IT'S BIZARRE!!
IT'S SHOCKING!!!
IT'S...
Table of Contents
CHOWTIME!
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Ah, Italy! Land of spaghetti, lots of guys with the middle name "The", and during the late seventies and early eighties, enough cannibal movies to choke every horse in our galactic quadrant.
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If Italians are notorious for one thing to Americans, it's pizza. But if they're notorious for one thing to American B-movie geeks... well, it's still pizza, but their horror and exploitation films come in a narrow second. Some of the most brilliant cinematic visionaries have come out of the country, hand in hand with the worst schlockmeisters the world ever suffered to exist. But to me, even their crap somehow smells better than our crap; hence the copy of Burial Ground sitting on my shelf cheerfully emitting little animated stink lines.
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So I won't bullshit you; as far as I'm concerned, the Italian horror flick is the greatest invention since the blowjob. When I gazed in wonder at the fourteen-inch splinter eyeball gouging in Zombi I knew my life had changed for the better. If you're not a follower, trust me when I say the modern attempts at naturalistic violence that have so many panties in a wad are giggle worthy; the cheeky aplomb our overseas friends display when going for the gore makes Hostel look like Finding Nemo. So hell with it, from Lucio Fulci to the delicious and wonderfully named pasta fagioli, they've given us so much I love the whole country. They don't care what it is; food, music, art, wine, movies, or anything else, the Italians simply do not fuck around.
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I've always wanted to review a cannibal movie because they're the standard bearers for grotesque exploitation - the lowest of the low - and such a ridiculously prolific genre their brief popularity is still referred to as the "cannibal boom". But they've also become a kind of B-movie geek initiation rite; until you've done a tour of duty in the Venezuelan wild you're just a regular asshole unable to claim true geekery. Well that sure as hell wouldn't do, but one of the issues I kept hitting was having no idea how to fill space. The plot of almost every single cannibal film can be boiled down to a single, lonely sentence:
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White ignoramus ventures into the jungle, is captured by tribesmen, and after enduring various types of ritual torture he: a) barely escapes to tell the tale, b) is inducted into the tribe, or c) ends up a belch in someone's conversation.
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Well, that was easy. The only real variation is the number and gender of the aforementioned white ignoramuses. Although that's neatly concise it doesn't make for much of a review, and any one I picked would read largely the same way and be totally pointless in the bargain. Oh shut up. But during my mental preparations for a second viewing of Hobgoblins the itch struck again; I really really REALLY wanted to do a cannibal piece. Lucky for all of us, common sense prevailed. Instead of reviewing a cannibal movie I'm reviewing the whole goddamn history of the things.
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Don't ask why, I don't know either. I refuse to divulge the number of cannibal movies I own on the grounds I may incriminate myself, but there were decisions involved on what to include and I don't even like the fucking things! I'd pick one up (once paying an absurd amount for a ninth-generation bootleg), watch it once, and then stuff it away somewhere never to be viewed again. I'll grab a stupid-ass zombie flick and watch it until my DVD player chews it up in protest (Icemann, I'm still going to get you for Zombie Strippers), and yet a substantial portion of my collection consists of shit I never intended to see more than once in the first place.
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I know what you're thinking; why don't I brag about my penis size like normal people instead of how many sick films I've amassed? It's enormous since you mention it. On a completely unrelated note, the spirit of Chuck Norris recently granted me ancient samurai powers that I'm employing in my new career as a masked crime fighter.
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Anyway, over the last few months I dug every reeking one of them back out and I've now watched enough people eat other people that my next review is going to be The Care Bears Movie. Worse, I watched them sequentially or as close to it as possible, including those I wasn't intending to review. While in production I didn't tell many people about this undertaking, primarily because they'd look at me like I was fucking the cat.
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And now here I am, sitting atop fifteen thousand words on everything you never gave a shit about regarding the Italian cannibal movie, and I still can't give a solid reason why. I guess I'm lending credence to my interest in the genre, but that's just fancy talk for "making up bullshit excuses for watching this trash". It's possibly a subconscious effort to clean my headmeats out like when I reviewed I Spit On Your Grave - a kind of cerebral enema. But I think at the heart of it I just wanted to write a serious piece on a subject that interests me without relying on cheap wiener jokes for a change. My God, that fly's dong is huge.
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So here's my own little criminal profile, presented for your consideration. We've got a hell of a long road ahead of us, so we better get rolling; just watch out for punji pits and you'll be fine. Wait, what's this, you ask? Oh, that's nothing to worry about. I always carry a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. You know... for luck...
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Hey, look over there!
Fun With Disclaimers
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The next time some douchebag utters the words "tame by today's standards", slap him upside the head with your dick and tell him it's from me.
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I cannot stress this enough: This is NOT kiddie shit. This, my little droogies, is as rough as it gets - films where if you're not sure, I suggest you err on the side of caution and give them a pass. Even simulated snuff like Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood and August Underground's Mordum can't hold a candle to this shit, and that's because each and every cannibal flick gleefully boasted the real fucking thing.
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No, not actual murder even though Ruggero Deodato was no-bullshit arrested ten days after the premiere of Cannibal Holocaust and forced to prove he hadn't made a snuff film. What I'm talking about is the fact that if you watch the credits, there won't be a single "no animals were harmed" reassurance to be found. Anywhere. As with its Mondo progenitors, the hallmark of the genre was animal mutilation, as real and detailed as it could possibly get.
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I want state in public and for the record that regardless of what I may say or how I may feel about any of these films, I COULD never and WILL never condone such heinous acts. Those responsible, to a perpetrator, deserved to be punished to the fullest extent possible and some more just for the hell of it.
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Now don't get me wrong, I'm not PETA material myself. I've got a real leather jacket made out of a real dead cow that's older than some of you, and I like my steaks cooked just enough so they don't try to escape. Genuine documentary footage can be unpleasant, but I can still recognize when people are just preparing food in a manner us westerners happen to find icky. They're doing what they'd be doing anyway if they didn't have a camera pointed at them, so that isn't the issue. The cannibal flicks, on the other hand, had actors and sets that needed to be synced up, so stock footage of tribesmen making lunch wouldn't cut it. And since there was no such thing as the American Humane Association in 1970's Italy, the problem was solved in the least expensive way possible. Just fucking do it. On the fucking set. For the fucking camera.
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Ugh. Now, this wasn't just an Italian phenomenon, or a Mondo tradition, or even a cannibal movie thing. This shit was going down in mainstream theatres across the world. The original Friday the 13th featured on-screen snake snuff and nobody gave a rat's ass. But the cruelty that dominated this particular genre is so monstrous and unforgivable it will leave you reeling. I'm being dead serious and I hope you believe me; if there is a trace of empathy in you, proceed at your own considerable risk.
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With that said, these flicks also wallow in every simulated act of brutality imaginable and some you never thought of. Gut noshing may be the core theme, but it ranks only slightly above graphic and violent depictions of rape, torture, mutilation (often of somebody's junk), and anything else your sick little heart desires. The better (?) outings portray this in a frighteningly naturalistic manner, as should be indicated by a director getting his ass hauled into court on suspicion of murder. To an entry they are ugly, repellant films, and not a one of them can really be called entertainment.
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So why the hell watch them?
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That's a fair question. The argument I put forth is that's how they were made, and despite any personal misgivings, I believe that's how they should be seen. The Italian cannibals weren't doing anything anyone else wasn't; they were just doing it bigger. There are toned down versions available - the long-awaited Cannibal Holocaust DVD includes two different cuts, so you get your choice of the whole loathsome experience or a version with the animal cruelty excised. While the "tame" edit still isn't easy watching by any means, I find it a little like renting The Anal Starlets only to discover all the butt sex has been cut out. If you're going to watch Cannibal Holocaust you might as well watch Cannibal fucking Holocaust and not dick around. It isn't nice, it isn't fun, and if you're a mentally stable person it'll make you sick to your stomach. That, my friends, is the entire point. If you're not squicked out, it says a lot more about you than it does the movie.
