Gefangen in der Hölle des Dschungels

The copy that I borrowed from a friend is titled "Amazonas". I have been a friend of all the Italian gore films, so that is why I checked it out. It has adventure, sex, and gore. It sort of reminded me of Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals in that it goes a little farther in the sex scenes then your average adventure movie. The copy I have is the uncut unrated version. So if there is a rated R version, I can imagine it just wouldn't have the same edge that the unrated version has.

Some may see the rating I've given Massacre in Dinosaur Valley and think I've lost my mind. I'm fully aware that a 5/10 may be too high. In all honesty, the movie is horrible. Tarantini has crammed the film with every exploitation element and cliché you can think of. Massacre in Dinosaur Valley lacks originality, any semblance of good acting, and anything approaching taste. Technically, the movie doesn't fair much better with some really bad looking special effects and poor editing. But if you can get past all the film's shortcomings (as I did), it's a lot of fun for fans of cheese-filled, Italian exploitation type movies. Maybe I was just in the right frame of mind, but I had a great time with it.

Actually, my biggest complaint with the film has nothing to do with the list of previously mentioned problems. My biggest gripe is the "look" of the cannibals. If you've seen Cannibal Holocaust, the Granddaddy of cannibal films, you'll understand what I mean. The cannibal tribes in Cannibal Holocaust look authentic (at least to my untrained eyes). They're dirty, unkempt, and "wild" looking. The cannibals in Massacre in Dinosaur Valley, on the other hand, look like actors. They look like they showered, shaved, and had a fresh haircut on the way to the set. In addition, the cannibal village in Cannibal Holocaust is something completely alien to our modern society. It fits the look of the cannibals. Here, the cannibal village reminded me of one of the headhunter sets from Gilligan's Island. A little more authenticity would have really helped Massacre in Dinosaur Valley.

My review was written in January 1987 after watching the film on Lightning video cassette.

"Massacre in Dinosaur Valley" is a poor Italian exploitation film, made worse by an intentionally misleading title: there are no dinosaurs or fantasy elements in this potboiler. Pic was lensed in Brazil in 1985 with "Stranded in the Valley of Dinosaurs" as its working title.

Format is in the corny vein of "Five Came Back": a bunch of folks are caught in the jungle and swamp when their light plane crashes en route to Manaos. Among the passengers are an archaeologist (Michael Sopkiw), a scientist who's killed in the crash, his pretty daughter (Susane Carvall, usually credited as Suzanne Carvalho) plus several other beauties. They're attacked by indians, fall prey to leeches and quicksand, plus the other tired gimmicks of the genre.

Sopkiw finally frees two girls from the clutches of the indians and an hour into the film finds fossilized dinosaur footprints. Just when the film might be getting interesting, the three survivors are captured by a creep using slave labor for his mining operations. The rest of the picture is devoted to the boring subplot of Sopkiw engineering another escape with Carvalho.

This sexploitationer mixes pratfall comedy, disrobing women and the usual gore carelessly.

Michele Massimo Tarantini's NUDO E SELVAGGIO aka MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY (Italy and Brazil, 1985) belongs to the category it's so damn bad it becomes totally enjoyable for fans of low budget trash cinema. The film is written by Tarantini, too, and some sources mention that also Dardano Sacchetti (the man responsible for many Fulci scripts) worked as a writer in this film, uncredited. Still most of Sacchetti's screenplays are much better and professional than this so I think he didn't do too much for this film after all.

In DINOSAUR VALLEY, Michael Sopkiw (BLASTFIGHTER (1985), 2019 BEFORE THE FALL OF NEW YORK (1983) etc.) stars as our Indiana Jones like hero who collects dinosaur bones and sells them to those who pay him much. He travels to Brazil and is willing to search for the bones there. There he gets to know an older doctor and his daughter, who are also going to the jungle alongside a photographer, his two almost naked female models and a traumatized Vietnam veteran and his more than annoying and paranoid wife. Now that sounds a hilarious cast doesn't it? It is as wild and laughable as it sounds, so the fanatics of trash cinema will love DINOSAUR VALLEY.

