Mondo cannibale

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.

I think this movie is the same as rhe 1979 Franco Prosperi listed in the "Mondo Cannibale" listing. It is indeed a Jesus Franco movie. And it is indeed badder-than-bad !!! If you get bored, count the screenplay inconcinstensies.

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.

This film was released in 1980 ..around the time most Italian cannibal films were being filmed and released. This was possible the worst one I've seen next to cannibal terror ( and both films share footage) the so called cannibal tribe in this movie is more like a bunch of average Joe's wearing towels and clown makeup and I've noticed no women ( more like a sausage party than a primitive cannibal tribe) the acting is horrible and the plot wreaks but i still find it enjoyable in a comedic way. And I've seen Al Cliver in a lot of other great films like Zombie...the beyond...rulers of the city and joe d'amatos endgame

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.