Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell
― Nutty Nigel is the piss-poor pseudonym of C@lum W@ddell, Wednesday, 18 February 2004 00:43 (twenty-two years ago)
Guess who wrote this crap...
Ah, yes, the cannibal movie: possibly the bane of my life. Alongside the mondo documentary it is the one form of 'horror' cinema that pushes the viewer's stance against censorship to breaking point. Surely no genre fan is unaware of such titles as Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox, considered to be the two milestones of the short lived trend. Indeed, I doubt that there are many gore fanatics out there who haven't watched these two mainstays of the age old DDP 'video nasty' list.
The Italian cannibal movie (and make no mistake about it - that's what we're talking about here so there'll be no Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Motel Hell in sight) started life in the form of Umberto Lenzi's Deep River Savages (1972). Lenzi's film is generally seen as being the forefather of the mondo/cannibal trend but far from being the trendsetter. However, the film does include several scenes of animal cruelty and this is where the great controversy about these types of films tends to begin and, rest assured, I'm going to tackle that subject later.
The real granddaddy of the Italian cannibal film is Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal (or The Last Cannibal World as it is more commonly known), originally devised as a sequel to Lenzi's Deep River Savages... Deodato's film is extremely cheap looking, even in spite of its genuine footage of the gorgeous Malaysian rainforest. Deodato claims that the film was shot using a real tribe (and one that practised cannibalism at that!) but, as I have long since concluded, it's probably worth taking every word which Mr Deodato has ever uttered with a pinch of salt.
However Cannibal (1976) came about, the film remains an especially unpleasant viewing experience... you're not even five minutes into the film but you're met with the fetching sight of a huge python eating a large lizard alive. This would all be very well in a nature programme but one can't help but feel that Mr Deodato has carefully set this vicious scenario up. Moreover, because it serves bugger all purpose to the story line the sane viewer cannot help but jump to conclusions and wonder exactly whom this sort of thing is actually aimed towards entertaining...
Cannibal, apparently based on 'true events', tells of a plane crash and the handful of survivors who find themselves marooned in the Malaysian jungle. The stars of Deep River Savages, Ivan Rassimov and Me Me Lai, return to the jungle - although the real focus of Cannibal is Massimo Foschi who could very well be the missing link. In all seriousness though, Deodato's first attempt at bringing retarded tribesmen who feast on flesh and hack up huge reptiles to the viewing public is nothing less than dull and mean spirited nonsense.
After being captured by the tribe, Foschi finds himself being urinated on by giggling children before having to fight for scraps of fruit to eat with a particularly nasty bird of prey - which is later decapitated for good measure. In between all this, animals are filmed either being slaughtered or eating each other such is the mentality of Deodato's movie. All this succeeds in doing is grinding the proper 'action' to a halt and testing the viewer's toleration of such material. If indeed Deodato wanted to make a documentary on a tribe and their way of life I'd have no problem with such visual cruelty. But as it so happens (and as we later see from Cannibal Holocaust) the animal cruelty in this film appears to be there simply to titillate, with especially graphics close ups.
The film ends with Foschi escaping with Me Me Lai and, in what would become an increasingly unpleasant trend in the work of Deodato and screenwriter Gianfranco Clerci we are greeted with a scene of repulsive misogyny. Clerci was one of the three scriptwriters of Cannibal, and one of the minds behind such works as Cannibal Holocaust, The House on the Edge of the Park and, perhaps most tellingly, The New York Ripper. In Cannibal, Lai finds herself raped by Foschi and, when Foschi falls asleep, she responds to this violation by actually bringing him breakfast!!!
One, surely, need not look any further for an explanation of the mindset of Ruggero Deodato. Anyone who would dare to show the effects of rape as somehow liberating and necessary not once but twice (see his equally repulsive The House on the Edge of the Park) surely warrants a comment such as 'if you see this man, cross over the street' (from Positif, 1981). Never mind crossing the street... I'd advise kicking him very hard in the backside!
