En el infierno caníbal

Ruggero Deodato's name is forever linked with the cannibal movie genre mostly because of his infamous 'Cannibal Holocaust', a movie which I've yet to see uncut. 'The Last Cannibal World' (aka 'Jungle Holocaust') was his first cannibal movie, and isn't as well known or talked about. If you don't take it too seriously, and don't object too much to the gratuitous animal slaughter, it's sleazy, trashy entertainment. Deodato by the way didn't start this movie cycle, Umberto Lenzi did, but Lenzi later recycled some Deodato footage, and cast Ivan Rassimov and Me Me Lai in his 'Eaten Alive'. Anyway, Massimo Foschi plays an American, Robert Walker. The plane he and his colleague Rolf (Rassimov) are traveling on crashes and they get separated in the jungle. I forget where the setting was supposed to be. It doesn't really matter as these cannibal movies are fantasies with no basis in reality. They usually film them in the Philippines and get the locals to wear dirty wigs and ham it up, which is alright by me if it's alright with them. It's a living, right? Walker gets caught by a primitive cannibal tribe, who tie him up, rip his clothes off and play with his penis. Maybe they are impressed, I don't know, but instead of eating him they imprison him. He witness all kinds freaky stuff while caged, but eventually escapes and takes Pulan, a beautiful local girl, as a hostage (Me Me Lai, also in Lenzi's 'Man From Deep River', made before this, and his 'Eaten Alive', made after). Their relationship is difficult to fathom and depends a lot on which cut of this movie you see. Walker is eventually reunited with his old pal Rolf and then decides to kick some cannibal butt. Really the plot is slim, and who cares? This is just an excuse to see lots of gross stuff and Me Me Lai's breasts. If I was forced to defend this type of movie I really couldn't, but hey, I enjoyed it while it lasted. My favourite cannibal movie is still Sergio Martino's unfairly dismissed 'Mountain Of The Cannibal God', starring Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach, which was released the year after this. It isn't as hardcore as the Lenzi and Deodato movies but it's lots of fun.

A plane full of annoying oil hunters crash their plane deep in a jungle and almost immediately the non-Caucasian members of the expedition are caught and devoured by a band of revolting cannibal natives, leaving the smart, sensible survivalist Ralph stranded with the weenie, whiny, panicky dolt Robert, who gets them completely lost within minutes. They manage to construct a remarkably sturdy raft that is almost instantly crashed into some rocks. The duo is separated and Robert eats some mushrooms that make him vomit, and then he is captured by the always-naked, mostly male cannibal tribe. They tie him up, rip off his clothes, and tug at his genitals. There is more male frontal nudity in this than at a pool party at James Whale's house.

There is, of course, one beautiful female native with no body hair and breast implants who falls for Robert- although not until after he ties her up, leads her around on a leash like a dog, and beats the snot out of her. This is a pretty detestable movie.

The print I watched was called "Last Cannibal World" and it seemed to have all the good bits (the gore and sex, that is) cut out. The tons of cruelty-to-animals (not as much fun as cruelty-to-humans) and the offensive male-female relationship result in a non-extraordinary cannibal movie devoid of any likability. I was never bored, though, and there are lots of scenes of that pathetic blockhead Robert getting humiliated. He's peed on, gets rotten vegetables thrown on him, and it tied up and swung around on a rope because they think he's a bird. And, according to some text at the beginning of the flick, it's all true!

JUNGLE HOLOCAUST is a brutal, no-holds-barred early entry in the bizarre cannibal subgenre of the seventies and early eighties. It's shocking, violent, immoral, sleazy and exploitive. In other words, it delivers.

I can't defend this movie from an ethical standpoint. Even the observation that the live animal slaughter (which is fairly minimal here) is committed by people who apparently were members of a real tribe of primitives, as part of their daily routine doesn't change the fact that it was shot for purely sensational purposes. But it is undeniably intense, suspenseful and creepy.

A plane lands in the Amazon wilds while searching for a couple of lost explorers. The people in the plane wander off a little too far and become separated. The movie then follows one of them, who is captured by a tribe of cannibals and kept prisoner for months. He finally manages to escape and kidnaps a young, beautiful female member of the tribe to use as a guide.

The movie has a gritty realism to it that makes it play almost like a documentary. It captures the gradual transformation of the character from a "civilized" man to a grunting "savage" extremely well, although a scene in which he wins over his female companion by raping her is a little over-the-top, to say the least.

The midsection of the movie is almost entirely devoid of dialog, so the atrocious dubbing is confined mostly to the first and last sequences. Overall, it's a very well-made and unsettling thriller, although it would have been far more suspenseful had there not been a disclaimer at the beginning saying the main character survived to tell his story.

(aka: JUNGLE HOLOCAUST)

Unlike Deodato's later atrocity CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, I can at least stomach this one since only one crocodile is killed and skinned by the natives, and then they eat it afterwards. This is something they've been doing for thousands of years, so who are we (as so-called 'civilized' human beings) to say they can't?

