La Dea Cannibale

This Spain/Italy/France co-production results to be a scary movie about cruel indigenous cannibalistic tribes , it is filled with some genuine fright , horror and doom . A man (Al Cliver) who lost an arm and his family -his wife and daughter- , while cruising through the jungle when their boat was attacked by a tribe of mangler cannibals . Later on , he organizes an expedition with some unfortunate travelers (Lina Romay , Olivier Mathot , Pamela Stanford, Antonio Mayans) and he goes back ten years later to bring back his teenager daughter who was held captive by the heinous tribe , only to find that she grew up into a beautiful blonde woman (Sabrina Siani) who became the cannibals' queen . Where the natives are pleased to Meat you! Kidnapped by cannibals! Raised to eat human flesh! .She grew up to be her queen !. Now her father is looking for her !.

A ruthless , barbaric , authentically disgusting flick packing inexplicable disturbing occurrences , shocks , thrills , suspense , chills , hair-rising events with horrible mangling and being extremely gory . It follows in the wake of the cannibalist films from Umbert Lenzi , and, especially , the really a brutal fake documentary : ¨Ruggiero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust¨ that resulted to be the mother of all cannibal films , the most savage , the most controversial movie ever made and the most horrific tale in modern history . Mondo cannibale (1980) is a below average yarn with too much chilling scenes , filled with sleaziness and non-sense of style . It is full of killings , nudism , sexual violence , disfigured people, grisly murders by means of slashing , ripping to death , killings in cold blood executed by ominous cannibals , loathsome and loads of blood and gore . A mysoginist movie with plenty of nudism , sadistic frames , graphic cannibalism , explicit scenes of violence and made in extremely scary style , no for squeamish . This Terror/Cannibal Movie displays lousy special effects with cutting , chopping , hacking , beheading , stomach ripped out and other cannibalistic frames .Stars a second-clas cass with B-Italian actor Al Cliver and the beautiful Sabrina Siani who wonderfully dresses in thong . And involving some familiar faces from Jesús Franco , such as : his real wife Lina Romay as Candy Coster , Shirley Knight , Olivier Mathot , Pamela Stanford Antonio Mayans and as usual , a cameo by Jess Frank himself as a swindler.

Mediocre cinematography by Juan Soler filmed on location in Serra de Sintra, Portugal ,where Franco shot several films ; however , being faded by the odd colouring of the old VHS, I would like to see this get remastered on blu-ray . It contains anticlimatic musical score composed by composer Roberto Pregadio . A disconcerting horror movie with no much interest and badly made by Jesús Franco. He often used a lot of pseudonyms , among the aliases he used, apart from the names Jess Franco or Franco Manera, were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford Brown, David Khune , Toni Falt, James P. Johnson, Charlie Christian, David Tough , among others. In many of the more than 180 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer, cinematographer and editor. Jesús's influence has been notable all over Europe . Jess was a Stajanovist, restless writer, producer, director who played and realized over 200 pictures. His career spans over 50 years with a few successes and lots of flops, making all . From his huge body of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless directors of Spanish cinema and often releasing several titles at the same time. Many of his films have had problems in getting released, and others have been made directly for video. More than once his staunchest supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one or more of his older films. Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when most of his colleagues tried to please the government administration. He broke up with all that and got the independence he was seeking and getting , at times great eye for composition. He was a hard-working filmmaker, directing a lot of ridiculous movies. However, making some acceptable films , such as : ¨We are 18 years old¨, ¨The awful Dr Orloff¨, ¨The Bloody Judge¨ , ¨Count Dracula¨, ¨99 women¨, ¨Parxismus, ¨The Blood of Fumanchu¨, ¨Faceless¨ and a few others. He always went upstream in an ephemeral industry that fed opportunists and curbed the activity of many professionals. But time doesn't pass in vain, and Jesus' production diminished since the 90s , but he went on working untin his death.