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The interesting thing is that in their twisted manner the cannibals did a hell of a lot to shape the cinematic world. Many highly regarded works have quietly filched themes (and once the whole damn movie including the ad campaign) straight out of the gut-munchers' playbook, although the creators will deny it like you accused them of hamster molestation. That alone doesn't qualify them as important history, but they also happened to be key players in one of the most infamous periods of time moviedom has ever known.
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Why are these foul, cheapass pieces of yuck worthy of examination? Because they once made an entire nation completely lose its shit.
Nasty!
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So there you are in the U.K., it's the wee years of the 1980s, and you've finally saved enough scratch to buy one of those newfangled vee-cee-ars. Excited to try it out, you stop by the video store to rent a few tapes (you would have bought some but the cheap ones run a hundred smackers). But hang on a minute; something's not right... You drove past here this morning and everything was cool. Now it's locked up tight, half the inventory has been confiscated, and the owner is cooling his heels in the slammer for trafficking in obscenity.
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Turns out he had a copy of The Evil Dead on his shelf.
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It's impossible to talk about cannibal movies without mentioning the Video Nasties since as far as I know every one was on the list at one time or another. For those somehow not in the loop, the Video Nasties era was nation-wide shit storm of censorship, persecution, and plain old harassment carried out (as usual) in the name of decency. How it came to be is a convoluted mess, but from what I can tell it started by accident, as is often the case with this kind of near-global dipshittery.
If you ask me (and I know you didn't) the major studios were the root of the mess: They didn't trust this home video bushwa and often refused to release their blockbusters. This left the storeowners quite literally struggling to fill shelf space and anything would do. Since the technology was too new to have much by way of legal regulation, movies that were banned from theatres found a very lucrative home on tape.
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Over in Britain, pretty much any form of media fell under the purview of the Obscene Publications Act, a law written in the no-bullshit 19th century. Here's where the distributors aggravated the problem because like the movies themselves, the advertising and box art were made as obscene as humanly possible. To attract attention, the blood-drenched covers were full of promise of the horrors that lurked inside, from a naked woman impaled ass-to-mouth to a guy with a power drill goring into his forehead. I probably don't need to tell you it worked; people were even more eager to watch these things now they could do it at home rather than out in public. Thus the video shelves of the world were flooded with movies that would never have seen the light of day otherwise, including more than a few that would eventually be considered classics.
Naturally, there were those who didn't approve of all this freedom of choice and naturally, they freaked the fuck out. The distributors of Cannibal Holocaust groked the concept of free publicity too well and tried to cash in with a stunt as ingenious as it was balls-out moronic; they wrote a series of phony letters complaining about their own film. The press swallowed it hook, line, sinker, rod, fisherman, and half the fucking dock, and the resulting media frenzy was every bit as outrageous as the films being rallied against.
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Stop me if you've heard any of this before. The films were "invading" homes worldwide (conjuring images of The Beast In Heat sneaking into the house at night to devour your copy of Yentl). They were “intended to deprave and corrupt", actual wording from a hundred and twenty-five-year-old piece of legislation. They were easily available to children and a single viewing would transmogrify them into violent, sociopathic criminals. They were marketed directly at said minors, devouring their young souls for the sake of a fast buck. And on, and on, and fucking on. The alarmists ate it up, and gangs of Helen Lovejoys roamed the streets bawling, "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?" Finally, enough noise was made that the authorities stepped in and everything completely went to hell.
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The Department of Public Prosecutions (having absolutely no idea what the hell they were doing) decided that rather than create a set of guidelines they would pick and choose specific movies to take to court. The resulting list was dubbed the Video Nasties, and there was no chance that something this absurd wouldn't be picked up and imitated to varying degrees in every country the technology was available. Thing was, there were one or two minor problems with the system.
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First off, there wouldn't be an official list for several years. While the final tally came out to seventy-four flicks, a shitload more were added and dropped daily. This meant it was impossible for dealers to know if they had any felonies in stock on a particular morning. Distributors and video shops were raided on an arbitrary basis and were fucked eight ways from Sunday if the cops found something that was currently on the list. Even if that nice elderly couple running a small family enterprise got acquitted and dodged jail time, legal fees ensured a going out of business sale anyway.
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Oh yeah. Another teensy dilemma was that the vetting process was so meticulous that for a period of time Zombie Flesh Easter sat next to Zombie Flesh Eaters in the index of the forbidden.
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Yes, my little droogies, that is correct. They banned a motherfucking typo.
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Even this wasn't insane enough to satisfy the guardians of morality, so a precedent was set that a film could be prosecuted in any jurisdiction while a ban would be enforced nation-wide. This meant that if someone really wanted a movie gone, he could take it from court to court until he got the conviction he wanted. The Evil Dead was acquitted three times by three different judges and still wound up banned for the better part of a decade.
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Around about 1984, a very small dash of method was added to the madness when the Video Recordings Act dared establish one or two honest-to-god regulations. Problem was the rules on video recordings were even more draconian than those imposed on theatrical releases. So rampant censorship was still the order of the day and the act was ambiguously worded leaving plenty of wiggle room for ever-vigilant assbags. Films that had already jumped through ludicrous hoops to score release were nailed yet again by the VRA. The Exorcist had been given the courts' official okey-dokey multiple times, but under the new law would be absent from video shelves for fifteen years.
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So where do the cannibals fit into all this? As I mentioned before (and as far as I've been able to uncover from conflicting accounts), the entire genre was kicked the hell out of the U.K. More importantly, there was the itty matter of free press. If you ask me, alarmist watchdog groups have never understood how this shit works, because the Video Nasties were as important a part of the cannibal boom as the films themselves. Nothing generates interest in something like banning it, and the ruckus raised over these sick flicks placed them among the most highly sought-out in history. Far from being forced into retirement, filmmakers cashed in on the bullshit to astounding effect. The distributors of The Exorcist set up a dedicated bus system to ferry moviegoers to where the film could legally be screened, and Cannibal Ferox slapped a "Banned in 31 countries" label on the box art before the movie was finished. Black and gray market copies bred like rabbits fresh out of prison, and I've personally been in a store that had an entire room dedicated to the Video Nasties. Ultimately, there's no denying the whole clusterfuck was the best thing to ever happen to the exploitation movie, bar nothing.
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But I'm two decades ahead of myself. Now that we have an idea of where the genre would go, it's time to set the wayback machine way WAY back to the sixties and see where it got started: Namely with a family-friendly cinematic jewel called Mondo Cane.
Mondo Everything
(Italian trailer, mildly NSFW)
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"The more you rape their senses, the happier they are."
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By 1962 the concept of a "shockumentary" was about as new as film itself. Moviemakers figured out quick they could show otherwise banned material by framing it as educational and/or tacking a dire admonition onto the end. That way the audience got a taste of the forbidden and the filmmakers got an excuse to show it, and everybody was happy. Naturist documentaries were popular for some reason - seems there was a lot of curiosity at the time as to the goings-on in nudist colonies. But our favorite historic asshole Thomas Edison made the first snuff film in Execution of Czolgosz, (with Panorama of Auburn Prison) back in nineteen-o-fucking-one, so the idea wasn't exactly groundbreaking.
