Cannibal Ferox (1983)

Make Them Die Slowly. With an alternate title like that, you know what you're getting into here. You're getting into Umberto Lenzi's (Eaten Alive, Spasmo, Man from Deep River, Eyeball) dark and depraved voyage into the world of cocaine-addled maniacs battling cannibals. Beware.Considered to be "the most violent film ever made" and "banned in 31 countries," Cannibal Ferox is packed with both simulated and real violence (the credits should probably read animals were harmed during the filming of this motion picture). It's all about a gang of malcontents who make the dumb mistake of not only going into the jungle, but screwing with the wrong people.In New York City, Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, City of the Living Dead, Stagefright) is on the run from the mob, as he owes them $100,000.Meanwhile, in Paraguay, brother and sister Rudy and Gloria (Lorraine De Selle, Emanuelle in America) and their friend Pat (Zora Kerova, The New York Ripper) are heading into the rainforest. Gloria has a theory that cannibalism is a myth and wants to prove it. They run into Mike and his partner Joe, who have run afoul of some cannibals. Soon, Gloria goes missing and everyone starts to look for her.Soon, Mike's having sex with Pat, doing coke and trying to get her to rape a native girl, as you do. She can't do it, so Mike kills the girl as Joe reveals - as he dies - that they were responsible for making the cannibals go wild as the result of exploiting them for emeralds and cocaine. Turns out killing and torturing natives isn't new to Mike!After Joe dies, the cannibals find and consume his body while everyone is captured and forced to watch Mike get tortured and beaten. Back in New York City, the mobsters are still looking for Mike, along with the cops (who include Lt. Rizzo among the number, who is played by Robert Kerman, a former porn actor who also appeared in Cannibal Holocaust and Eaten Alive!)Rudy tries to escape, but he is caught in a trap in the jungle and attacked by piranhas before the natives kill him with a poison dart.Pat and Gloria are put in a hole while Mike is in a cage. A native man tries to help the women escape, as Pat had saved him after the virgin was killed. However, Mike screws it all up for everyone and runs into the jungle to escape. The natives slice his hand off and recapture him. And then they show off their brains, as they tell a search and rescue party that the outsiders all died after a crocodile attack.Gloria can only bear witness to Pat being hung by her breasts until she is dead and Mike's skull being cracked open and eaten. The native who tried to help before now frees Gloria and they run through the desert before another trap kills him. Luckily, Gloria finds some trappers who rescue her. She tells them the same story as the natives: everyone else was killed by crocodiles.Once Gloria returns to New York, she writes a book that supports her theory and continues the lies called Cannibalism: End of a Myth.This movie is a fine piece of cannibal filth, but is tainted by the real animal deaths. Giovanni Lombardo Radice objected and refused to participate, leading Lenzi to say, "De Niro would do it." Radice replied, "De Noro would kick your ass all the way back to Rome." The stand-in who did the actual killing was cut so badly that he almost severed a main artery, which Radice looked at as karma. I agree.

Agreeably trashy story stars Lorraine De Selle as Gloria Davis, an NYC anthropology student who's basing her thesis on the idea that cannibalism does not exist and never has existed. She couldn't be more wrong! Venturing into the Amazon with her brother Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and friend Pat (Zora Kerova), they run into not only the local Indio tribe of flesh eaters, but the immortal jerk character Mike Logan (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Mike went on the run while owing money to the Brooklyn mob, heading for the Amazon to get rich mining for emeralds. The ensuing carnage is pretty much all thanks to mad man Mike.Admittedly, horror and exploitation of this variety isn't for everybody, especially if you dislike seeing animals killed for the sake of entertainment. But Mike is such a great villain, and the gore is so vivid and juicy, that fans of the jungle and cannibal genres should be more than satisfied. Both Lombardo Radice and Kerova have horrible fates waiting for them. The story cuts back and forth between the action in the Amazon and the action in NYC, as both the cops and the mob mount intense searches for Mike, putting the pressure on his roommate Myrna (Fiamma Maglione) to...pardon the expression...spill her guts.The music by Roberto Donati and Ms. Maglione is great fun, the photography & scenery are quite impressive, and the performances entertain solidly. Lombardo Radice is a total hoot, and it's nice to have Robert Kerman on hand as an investigating detective. The film also comes complete with basically the same subtext as the previous years' "Cannibal Holocaust", that it's us so-called "civilized" people who drive the more primitive humans of the planet to commit acts of violence.A must for anybody who digs trashy Italian genre filmmaking.Eight out of 10.