As you can see the cannibal movies are films that simply fail to conform to any barrier of taste or political correctness. In fact, they appear to revel in their own immorality and bloodshed - making for especially uncomfortable viewing experiences as you are brought to contemplate the sanity of the man behind the camera.
After Fosschi rapes Lai and she brings him breakfast I was actually tempted to switch off Cannibal, but I kept going and found the rest of the film to merely degenerate into a dull adventure movie. Foschi once again meets up with Rassimov (who carries with him an injured and diseased leg and finally dies) before winning a battle to the death with one of the cannibal tribe. Then Foschi flips and chomps down on the poor jungle retard's insides! Lai, meanwhile, is captured and, in an appallingly brutal scene, is hacked up (whilst nude) and has her insides stuffed with hot coals. Lovely. Foschi escapes back to civilisation and the movie comes to a belated and very thankful close.
Cannibal is not a film with much to say other than that a civilised man might go totally bonkers if dumped in the middle of nowhere and captured by a flesh eating tribe. So no surprises there then. The film also borders very thinly upon the line of racism. After all, these are primitives who fail to care about their own kind (hence, Lai is captured and killed for the awful crime of merely being kidnapped) and who can be dominated and controlled as soon as a good white man gives them what for (c.f. Lai being raped).
Accusations of racism, therefore, seem fairly accurate. These tribesmen are, after all, shown as being vicious, reactionary and, moreover, inferior. Foschi, meanwhile, is the hero - a rugged man whose is something of a cause celebre in the caves of the Malaysian jungle inhabitants. From the second Foschi finds himself marooned and captured, Cannibal gives the viewer little or no reason to consider who the real villains of the story are... it's the uncivilised, animal torturing barbarians of the forest. Whether or not this was a genuine tribe is surely beside the point - the film still casts them in a negative role.
The animal cruelty, of course, seems like little more than a warm up for what was to follow. Sergio Martino's Prisoner of the Cannibal God (1978) highlights especially nasty scenes of a monkey being eaten alive by a huge boa constrictor whilst, in another scene, a turtle is eaten by a crocodile and a lizard is carved up in graphic, unflinching detail. Even this, however, pales in comparison to the genre's reputed 'classic' Cannibal Holocaust...
Not wishing to repeat the story of Holocaust, as I suspect most fans have seen it by now, the film remains, for me, a revolting experience. It's a truly atrocious film to be sure. It's vomit inducing and deserving of every bit of castigation ever afforded to it. Mind you, it does (and I say this through gritted teeth) have a good idea behind it. The notion of a group of documentary filmmakers who were slaughtered by a tribe in the Amazon jungle and who captured their last days on camera is, at the very least, a worthwhile and intriguing premise. In the right hand this could've been a classic, but instead Cannibal Holocaust remains little more than an endurance test with a pleasant, but nonetheless ridiculous, theme tune (by Riz Ortolani).
Certainly, the film's popularity can be attributed to fanatical gore hounds that tend to harp on about its 'technical merits' until they are blue in the face. However, if such fans are only bothered about a film's cinematic value then why aren't they watching something by Jean Renoir or Akira Kurosawa, or sitting down to Citizen Kane or Goodfellas? If they are looking for a quality, technically amazing horror film then there are infinite more impressive films to be ranting about - James Whale's films for a start, not to mention the contemporary likes of Jaws, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Videodrome. All far, far better films than this low budget cannibal shocker could ever dream of being. And if it's the atmosphere of the Amazon or the theme of the cruelty of Western civilisation that some people like to read into Deodato's film... well Roland Joffe's masterpiece The Mission does it so much better. What's more, The Mission actually has a proper 'message' and does something with it, without wallowing in pathetic scenes of mainly (badly) faked blood and guts.
Really, fans tend to like Cannibal Holocaust because it is gory. Very gory, and very nasty - and I guess some people like that. However, I always feel that when fans have to try and defend a film they are onto a bit of a difficult one. The best films, low budget or not, simply speak for themselves.