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But then the Lord said, "Let there be Mondo Cane", and whether it was good or not is still being debated. A documentary of extreme weirdness from around the world, it's simultaneously entertaining, thought-provoking, and balls-out fucking mean. It heralded itself as a film that, love or hate, you would never, ever forget. I'll swear by all that is good and Discordian that Mondo Cane not only lives up to that promise, it takes a monster shit on it as it runs by laughing its ass off.
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Do not - I repeat, DO NOT - let the relatively chaste trailer up there fool you. This was one of the toughest couple of hours I have ever spent. Goofy sequences intentionally played for laughs lead into goofy sequences intentionally played for boobies. Then when you're starting to wonder what all the fuss is about, POW! Right in the kisser! The movie cuts from a touchingly extravagant animal cemetery to a bundle of cute yet only temporarily lively pooches being prepared underneath a sign reading "roast dogmeat". The camera doesn't flinch until the horrifying spectacle is complete and then eases you back down with an innocuous bit on the art of cow massage. Genuinely informative segments such as the effects of nuclear fallout on a small island are given equal screen time with brutalities I have no wish to describe or even think about. Then all of a sudden we're back to boobies.
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That's just how the movie rolls and the critics were (excuse me, are) completely deadlocked on whether it's a brilliant documentary or the worst of sensationalism. It's legitimate footage, expertly shot, often at what must have been a significant risk to the cameraman, and was being advertised as a Serious Film. This is a flick where a ridiculous "man-catching" contest featuring many many bare breasts gives way to the explicit slaughter of just as many hogs for a tribal banquet.
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Need I bother saying it did reasonably well financially? As in damn near out-grossed Star Wars well? As in nominated for the highest award at the '62 Cannes Film Festival well? These were the times, folks; make the same movie today and you'll get force-fed your own ass. Mondo Cane was up for a goddamned Oscar.
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I'll admit I'm in the camp that considers this an amazing film. It delivers exactly as advertised, and the pacing of the sequences gives each the maximum impact, be the intent to make you laugh or give you nightmares. Most powerful is the juxtaposition that serves as a constant reminder of how fast we transform into a rotten fucking species when we feel like it. No matter what you think of Mondo Cane, you will view the world a little differently after the credits roll; there's no way around it. Even the parts that badly date the picture, like the junkyard where they (gasp) destroy cars, are poignant looking back on them.
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An hour or so after Mondo Cane came out, nine bazillion jillion imitators hit the market, and if there was a perverted stone left unturned these new Mondos took it as a personal challenge. The genre stretched from Mondo Topless by the boobie lovin' Russ Meyer, to the thoughtful dissertation on stoned hippies that was Mondo Teeno. The culmination might be Africa Addio - a film I do not own, will not watch again, and have no intention of ever discussing. Whatever you felt like looking at on a particular night, the Mondos had you covered.
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As should be obvious, the majority relied solely on shock factor rather than the crafty and intelligent structure of Mondo Cane. And brother, nothing shocks like bizarre tribal rituals and animal snuff, the ickier the better. Whether the original was designed to enlighten, disgust, or both, its dozens if not hundreds of imitators settled happily into option B. This is to say, it turned into a worldwide gross-out contest.
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If this seems fucked... well, it is. To draw a parallel, unless you're new around here you're aware of a cute little film snip called 2Girls1Cup. You might even have been tricked into watching it so some snickering douchebag can film your reaction. But if you haven't seen it, there's a sick curiosity in you isn't there? Could anything live up to the reputation this thing's garnered? Could it really be THAT bad? They even joked about it on "Family Guy" for crying out loud. The sheer notoriety almost makes you want to check it out for yourself just to see what the noise is about, doesn't it? You're a man of the world. You can handle anything, right? You've seen weird shit before (pun intended).
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Welllll... let's just say that if you've ever seen anything like it elsewhere, you are a seriously fucked up individual with whom I don't wish to be acquainted. Go away and stop reading my review before you get cooties on it.
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And so it was with the Mondos; they were the cinematic equivalent of rubbernecking. If you think we got over this, turn on Discovery Channel and within an hour or two you'll hit a documentary of bizarre accidents, birth defects, and/or weird foreign shit. Or if that's too highbrow, switch over to "COPS".
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But all good things blah blah blah and by the early seventies the Mondo craze was choking to death on its own vomit. Sheer saturation meant repetitiveness, the later entries used ever more staged and/or fake footage, and some decided it was too much work and just stole the whole thing from earlier films. Meanwhile, the western world had spent the last decade turning into its own freak show, so there wasn't much reason to drop your hard-earned scratch at the 42nd Street grindhouses when you could wander 42nd Street for free. The genre would prove beyond durable, but at the time most sane people had given it up as a passing (if unusually gross) fad.
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Notice I said "most" and "sane".
THE MAN FROM THE DEEP RIVER (1972)
(Trailer NSFW)
(Alternate Titles: Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio, Deep River Savages, Sacrifice!)
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By 1972, Giorgio Rossi and Ovidio Assonitis had collaborated on several projects, most recently Sesso, a sex documentary that'll kill your libido faster than a case of Assonitis. The Mondo movie was asphyxiating on the hotel floor leaving the two in a hell of a predicament: The films were the fastest, cheapest buck you could make this side of peddling your own ass, and now the whole genre appeared under threat of extinction. This was not good. After much discussion they decided against peddling their asses in favor of adding a story to the sordidness (proving that among its other benefits, weed will allow you to watch Boogie Nights twenty five years before it's made). This would be a tricky project, so they entrusted it to Umberto Lenzi; a man for whom no script is too lamebrained, no scene too artless, and no rip-off too blatant - the perfect man for the job.
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A small aside: The DVD case and menu say "Man From Deep River", the DVD art reads "The Man From Deep River", while the opening credits insist on "The Man From The Deep River". That the movie doesn't even know what the fuck it's called should give you a hint of what we're dealing with here.
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Why Umberto Lenzi should be hung by his scrotal sack: Three snakes, an alligator, a monkey, and a goat.
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"In the dense jungle along the often ill-defined border between Thailand and Burma, it is still possible to find primitive tribes which have no contact with the outside world. This story was filmed on location with one of these tribes, and even though some of the rites and ceremonies shown are perhaps gruesome and repugnant they are portrayed as they are actually carried out. Only the story is imaginary."
My ass.
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This, my little droogies, is a steaming load. Lenzi himself maintains it's the God's honest truth in the included director's interview but I'll be delving into that quagmire a bit later on. I will say the movie is beautifully lit and shot, making me question if they were really along the often ill-defined border between Thailand and Burma with a primitive tribe that has no contact with the outside world.
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Speaking of the tribe, these are the most attractive savages I've ever seen. Now there's no reason why even the most feral culture wouldn't be hygienic. Og the caveman probably discovered that swimming in the river meant his dinner wouldn't smell him coming anymore. But to almost an individual we've got unblemished skin, perfect teeth, neatly trimmed and coiffed hair, and there's nary a saggy boob in sight. So unless the order of authority goes Chief, Witch Doctor, Manicurist, Hairdresser, I think a little more than the story is imaginary. I'm not sure where Landscape Artist sits in the hierarchy, but it's probably pretty high up considering their lovingly tended and mown lawns.
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Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There's that line hanging out near the bottom of the end credits that reads "Shot at N.C. Studios, Rome". Nice try, Lenzi.
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On to the movie, such as it is: Our white ignoramus is John Bradley, a man as attractive as bat guano, twice as smart, yet not nearly as likable. He's a British wildlife photographer on assignment to the Thai rain forest, and this establishes a tradition that will endure the entire cannibal boom. The white ignoramuses are always British or American and really REALLY white. This is either to throw them into sharper contrast against the natives or it's a not-so-subtle jab at Scandinavian types. Since they also tend to be really really ignoramusy, I think I know which it is.
