Welcome back to my bite sized examination of the U.K.’s infamous
Video Nasty list, the films that the Director of Public Prosecutions deemed too
morally reprehensible to be viewed by any upstanding British citizen in the early
‘80s. For the sake of time and sanity, I’m
breaking the list into easily digestible chunks. On this week’s menu is a lightly pan seared delicacy,
the films of cannibalism.
The DPP really, really hated cannibal movies. Out of the 72 movies prosecuted or considered
for prosecution on grounds of obscenity, 10 were about cannibalism,
6 with the word "cannibal" in their title.
This might be due to the inherent gruesomeness of the subject, but I
believe iftmostly stemmed from one movie, perhaps the most notorious
off all the Video Nasties, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.
And while the film itself is well deserving of notoriety, it was
probably this image that caused the most fuss.
This VHS cover was scientifically designed to horrify old
white conservatives while intriguing everyone else (seriously, you want to turn
your eyes away, but you can’t). It was
so blatant and in your face that it practically dared the establishment to ban
it, which it did. When the MPs went
looking for titles to add to their list, anything using the word cannibal was
guilty by association.
To be fair, though, if you include “Cannibal” in your title,
there’s a reasonable bet your movie is just a little bit nasty. I’m sure there is some highbrow French film
out there that uses the word as an analogy for the bourgeoisie, but it isn’t
CANNIBAL TERROR.
So I start this installment with the Mother of All Video Nasties,
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. I seriously debated
putting this one in the Bummers category, as it is kind of a downer. And by “kind of” I mean “soul crushing”. I have seen a lot of
really rough movies, but nothing compares to this one. The biggest reason being that the movie, which
is about a professor traveling through the uncharted jungles of Amazon to find
what happened to a missing film crew, is actually very well made. Director Ruggero Deodato made some incredibly
hokey (and entertaining) films in his career.
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is not one of them.
It is beautifully shot, well scored, decently acted, and most of all,
very authentic feeling. This is
especially true of the found footage portion (made before that was even a
term). The combination of real violence
to animals (quick, but still nauseating) and very effectively staged violence
toward the characters (shot from a distance) causes the lines between movie and
reality to blur. There is a reason
Charlie Sheen reported this to the police as an actual snuff film when he saw
it, and it wasn’t just because of the cocaine.
Fun fact: While being
banned in over 50 countries (allegedly), CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is the second
highest grossing film in Japan, behind E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERESTRIAL. Coincidently, this also constitutes the world’s
worst double feature ever.
The power and gravity of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is most
apparent when shown against its similarly themed but immensely trashier
counterpart, CANNIBAL FEROX (re-titled MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY in the U.S. because
no one knew what the hell a ferox was). Umberto
Lenzi’s film has practically the same plot (minus the found footage) and
arguably even more gore, but none of the stark, visceral impact of Deodato’s. There is no mistaking FEROX for anything
other than the sleaziest of exploitation, especially with the incomparable Giovanni
Lombardo Radice chewing up the scenery. Radice
was a staple of Italian genre cinema of that era, and perhaps the subject of
more gruesome deaths than any other actor in history. FEROX is still a rough movie, but
considerably more fun (except for the animal killings, boo!).
Umberto Lenzi actually started off the whole Italian
cannibalspoitation genre with THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (aka SACRIFICE!, aka DEEP
RIVER SAVAGES). Basically a remake of
the American Western A MAN CALLED HORSE, the movie is about a photographer who
is captured by a primitive tribe in the Amazon and slowly adapts to their ways
(after a period of distrust and torture).
DEEP RIVER is far tamer than the cannibal films that would follow. The gut munching angle doesn’t even appear
until near the end, when a hostile (and hungry) tribe attacks. Less of a horror movie as it is an exploration of cultural understanding. Except, you know, a little bit racist. Oooow, scary indigenous people want to eat you! The whole cannibal genre is uncomfortably literal exploitation cinema.
Switching from the Amazon to New Guinea but still very
Italian, Sergio Martino’s MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD is another one caught in
the DPP’s widely spread cannibal net.
This one, starring Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress, is more of a straight
up adventure movie, with subplots about corporate greed and the exploitation of
nature. Andress hires Keach to guide her
and her brother through a dangerous jungle in search of her missing
husband. The gore is fairly restrained
(unless you are an animal), until they get to the titular mountain and
everything goes absolutely apeshit. Ursula
Andress covered in honey, cannibal orgies, forced heart eating, and one very
confused pig. I re-watched that scene
last night and it was even more insane and uncomfortable than I
remembered. It’s the cannibal equivalent
to CALIGULA.
