L'esclave blonde

This Italian film with once again more alternative titles than actual dialogue is a mid-80's exploitation attempt by enthusiast director Mario Gariazzo, who obviously was deeply impressed by the work of his fellow Italian filmmakers Rugero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi. It's a supposedly true story (yeah…sure) about an 18-year-old girl who visits her parents' plantation in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Shortly after her arrival, her parents are brutally murdered and beheaded during a boat ride. The poor cutie is taken prisoner by a savage and primitive tribe. During two years, she's has to take part in traditional and barbaric rites of this tribe. She's sold to the richest man in town (price = one goat and a chicken), has to work and, eventually, she escapes with the head warrior she has fallen in love with.

Now, 'Amazonia' isn't a bad little flick but it tries to be so much bigger than it actually is. The entire production seems to shout out: 'Look, we're as good as Cannibal Holocaust!!!' The opening sequences, in which the beautiful jungle is shown guided by a great score, is an exact copy of Deodato's film and throughout the whole film, the same documentary style is used. The film could have done without these pretentious aspects. At his best, Amazonia is like a fairly reasonable crossover between Cannibal Holocaust and Umberto Lenzi's 'Deep River Savages' (in which an Englishman spends years among a primitive tribe in New-Guinea). It's not nearly as memorable as the majority of Italian sleaze classics and that's merely due to the atrocious acting of Elvire Audrey. There's some great gore and terrific authentic sleaze to enjoy, though.

WHITE SLAVE has some decent elements and originality going for it. The story is about a girl who's lost in the jungle after her boat is attacked and her parents are killed. She ends up becoming part of a tribe because she has no choice and can't escape. One of the tribesman takes her as his wife, and he ends up being a pretty decent guy, as savage tribesman go...But she's having no parts of it because she believes it's his fault for the death of her parents. As she learns the tribal language, and her "husband" learns English, the lines of communication open up, and the death of her parents may not be what they seem... Definitely not as memorable as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or even CANNIBAL FEROX - but the twist in the story is a welcome change to an otherwise rather straight-forward genre. Not nearly heavy enough on the red stuff for most "gorehounds" tastes, but still worth a look. 7/10

Although not technically a cannibal movie (the main tribe are 'head-hunters'; cannibals feature very briefly but no cannibalism is shown), Amazonia shares enough similarities with the infamous gut-munching gore classics of the 70s and 80s to be considered part of the genre.

Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) is a beautiful 18-year old taken captive by a group of savages after her parents are killed on a river trip. Sold to a member of the tribe for the sum of 'a goose, a water-dog and a turtle', Catherine endures terrible suffering until she is helped by Umukai, a warrior who treats her with a bit of respect. After many months spurning Umukai, believing that he was the one who killed her mum and dad, she discovers that others were in fact responsible. Falling in love with her friendly native hunk, she convinces him to help her take revenge on those really responsible.

Amazonia is pretty close in theme to The Man From Deep River, Umberto Lenzi's classic from 1972, but doesn't quite match that one in terms of quality. However, with a fair amount of cheesy gore (several be-headings, blow-darts in the face, some bloody bullet wounds) and loads of female nudity (courtesy of Audray and the native women, some of whom are pretty foxy), fans of this kind of thing should find just about enough to enjoy in this flick to make it worth a watch.

I have just watched this for the first time, I started watching thinking oh no, another Cannibal Holocaust wannabe, with it's VERY similar music and opening titles.

Fortunatly the whole central section of the movie is totally different, apart from the obvious facts of being set in the Amazon.

It's actually quite a well written (for the genre) tale of a girl who is dragged into the Amazon and lives with a tried there.

There is a lot of nudity but for the more part it doesn't feel gratuitous but rather just what you would expect.

There is some blood and some sexual situations but mostly not 'too' exploitationary.

On the whole this is a film I think I'd like to watch again, although it's not without it's faults which include the dubbing and some VERY gratuitous animal stock footage.

There are some interesting twists and turns in the movie too which makes a change, and no HUGE leaps of logic plot-wise. It also makes a far better point about western man being the real cannibals, far better than Cannibal Holocaust.

6/10

This is basically another one of those cannibal/jungle movies. It's true this movie is nothing but gore and nudity, but that's all you should be expecting from this kind of movie.

A young girls parents are killed and decapitated (in a fairly gory scene) and she is taken prisoner by a group of headhunters. They strip her and trade her as a slave, so she spends the rest of the movie running through the jungle naked. Unlike a lot of these kinds of movies it actually does have a plot and it's supposedly 'based on a true story'. Definately worth a rental.

If you use words like "atrocious banal" then you probably will not like this movie.