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In a series of events far too stupid to go into here, John kills a man at a clearly not shot on location Thai kickboxing match. Deciding he better make himself scarce for a while, he hires a guide and sets off down the river. The local he rents the canoe from warns him that he should only go as far as the river remains wide - any further and he's boned.
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Have you ever marveled at how many flicks would be over in ten minutes if the characters took one fucking piece of advice?
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Since you've probably seen at least one movie by now, you don't need me to tell you John travels too far, whereupon his guide gets an arrow in the neck. If you're ever out of work, the job of native guide has a hell of an employee turnaround, though life insurance and full riot gear might be a good idea. Anyway, the villagers are confused by John's blonde hair and wetsuit and assume he's some kind of messed-up fish, but the chief's daughter saves him before he becomes a fillet. This is Maraya, played by the exquisite and very rarely clothed Me Me Lai, classily credited here as Me Me Lay. She convinces her father that John's a human being (I'm still undecided), so he's put to work as slave labor instead.
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By this point John's already been established as a douche, but after his capture he takes douchebaggery to such staggering levels I was praying he'd get eaten - and this was the third time I'd seen the movie. I know he's been taken captive by stone age tribesmen which would stress anyone out a little, but here's an example: Maraya, owner of the most perfect ass in movie history, brings him a plate of quite tasty looking food. He spits it out, bites her hand as a thank you, and goes off on a rant about how she and the rest of the filthy savages stink up the place. As we'll soon discover, this is John being polite.
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During a wacky tribal funeral ceremony that consists of the widow getting boned on top of her husband's warm ashes, our hero makes a break for it. Alas he doesn't get far, and so the movie must continue. Damn. In the struggle he kills their mightiest warrior, thus gaining the respect of the tribe.
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If right now you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this sounds a lot like A Man Called Horse", that's not an accident.
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This is as good a place as any to say the special effects are so feeble you'll be snickering instead of recoiling in horror. The warrior John kills has a scar on his face that's spent the entire running time changing size, position, and color from shot to shot, and is usually in the process of falling off. I know there wasn't much of a budget to work with, but holy balls - Herschell Gordon Lewis did it better with his bladeless plastic knives than Lenzi does here, and that was ten years earlier.
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Obviously, if you're going to be inducted into a primitive tribe there has to be ritual torture involved. John's consists of being put in the wicker bondage seen in the poster and tied to a revolving pole so the villagers can blow darts at him. Then he's laid out in the sun for days without food or water. He survives (damn), and now that he's initiated we're treated to a montage of daily life, which of course includes wacky tribal customs and more animal snuff footage. The oh-so-delectable Maraya decides to take a husband, and the wacky tribal custom is that she sit naked in her hut while prospective suitors take turns groping her through a hole in the wall. Need I bother saying John wins this particular contest? Need I bother saying I'd go looking for cannibals if it meant I got to cop a feel off Me Me Lai?
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What follows is an episode of "As The Stomach Turns" as John and Maraya enjoy their new life together. Remember when I said John was a douche? Well, the movie's just lucky the many (many) shots of a de-clothed Ms. Lai kept me fingering myself instead of the fast forward button. Check this Immortal Dialogue out.
"You think you love me, but you haven't yet learned what love really means."
"Cars are boxes that make noise, but that's too difficult for you."
"It'll be a boy, my little black savage."
And brother, that ain't the half of it.
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By now you're probably saying "Hey dillhole, you promised us cannibal movies, so where are the fucking cannibals?" Well, they get their asses in gear around the 1:10 mark and attack a young couple out having a boink in the wilderness. We can tell these are the cannibals because they're not attractive. The boy gets away to warn the village while the girl is raped and eaten in a sequence that I swear will make you laugh out loud. The 'rapes' are committed in a position that would make penetration impossible even with a willing partner, then the beautiful young actress with perky breasts lies peacefully on the ground with a couple of her limbs covered in dirt. The cannibals (including one who really looks like David Lee Roth in the opening to "Yankee Rose") chomp on a bouncy rubber arm. According to Lenzi's interview, the poor man had a difficult time finding someone willing to play the part of the victim the scene was so brutal.
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"It was shocking and cruel, on the verge of sadism. I had a lot of problems with my conscience before I ended up doing it."
Lenzi, I'd really appreciate it if you'd go do something impolite to yourself.
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Normally this is where I'd put something silly about how I'm not going to give away the ending, but I've got enough running gags in this thing already. I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm out of ideas or anything. I will say the flick doesn't end so much as screech to a halt and never gets any less stupid.
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While it's hard to call a movie with less than five minutes of cannibals in it a cannibal movie, all the elements are where they'd stay during the whole gory business. The white ignoramus, the doomed native guide, wacky tribal stuff, revolting animal cruelty mixed in with other Mondo faves like bug-eating... it's all here for your pleasure. The problem is the flick can't decide what the hell it is - an insipid love story or a sickening Mondo spectacle. My opinion is that Lenzi fucked up. He set out to make an exploitation picture and accidentally exploited the wrong element; a "romance" so badly scripted it's the second most offensive thing in the movie.
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The interview with the man is the best thing about the DVD, as it's obvious if he had any shit to begin with he's completely lost it now. He starts off by claiming The Man From The Deep River isn't a cannibal movie and is unfairly considered part of the genre. By the end, he's three seconds away from an aneurysm as he goes off on Ruggero Deodato; "So when they say that my colleague Deodato, who I do greatly admire, invented the cannibal genre; that's pure fantasy". I don't speak Italian, but I can tell when someone is spitting out "admire" like it's a small turd caught between his teeth.
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Well, he's right. Lenzi did - unintentionally by his own admission - invent the genre, which is the only reason I chose to include this dreary picture. All would be quiet on the cannibal front for almost five years, but the traditions established here would be slavishly obeyed right up to the end.
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On a closing note, if you noticed earlier I said Lenzi exploited the second most offensive thing in the movie, so did he. He got his priorities straight in the future, although directorial competence would never make the list.
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Final Rating: Unflavored tofu with a razor blade inside.
LAST CANNIBAL WORLD (1977)
EMMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (1977)
(Trailer not even remotely SFW)
(Alternate titles: Emanuelle e gli Ultimi Cannibali, Trap Them and Kill Them)
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Between you and me, have you ever felt too clean? You know, like maybe you're getting a little too goody-two-shoes for your own liking? Or maybe you just watched Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and are desperate for the antidote. Well, whatever the problem is, I have the guaranteed solution: Nobody - and I do mean nobody - out-sleazes Joe D'Amato.
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This may seem an odd choice for inclusion. It added nothing to the genre and certainly isn't any kind of landmark - it wasn't even D'Amato's first (or last) attempt to fuse gore and porn. My own theory is that this equal parts silly, morbid, and boner-inducing flick fed the cannibal fire as much as its more egregious brethren; an idea I will of course explain using my patented technique of run-on sentences with too many commas in them.
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It was 1977 and the cannibal picture was still a squawling infant. The early ones were met with breathtaking rounds of indifference by what I'm sure the filmmakers thought was a pre-made audience. There was no public awareness since there wasn't anything for the public to be aware of, and at this point the genre couldn't even die since it wasn't a genre yet. Yes, it's conceivable everything would have ended right here if not for Italy's most unapologetic smut peddler - with malice aforethought, Joe D'Amato incorporated gut noshing into his best-known series of skin flicks. A director infamous for sleazebaggery and name recognition in the Emanuelle brand was all the encouragement anybody needed to see what this cannibal shit was about.
