Wolf (1981) User Reviews

Srigala

[casiotonenation · 6/10 · 8 July 2023]

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.

Srigala (1981)

[jonahstewartvaughan · 6/10 · 22 October 2023]

Shocktober 2023 #4: Srigala (1981)

(6/10): Srigala or otherwise known as Wolf is an Indonesian Slasher film that is a whole bucket of weird.

Srigala follows a group of treasure hunters who visit a lake that is supposedly haunted in search of a treasure.

The group is interrupted when another group of people visit the lake as they wanted to keep the fact that were there secret.

One treasure hunter sees a girl from the other group and he of course falls in love with her.

The night comes and it's downpouring, a few attempts to hook up are made but they are all faltered.

The next day a coffin is excavated from the bottom of the lake and opened, an unknown boater attempts to mess with their operation and maybe scare them off but it turns more into a boat chase.

That night is finally when something interesting happens as people begin to get disposed of left and right until the love interest is the only one remaining, then she is relieved to find a vehicle coming to her aid with a woman in it. This woman explains that she had hired the leader of the treasure hunting group to retrieve the treasure from this lake for her and that he had been attempting to retrieve it for himself, so she had to kill him along with any potential witnesses which means she has to kill her now.

Anything sound familiar? Well if you said that it seems reminiscent of the finale of the original Friday the 13th, you'd be absolutely correct, it even has the stinger ending.

Srigala is in fact an Indonesian ripoff of Friday the 13th.

It is a genre obscurity that feels more like they were making one kind of movie but then they caught wind of the immense success of Friday the 13th and decided that since they were already filming on a similar location they would start filming it as if it were a Friday film.

The movie definitely takes some time getting to its actual horror and Friday the 13th aspects as the first hour is moreso it just meandering around, but it still has a bit of cheesy entertainment value to it.

The kills are lacklustre to solid, the best one is the man getting the car hood slammed down on his body, but there's a couple of kills that are offscreen, sure you see the body later but it still feels a bit cheap.

The makeup is pretty decent, not the greatest quality but not the worst either.

If you're a slasher enthusiast I recommend checking it out as it is worth it for the last thirty minutes and just how shameless it gets but I can really only recommend it to completionists.

Indonesian Friday the 13th

[Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki · 7/10 · 4 December 2016]

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?