I recently watched Cannibal Holocaust and, in some strange way, actually enjoyed it. I'd heard that Cannibal Ferox was similar, so I thought I'd give that one a go too.Ferox has the tagline 'banned in 31 countries' on the front and all I can say is that, now it appears to have got a mainstream release, they must have taken a lot of it out. The version I saw ran at about 83 minutes and was not just bad, but pretty tame.The plot centres around a budding scientist, dragging her brother and her friend to the Amazon in order to prove that cannibalism doesn't exist. Once they get there, they meet the most psychotic drug dealer there is and decide it would be a good idea to team up with him. Unfortunately, said dealer has slaughtered half a tribe of natives around here in pursuit of some emeralds. And, guess what, the natives want their revenge.I couldn't really see why some people seem to enjoy this. Even if it had its full compliment of gore, it was pretty awful. The acting was bad (okay, so horror films never normally have Oscar-worthy performances in, but this went even lower than normal); it was almost as if they were trying to be over-the-top and bring a parody edge to it (not that I can find any actual evidence to back this up - it just seemed this way).The 'heroes' are too stupid to like (and that's just the most likable ones!), the drug dealers are the type you want to see eaten alive.And, while these hapless souls are trudging through muddy swamps in the Amazon, there's a subplot about the police in New York trying to track down one of the dealers. This wasn't necessary, as, by now, you're probably gagging for whatever 'pay-off' is going to come at the end of the film. When it does come, it's over before it gets going.Like I say, I could be being unfair on Ferox, as I've clearly only watched a heavily edited version. However (and I never thought I'd say this), if you only want to watch one gut-wrenching sick cannibal film about people eating each other, stick with Cannibal Holocaust.

The film begins with the murder of a drug addict in an unknown apartment by some gangsters looking for a man named Mike Logan. As the police begin their investigation into the shooting, the action relocates to the Paraguayan jungle, where two students, Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Rudy (Danilo Mattei), and one tag-along Pat (Zora Kerova) are making their way into the heart of the jungle looking for native tribes who have been accused of cannibalism. Gloria is out to disprove the claims of cannibalism for her dissertation, and after they come across two mangled bodies of tribesmen, they also come across Mike Logan carrying his injured partner Joe (Walter Lucchini), who both claim to have been attacked by savage cannibals.Between 1977 and 1981 there was a huge boom in cannibal films. They boasted exotic locations, horrific gore, real animal killings, and the threat of the unknown in the primitive tribes. It was Ferox's director Umberto Lenzi who kick-started the sub-genre with Deep River Savages in 1972, but they only really hit their stride in 1977, when the Grindhouse theatres were at their most popular. The cannibal genre died out pretty quickly, thankfully, as they represent everything that is ugly about the horror genre, and Cannibal Ferox, possibly the second most notorious after Cannibal Holocaust, is no exception.The gore and violence is by no means convincing, or even disturbing, but it is clear from the off that the film's sole purpose is to be more repulsive than anything else before it. Multiple cocks are hacked off (and one is eaten - yummy), a woman is lifted into the air with fish- hooks through the breasts, there is an eye-gouging, and of course, no cannibal film would be complete without a bit of the ol' brain eating. This is all well and good and what can be expected from an Italian exploitation film at the height of the nasties era, but the animal killings are simply needless.I always found myself defending Cannibal Holocaust for the animal cruelty, as that is a genuinely good film, and the horrific animal scenes really do add to the horrible and deeply unsettling atmosphere. But after seeing Ferox, I realised there is really no excuse for it. Regardless of the film's quality, there is no place for the pointless killing of animals. Radice refused to wield the knife during the pig- killing scene, and in the DVD commentary, director Lenzi said 'Robert De Niro would have done it!', to which Radice replied 'Robert De Niro would have told you to f**k off!'Anyway, the film really is pretty damn awful. Why the action keeps shifting back to New York is anyone's guess. Mike is a wanted drug pusher that legged it off to Paraguay in search of cocaine and a fortune in gemstones, but surely knowing this is enough? There is a rescue attempt near the end that looks like joining the two stems together, but nothing comes of it. It seems to be there only to add a few more minutes onto the running time, allowing the film to render itself a feature. As you would expect, the acting/script/story is guff, but the strange thing is the moral message it seems to be putting out. When it revealed that Mike was lying and it was in fact him that attacked the tribe (shock horror), it seems to be a 'don't judge a book by it's cover' type message. But when the tribe acts out their revenge, they revel in the torturing.Well anyway, the real torture victim was me, who had to sit through this. There's a few more cannibal films to get through for the nasties project (maybe I'll leave them to Marc), and although I'll welcome (if that's the right word) another viewing of Cannibal Holocaust, I have to say that I would be happy not to have to sit through another cannibal film. And there's always the Mondo sub-genre I suppose!www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com