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I admit that's only half the reason this one's here. The other half is that I'd never forgive myself otherwise as D'Amato is my ultimate guilty pleasure. Whenever I feel my ticket into Heaven is a little too assured, I just rummage around in the "Not For Company" section and throw in whatever Joe's got to offer. The man has yet to disappoint. With close to two hundred titles to his name (a hundred and ninety-two of which are varying breeds of porn) he is the one to thank for introducing the world to walking goddess Laura Gemser, a.k.a. the Black Emanuelle.
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Thank you. Thank you, Joe, from the bottom of my heart.
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For the uninitiated, Gemser's Emanuelle is absolutely NOT to be confused with Sylvia Kristel's Emmanuelle (note the number of m's). The two-m'ed Emmanuelle is a series of vaguely erotic French softcore, while the one-m'ed variety is a much more dangerous beast. If you're looking for the solid granite rock bottom of the barrel of sexploitation, welcome home my brother.
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It started "innocently" enough with Black Emanuelle in 1975, a cheap rip-off of the French series with the sleaze-o-meter turned up to eleven. There was a hardcore version, but this was accomplished with inserts - no matter what ghastly thing she might be called on to do, Gemser never once indulged in hardcore action. But you needn't worry your heads about that, because when D'Amato took over the series he proved that softcore could be way smuttier than the hard stuff if you just want it bad enough. I couldn't count how old I am if I took off my shoes and unzipped my trousers, so I've seen my share of porn. And your share, and your share, and part of his share. But I once reviewed this film's predecessor, Emanuelle in America, and to this day I feel dirty about it. No shit.
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The gorgeous and allergic to clothing Gemser would play Emanuelle seven times officially and ten more counting films that were added to the franchise after the fact. Her recurring role is a reporter investigating stories that inevitably end in some kind of sexual depravity (or start with some kind of sexual depravity; D'Amato likes to get to the point). Having already dabbled in some seriously fucked up shit in Emanuelle in America including fake snuff and some other things I won't discuss until I've completed my therapy, there was no way in hell our heroine was missing out on this new cannibal upsurge.
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Why Joe D'Amato should be disemboweled in a freak blender accident: One large snake.
"This is a true story as reported by Jennifer O'Sullivan."
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Whatever. At least he didn't try to pretend it was shot on location, but a jungle isn't the scenery this movie's interested in. I intended to keep a tally of random gratuitous sex scenes, but I lost count... fifteen minutes in.
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Emanuelle has gone undercover in a mental hospital, snooping out reports of lesbian rape. Her standard interrogation method is to sneak into women's rooms at night and masturbate the info out of them. God, I love Joe. The fun is interrupted when a new inmate attacks a nurse and chews one of her breasts off. It's explained the girl is a savage found along the river something-or-other, and when Emanuelle goes to... uh, drill her for information she discovers a strange tattoo above the girl's pubic region. A bit of research reveals this to be the mark of a supposedly extinct tribe of cannibals.
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Fair warning; what was confined to a lone sequence in Emanuelle in America is a near-constant theme here. The casual intermingling of extreme titillation and extreme violence is present from the start and never once stops being creepy as fuck. Wanting to get the scoop on the existence of cannibals, our heroine goes to see one Mark Lester who is an authority on the subject. After showing her a nastily realistic video of a cannibal dong-whacking, they indulge in vigorous simulated sex. Joe D'Amato, ladies and gentlemen.
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Two or three random gratuitous sex scenes later, Emanuelle and Professor Lester fly to the Amazon to meet with one of Lester's contemporaries. He's too old, fat, and ugly to accompany them on their expedition, but his extremely attractive daughter is perfectly qualified. Along for the ride is Sister Angela who is tracking down a missionary recently gone missing - so yep, Joe worked a hot young nun into his cannibal sex flick. You can't deny the man's got a style all his own.
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The middle third of the movie consists entirely of Emanuelle and her gang of white ignoramuses boating, walking, and bumping uglies, definitely not in that order. Lest things get dull with only three attractive young women (well, two attractive young women and Laura dear-lord-help-me Gemser), they run into another expedition. The new ignoramuses are Donald, his wife Maggie, their assistant Salvadore, and an unnamed native guide who most amusingly is wearing an I-shit-you-not red shirt. They join forces and hump their way through the jungle - literally - but rampant partner swapping isn't nearly degenerate enough for this movie. We need a personal touch to our raunch, like the chimpanzee sitting and smoking cigarettes as he watches Emanuelle and Isabel fluff each other's muffins. Joe D'Amato, ladies and gentlemen.
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Long after we've forgotten why the hell we're in the jungle in the first place, random POV shots are revealed to be a few sorry ass cannibals. They help themselves to the boat, supplies, and Sister Angela, and scamper off for an extended nun munching party where D'Amato once again displays his odd penchant for mutilating naughty bits. The search party finds her severed head and loses the nameless brown-skinned guide to a spear trap in a sequence we absolutely did not see coming a mile away. All this gruesomeness doesn't do a thing to dampen anybody's libido, and during a celebratory boink relating to a goofy subplot about diamonds, the cannibals follow up with a Maggie raid. One royal clusterfuck of a rescue attempt later, the fate of the survivors lies in Emanuelle's lovely and talented hands.
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This may be the easiest summation I've ever written: If screwball smut is your passion, you need look no further than the Emanuelle series. My man Joe covered it all at one point or another, and if you can't find what you're looking for you should probably be locked up. Last Cannibals is worth a watch or six if only for the sublime Laura Gemser and the preposterous level of bad taste on display - although I guarantee you'll want a really hot shower afterward.
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Final Rating: Spanish fly and a side of ipecac.
Meanwhile...
(Trailer kinda SFW)
(Trailer very NSFW)
THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978)
PAPAYA, LOVE GODDESS OF THE CANNIBALS (1978)
So the ground rules were laid, the roughest qualities firmly established, and now there was public awareness due to inclusion in a series famous for mean-spirited smut. This was all it took, and in a matter of nanoseconds, cannibal movies were falling out of the sky like a rain of foul-tasting and really stinky fish.
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Among the first to land with an audible splat was The Mountain of the Cannibal God - something close enough to a legitimate film to get mainstream distribution. While no less villainous than its brethren (there were so many censored cuts that I'm still not sure my own copy is the real thing), it's noteworthy in several aspects. Director Sergio Martino tries (unsuccessfully) to be as big a rip-off artist as Lenzi, they dispose of an amazing four native guides as well as a white one, and Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach star as the white ignoramuses. Granted, Andress' career was nearing the U-bend and Keach was never the most persnickety dude when selecting roles, but these were still name celebrities in a cannibal film. And as if the masses needed yet further convincing, Andress gets nekkid in it.
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I struggled whether or not to include a proper review of Mountain, but decided against it due to the film being soul-crushingly rotten. There's a decent enough payoff, but the majority of the running time is a babbling boreathon interspersed with guides' demises and copious "Hey, you stole that from Last Cannibal World" moments. Then again, I did watch this following the aforementioned film and Emanuelle, so a grotesquerized National Geographic jungle slog didn't seem anything to wet my pants over. Who knows, maybe there is something to this "jaded" bullshit after all... nah, The Mountain of the Cannibal God just sucks.
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Amid the numerous Hobgoblins quality entries that hit the market, my good friend Joe continued to defend his title for unrepentant depravity with Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals. No Emanuelle and not even really a cannibal film at all, it barely deserves mention except it offered yet another chance to mix smut and splatter (a guy gets his wiener gnawed off less than ten minutes in - Joe D'Amato ladies and gentlemen). Some years later, this interesting hobby would reach its zenith with Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.
