L'esclave blonde

This Italian film with once again more alternative titles than actual dialogue is a mid-80's exploitation attempt by enthusiast director Mario Gariazzo, who obviously was deeply impressed by the work of his fellow Italian filmmakers Rugero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi. It's a supposedly true story (yeah…sure) about an 18-year-old girl who visits her parents' plantation in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Shortly after her arrival, her parents are brutally murdered and beheaded during a boat ride. The poor cutie is taken prisoner by a savage and primitive tribe. During two years, she's has to take part in traditional and barbaric rites of this tribe. She's sold to the richest man in town (price = one goat and a chicken), has to work and, eventually, she escapes with the head warrior she has fallen in love with.

Now, 'Amazonia' isn't a bad little flick but it tries to be so much bigger than it actually is. The entire production seems to shout out: 'Look, we're as good as Cannibal Holocaust!!!' The opening sequences, in which the beautiful jungle is shown guided by a great score, is an exact copy of Deodato's film and throughout the whole film, the same documentary style is used. The film could have done without these pretentious aspects. At his best, Amazonia is like a fairly reasonable crossover between Cannibal Holocaust and Umberto Lenzi's 'Deep River Savages' (in which an Englishman spends years among a primitive tribe in New-Guinea). It's not nearly as memorable as the majority of Italian sleaze classics and that's merely due to the atrocious acting of Elvire Audrey. There's some great gore and terrific authentic sleaze to enjoy, though.

Although not technically a cannibal movie (the main tribe are 'head-hunters'; cannibals feature very briefly but no cannibalism is shown), Amazonia shares enough similarities with the infamous gut-munching gore classics of the 70s and 80s to be considered part of the genre.

Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) is a beautiful 18-year old taken captive by a group of savages after her parents are killed on a river trip. Sold to a member of the tribe for the sum of 'a goose, a water-dog and a turtle', Catherine endures terrible suffering until she is helped by Umukai, a warrior who treats her with a bit of respect. After many months spurning Umukai, believing that he was the one who killed her mum and dad, she discovers that others were in fact responsible. Falling in love with her friendly native hunk, she convinces him to help her take revenge on those really responsible.

Amazonia is pretty close in theme to The Man From Deep River, Umberto Lenzi's classic from 1972, but doesn't quite match that one in terms of quality. However, with a fair amount of cheesy gore (several be-headings, blow-darts in the face, some bloody bullet wounds) and loads of female nudity (courtesy of Audray and the native women, some of whom are pretty foxy), fans of this kind of thing should find just about enough to enjoy in this flick to make it worth a watch.

not a bad example of the italian cannibal genre. has many of the standard exploitation requirements, naked girls and violence, though lacks in the actual human consumption department as this tribe consists of head hunters not cannibals. still plenty of gore and a nice musical score . The voice over narration can get annoyingly obvious( as in it states what is happening on screen, or the characters reaction to what they are seeing)but this is a minor flaw

overall, quite entertaining.

Decent story about an eighteen year old student visiting her parents in the Amazon. On a cruise down the river her boat is attacked and her parents are beheaded as she is taken captive by the natives. As she tells the details of her captivity to a court while on trial for murder she provides the tales of strange tribal customs and barbarism. Told mockumentary style (ala Cannibal Holocaust), Slave is a halfway decent attempt to give a little narrative force to the ample nudity and rather tame violence. The photography is nice and the acting is passable but the court scenes are rather laughable because the prosecutor says some seriously stupid things. A good way to pass the time if you are into cannibal flicks or a fan of exploitation.

White Slave starts off looking like it's going to be a really lame pastiche of Cannibal Holocaust, what with an opening montage of the Amazon set to ho-hum music imitating Riz Ortolani's famous score for that other film. And actually it stays lame for a fair while - but then it gets good! Amazon headhunters ambush the boat of some well-to-do white landowners and their daughter, who's back fresh from studying in London. They remove the heads of the parents and drag the daughter back to their village, where gradually (and after much gnashing of teeth by all concerned) she's absorbed into their tribal lifestyle - which never seems to involve any more headhunting for the rest of the film, but don't dwell on that.

The film makes sure to include a little bit from all of the major food groups of this horror subgenre: gore, hazardous jungle treks, badly graded stock footage of wildlife, animals stupidly killing each other for real, tribal warfare, cruel and probably entirely fictitious tribal customs and punishments meted out left, right and centre, and plenty of nudity. Interestingly, there's no cannibalism at all. While the first third of the film really seems to be going through the motions with these things, there's a whole bunch of plot from then onwards and dare I say a good degree of human warmth. Once Catherine is fully ensconced in the tribe, she deals with character rivalries, tribal customs and conflicting loyalties and emotions. There's some honour and romance at stake, plus a minor mystery to be dealt with and revenge to be had. White Slave mobilises from being an extremely by-the-numbers exploitation film to one with an involving story and human qualities you can get into. You still have to put up with one of the silliest court trials in the world (it's used as a framing device), but overall, I found this film to be a pleasant surprise.