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Umberto Lenzi
Another Italian director, famous for his gory cannibal movies and some miscellaneous horror. Actually one of two directors (with Deodato) that tried to outdo each other until the cannibal genre finally died of excess. His other movies include the usual giallos, thrillers, b-movies, zombie ripoffs and westerns. Reviewed until 2016. The first cannibal movie that spawned the genre by simply ripping off A Man Called Horse and exploiting the primitive violence and sex in such a story to extremes. After an accidental murder, a photographer decides to disappear down-river for a while, but soon gets caught by a native primitive tribe. Savage and cruel customs, primitive rituals and nasty initiation rites fill the rest of the movie intercut with drama as he is slowly accepted by the tribe and falls in love with a local. The exploitation, gore, rape, and real animal deaths started here, albeit less gratuitous at first. A later non-sequitur entry into the Demons sequels featuring black living dead slaves coming back to avenge themselves on white people. Bad acting, cheesy plot, and only 3 short gore scenes with eye-gouging and slashing. Called the 'ultimate' cannibal movie, banned in 31 countries and featuring numerous, very extreme scenes of gore, torture and animal death. The acting and directing is horrible and the focus was obviously on grisly scenes such as very graphic castration, a meal of fresh intestines, hanging by hooks through breasts, eye-gouging, etc. In between these gory effects we are treated to various real scenes of animal butchering by humans and other animals. The plot is about anthropologists in the jungles trying to prove cannibalism doesn't exist, that hook up with some psychos who brutalize the natives only to find out the natives can be a whole lot more brutal. For gorehounds only. A lame cannibal entry that rips-off ideas from other movies in the genre, especially Jungle Holocaust and Apocalypse Now. A woman in search of her sister goes deep into the jungle with the help of a rough adventurer (sound familiar?). Local anthropologists, cannibals and a cult make things difficult by chopping off body parts, raping women, forcing strange initiation rites and eating fresh humans and animals. Pointlessly scattered throughout the movie like porn scenes is footage of real animal deaths. The acting is terrible and the mostly naked women maintain perfect makeup and hairdos while running for their lives. An extremely bad zombie movie where the so-called zombies are radioactively contaminated violent people covered in oatmeal-makeup who run around killing and shredding everything in sight using any weapon they can get their hands on (although women are stripped naked first of course). As if the acting and non-existent plot weren't bad enough, the movie had to preach environmental and third-world issues, and add a we-have-reached-new-levels-of-stupidity twist ending. |
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