Chasseur de l'enfer

I am a huge admirer of the prolific Spanish Exploitation deity Jess Franco, whose impressive filmography includes over 190 titles so far. It is undeniable that the man has made masterpieces and total crap alike, and his attempts to cash in on the popular Italian Cannibal-sub-genre belong rather to the latter category. This movie of the delicate title SEXO Cannibal (aka. THE DEVIL HUNTER) of 1980 is better than his absolutely terrible other Cannibal flick from the same year, MONDO CANNIBALE (which is not to be confused with Umberto Lenzi's PAESE DELLO SESSO SELVAGGIO and Ruggero Deodato's ULTIMO MONDO CANNIBALE, two genre-classics which are often referred to as MONDO CANNIBALE 1&2). SEXO Cannibal is somewhat interesting for its epitomizing Jess Franco's habit to shamelessly ignore any logic and build up movies that exist almost entirely of sleaze and violence. The film is furthermore notable as it is one of the three Franco-films that landed on the UK's infamous "Video Nasty" list of banned movies, making him the most prolific Video Nasty maker alongside the Italian genius and 'Godfather of Gore' Lucio Fulci, who also made three films that landed on the list.

A model (Ursula Buschfellner) is kidnapped by criminals who ask for a ransom of 6 million dollars. Her agent asks 'nam vet and soldier of fortune Weston (Al Cliver) to free her. Out of all places, the criminals hold her hostage on an island full of savages who habitually feed young women to a rape-hungry cannibal fiend. Needless to say that the island is full of hot women with exhibitionist tendencies...

The film is fun to watch for its shameless sleaze and for the gore (though the latter wasn't as extreme as I had expected). It is also fun to watch for the lack of logic, and some parts that are downright absurd. Weston's sidekick, for example, is the wussiest 'Nam vet I've ever seen on film. The guy starts crying whenever he enters the jungle. Franco obviously picked up on the 'Nam-trauma' theme that was so popular in US-cinema in the late 70s and 80s here, and since he is Jess Franco he decided to exaggerate it more than a little bit. Overall, this isn't one of Franco's worst 80s movies, but it certainly far from being one of his better ones. Personally, I would state that Franco is best when making films about deranged Scientists or Nymphomaniac/Lesbian Vampires, his contributions to the Cannibal-genre are rather forgettable. SEXO Cannibal is still worth the time for my fellow fans of the man, who are most likely not gonna expect intriguing story lines and breathtaking suspense anyway.

I thought this would be a jungle cannibal flick, but it turned out to be something else altogether. It takes about a half hour of boredom to really get going, but once it does it's okay. It's certainly plenty gross in parts, especially the close-ups of the creature's blood-smeared mouth.

The helicopter crashing scene and the scene where the hero is "climbing up a cliff" are particularly hilarious.

Perhaps I'm more favorably disposed to this movie than to the similar Jess Franco effort "Cannibals" because I only rented this one instead of purchasing the DVD. Regardless though, while "Cannibals" is pure dreck, this movie is kind of entertaining, mostly in spite of itself. A group of kidnappers snatch a bimbo starlet (Ursula Fellehner) and hold her captive on an island. They are pursued by two hired mercenaries (Franco regulars Al Cliver and Anthony Mayans). While the two groups fight amongst themselves, the girl falls into the clutches of a local tribe of "cannibals" (half of which are African, and the other half obviously white Southern Europeans), who plan to sacrifice her to their "god", a tall black guy with ping-pong ball eyes. (Franco famously, if very unconvincingly, once accused the movie "Predator" of stealing his plot idea from this movie).

The best part of this flick is the goofball dialogue and dubbing. Anthony Mayan's character, for instance, talks like Gabby Hayes for some reason and keeps having Vietnam flashbacks, even though he looks a little young to have been in 'Nam. One of the kidnappers shouts obscenities at everybody and seems genuinely disturbed by the "wild vegetation" (he makes Giovanni Lombardi Radici's character from "Cannnibal Ferox" seemed well-mannered and soft-spoken by comparison). When asked by reporters what she thinks of the men in their, country Fellehner's character responds in true bimbo fashion, "I have no opinion of men. I just love them." Later one of the mercenaries tells her stay put. Her response: "Huh?!"

