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Directed by: Umberto Lenzi
Written by: Umberto Lenzi
I think I just don’t like cannibal films anymore. I mean, I’m not going to go off on them for being abhorrent or racist or sexist or morally bankrupt (although they are…that’s the whole point of them it seems), but I just don’t enjoy them.
Every single one of them is exactly the same: a group of ugly Americans goes into the Amazon for one reason or another (this time to prove the cannibalism doesn’t exist) and each one gets killed by a cannibal tribe of natives. Of course, we’re all rooting for the natives because the Americans are awful, horrible people or kill/rape members of the tribe. Fuck ’em. They deserve to die.
And there’s always at least 184 scenes of animal killings. These are always the scenes that really get to viewers. A couple of scenes in this movie are sort of “nature documentary” type deaths (a mongoose being killed by a boa, etc), but then there are the really bad ones where a human just tortures and kills the shit out of these animals. And, because this is an Italian production, all of the animals are actually killed. (In this one and Cannibal Holocaust, actors refused to kill the animals and the filmmakers had to find someone who would do it.)
It doesn’t help that this movie is fucking ugly. Not just in content, but in the way it looks. You’re in one of the most beautiful places in the world and you choose to make it look like someone’s unkempt backyard? And then you find cut-rate actors and the worst cinematographer you can?
I’ve owned a copy of this movie for a long time. I also have Cannibal Holocaust. I’ll keep that one just because it’s got a lot of significance to me and to film history. But this one might be going away. I just don’t have any interest in watching it a third time.
LOW POINT: Seriously, the whole movie. It’s bloody awful