Chasseur de l'enfer

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.

Not sure if I'm referring to those who labeled this a video nasty or to the director..."Devil Hunter" sure is one bizarre 'horror' movie.

The plot is a loosey goosey combo of superior films like "Cannibal Ferox" and "Cut and Run." Chick gets kidnapped in the 'jungle' by a 'tribe' of 'savages.' The jungle looks more like a park somewhere in Mexico. The tribe is like a group of hippies who walk around in Party City-style Halloween costume renditions of tribal garb. And the savages range in race from white to Asian to black to hispanic. I suppose Franco just grabbed anyone who looked even slightly ethnic for this romp.

To make matters worse, this film has ultra-minimal gore, no real scares and a lot of unnecessary penis. Not fun. I can find something to like in just about any sleazy Italian or Euro-trash film; this one just fell WAY short.

2 out of 10, kids.

Of the three titles from Jess Franco to find their way onto the Official DPP Video Nasty list (Devil Hunter, Bloody Moon and Women Behind Bars) this is perhaps the least deserving of notoriety, being a dreadfully dull jungle clunker enlivened only very slightly by a little inept gore, a gratuitous rape scene, and loads of nudity.

Gorgeous blonde Ursula Buchfellner plays movie star Laura Crawford who is abducted by a gang of ruthless kidnappers and taken to a remote tropical island inhabited by a savage tribe who worship the 'devil god' that lurks in the jungle (a big, naked, bulging-eyed native who likes to eat the hearts of nubile female sacrifices).

Employed by Laura's agent to deliver a $6million ransom, brave mercenary Peter Weston (Al Cliver) and his Vietnam vet pilot pal travel to the island, but encounter trouble when the bad guys attempt a double-cross. During the confusion, Laura escapes into the jungle, but runs straight into the arms of the island's natives, who offer her up to their god.

Franco directs in his usual torpid style and loads this laughable effort with his usual dreadful trademarks: crap gore, murky cinematography, rapid zooms, numerous crotch shots, out of focus imagery, awful sound effects, and ham-fisted editing. The result is a dire mess that is a real struggle to sit through from start to finish (It took me a couple of sittings to finish the thing), and even the sight of the luscious Buchfellner in all of her natural glory ain't enough to make me revisit this film in a hurry.

The Devil Hunter (this film's UK video title) found itself caught up in the early 1980s 'video nasties' scare, for reasons I find impossible to fathom. It certainly should have been banned, but only because no reasonable human being should have to pay to sit through such junk. As with most of Jesus Franco's films, there are crash zooms to nothing, dreamy music, terrible performances, clumsy dubbing (most of the male characters are apparently dubbed by the same actor!) and several interminable sequences, suggesting that the former musician couldn't wait for a day on the set to finish - so he shot everything fast and cheap in order to get back home to his jazz records and his trumpet. Large parts of the film make no sense, and you'll run out of fingers and toes trying to count the goofs, but the really priceless ones are the actor who actually giggles when a squirt of blood hits him in the face, and the totem pole that bounces when it's supposed to be crashing to the floor. And check out those sound effects - since when did walking through the jungle sound like walking down a gravel drive? If you can find a copy of this tosh anywhere, I'll be surprised, but do yourself a favour and pass it by. If you decide to watch it, you'll want to sue Franco and his colleagues for ninety minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

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.