Matar es sobrevivir

With a title like CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE, one might go into this movie expecting an all-out war between humanity and roving bands of flesh-eaters, seeking out human snacks. Well, that would have been great. Instead, we get a few hungry people chomping on a few necks.

John Saxon is serviceable as the Vietnam vet plagued by anthropophagic flashbacks about his former military comrades. Also, the idea of a viral, cannibalistic epidemic is a good one, hearkening back to Cronenberg's RABID. So, the story isn't bad, as long as you don't expect it to live up to it's overblown title...

This is a movie that follows a lot of the conventions of a zombie movie, the main difference being that instead of being dead, these flesh-eaters are alive, just taken over by a virus that turns them into deranged cannibals. It's an interesting concept, and this film features a lot of interesting scenes that you just don't see portrayed too often, such as a bizarre molestation in a film theater, and a long, tense standoff with a crazed gunman in a resale store.

This movie shows the influence of Dawn of the Dead all over it, from the resale store biker rampage and standoff to the final scenes, in which a group of four with the exact same gender/ethnic makeup as in DotD hole up against outside invaders. The interesting twist this time is that THEY are the pursued flesh-eaters, rather than the other way around.

This movie, while having rich and deep cheese deposits, also actually has some quality to it. It sustains a creepy and tense tone tied around John Saxon's growing obsession with consuming human flesh, and his struggle and fear about giving into those impulses. Saxon carries off his 'upright soldier' persona so well that one both empathizes with his struggle, and fears what will happen once his intensity is channeled into being evil. The direction is actually very good, with many shots carefully composed to create and sustain a great deal of tension and menace. And then there's just the story, which covers the first days of a viral outbreak as it begins to spread and people begin to wake up to what is going on, which is also pretty fascinating.

There's also an additional layer of tension to the movie (compared to a traditional zombie movie) in that after someone's been bitten, you aren't sure WHEN they will start turning into a crazed flesh-eater. In a regular zombie movie, they're dead until they wake up again, here they're a normal person until suddenly they just snap, which is cool.

Though this is supposed to be an 'extreme gore classic,' it's pretty tame by today's standards. When your big gore payoff shot has been done to comic effect in Death Becomes Her, the edge is pretty much gone.

Okay, now onto the individually delightful cheese elements: Stock helicopter footage opens the picture. There should be some kind of film festival of movies that incorporate unrelated stock footage, the supreme champion obviously being Hell of the Living Dead.

A guy pets a dog with an obvious explosive around its neck. He explodes—and then the funky disco music begins! What's more, the music was actually pretty good! Please note: potential cannibals should not keep huge slabs of unwrapped bloody meat in their fridge. I mean, obviously everyone does, but if you suffer from cannibalistic tendencies… A young girl comes onto John Saxon (who wouldn't?) by wanting to borrow a hair dryer. Her hair is not wet. She then reveals herself as an unhinged psychotic while blowing him (um, with the dryer) while he's trying to have an important phone conversation (with another unhinged psychotic), which would earn a punch in the mouth from me (but I am not susceptible to nubile vixens). Motorcycle chase in warehouse/resale store! Hard-bitten detective asks about mad gunman: "Is he subversive? Queer? Black? Commie?" Uptight mother advises daughter to stop "acting like a hussy!" They set real rats on fire! That's not nice.

There are EXTENSIVE background materials on the DVD, one of which tells two interesting stories: 1) That John Saxon couldn't understand enough of the script (badly translated from Italian) to know that he was in an extreme gore flick, and 2) Radice tells an incredible story about refusing to kill a real pig, leading to his "accidentally" almost severing an assistant's hand with a meat cleaver. Oops. But the docs get boring pretty quickly.

Hey, there are lot of other reviews of bad and cheesy movies (plus a lot of good movies) on my website, Cinema de Merde, which you can find through the URL in my email address.

There's a good deal of talent in this cannibal flick. Bringing cannibalism into an urban setting and adding in a number of action sequences makes this feel more like a zombie movie. Antonio Margheriti does a good job directing here. We get several quality shots and sequences. Plus, we get fantastic performances from John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, and Giovanni Lombardo Radice who really sink their teeth into their roles.

However, the script holds this one back. The dialogue is bad. The characters are poorly written. The positive part is that it makes the characters unpredictable, and it's hard to know what will happen next. But the negative part is that it's difficult to know who to root for. There are no intuitive emotional consequences to people's decisions. And the film missed a chance to say something about war or mental illness or some meaningful commentary about society.

At the end of the day, this was a fun watch if you're into the red stuff.

Renting this movie I thought it would be the usual cannibal carnage only set in the city and it was but with a surprising difference it had a zombie type virus in it as well.Two of my favourite genre's in one and I thoroughly enjoyed it.Its about a group of vietnam vets who return to America with a cannibal virus and anyone they attack also become cannibals.It stars John Saxon,Tony King and Giovanni Lombardo Radice(my favourite actor)as the vietnam vets. I recommend this movie to any cannibal and/or zombie movie fan so check it out if you can find it.

A cannibal-movie that actually tries and succeeds to be different. This movie transcends the cannibal genre and becomes something else. You'll have to get past the silly & inept Vietnam opening-scene, but then this movie turns into an urban tale of virus-outbreak. A cannibal-virus, that is. There's some violence, there's some drama, there's some nudity, there's some very nice gore and there are four cannibal-fugitives on the run. Awesome mixture that works! Add to that a satisfying ending, and we've got a hit! A hit with John Saxon in it, no less. "Cannibal Apocalypse" indeed feels, at times, a bit like Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), but the one movie that kept coming to my mind was David Cronenberg's "Rabid" (1977). So if you're tired of all those "half naked cannibals eating human flesh and slaughtering animals in the jungle"-flicks, and if Umberto Lenzi's "Nightmare City" (1980) just made you laugh instead of anything else, then go watch Antonio Margheriti's "Cannibal Apocalypse" (aka "Invasion of the Flesh Hunters"). And make 100% sure you get a hold of the uncut version.