Horror caníbal

Still one of the funniest movies of all time, assuming you're not shocked by cheap gore. Never mind the "20 scenes of extreme brutality" mentioned in the introductory "warning" (ROLL UP! ROLL UP!), there are at least 30 scenes of extreme hilarity....

If you're looking for a good cannibal flick, "Cannibal Holocaust" is the one - still pretty dumb, but good. "Ferox", on the other hand, is the one to choose if you want a good bad-taste laugh. There are way too many hilarious moments to list, but I love the central premise that Lorraine de Selle is going into the jungle to prove that cannibalism DOESN'T exist, and NEVER HAS. Right - I just walked home from the pub and didn't get into a fight, that proves that no one has ever got in a fight on the way home from the pub. And no one who's seen this film will ever forget John "Giovanni Radice" Morghen's acting as he wails the immortal line, "then...THEN THEY ATE HIS GENITALS!!!"

The commentary track on the DVD is fantastic - Lenzi is a hilariously arrogant idiot, while Morghen's camp, bitchy comments had me in hysterics.

But don't believe this nonsense about how "Ferox" is "sickening" for showing a snake crushing something to death, or South American tribes killing a turtle. Have you never watched a documentary about snakes on the BBC or the Discovery Channel? Guess what - they show them crushing things too! And if you don't believe that nature documentary crews actually feed "innocent" animals to predators just to get good footage, you're very naive. As for the turtle -- these tribal guys live IN THE JUNGLE, ok? "But you don't have to show them actually cutting the head off a live turtle!" Well first of all, the fact that it's a "live" turtle is neither here nor there - if it was a dead one, it would still have been killed, duh. And secondly, what? We can eat our turtle soup, but we don't want to watch it being made? Grow up.

I love this flick, so am I perverted or even totally weird?!? None of both, because "Cannibal Ferox" is a great guilty pleasure and an excellent stare-if-you-dare-movie! It is banned in 31 countries and there are truly good reasons for that: nearly no film delivers such an immense load of explicit gore, blood and guts, castration and sadism as this one features! But even though you like to hear it or not, Lenzi´s film is pretty suspense-packed, full of dramatic and entertaining from beginning till the end! Once more the a whole zoo of animals was slaughtered and the most disgusting take is when in a nearly heart-braking scene a little tethered and despaired screaming anteater gets strangulated by a huge Anaconda! However this shot has an almost symbolic character in view of the plot... The cast includes such exploitation-greats like Robert Kerman ("Eaten Alive"), John Morghen ("Cannibal Apocalypse"), Perry Pirkanen ("Cannibal Holocaust") and in the first line the wonderful Zora Kerova ("The New York Ripper"), who makes some really bad experiences with meathooks at the unhappy end..! Faint-hearted persons will surely turn away in deeply disgust, however all those who threw their political correctness over board may surely enjoy this sick symphony of sheer cruelty!

The film begins with the murder of a drug addict in an unknown apartment by some gangsters looking for a man named Mike Logan. As the police begin their investigation into the shooting, the action relocates to the Paraguayan jungle, where two students, Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Rudy (Danilo Mattei), and one tag-along Pat (Zora Kerova) are making their way into the heart of the jungle looking for native tribes who have been accused of cannibalism. Gloria is out to disprove the claims of cannibalism for her dissertation, and after they come across two mangled bodies of tribesmen, they also come across Mike Logan carrying his injured partner Joe (Walter Lucchini), who both claim to have been attacked by savage cannibals.

Between 1977 and 1981 there was a huge boom in cannibal films. They boasted exotic locations, horrific gore, real animal killings, and the threat of the unknown in the primitive tribes. It was Ferox's director Umberto Lenzi who kick-started the sub-genre with Deep River Savages in 1972, but they only really hit their stride in 1977, when the Grindhouse theatres were at their most popular. The cannibal genre died out pretty quickly, thankfully, as they represent everything that is ugly about the horror genre, and Cannibal Ferox, possibly the second most notorious after Cannibal Holocaust, is no exception.

The gore and violence is by no means convincing, or even disturbing, but it is clear from the off that the film's sole purpose is to be more repulsive than anything else before it. Multiple cocks are hacked off (and one is eaten - yummy), a woman is lifted into the air with fish- hooks through the breasts, there is an eye-gouging, and of course, no cannibal film would be complete without a bit of the ol' brain eating. This is all well and good and what can be expected from an Italian exploitation film at the height of the nasties era, but the animal killings are simply needless.

I always found myself defending Cannibal Holocaust for the animal cruelty, as that is a genuinely good film, and the horrific animal scenes really do add to the horrible and deeply unsettling atmosphere. But after seeing Ferox, I realised there is really no excuse for it. Regardless of the film's quality, there is no place for the pointless killing of animals. Radice refused to wield the knife during the pig- killing scene, and in the DVD commentary, director Lenzi said 'Robert De Niro would have done it!', to which Radice replied 'Robert De Niro would have told you to f**k off!'

Anyway, the film really is pretty damn awful. Why the action keeps shifting back to New York is anyone's guess. Mike is a wanted drug pusher that legged it off to Paraguay in search of cocaine and a fortune in gemstones, but surely knowing this is enough? There is a rescue attempt near the end that looks like joining the two stems together, but nothing comes of it. It seems to be there only to add a few more minutes onto the running time, allowing the film to render itself a feature. As you would expect, the acting/script/story is guff, but the strange thing is the moral message it seems to be putting out. When it revealed that Mike was lying and it was in fact him that attacked the tribe (shock horror), it seems to be a 'don't judge a book by it's cover' type message. But when the tribe acts out their revenge, they revel in the torturing.

Well anyway, the real torture victim was me, who had to sit through this. There's a few more cannibal films to get through for the nasties project (maybe I'll leave them to Marc), and although I'll welcome (if that's the right word) another viewing of Cannibal Holocaust, I have to say that I would be happy not to have to sit through another cannibal film. And there's always the Mondo sub-genre I suppose!

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This film is much the same as Cannibal Holocaust. If it weren't for the needless animal killing in the name of 'shock' ("Ooh look at us, we're hardcore, we've added real death to our films") these films would make their way onto my dusty classics shelf - I'm a huge fan of cannibal films and zombies. But as it stands, it's another example of shock horror clutching at the last straws of the pile in a desperate effort to make a poor film generate more hype. To sum up, a crusty gore flick with limited appeal. A fan of 70's gore should give this a try, but anyone with modern ethics and tastes should pick something a little better written for their popcorn-fest.

i'm not a naive person. i realize that animals in nature are killed and sometimes slowly. i just don't understand what it had to do with the film. why did they have to have 5 minutes of an innocent animal screaming before the huge snake finally coiled tight enough to cut off it's air. i love cannibal, zombie, and monster movies. i enjoy movies of humans getting killed. you wanna know why? because i know at the end of the day they took home a paycheck no matter how small it was. they got to get up, take a shower and go home. they didn't end up in a digestive system for real for somebody's (mainly mine) entertainment. that part of the movie in no way, shape, or form had anything to do with any part of the movie. it wasn't like blondy could send the little sucker to get help or anything. i'm also just wondering if maybe one of the sickos that made this movie just didn't add in some extra audio of the little guy screaming just for his own "i killed the neighbors cat last night mom" ya yas. this might seem stupid but i'm just saying the people signed up to be killed, the little animal didn't. just some food for thought.