Mondo cannibale

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.

Being a great fan of the prolific Spanish Exploitation deity Jess Franco, I always believe negative feedback to a Franco flick I haven't seen to be exaggerated. It is undeniable that the man's impressive repertoire of about 200 directed movies includes masterpieces as well as big-time stinkers (and everything in-between). However, I do tend to enjoy even those Franco films that most people find awful. This is not the case with this film, however. "Mondo Cannibale" (aka. "Barbarian Goddess"/"White Cannibal Queen"/"Cannibals"/"Mondo Cannibale 3") is Franco's attempt at the Cannibal sub-genre which, with its gruesome and uncompromising films, was very successful in Italy at the time. Right after the abysmal French "Terreur Cannibale" (in which Franco was also involved), "Mondo Cannibale" is the second-to-worst Cannibal film I have ever seen and it has replaced "Sadomania" in its rank as the worst Franco-flick I've seen. "Mondo Cannibale" is, by the way, not to be confused with Umberto Lenzi's "Il Paese Del Sesso Selvaggio" (1972) and Ruggero Deodato's "Ultimo Mondo Cannibale" (1979), two classic Italian Cannibal films which are titled "Mondo Cannibale I&II" in many countries. This abysmal Franco flick is therefore often referred to as "Mondo Cannibale 3".

For whatever reason, a scientist (Al Cliver) brings his wife and young daughter with him on an expedition deep in a jungle filled with hungry cannibals. His wife gets eaten, and he escapes without his daughter (!), after his hand has been chopped off. Years later, the scientist comes back for his daughter, along with a couple of bored rich people who don't believe in his story and are just there to have fun. The cannibals are in the meanwhile, worshiping the daughter (who has blossomed into a beautiful bare-bosomed blonde)as a 'white goddess'...

There is so much wrong with this film that I hardly know where to begin: The jungle is not a jungle. It is a very neat assembly of palm-trees, probably somewhere in Spain or Southern France. It is so neat that the expedition is capable of going there in cars. Sometimes, one can even see Western buildings in the background. The 'savages'are entirely white guys. Some of them sport mustaches, sideburns and hip hair-cuts. Other wear watches or gold rings. Even though they clearly hate 'whites' (which is odd since they are white themselves), the cannibals declare the white girl their goddess on sight. The child, by the way, has brown hair, which magically becomes blond when she grows up. The main hero is apparently cowardly enough to leave his child daughter behind with a bunch of cannibals, but insanely brave enough to go back there after years, with two other men and three women to face the entire cannibal tribe... I could go on and on about the film's inconsistencies; however, the incredible logical errors are actually the most fun factor of the film. Sadly, all the rest is very boring. The seemingly never-ending monotonous drum banging is annoying as hell.

The Cannibal genre has many great Italian films to offer for anyone interested. The genre's only true masterpiece is Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980), but there are many other gruesome and disturbing ones to watch, most notably Deodato's "Ultimo Mondo Cannibale" and all of Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal films. Jess Frano's take on the genre is a disaster. The budget was obviously tiny, but that's hardly an excuse, as Franco has proved on many occasions that he is perfectly capable of making great films on a tiny budget. The man has to be saluted for dabbling in about any Exploitation/Horror sub-genre imaginable. This film is still awful and hard to sit through. Not even Franco's muse and real-life wife Lina Romay can save this. One to be avoided, unless you are writing a book on Jess Franco.

White Cannibal Queen (1980)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Al Cliver plays a researcher who heads into the jungle with his wife and young daughter. They are attacked by a group of cannibals with the wife being eaten and the daughter kidnapped but Cliver escapes with only an arm cut off. Flash forward ten years and Cliver heads back into the jungle to locate his daughter who is now a goddess to the cannibals. It's true that Franco would be hired to jump on a bandwagon whenever a certain genre got hot and that's the case with this French film that tries hard to follow in the footsteps of various cannibal films from Italy. If you hated those Italian films due to the graphic nature of the violence, which included animals killings then you might get something more out of this sense it's violence free towards animals. With that out of the way this film is still pretty bland as Franco seems to forget (or didn't know) what made those Italian films work and that's that they played out well as adventure films. That's not the case here as the story is pretty bland and there's nothing to really keep you glued to the film. The performances are all rather bland but the attractive cast does feature Cliver, Lina Romay, Robert Foster and Pamela Stanford. Sabrina Siani plays the grown up daughter and at least walks around nude to keep things moving. The incredibly bad English dubbing makes for some laughs especially when Franco shows up sounding like a cowboy from Texas. The cannibals themselves are all laughable with their horrible body paint and silly dances but hey, this is a low-budget Franco film.

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.