Indonesia responds to the Italian cannibal genre with their own homegrown effort PRIMATIVES, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

A trio of "American" university students – hunky Robert (Barry Prima, THE DEVIL'S SWORD), Rita (Enny Haryono), and nerdy Tommy (Johann Mardjono) – hire local guide Bisma (Rukman Herman, THE WARRIOR) to take them to see a jungle tribe, and then bribe him to take them even down the river to meet real primitives to have something fresh for their thesis. When their raft crashes in the rapids, Robert and Rita swim to one side of the river and discover the remains of a camp belonging to a missing expedition while Bisma and Tommy separately try to survive in the wilds. When Robert and Rita are captured by a cannibal tribe, they get a taste of primitive civilization and it just may get a taste of them if Bisma or Tommy do not come to the rescue.

Obviously inspired by the Italian cannibal films, PRIMITIVES in its English dub plays exactly like a tamer version of the genre – partially because the dubbing was done in Italy – with slavish borrowings from both MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (a native would-be rapist getting castrated) and LAST CANNIBAL WORLD with Prima and Haryono both getting groped and stripped (although not to the extent of the Deodato film) with some nods to MAN FROM DEEP RIVER. The odd thing is that no human flesh is actually consumed. We get a lot of animal slaughter – both for feeding by the tribe as well as some stock footage badly intercut with the horrified reactions of the actors. The film is generally too silly to be grueling – with Prima doing some martial arts on the natives and a bit involving a "boomerang axe" stretching credibility further – but it is only fitfully entertaining compared to some of the other Indonesian horrors from the same filmmakers like SATAN'S SLAVE, THE HUNGRY SNAKE WOMAN, and SRIGALA. The score is credited to Gatot Sudarto (REVENGE OF THE NINJA) but incorporates unauthorized cues from Jean-Michel Jarrre.

Unreleased theatrically or on home video in the United States, PRIMITIVES did make an appearance in the U.K. as a Video Nasty under the title SAVAGE TERROR, and that VHS was presumably the source for VideoAsia's unauthorized EYE ON HORROR ten-film set release. Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer comes from a 4K scan of the original negative. The opening and ending credits have vanished so the credits were scanned from a German print with the title DEATH CRY OF THE CANNIBALS. The negative has not been carefully archived, so faint damage, some density issues, and some flickering are in evidence but this is largely a satisfying presentation of a film shot in rough location conditions. English and Indonesian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono dubs are included, with the former being enjoyable in the way it does remind one of a dubbed Italian cannibal flick, while both English subtitles for the Indonesian track and SDH subtitles for the English track are also available.