L'esclave blonde

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.

This is basically another one of those cannibal/jungle movies. It's true this movie is nothing but gore and nudity, but that's all you should be expecting from this kind of movie.

A young girls parents are killed and decapitated (in a fairly gory scene) and she is taken prisoner by a group of headhunters. They strip her and trade her as a slave, so she spends the rest of the movie running through the jungle naked. Unlike a lot of these kinds of movies it actually does have a plot and it's supposedly 'based on a true story'. Definately worth a rental.

If you use words like "atrocious banal" then you probably will not like this movie.

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.

Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story (1985)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Eighteen-year-old Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) is on a trip in the Amazon with her parents when they are attacked by a tribe of jungle people. The parents are murdered and their heads cut off but Catherine is saved by a member of the tribe who appears to have a thing for her. Catherine is then taken back to their village where she witnesses all sorts of horrors.

There's no question that Italy was the home of the cannibal movie and many think that it reached its height with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. This film here came towards the end of the genre and was also known as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST 2 as well as several other titles. For some reason this movie doesn't get much attention from fans when they discuss the genre but I personally thought it was a fairly entertaining movie, although it certainly doesn't rank among the best.

What I enjoyed the most was Audray herself. The horrible English dubbing makes it hard to really judge her performance but I thought she was extremely cute in the part and I also thought she was rather believable in the role. This was especially true as the character becomes more like those holding her hostage. The supporting players are decent at best but there's certainly nothing horrible here.

The film also benefits from a very good score by Franco Campanino, which clearly wants to be like the one in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. There's also the violence and gore, which is pretty fun, although there's no question that the effects aren't as good as what we saw in films from earlier in the decade. There are a couple decapitations, several other body parts cut off and plenty of blood throughout. Fans of gore will certainly get a kick out of some of the violence here and especially a couple head shots.

AMAZONIA: THE CATHERINE MILES STORY starts off with the lead character going to trial for murder and throughout the film we get some narration of her testifying in court. I personally thought this set-up was rather lame and it actually hurt the film a bit. With that said, I thought the movie was fairly entertaining for what it was and it was worth watching for fans of the genre.