Primitives (Severin Films Blu-Ray Review)

Is Primitives Treasure or Trash?

Blu-ray Distributed By Severin / September 29, 2020

Four years before they rocked Asia with SATAN’S SLAVE, director Sisworo Gautama Putra, screenwriter Imam Tantowi and producer Gope T. Samtani made their collaborative debut with Indonesia’s first – and still only – Italian-style cannibal shocker: When three naïve anthropology students go in search of a lost primitive tribe, they’ll instead discover a nightmare of bloody rituals, depraved torture, jaw-dropping music cues and flesh-chomping brutality. Indonesian martial arts legend Barry Prima (THE WARRIOR) stars in this “peculiarly local, sometimes psychedelic and virtually unseen” (Mondo Digital) chunk of graphic jungle carnage – released in the UK as SAVAGE TERROR and classified as a Section 3 ‘Video Nasty’ – now scanned in HD from the Jakarta vault negative for the first time ever.

Jamie’s Take (2 / 5)

From the director of Satan’s Slave, this cannibal film followed on the heels of the international hit Cannibal Holocaust and seems to have over the years been forgotten and possibly lost in the mix of other well known cannibal films like Cannibal Apocalypse, Cannibal Ferox, Man From Deep River, Eaten Alive, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, and others. There is a reason for that: Primitives isn’t very good and quite forgettable. It’s the type of movie I would struggle to even remember if I ever saw the movie or not in a few years.

This Indonesian film is set like most cannibal films in an undisclosed jungle where some anthropology students are there to study certain tribes. At first they are greeted by a kinder, more civilized tribe but soon these greedy students want to seek out other lost tribes, albeit to the warnings of their tour guide that some of these lost tribes are very dangerous. It would be a pretty boring and short film if these students listened so of course they go wandering off only to meet and be captured by a cannibal clan and subjected to depravity and torture.

Now the Severin slipcover talks about how gory the film is, with gross out moments and graphic jungle carnage and for those of you who enjoy a good gore flick and like your horror to the extreme…you will be disappointed. Primitives is fairly weak thanks to it’s ultra low budget. There isn’t much gore or violence to be seen (there is one moment where a character does get impaled on spikes and hung from a tree that was pretty gruesome) and I have the feeling director Sisword Gautama Putra (God don’t make me type that out again) was going for a more serious artistic approach with odd camera angles, strange editing tricks, and focusing a tad too much on story and not on the exploitation aspect. It’s almost like watching an 80’s sex comedy only to find out that there is no nudity.

That is where Primitives fails in my opinion. A cannibal film honestly is for the depraved, those searching for an intense gore flick. These films are usually never fun to watch and can be downright depressing. It succeeds in its shock value. Gore, nudity, and sadly animal cruelty which these films are also known for. I could do without seeing that and unfortunately Primitives does contain some gruesome deaths of some jungle creatures like snakes and crocodiles. There is also quite a lot of stock footage thrown in that is obviously footage from the 60’s or 70’s that is laughably bad, serving no purpose to the story. Primitives doesn’t come close to being as shocking or graphic as say Cannibal Holocaust or the even more twisted Cannibal Ferox. That’s up to you viewers to decide if that is a good thing or not.

Primitives did succeed in making me laugh unintentionally as the dubbing is hilarious with tribes people actually shouting “Ooga Booga” and raising their arms rapidly, looking bored or confused. The film even has an almost Benny Hill moment where the tribes people rip the clothes off one of the men whose captured, with the camera cranked in fast motion to show how quickly these tribe people move. And how can you not laugh at seeing a child pee on the head of one of the captured students? The make-up effects are also…ready….primitive (hardy har har) as goop and cheap looking latex is placed on characters legs and faces that looks like jelly. But easily the highlight of the film is this dramatic moment with the students talking about missing home and the Princess Leia theme from Star Wars begins to play! Bruno Mattei would approve.

Severin’s blu ray transfer does the best they can do as the print must have been in rough shape with several scratches and speckling throughout the movie. Looking at the film’s trailer that was included on this disc, Severin did do a great job in fixing the colors from being washed out to more vibrant. While the special features only contain two interviews and an alternate title sequence, I am honestly impressed they were able to provide much of anything given how old and obscure this film is.

While I didn’t hate Primitives, it’s not a film I would ever need to see again. I guess the disc is only worth owning for those who need to collect every cannibal film from the 70’s and 80’s. I know there is a fan base out there so maybe those that get a kick out of this genre may want to take a gander.

Jamie says: One’s Trash is Another’s Treasure.