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And so all was made ready; the powder keg that would be the cannibal boom was loaded and waiting for that one spark to set it off. All the genre needed now was a defining movie to catapult it into infamy and send the world into a pants-wetting tsunami of censorship. We'd have to endure a couple more years of worthless drek, but the bill would be filled soon enough. The most appalling, hateful, and altogether nefarious movie ever to befoul the cinematic landscape was already in the works: The crown jewel of a degenerate empire, Cannibal Holocaust.
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980)
(Trailer astoundingly SFW)
Okay guys, family time's over.
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Yes there are white ignoramuses and yes the native guide bites it. That's as close to a joke as you're going to get out of me for the next couple of pages. This is without question the archfiend of the genre and one of the most unflinchingly vicious parade of atrocities ever committed in the name of art. It's a film that knows exactly where your bellyflesh is the most tender and never misses a chance to dig in with poison barbs and occasionally a wrecking ball. This, friends, isn't something you watch so much as bear witness to, and for me to take it lightly would be in the worst possible taste.
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Instead of a "no, seriously, this is real" bullshit opening crawl, there is a lengthy and somber statement by the distributors that I'll quote from instead: "[Cannibal Holocaust] should be viewed as a disturbing historical document of a bygone era of extreme irresponsibility, which no longer exists and, hopefully, never will again." I'm not dumb enough to think this is anything but an excuse (the 100% uncut version wasn't available in the US until the late nineties), but just because something's bullshit doesn't mean I don't agree. I'll quote both the opening crawl and Thomas Jefferson now: "It behooves every man who values the liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others." Rough translation to modern terms comes out "Fuck you, I'll watch Cannibal Holocaust all I want" - which is admittedly twice with high improbability of a third, but the sentiment stands.
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That said there's no question it's a fucking brilliant movie. It's beautifully shot and paced, and has just the right level of grain to look far more authentic than is comfortable. Rather than rely on heavy editing the camera simply observes the wickedness as it's played out, eschewing musical stings or other cheap tension-builders. More frightening are the moments when the film reveals how devious it's been. You've witnessed stock footage of real executions, graphic and violent rapes, and half a dozen of nature's creatures ripped limb from limb while screaming in mortal terror, so by the time you get to the impaled woman, the idea that she could be sitting on a bicycle seat simply does not occur. Rather than being a nifty special effect, it's just one more abominable sight we must endure on our road into the green inferno. There's a thing called 'forced participation' and monstrous as it is, this movie has that power.
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Still with me? Just checking.
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I did mention that Deodato was arrested ten days after the premiere, right? And this wasn't in tight-ass Britain either; this was in the heart of Italy where the genre was so popular Joe D'Amato had gotten in on it twice. But in all honesty, the man asked for it. This was during the time that rumors of snuff films were rampant, and once again, Deodato chose to shoot in a genuine location, this time the Amazon rain forest in Colombia. That this was the part of the world most suspected of producing snuff films was probably not coincidence. And then there was a little contract the actors signed promising not to appear in any kind of media until a year had passed. The lurid one-sheets swore the crew had been devoured while filming, and then they made the famous publicity stunt of complaining about their own film to the authorities... Yeah, put it all together and you get one Ruggero Deodato standing in court with four of his actors (including the impaled girl) saying something to the effect of "Okay, everybody who was eaten alive by cannibals, please raise your hand".
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It's little wonder that this is one of the most recognized films in history. Normal folks who wouldn't come within a hundred yards of the genre know Cannibal Holocaust, just because of all the people who blew their cork over it.
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Why Ruggero Deodato should be castrated with a potato peeler: A large tarantula, a muskrat, a turtle, a snake, a monkey, and a pig.
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The plot might seem familiar if you were alive in 1999. A team of young documentary filmmakers disappears into the wilderness, and some time later their footage is found. The movie is essentially two in one; the first involved with tracking down the missing explorers, and the second where we get to watch "The Green Inferno" haphazardly patched together. The entire picture is a gut-wrenching experience but the final half is for the strong stomached and minded only. If you're looking for something safe, skip down to Cannibal Ferox below - it's the fucking Princess Diaries by comparison.
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Professor Harold Monroe has been hired by New York University to track down the missing documentarians, whose work is very popular and very lucrative. Here's where even most of the "uncut" versions chicken out, as the example we're shown is footage of South African firing squad executions. And yes, by most accounts it's the real thing except for a few close-up shots. So we're already getting the idea that movie-within-a-movie director Alan Yates might not be the most wholesome guy, and movie-outside-a-movie director Ruggero Deodato still isn't one for fucking around.
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Upon reaching South America, Monroe and his two hired survivalists meet the newest member of their party; a native tribesman captured in the same area the filmmakers vanished. Even more interesting, he has in his possession a lighter owned by Yates' girlfriend Faye Daniels. He's intimidated into leading the party back to his village, and their first encounter with the Yakumo tribe is witnessing the ritual execution of a young adulteress. I've decided against describing this scene out of respect for the reader, but since the Yakumo are the most peaceful of the tribes in the area, expect to feel some apprehension about where Deodato is planning to take us from here.
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When they reach the village they aren't greeted with flowers and candy, and considering what we've just seen, it's safe to say Professor Monroe and his party are in tangible danger. They bargain their hostage for information on Yates, learning he passed through the village and deeper into the jungle in hopes of finding the really mean cannibals.
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Monroe and party are equally determined, and follow the trail into territory it's easy to believe "no white man has ever seen". They have a stroke of luck when they rescue one band of cannibals from another, and are brought back to the Yanomamo camp. He ingratiates himself with the tribe via his tape recorder ("If it can capture voices, it can capture spirits") and his willingness to share their dinner - roast Shamatari captive. This is a powerful scene, enough so that for the rest of the film I was looking at this polite little man and thinking, "Jesus, he fucking ate that guy!" The next day Monroe is led to a sort of tribal totem constructed from Yates' film equipment the crew's collective mortal coils. The Yanomamo seem eager to get it the hell out of their village, and Professor Monroe and we are about to find out why in graphic detail.
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Thus we segue into movie number two: The Green Inferno, i.e. the half edited footage in the recovered film cans. This is where Deodato really shows what he has behind the camera as well as what he's willing to put in front of it. As I mentioned, the camerawork is appropriately shaky, but not to the nausea-inducing level that would plague the movie's best-known rip-off, The Blair Witch Project. As this is supposed to be partly edited, the scenes of wandering through the jungle have cutaways and some music looped in, while the rough stuff "the editor wouldn't touch" uses long (fuck it, leering) shots and a complete lack of dramatic stings. Some shots are overexposed, there is pop and grain in the picture, and there's no sound when Yates' and crew aren't using their microphones. In other words it looks exactly like rough footage, yet it's constructed in such a way that we don't miss a single appalling detail. The amount of thought and carefully placed artistic touches in this picture may actually lower your opinion of Deodato, but the guy knows his shit.
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It's difficult to detail what goes on from here as it is (intentionally) haphazard and just keeps getting uglier and uglier the longer it goes. We rapidly find out two things about good ol' Alan Yates: He's a charlatan and batshit insane. It's revealed that most of his documentary footage was staged (a BIG ol' poke at the Mondo movies) and he puts zero value on human life. At first this is displayed by his interest in filming a gigantic spider rather than getting it the hell off his girlfriend, and leads up to (and way past) treating his guide's snakebite by hacking his leg off and recording as he dies from shock trauma. It's eventually explained that he got the execution footage by paying off the local military to whack a few villagers. This careful build-and-reveal keeps Yates from turning into a Snidely Whiplash caricature, although just barely.