While cannibal movies were mostly the domain of the
Italians, other countries were eager to get in on the action. From France came the sublimely schlocky
CANNIBAL TERROR, which I have already gone on about in more detail than the
movie has probably ever received.
Spain’s exploitation maestro Jess Franco took a bit of the
pie, as well. His most obvious offender,
CANNIBALS (aka WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN), somehow escaped the Video Nasties List,
probably because everyone in the U.K. government thought it was CANNIBAL TERROR. Or they thought it was already on the list
because they mistook it for Franco’s other kind-of-supernatural-but-not-really gut-munching
tale, DEVIL HUNTER. It is primarily an
action vehicle starring ZOMBIE vet Al Cliver as a tough guy hired to rescue a
kidnapped actress from a mysterious jungle island that is coincidentally
inhabited by cannibals. The twist is
that the tribe doesn’t do the cannibalizing (they mostly just dance a
lot). Instead, they offer up tasty
people treats to their god, a man with the power of having weird bug eyes. That’s it, really. Not sure why they think so highly of
him. There are a few very
unconvincing liver extracting scenes that were probably the reason the movie
was labeled a Nasty, but the real high point is watching the uncoordinated
Cliver have a fight with an almost completely blind actor on a real cliff
top. It could have so easily become an
accidental snuff film. I’m sure Franco
would have released it anyway.
Not all cannibal films have to be in the jungle. In Joe D’Amatto’s impressively named
ANTHROPOPHAGUS, a group of rich tourists, including another ZOMBIE alum, Tisa
Farrow, get stuck on an abandoned Greek island and discover that a horribly
disfigured cannibal is stalking them.
The tourist chomper is played by legendary Italian exploitation villain George
Eastman, but since his character has been driven mad to the point of catatonia,
we are deprived of the standard Eastman overacting magic. The movie has plenty of gore, including one
super gruesome bit of depravity (more in concept than in execution), but
honestly, it is kind of a slog to get through.
None of the characters are remotely interesting, and even the death
scenes are slow moving and drawn out (not in the torture porn way, more in the
“okay, we got it” kind of way). It’s
really only notable for being the movie that made Tisa Farrow conclude “You
know, maybe the acting world only needs one Farrow.”
Eloy de la Iglesia’s THE CANNIBAL MAN is the real oddball in
this line up because it is actually a fairly classy, introspective film about
isolation, loneliness, and desperation.
It is certainly the least gory. Clearly
no one in the DPP office actually watched it, they just looked at the VHS
cover and declared “Another one of those bloody cannibal movies!” The irony is that the main character, played
by Vicente Parra, isn’t even a cannibal.
He is just a guy who accidentally kills his girlfriend, and in trying to
cover up the crime has to kill an ever increasing string of witnesses, snoops,
and blackmailers. He decides to dispose
of the bodies at the sausage making factory where he works. In that sense, he’s less of a Cannibal Man as
he is a Cannibal Enabler. It’s quite a good movie, really, as long as
you aren’t expecting a lot of intestine yanking gore.
It is kind of a stretch, but I’ll include BLOOD FEAST, a
movie which I have already described in great detail, in the cannibal
section. Faust Ramsey never consumed any
of his delicious Egyptian feast made for—and from— lovely Floridians, but it
was definitely his intent. If he hadn’t
been so enormously incompetent and the police very slightly more competent (and
ridiculously lucky), an entire upscale neighborhood would have unknowingly been
turned into flesh eaters.
Lastly, and most enjoyable of all, Giovanni Lombardo Radice
returns, along with John Saxon, in Antonio Margheriti’s CANNIBAL
APOCALYPSE. The title might be (intentionally) reminiscent
of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, but that is about as close as it gets. Margheriti completely discards any sense of
realism or atmosphere by setting the majority of the movie in Atlanta, GA. It has the strangest, most confusing
connection with cannibalism of all the movies on the list. APOCALYPSE starts off as a Vietnam POW flick,
transitions to a FIRST BLOOD style PTSD drama, then mutates into a zombie
film. In a new twist, anyone bitten by a
cannibal becomes a cannibal themselves.
Because of a virus, maybe? Logic
is clearly secondary to Radice’s wonderfully unhinged performance as he takes
on both a weekend biker club and the cops.
Saxon brings his trademark brooding intensity, compounded by the fact
that he has absolutely no idea what is happening. The gore is impressive without being too
disturbing. As to be expected Radice
takes a lot of punishment (though not nearly as much as in CANNIBAL
FEROX). I might need to revisit this one
as a full post one day.
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