Naturally, the special effects are laughably un-special, and the public domain copy I saw was obviously ported from a Japanese source since it "optically fogs" Fellehner's pubic region (which is quite a job since the German Playboy Playmate barely spends a minute of her screen time with any clothes on). But despite the rampant (albeit partially "fogged")nudity from Fellehner and other assorted bimbos, this movie really fails to live up to its foreign title "Sexo Cannibal" (the cannibal doesn't get any sex, nor does anyone else really). Amazingly, this rather tame item was one of only two Franco films that were banned in Britain back in the "video nastie" days.

Of course, I'm sure an overpriced "uncut" and subtitled version will someday appear for all the spendthrift masochists, i.e. Jess Franco fans, out there. But frankly I don't think they can improve on the unintentional hilarity of this public domain version (aside from "unfogging" Fellehner's pubes, of course).

Lesser known but full-blooded Jess Franco exploitation that cashes in on the popular early 80's trend of European cannibal movies. A successful actress is kidnapped by a gang of thugs whilst shooting a movie in the South-African jungle. She's kept prisoner and gets sexually abused frequently, but this is only the beginning of her misery as the jungle homes a native tribe with strange and primitive beliefs. Their God is a spooky, flesh-eating madman with his eyeballs hanging out of his sockets. Yikes!! "Devil Hunter" features some beautiful filming locations, good atmospheric music and a whole lot of authentic euro-sleaze. Still, there are many tedious moments and redundant sub plots. The amount of gore is limited but several sequences are truly nauseating, notably the one where the lead-cannibal bites off a poor girl's labia and devour it! Oh my God!! According to the VHS-cover it was her heart, but I doubt her heart was located between the legs. Proceed at your own risk!

When a man who doesn't have Alzheimer's can't remember how many films he's made, he probably is the world's most prolific director after all. That man is Jesus Franco, the king of so-called 'eurotrash'. His 1980 flick Devil Hunter is as rushed, opaque, stupid, lazy and exploitative in the truest sense of the word (the film's title is misleading, for starters) as any other Franco film I've seen. That makes it sound pretty awful, and it is... Yet Franco does have some kind of inimitable sensibility, a generous way with the baldly outrageous, with nudity and sleaze and violence, and even with his stupid cheap editing which tries to pave over the extreme haste with which all his films were made. The mix of all these elements causes you to ride his films out, even while you're mostly waiting for them to end because they're so very tedious.

Devil Hunter is nigh on incomprehensible for the first half an hour. The kidnap by strangers of a white woman who seems to be a model or film star is intercut with a bunch of native action in South America. There's lots of naked writhing, dancing, and endless repeated zoom-ins on an ugly totem pole. You need to get used to the repetitive zoom-ins and the technique of cutting back to the same shot about three times in a row right away, as these are Franco's main methods of extending a film out to feature length.

The monster who looks like the totem pole is actually kind of scary. He has raw bug eyes and his presence is always signalled on the soundtrack by cacophonous groaning, apparently recorded in an echo chamber. Early in the piece he chews on a native lady strapped to a tree, and it's hard to know what really happens here but I think he ate her stomach (or her genitals, sweet Jesus!).

Anyway, the adventure begins properly when a studly guy and his freaked out Vietnam vet pal are sent to the island to recover the white girl from the kidnappers. The flakey guy has an accent which, as dubbed, is half Brooklyn-American, half English-Liverpudlian and all retarded. All of the dialogue and dubbing is ridiculous and laughable, making for another layer of the film which can somehow hold your interest.

Not too much really happens from here on in, and it happens pretty sluggishly, studded with the odd bit of outrage like a rape. The nebulous action is fleshed out (haha!) by acres of 360 degree nudity from the natives and the two female leads, and even from the monster himself. That he walks around with his penis exposed makes wrestling him an unappetising prospect for the tough guy hero, but it's gotta be done at some point, and it's nice to note that the director will show anyone's genitals on camera.

The best feature of Devil Hunter is the location filming. Franco can be extremely cheap with the structural and story aspects of film-making, but he doesn't muck around with sets. You get real islands, jungles, helicopters and mountains, all in widescreen. This is something that is really cool to experience in these days of crappy CGI sets and backdrops ad nauseam.

Ultimately, issues of recommendation where this film is concerned seem moot. If you're trying to see all the Video Nasties, you will have to watch this at some point, and you'll be made as restless as I was. If you like Franco, you'll watch this anyway. If you fall into neither of the above categories, the odds are you'll never come across this film. Copies of it aren't just lying around, and I could hardly recommend the seeking out of it. It's Franco. Lazy, crazy Franco.