Holocaust works on the following levels. Firstly, Deodato cannot deny that the film was designed as some sort of 'gross out' endurance test. There is precious other reason to document, in such graphic detail, the tearing apart of human beings (perhaps inevitably, Holocaust is about a misogynistic as movies get with much rape and brutalising of females) and the un-simulated torture of animals. Particularly horrific is the long, drawn-out sequence in which a (highly endangered) huge sea turtle is literally torn to pieces for four straight minutes in unflinching detail.
Quite frankly - it's unwatchable. The decapitated head of the turtle is even mocked by the actors (as it continues to gasp for air) and placed upright in its prised off shell. It's offensive beyond belief. That these amazing and beautiful animals can take up to a decade to reach sexual maturity in order to reproduce makes this all the more sickening - and I often wonder why fans of this film don't seem to care about this. The same goes for the sequence in which a wild rat has a knife inserted through its throat. There is no quick death here, as the rat squeals the knife pops out of the top of its head. The poor creature is finally put out of its misery by being impaled through the neck. Deodato uses the excuse that these animals were being used for food, but the rat is quickly thrown away and the death is, ultimately, pointless.
A (highly endangered - GET THE MESSAGE?) leopard monkey is also beheaded and a pig is shot at point blank range (after a good kicking around mind). It really does ruin the film and makes you wonder about whether or not Deodato should actually be allowed to roam the streets. Ruggero spent four months in jail for the animal torture in Holocaust (for killing endangered wildlife now in South America he'd be lucky to escape with his life) and the film is probably destined to remain a popular obscurity because of its possible, but unlikely, influence on the far better The Blair Witch Project.
For all I've said about Cannibal Holocaust, there lurks - beneath the outright offensiveness of the animal cruelty - an interesting narrative and a mildly captivating mock documentary filming technique. There is even one almost powerful image, that being the scene featuring an impaled woman, but ultimately it's only powerful because it is revolting. In amongst all the carnage at the end of the movie you may notice that one of the fictional film team actually disappears without any explanation whatsoever. Such a narrative lapse is hardly the sign of a good film...
I've not seen Cannibal Holocaust for years now. It's just too much, really, and the prospect of seeing that awful turtle scene again is highly unappealing. As far as the 'subtext' of the movie goes (the sensationalism of the mondo movie et al), it all seems to fade away, submerged beneath the blood and gore of a very nasty and totally rubbish little film.
Before the notorious Cannibal Ferox, Umberto Lenzi graced drive-ins with Eaten Alive (1980). This one is easily the most boring of the cannibal films. Me Me Lai returns as a jungle vixen and so does Holocaust star Robert Kerman (a former porn actor who can also be glimpsed in Ferox). Kerman ventures into the jungle with Janet Argen (from City of the Living Dead) to find out what happened to her sister. It turns out that she joined a cult and brutal scenes of jungle rape, mutilation and animal cruelty ensue.
Lenzi botched all of the animal cruelty for this one from his earlier film, Deep River Savages and also from Martino's Prisoner of the Cannibal God and Deodato's Cannibal. The final death of Lai is also taken from Cannibal. Eaten Alive, as you can imagine, is something of a mess - trying hard to fit into its running time as much unpleasantness as is seemingly possible. It is, however, also a rather fitting cure for insomnia. Seriously, as gruesome as the film may be, Eaten Alive is one of the most boring movies that I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. Take that as a recommendation if you like.
The other 'infamous' cannibal title is, of course, Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox (or Make Them Die Slowly). Ferox is another bloody awful film. It's dull, it has relatively low production values and it features static, stilted camerawork. The whole point of the film seems to be the 'novel' idea of pointing an unflinching camera at as many scenes of cruelty and gore as one can possibly imagine.
