young lads -- he was pretty new to film here, but went on to become a ubiquitous presence in Indonesian action cinema. Two lovely young women and a nerdy guy show up to camp out at the lake. The head bad guy tries to nudge them away, but they stay. Stormy weather and mutual attraction draw the two camps together suggestively, but still chaste (to keep the Indonesian censors at bay).

A mysterious third party shows up to complicate matters with a speed boat chase and violence. For good measure, there are campy zombies on hand that made me think of Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake in the best possible way. It's not all schlock, and it's not all serious, either. I enjoyed the tone.

The 2023 release from Terror Vision is a top-notch restoration with excellent cast and crew interviews. Old, badly-cropped VHS of this can finally be retired. It's almost certainly never looked better, excepting (maybe) the premiere.

This film is so poorly transferred, and projected dead centre in the screen, the title looks as though it is, RIGAL, and the opening credits are cropped on both sides of the screen, with the names of its cast and crew illegible, and apparently only available in unsubtitled Indonesian, which I do not speak, so I might have missed something in the story.

Opening scene is unintentionally funny, as a bug-eyed man in swim trunks is killed by a POV shot, this proceeds to spend its first two thirds with Indonesian Panama Jack leading the hunt for sunken gold treasure, with a group of people on holiday nearby, at a campground called Siru Angsana, and scuba divers being methodically butchered by more POV camera-work.

In case you hadn't noticed, the majority of the action occurs off-screen, but there is a good motorboat chase, reminiscent of Live And Let Die, which appears to use real stunts mixed with model work. It is one of the better scenes to the film (especially when the killer resorts to just simply throwing dynamite at the other boat!) but it has some awkward cuts, and the tiny little model motorboat's engine obviously falls off twice, only to reappear in each time, before its curiously large explosive crash into a cliff-side.

Blurry cinematography, with lots of muddy underwater shots, but I like the change from a forest to a jungle setting. When the heavy nighttime downpour begins, the Friday the 13th clone begins, as the final thirty minutes are, quite literally, a scene-for-scene copy of the original Friday the 13th. Indonesian Pamela Voorhees slaps around the heroine at the climax, before Indonesian Alice plunges ... something or other, a corkscrew, maybe? into her chest. Sole survivor goes for an early morning canoe ride, only to learn that she is in a reenactment of the penultimate scene in Friday the 13th, as a seemingly burnt, decomposing body jumps out of the water, grabs her and pulls her under.

Another amusing moment comes when Indonesian Kevin Bacon is running from killer, who is chasing him in a jeep, and he throws a rope at it to try to stop it.

No classic, it cannot come close to the original Friday the 13th, but it can be amusing, if watched in the right frame of mind. It does have a quirky, oddly likable vibe. I'd watch it again, especially if I can ever find an unedited print, as again, a lot of the action occurs off-screen. Although, for what reason that happened is unclear, if the film had to be edited, or if there wasn't enough money in the budget for effects?

And perhaps plagiarism is too strong of a word to use. It is quite common for foreign films to take elements from successful American films and incorporate them into their own films in an attempt to better sell them. We saw this heavily throughout the 80s, especially with all the Mad Max knockoffs, Jaws knock offs and others.

There are several scenes that are lifted directly from the original Friday the 13th, that cannot be denied. Srigala is also set on a lake, but that is where the similarities end.

What this film does offer is a unique enough crazy homicidal maniac going around protecting what is his. Keeping these pesky outsiders away. Beyond that I would have to give away spoilers and I definitely don't want to.

The acting is pretty solid. And this film has a bit of everything. I'll say that. You have a few surprising scenes of heavy action. There is a boat chase that is unlike anything you have ever seen and any Friday the 13th and you also have a martial arts scene between the two female characters That is pretty cool and also humorous. Actually, there was quite a bit more humor than I had thought there would be. Some of it is intentional and some of it is not but all of it works pretty well.

I did see some other reviewers point out that the quality of the film is lacking. They must've not seen the Terror Vision version for what I saw is very cleaned up with vibrant colors and quality sound. So hats off to them because they did an exceptional job with this release. I do wish it would've had better special features than just a few interviews but being an obscure Indonesian film from 1981 there probably wasn't much there that they could find so definitely do not hold it against them in the slightest.

The music is quite interesting. It seems like they used music cues from other films and kind of splice them all together. The way John Woo did with his early films The Killer and Hardboiled. The crazy part is that while some of the cues are completely different sounding and even use different types of instrumentation, it all seems to work in an odd way.

Also do not base your judgment of this film by whoever initially rated everything 'severe' on IMDb. There is zero nudity, a couple of really mild words of profanity, a little smoking of cigarettes, and some gore, which is pretty tame by even the 80s standards. Which also ties back to my original comment that some reviewers made it seem like Srigala completely ripped off Friday the 13th and then from that you can assume that it's about someone punishing teens for screwing each other. That is so far from the truth here. The closest you get to that is two actors trying to hook up, but they get as far as a little kiss and it is broken up. These scenes serve more for comic relief than anything else.

That being said, if you like homicidal maniac slasher films and you don't mind reading subtitles I think you will like this little 80's gem.

-OGA.