Shot in Malaysia and the Philippines, this one is about an airplane (carrying Massimo Fosci and Ivan Rassimov) that lands in a survey camp in order to follow up on their research, firsthand. The plane is damaged on landing and the camp is found deserted. Of course, it doesn't take rocket science to figure out what happened to them.

As Fosci and Rassimov trek into the jungle, they get separated from the plane and then Rassimov disappears down some rapids, leaving Foschi alone to get captured by the natives. They take him to an underground cavern and rip his clothes of, and then start probing his genitals with a stick. Then they tie him onto a rope and haul him up to the ceiling. Native girl, Me Me Lai gets to watch all this and is fascinated by Foschi. It's love at first sight.

Next, we see a native guy tied up and his arm is cut in order to let the ants eat it all the way to the bone. Cool shot. Then the native boys urinate on Foschi on a ledge high up above his enclosure. He get's all wet. Ha! They keep him there because they are going to use him as bait for the crocodiles, so he escapes and forcibly takes Me Me Lai with him. Along the way, he rapes her in the elephant grass, but it looks more consensual than a rape.

He hooks up with Rassimov who has survived the rapids and they trek back to the plane. Rassimov is badly hurt while My My Lai get's captured by the cannibals and is eaten alive in some scenes that later appeared in Umberto Lenzi's EATEN ALIVE (1980).

In a memorable scene, Foschi cuts open the native guy he has killed and starts to eat his innards, just to let the other cannibals watching know he means business. Himself and Rassimov make it to the plane although Rassimov dies while the plane takes off.

The Shriek DVD includes revealing interviews with Foschi, Rassimov and Deodato, plus film posters and trailers. Rassimov comments that it was far easier to work for Deodato than it was for Lenzi while Foschi and Deodato both say that it was the producers who inserted the 'crocodile getting killed' scene and not Deodato. I think that's a load of bullsh#t, myself and I don't believe one word of it.

Still, it get's a 6 out of 10 for holding my interest and for not being as sh*tty as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.

I guess when you've run out of Westerns, Gialli and Eurocrime films to make you've got to start looking elsewhere for inspiration. Last Cannibal World isn't the first even Italian cannibal film (that being Deep River Savages) and it's not Ruggero Deodato's first jungle film either - that's Gungala, a film with a far less sinister atmosphere than this vileness. What this film did was kick off another genre exploiting free-for-all of cannibal movie clones which isn't what you'd call the best period of Italian cinema.

Some guy actor called Massimo Foschi, who will be spending the majority of this film naked, plays an oil prospector called Robert Foster. Robert in a private plane with jungle expert Ivan Rassimov and two people who will shortly become cannibal fodder because they are not white. Robert's concerned that they can't get in radio contact with the makeshift airfield an advance party of engineers has set up, and things get worse when they tried land and a wheel is knocked off the plane by the long disused radio. That's no good.

The pilot reckons he can get the plane up and running in short order, but then Robert ruins everything by running into the jungle looking for his missing engineers and gets lost. Eventually Ivan Rassimov finds him and they head back to the plane, finding the murdered corpses of the engineers on the way back. Now Robert is in a hurry to leave the place, but the pilot tells him it's too late and they'll have to fly out first thing in the morning. We the audience are then clued in that someone is out there in the dark (via a nice jump scare), but when the female companion of Robert has to go outside to pee, she's captured by the natives waiting outside and things go tits up right away.

Robert shows that he's probably inherited his oil company because he seems to operate without any foresight or intuition. The pilot gets a spike ball to the guts, Robert loses Ivan on some river rapids after they get lost again, then Robert thinks it's a good idea to eat some strange mushrooms before tripping out, getting caught by natives, getting stripped to the nuts and getting his tummy banana tugged on by some backwards cannibals.

They also think he's a bird and dangle him off the ceiling of the cave their in before trying to eat his watch and throwing him in a cave with some birds while periodically throwing slops at him or peeing on him. Robert also gets to meet Me Me Lai, who mistakes the universal hand signal for 'I need food' for 'give me a handy'. Me Me stands out a mile not only because she's the only cannibal with all her teeth, she also seems to have a very good plastic surgeon judging by those fake boobs!

We spend rather a long time watching the natives being primitive and eating snakes/crocodiles, stock footage of animals eating other animals, and the natives being savage by having a rival native's arm eaten by ants before eventually escapes with Me Me and the romance/lengthy chase sequence begins! Turns out the most romantic thing you can do with a native is punch her directly in the face.

If you remove the animal cruelty from this one (and luckily my copy is missing the croc eating scene, but keeps the gore intact), you have a decent jungle adventure which thinks it's being clever in showing one civilised man's descent into savagery as the only way he can survive his ordeal in the jungle, although it's all just an excuse for gore and violence. The animal stuff is kept to a minimum thankfully, but that would be remedied in Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, a truly nauseating exercise without any redeeming features.

The goriest part of this film is reserved for Me Me, who is rewarded for leaving the tribe by being served up with a bat confit, grub ganache, native drool foam, bamboo tuille and a crocodile jus. This won the tribe Masterchef: Cannibals in 1977.