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When Yates encounters the Yakumo, he shows his good intentions by shooting one in the leg so he'll be slow enough to track. Back at their village, he finds it populated by the very young and the elderly with all the warriors away doing warrior things. This isn't what our intrepid telejournalist was hoping for, so he forces the natives at gunpoint into a large hut and sets it ablaze to simulate a cannibal attack. The crew decides to press on before anyone, you know, dangerous shows up, but not before the cameraman sneakily films Yates putting it to Faye amid the remains of the burnt hut.
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It's rough going from here - both for the audience and Yates - as the remainder of the flick is hideous scene after hideous scene piled armpit deep. During what will prove to be a very brief trip through the jungle, numerous evils are either filmed or perpetrated by Yates, culminating in the rape of a native girl. Notable is that Faye seems more concerned with wasting film than her boyfriend forcibly violating someone in the background. Only a short time later they come across their victim, executed via the now-famous impalement for not being a virgin anymore. While this makes for sweet documentary footage, it also means that Yates and crew are not alone out there...
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While other films had toyed with the "modern man is the true savage" idea, Deodato picked up that ball and made a seventy-yard end-run giving everyone the finger as he went. And while the social commentary is delivered with a sledgehammer, it's biting just the same. My one complaint is that Deodato throws hard rights at sensationalist media, but considering Cannibal Holocaust is sensationalism at its absolute worst it's hard to understand what he's trying to prove. By appearances, his message was that you shouldn't commit heinous acts for the benefit of a leering camera, and he proved it by committing heinous acts for the benefit of a leering camera. This is a serious flaw, as what should be a strong and disturbing message is buried under the weight of the film's own hideousness.
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But you didn't pick up Cannibal Holocaust for self-examination. You grabbed it to see if it's really as fiendish as reputation insists. Well, it is. Period. From beginning to end it is a foul, nightmarish, and altogether depressing piece of work, and in that lies the malevolent genius. You were never supposed to cheer when the hero kisses the girl as they make their getaway. You were supposed to leave the theatre in a goddamn state of shock.
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The masses wanted a cannibal movie and they got THE cannibal movie. It's sickening, cruel, frightfully naturalistic in both acting and effects, and is specifically designed to fuck with your head in very nasty ways. A film that succeeds on every level has to be admired, regardless of what it succeeds at.
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Final Rating: Toxic.
Meanwhile...
(Trailer SFW)
(Italian trailer, SFW)
(NSFW)
EATEN ALIVE ! (1980)
WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN (1980)
ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (1980)
The response to Cannibal Holocaust was tremendous, or to put it in more scientific terms, bugfuck nuts. With the ad campaign maintaining it as a snuff film (which it is if you're a monkey) and Deodato's well-publicized adventure in the Italian courts, this movie would have gone global if communications had been limited to smoke signals. Worldwide censorship and outright bans made Holocaust the single hottest ticket on the market, bar none. Barney the Dinosaur aside, nothing in the world can make this much noise and still be doomed to obscurity. To this day, several countries maintain an embargo against the movie even in heavily censored form.
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At long last, we've arrived: Welcome, my little droogies, to the CANNIBAL BOOM. Stone age gut-munchers leered from every poster and one-sheet, and the things were screened anywhere they were remotely legal and many places they weren't. Older films were drug out and dusted off, including several of the Mondos, The Man From The Deep River, and the justifiably unsung Primitives, each getting star treatment. Deodato's own Last Cannibal World finally got the audience it deserved after a quick rechristening to Jungle Holocaust that was in no way an attempt to cash in on the later film's popularity.
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As with all things, for every Cannibal Holocaust there were twelve Eaten Alives!. Umberto "I didn't make a cannibal movie goddammit" Lenzi looked around at the riches being generated by his eight-year-old idea, and being rather fond of money himself, decided it was high time to get the hell back in on the action. Amazingly his second attempt was even more half-baked and puerile than his first, despite the breathtaking scenery provided by a returning Me Me Lai.
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Again, I was tempted to include a proper review of Eaten Alive!, but Lenzi would provide a much richer vein of mock-fodder in his third misfire. There's also the fact that I've already reviewed the entire fucking movie! Eaten Alive! includes maybe thirty minutes of original footage (and I'm being very generous here) nearly all of which is dick-shrivelingly dull "characterization". The rest is blatantly stolen from Cannibal Holocaust, Mountain of the Cannibal God, Last Cannibal World, and Lenzi's own The Man From The Deep River - and those were just the films I recognized. And by stolen I don't mean he borrowed themes. I mean a pretty young native girl being menaced by cannibals transforms into a completely different native girl being menaced by completely different cannibals in the unedited rubber-arm scene lifted whole cloth from Deep River! More often than not the splice is literally visible on-screen, as the film cuts from the irksome white ignoramuses to the climactic gut-munching from Last Cannibal World! Lenzi even stole the score from Cannibal Holocaust!
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The movie industry has always been the rip-off artist's natural habitat - but Jesus Christ, Lenzi, were you marking your territory or something?
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A few gems were buried in the offal. Zombie Holocaust a.k.a. Doctor Butcher M.D. tried to get in on both the cannibal and zombie manias and wound up so goofy that if you've got a defective couth gland it's a laugh riot. Sexploitation auteur Jesus Franco did back-to-back entries, and while I haven't tracked down the second one, White Cannibal Queen stands as one of the most balls-out ridiculous things I've ever seen. But I'll forgive anyone who gave me Vampyros Lesbos, so Jess is off the hook. 1980 also saw the release of Cannibal Apocalypse starring B-movie legend John Saxon, which while satisfying had to be excluded due to it being set in Atlanta. Sorry, but if I didn't limit myself I'd be here until 2012, whereupon the Earth would implode before anybody got to read this masterpiece which would totally bum me out.
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The inevitable downward spiral was due to the cannibal movie having a, shall we say, limited premise, and thus the Law Of Diminishing Returns was harshly enforced. And anyway, Cannibal Holocaust set the bar so goddamn high that no film not featuring actual human death stood a chance against it. Not that this stemmed the flow of schlock entries; if anything it intensified as every filmmaker in existence tried to cash in on the media frenzy that was the impending Video Nasties.
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And speaking of schlock, I guess we owe someone a quick nod. One way or another, the asshole seems determined to have the final word on the subject.
CANNIBAL FEROX (1981/2)
(Somehow SFW)
(Alternate titles: Woman from Deep River, Make Them Die Slowly)
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It's 1981, and Umberto Lenzi is royally pissed. First a bunch of no-talent producers drug their feet over his triple salary and only waited for his dumb ass five years instead of the standard six. One humble moviemaker can't compete with this kind of conspiracy, and thus Deodato got to steal Last Cannibal World out from under him. Then the miserable bastard unleashed the film by which all others would be measured, lacking the common decency to give the creator of the genre a chance to make it first. The stinking public was almost as bad, having the audacity to snub his groundbreaking masterpiece of embezzled footage, Eaten Alive!. Well, enough was enough. It was time somebody put Deodato in his goddamn place and showed the world who the real high chief of the cannibals was.
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You know, it's only fitting that the man who invented the genre was also the one to sound its death-knell. Just as The Man From The Deep River was so phenomenally stupid it birthed the cannibal movie, Cannibal Ferox was so phenomenally stupid it killed it.
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Why Umberto Lenzi should be fed dong-first to a gorilla on PCP: A giant bug, muskrat, a beautiful jungle bird, a pig, a turtle, an alligator, and being Umberto Lenzi.
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"The following feature is one of the most violent films ever made. There are at least two dozen scenes of barbaric torture and sadistic cruelty graphically shown. If the presentation of disgusting and repulsive subject matter upsets you, please do not view the film."