After their plane crashes (unbelievably funny scene by he way!), the fun and the so called plot begins. The most interesting thing in the cast is easily Suzane Carvalho who belongs to the most memorable beauties I've seen in any of these exploitation films of the 70's and 80's. She plays the part of the doctor's daughter, and her beauty steels the whole show. Her eyes are like chocolate balls waiting to be eaten. There are some other beauties in films of this kind like Uschi Glass (Umberto Lenzi's SEVEN BLOOD STAINED ORCHIDS, 1971)), Glory Annen (Norman J. Warren's PREY, 1978) and Olivia Hussey (Brian Trenchard-Smith's outrageous BLOOD CAMP THATCHER aka TURKEY SHOOT, 1981) but Suzane in DINOSAUR VALLEY is easily the most beautiful angel of all.

Sopkiw is as bad as can be expected and that goes to the acting in general in this film, too. The acting is so bad at times that one might wonder if they did it in purpose because it seems unlikely that somebody really "acted" that bad while trying to act good and believably. That of course adds to the enjoyment this junk gives and DINOSAUR VALLEY is easily to these jungle adventures (CUT AND RUN (1985), THE CATHERINE MILES STORY (1986), TREASURE OF THE AMAZON (1985) etc.) the same as Ivan Katansky's ridiculous Italian sleaze fest BEAST IN HEAT (1977) is for nazi exploitation and WIP films. All those who've seen BEAST really know what I'm talking about.

DINOSAUR has plenty of gratuitous sex, nudity and gore which can also be expected from these films. The sex and nudity-o-meter is very high and there are some shots of naked females that go farther than I expected so the makers noticeably wanted to "deliver the goods" big time with this film. The same thing is with the gore as there are the usual scenes of blood letting and people being killed in gory manner as the dangers of the jungle like piranhas and leeches attack the unhappy travellers as well as the hungry cannibals who happen to live there, too. Also, they soon find out that the jungle is terrorized by some sleazy slave ring led by a fat and horny dirtbag whose fate in a film like this isn't too hard to guess.

Pretty much all the characters in the film are more or less disgusting and evil and there are some unbelievably sleazy scenes like the relationship between the war veteran and his wife as well as the laughably lusty men who, trapped in the jungle surrounded by different dangers, don't seem to be able to keep their eyes off the almost naked females and thus giving the camera man an excuse to give couple of close ups! Can it be even more exploitative and over-the-top sleazy than this?!

The settings in the Brazil jungles are very nice and beautiful as can be expected and that is perhaps the only positive and noteworthy cinematic achievement that can be found in this film. The water and trees are shot very lively and peacefully and it creates a nice atmosphere, and the overall beauty of nature is pretty stunning, and even the loathsome characters and goings-on cannot disturb that. The music score (the synthesizer one) is also worth mentioning and it is very simple but effective in the tradition of Carpenter's HALLOWEEN score.

After all, DINOSAUR VALLEY is almost perfect exploitation trash romp but the viewer really has to "understand" and love the genre in order to come to this conclusion. If you try to show this film to anyone with "normal taste" for cinema, you are guaranteed to be recommended to visit a mental hospital to get some help, because these films are so far away from what is considered as acceptable or correct in mainstream (and "normal") cinema. I give DINOSAUR VALLEY 6/10 as a fan of this cheesy genre.

There isn't much to be said for "Dinosaur Valley" (aka "Cannibal Ferox 2") with the exception of some lovely young ladies who spend a good deal of the film naked and on the run. A plane carrying some truly oddball passengers, including the film's fossil-hunting hero Kevin and several scantily clad models, crashes in the Brazilian jungle. For those who survive, it is a fight to get back to civilization, through pirhanas, jungle animals, flesh-eating pigs, cannibals and a slaver who is running an illegal mining operation. The film is wildly overacted and the dialogue atrocious, but the location photography is noteworthy and the ladies are the kind all heterosexual men dream of. The film verges on camp, so you might as well laugh along with it. The gore quotient is so-so, the few special effects pathetic.