With the many successes in the cannibal genre by his Italian counterparts in the early 80's, it was inevitable that Jess Franco would make a jungle movie of his own. Despite actually having some acting talent at hand for once, Jess Franco still fails to deliver the goods that made such movies as "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal Ferox" cult classics. If you are a huge fan of the jungle/cannibal genre then you will enjoy the unintended humor in this film, elsewise, you might as well let it keep on collecting dust on the video store shelf.

Thank you for this great review. But I need to mention that I Cannibali is not the movie you watched, but the Jess Franco flick Mondo Cannibali, aka Cannibals. There's some comments there, describing Mondo Cannibale as a boring movie. I agree. Certainly not a masterpiece in Jess Francos collection. Don't bother, watch Cannibal Holocaust again instead.

This was the third jungle cannibal film I've watched from Jess Franco. Easily the best of the lot, but the competition for that crown isn't much. Franco was simply riding the Cannibal phase, and it simply shows.

I guess, I would say this low-rent production was enjoyable in parts. Loved the slow-motion cannibal munching and the nauseating camera zooms. Those poor ladies. Franco really throws caution to the wind. Although gore fx is a real mixed bag, it works, in spite of some laughable moments.

This includes hilarious dubbing. Even the birds are dubbed?! It was strange hearing cannibals speaking fluent English. Using words like exterminate. But even then, they weren't the most convincing looking tribal cannibals. Nice make-up, but they sure did smear it at times, when eating alive their victims.

The plot throws out many senseless developments. I liked how 'everything' suddenly comes back all at once from our prototginist's lost memory. And how about these people deciding to tag along on a dangerous jungle expedition. They thought they were going on a tea party?! It ain't no walk in the park either... even though some scenes (the nicely trimmed vegetation) look it. Stiff acting and repetitive actions galore.

Surprisingly the funky soundtrack is what I think is the best thing here. Well, I guess I can't leave out Sabrina Siani and Lina Romay either.

Jess Franco fans like myself are kind of like drug addicts, always watching another film, hoping against hope to again capture the initial rush of something like "Succubus", "Venus in Furs", or "Eugenie--Story of her Journey into Perversion". Usually, we just wind up with mediocre dreck that leaves us vaguely dissatisfied. Sometimes though we REALLY get burned, like with this film. To be fair jungle action films are not Franco's forte--his films often fail to maintain a basic suspension of disbelief that they were NOT filmed in European zoo. Cannibalism is not Franco's thing either, for instance, he doesn't seem to realize that even cannibals COOK their food before they eat it. Franco actually used the same long, slow-motion takes of people eating raw flesh in extreme close-ups at the climax of one of his WIP movies, but in that context it was pretty sickening (if that's a plus). Here though it's just tedious and dull--the only way this rates a "99 on the vomit meter," as Joe Bob Briggs supposedly said, is if extreme boredom causes you to somehow throw up.

Naturally, with cannibal scenes this laughable the film is nowhere near as potent as one of your better Italian cannibal epics (although they don't slaughter any real animals, at least). But one thing I certainly would expect from a Franco film is sex and nudity--and that's were it REALLY disappoints. Lina "Mrs. Jess Franco" Romay is in the cast, but Franco uncharacteristically keeps her under wraps except for a brief t-shot when she's being eaten (literally). She is by far the most talented actor in the movie, but still what a waste of an actress who had one of the best bodies around in those days. You have the opposite problem with Sabrina Siani, playing the same barely-legal jungle girl character played by Alice Arno, Katja Beinert, and Ursula Fellehner in other Franco movies. Siani spends the entire movie half-naked, but she's such a terrible actress even that gets boring, and her one sex scene can best be described as somnambulistic. I also couldn't help wondering how the dark-haired little girl in the beginning grew up to be a blonde teenager (albeit with dark roots). Where did she find peroxide in the jungle? (Of course, she had to be blonde or this "white goddess" wouldn't have looked any whiter than the obviously European "cannibals").

But I'm forgetting something--oh yeah, the plot. Well, it's pretty much the exact same plot as "Diamonds of Kilimajaro", but with more inept "cannibalism" scenes and less gratuitous nudity. Watch that one instead.