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This, by the way, is the opener to the film itself and not an inserted disclaimer. The jerkwad ain't missing a trick.
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A white ignoramus (not one of the white ignoramuses, but he'd certainly qualify) visits his dealer friend Mike's apartment but finds some mafia guys instead. Mike isn't just a street-level hustler; he's recently gone on the lam with a hundred grand worth of the mob's Peruvian marching powder, and it suffices to say they're mildly irritated at him.
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Elsewhere, in a cannibal movie, Lenzi is sharing his opinion of scholarly types, hippies, and white people in general, as these are the ignoramiest ignoramuses in the history of ignoramitude. My spell-checker hates me. The central character, Gloria, has traveled to the Amazon to complete her dissertation on how cannibalism is just one more of the white man's lies (how a jungle slog is going to prove this escapes me). More, she contends that every reported incident in history is a myth created by racist conquistadors, and no homo sapiens have ever made a practice of eating each other. Um... yeah. Along for the ride are her photographer brother Rudy and their friend Pat who's here to get in touch with nature or some happy horseshit. This group of rugged outdoorsmen is so perfectly qualified for an expedition into Amazonia they don't bother to hire a native guide, (but lest you think Lenzi gained some originality, I assure you there will be one - several in fact).
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The party ferries down the river and takes off through the jungle in a jeep loaded with more booze than food or water. Alas, they didn't foresee a lack of maintained roads out in the untamed wild and their jeep blows a rod (something the movie itself accomplished five minutes in). Our growing-less-likable-by-the-minute heroes flip a goddamn coin to decide whether to press on or not. Ultimately they decide to "kill two parrots with one cracker", figuring they'll find another ride or if they're really lucky, some cannibals. Um... yeah.
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During a slog through the deep jungle (that to our characters' surprise doesn't have a single bus stop) the flick pauses every few minutes for some tried-and-true nastiness. Mixed in with the usual blech is a hilarious moment where they spot an old tribesman munching giant grubs (chewing with his mouth open, natch) and overlook the dozen or so cannibal warriors hiding in the grass behind him. I'm sorry, movie, but you're just not scaring me.
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Three is a pitifully inadequate number of white ignormuses, so Gloria and friends encounter two more in the wounded Joe and his friend (dum dum DUMM) Mike! It's Captain Continuity, fearless defender of truth, justice, and plot cohesion! The two are on the run from cannibals and have a most grisly flashback to share. They came here for cocaine farming but traded in that hobby for emerald smuggling the second they heard local tribes were using the things for toilet paper. Their expedition had barely begun when they were captured and subjected to all manner of cannibal-style fun and games. Oh, and they DID hire a native guide and the timeline clearly indicates he bought the farm first, just in case you were wondering.
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When I mentioned just how ignoramusy these people are, did you think I was exaggerating for comedic effect? We've got an undergrad, a photographer, a ridiculously played hippie chick, and two cokeheads turned emerald thieves that are currently fleeing for their very lives. What choice is there but to head straight back to the goddamn village Mike and Joe are running from? You know, the one full of bloodthirsty cannibals who ate their native guide and have made a local sport of dong-lopping? That any of these fuckwits have survived this long is proof of a God whose sole responsibility is to protect the mentally malfunctioned.
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So they return to the village where before you can shout, "Lenzi, will you quit ripping off superior movies" it's revealed all the warriors are absent. The remaining women and children are frightened and distrustful, and the men of the tribe (that have been repeatedly described as feral killers) could be back any second. Damn, this a good spot to settle in for a few days, and the numerous rotting corpses scattered around make for awesome feng shui! Rudy kills time by taking pictures of more Mondo-style yuck while Mike enjoys raping the attractive members of the tribe. Hippie chick finds Mike's hijinks irresistible, and Gloria spends the majority of her screen time trying to look pensive and failing miserably.
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Ye gods, this is way worse than I remembered.
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Joe in the meanwhile has taken a turn for the worse, coming down with a nasty case of blood poisoning. With his final breaths, he tells Rudy and Gloria the real story of what went down during their first visit. Mike was so pissed off that the natives weren't shitting emeralds he went on a rampage of rape, murder, torture, eye-gouging, and castration. He then grabbed a couple of youngsters to lead them out of the jungle, who met with predictably horrible fates being both natives and guides.
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A strange impulse to depart suddenly strikes our heroes, but outside their pillaged hut they find rotten papaya fruit mounted on stakes. It will soon become apparent this is the tribal symbol for "it's time to fuck your shit up", as the warriors have returned and are understandably pissed off. What follows is a long spell of dismemberment, weiner whacking, tit tearing, brain eating, and all sorts of gory good stuff.
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While every bit as aggressive and graphic as Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox suffers from one major problem: It's stupid as hell, dude. While Deodato's film displayed morbid intelligence and a sick animal cunning, Lenzi's horrors take a back seat to brainlessness every time. The premise is absurd, the script is laughable, the characters are bad parodies of themselves, and the attempted social commentary is overwhelmed by a mountain of ineptitude. Lenzi even managed to botch the can't-miss animal snuff, tossing the scenes out as background shots that make them even more unforgivable when you think about it. In yet another page lifted from Holocaust you're cheering for the cannibals by the end, but this is due more to the imminent closing credits than the montage of nasty fates that await our oh-so-deserving heroes.
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Well, it took him three tries, but Lenzi finally succeeded in making an actual cannibal movie and got the notoriety he felt he deserved. Cannibal Ferox will ever be remembered as such a putrid, contemptible, and balls-out ignorant flick that it almost single-handedly exterminated the genre as a whole. Enjoy your legacy, dillhole, you earned it.
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Final Rating: Harmful or fatal if swallowed.
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After Dinner Mints
(Trailer stupid and SFW)
(No trailer available, so here's a kitten cuddling a baby chicken)
GREEN INFERNO/CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST 2 (1988)
CANNIBAL FEROX 2 (Unknown)
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I admit to a sense of relief when I put Cannibal Ferox back in its case, as my trek through the green inferno was finally at an end. There were flicks still to come, sure, but Ferox was the last one anybody gave a rat's ass about. Apart from the two pieces of stupidity above (named as sequels well after the fact), the hangers-on were so forgettable just finding poster art is a challenge. It's almost as if the public at large came to the simultaneous conclusion that there was nothing more to see here, and it was time to move along to zombie movies. Holocaust II, in fact, was the last film to be counted as an official part of the genre. Just as suddenly as it burst onto the scene the cannibal film was kaput.
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Except maybe not... Over the years the genre has proven more insidious than anyone expected, and when the turn of the century saw the release of a few genuine uncut versions, popularity surged like it did two decades before. Now everything that can even remotely be called a cannibal movie exists in a remastered two-disc director's cut with all grotesquerie intact. Hell, the mere fact some asshat would sit and watch over TWENTY HOURS OF THIS SHIT should attest to the genre's roach-like vitality. And yes, there are still and always will be attempts to ban them from the market, but so far coinage has that skirmish won.
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And so ends our long and treacherous expedition with but one question remaining: Why? Why are a handful of sickass Mondo crack babies still so popular after all these years? Why is the period from 1977 to 1982 still spoken of in hushed reverence among B-movie geeks? Why have I just wasted over thirty pages on shit I don't even like watching?
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The answer, my little droogies, is as simple as you could want. And so as I look back on this strange journey of mine with a mixture of sadness and pride, I leave you with a modest bit of wisdom I picked up along the way. Take it freely and do with it what you will, for you are my friend.
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"The more you rape their senses, the happier they are."