Mondo Cannibale Teil 3: Die blonde Göttin der Kannibalen

White Cannibal Queen (1980)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Al Cliver plays a researcher who heads into the jungle with his wife and young daughter. They are attacked by a group of cannibals with the wife being eaten and the daughter kidnapped but Cliver escapes with only an arm cut off. Flash forward ten years and Cliver heads back into the jungle to locate his daughter who is now a goddess to the cannibals. It's true that Franco would be hired to jump on a bandwagon whenever a certain genre got hot and that's the case with this French film that tries hard to follow in the footsteps of various cannibal films from Italy. If you hated those Italian films due to the graphic nature of the violence, which included animals killings then you might get something more out of this sense it's violence free towards animals. With that out of the way this film is still pretty bland as Franco seems to forget (or didn't know) what made those Italian films work and that's that they played out well as adventure films. That's not the case here as the story is pretty bland and there's nothing to really keep you glued to the film. The performances are all rather bland but the attractive cast does feature Cliver, Lina Romay, Robert Foster and Pamela Stanford. Sabrina Siani plays the grown up daughter and at least walks around nude to keep things moving. The incredibly bad English dubbing makes for some laughs especially when Franco shows up sounding like a cowboy from Texas. The cannibals themselves are all laughable with their horrible body paint and silly dances but hey, this is a low-budget Franco film.

Prof. Taylor (Al Cliver) and his family are attacked on their boat by a group of cannibals. Taylor is taken back to the village and barely survives, losing his young daughter and left arm (!) in the process. He spends the next decade or so manic and recovering in New York City with the help of his nurse Ana (Lina Romay). When he finally comes to his senses, Taylor - with aid from his rich benefactors - mounts another journey into the jungle to rescue his daughter. Problem is that she is now married to the head of the tribe and, most likely, hates her one- armed daddy.

Always down for a little exploitation, director Jess Franco got his cannibal groove on in the late 70s/early 80s and shot this one in the south of Spain. The cannibals are laughable (one is spotted wearing a wedding band) and look like they were grabbed in a Lowes parking lot (not far off actually as Franco says they hired gypsies). Plus, they wear goofy make up that makes them look like they are members of the baseball gang in THE WARRIORS. Sabrina Siani, memorably nude in Fulci's CONQUEST, shows where she got her start as the grown up daughter-turned- cannibal-queen. Franco calls her the "most stupid" person he has ever worked with in the Blue Underground disc's documentary. He then stops himself short and says that he has worked with many dumb leading ladies and that she is up there in the top. He also has kind words for Cliver, saying he was professional and sober which "for a Latin person is a miracle." While the film isn't even close to the genre's best offerings, it moves along fast enough, features some skin and delivers some gory goods (yeah, I'm easy to please tonight). One thing is for sure though, you will be singing the "Oh, oh, oooooooh" cannibal theme over and over by the time the film is done.

Jess Franco fans like myself are kind of like drug addicts, always watching another film, hoping against hope to again capture the initial rush of something like "Succubus", "Venus in Furs", or "Eugenie--Story of her Journey into Perversion". Usually, we just wind up with mediocre dreck that leaves us vaguely dissatisfied. Sometimes though we REALLY get burned, like with this film. To be fair jungle action films are not Franco's forte--his films often fail to maintain a basic suspension of disbelief that they were NOT filmed in European zoo. Cannibalism is not Franco's thing either, for instance, he doesn't seem to realize that even cannibals COOK their food before they eat it. Franco actually used the same long, slow-motion takes of people eating raw flesh in extreme close-ups at the climax of one of his WIP movies, but in that context it was pretty sickening (if that's a plus). Here though it's just tedious and dull--the only way this rates a "99 on the vomit meter," as Joe Bob Briggs supposedly said, is if extreme boredom causes you to somehow throw up.

Naturally, with cannibal scenes this laughable the film is nowhere near as potent as one of your better Italian cannibal epics (although they don't slaughter any real animals, at least). But one thing I certainly would expect from a Franco film is sex and nudity--and that's were it REALLY disappoints. Lina "Mrs. Jess Franco" Romay is in the cast, but Franco uncharacteristically keeps her under wraps except for a brief t-shot when she's being eaten (literally). She is by far the most talented actor in the movie, but still what a waste of an actress who had one of the best bodies around in those days. You have the opposite problem with Sabrina Siani, playing the same barely-legal jungle girl character played by Alice Arno, Katja Beinert, and Ursula Fellehner in other Franco movies. Siani spends the entire movie half-naked, but she's such a terrible actress even that gets boring, and her one sex scene can best be described as somnambulistic. I also couldn't help wondering how the dark-haired little girl in the beginning grew up to be a blonde teenager (albeit with dark roots). Where did she find peroxide in the jungle? (Of course, she had to be blonde or this "white goddess" wouldn't have looked any whiter than the obviously European "cannibals").

But I'm forgetting something--oh yeah, the plot. Well, it's pretty much the exact same plot as "Diamonds of Kilimajaro", but with more inept "cannibalism" scenes and less gratuitous nudity. Watch that one instead.

Thank you for this great review. But I need to mention that I Cannibali is not the movie you watched, but the Jess Franco flick Mondo Cannibali, aka Cannibals. There's some comments there, describing Mondo Cannibale as a boring movie. I agree. Certainly not a masterpiece in Jess Francos collection. Don't bother, watch Cannibal Holocaust again instead.

I think this movie is the same as rhe 1979 Franco Prosperi listed in the "Mondo Cannibale" listing. It is indeed a Jesus Franco movie. And it is indeed badder-than-bad !!! If you get bored, count the screenplay inconcinstensies.