The most interesting thing about the film is the laserdisc/ DVD which has commentary by star John Morghen and director Umberto Lenzi played over the soundtrack. On this soundtrack, Lenzi comes across as something of a cretin and Morghen continually notes his embarrassment over the animal cruelty in the movie. Furthermore, it transpires that the animals that were used in this film were bought illegally from, more than likely poachers - at a local street market. I suspect that this is also the case behind the animals which were massacred in Deodato's Holocaust and it makes these films all the more easy to hate...
Ferox tells of three students and two drug dealers who find themselves brought together in the Amazon jungles (Ferox was shot in the same area as Holocaust). One of the drug dealers (played by Morghen), it turns out, is guilty of the massacre of some tribe members. The other dealer dies after being shot with a poisoned arrow, whilst Morghen ends up in bed with one of the students. Soon, the students are captured by the tribe and killed in various 'inventive' ways.
Morghen has his privates cut off - followed by his hand (after a bungled escape attempt) and then the top of his head is swiped off in its entirety. His girlfriend is hung up by hooks through her breast and left to bleed to death in the hot sun. Her friend, played by Lorraine DeSelle, manages to get away, but DeSelle's brother is not so lucky and he receives a poisoned dart after being chomped on by piranha fish. Sounds like fun? Yeah? Well, I've not even started on the animal stuff...
A fluffy dog-like creature is tied to a post and fed to a, thankfully uninterested, anaconda (on the commentary soundtrack Morghen says that the crew finally decided to refuse to shoot this scene, despite Lenzi's insistence, and the animal escaped with its life). A turtle is hacked up, a crocodile meets the same fate, a monkey is fed to a tiger and a pig is stabbed to death. Now make up your mind if it sounds like fun. If the answer is yes then I can I recommend that you get some fresh air?
Cannibal Ferox is, ultimately, not a very impressive film. If you took the animal cruelty out of Holocaust, you'd probably be left with a watchable but unimpressive time killer. If you took the animal cruelty out of Ferox you'd still be left with a big steaming pile of shit. Cannibal Ferox is only for those who feel that Eaten Alive was screwed out of an Oscar nomination for best foreign film.
Other, less offensive and problematic, Italian cannibal films include Antonio Margheriti's Dawn of the Dead knock-off Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), which features Morghen and Enter the Dragon star John Saxon. This one, more firmly rooted in the zombie genre, is actually quite good fun. Another video nasty with the cannibal title is the Spanish made Cannibal Terror (1981). This 1981 abomination is terrible, and also terribly funny! Cannibals with huge side burns roam the jungles while the incessant loop of a bird chirping away is repeated on the soundtrack. Look closely and you'll notice that the jungle is simply a forest by the motorway....
The late, and not so great, Joe D'Amato's Anthropopagous the Beast (1980) is full of cheesy gore effects. This one begins with a chap lying on the beach and getting an axe through the head for his trouble! Tisa Farrow (from Zombie Flesh-Eaters) stars in this gruesome tale of a hulking cannibal beast who inhabits a deserted Greek island and who doesn't take nicely to tourists. When Farrow and friends become washed up on the island, the title character wastes little time in scalping and chewing his way through the new arrivals. The best bit is at the end when the beast decides to chow down on his own insides before dropping dead! It's quite funny actually...
An Indonesian oddity, Savage Terror (1979), slipped out on video here in the early eighties. The back of the video box describes animals being torn apart by a cannibal tribe and features a picture of a pig being captured. It really doesn't sound very pleasant and after braving my way through this lot (albeit as an obscure horror film seeking teenager) I can honestly say that I've no interest in looking any further afield! Honestly, the cannibal films are a cinematic abortion... designed to churn the stomach and offend the mindset of any sane human being. Some folks love them but, then again, some folks love Cliff Richard. It's all a question of taste, I guess, but few would disagree with me, I hope, when I say that the animal cruelty in these films really shouldn't be permitted...
― Mr I need to learn to write (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 01:17 (twenty-two years ago)
three years pass...