It's hard to believe that today - in an age when man can send probes to Mars, order drugs via mobile phone and download porn from the internet - there are still places upon which civilised man has never feasted his eyes. Places thousands of miles from the stress and bustle of modern life, where primitive man still roams naked without shame, liberated, truly at one with both himself and nature. But you'll never, ever find that place. If you did, you'd be tortured to death, your cadaver hacked to pieces and roasted over an open fire with your guts providing lunch for those cannibals still lurking in the green inferno a mere plane journey away. Allegedly.
The glut of cannibal movies that seeped through the drive-ins throughout the 70s is still considered yet another cheap Italian attempt to cash in on the flesh-ripping success of Dawn Of The Dead. Not so. Umberto Lenzi spat out Deep River Savages back in 1972, creating one of the few B-movie subgenres Italy can truly call its own. After sticking some punk with a switchblade in a sleazy Bangkok bar, Ivan Rassimov has to finish his holiday hiding in the green inferno.
The further he travels down river, the further he finds himself up shit creek, until he's captured by the natives ("They must think I'm a fish," he asserts). They tie him down to bake in the sun, force him to eat monkey brains and use him as a revolving target for their blowpipes, but eventually they accept him as one of their own. In fact, it turns out that once you get to know them, these guys are actually quite friendly. The real savages happen to be the tribe next door.
Sadly, Deep River Savages isn't the bloodbath its reputation suggests. The freaks who get off on genuine animal cruelty - a trademark of cannibal flicks - will have a whale of a time watching the cockfights and crocodile-skinning herein, but the rest of us find ourselves short-changed with just a couple of token gore scenes here and there. It would take another five years for movie cannibals to reappear - this time in force.
That other spaghetti sadist, Ruggero Deodato, cut his teeth in 1977 with Ultimo Mondo Cannibal, providing the template for all good gut-crunchers to come. When a drunken pilot crashes his plane somewhat unspectacularly in the South American jungle, its passengers are picked off one by one until only Robert is left - left to become a prisoner of the cannibals. He is pelted with stones and pissed on by the tribespeople, and they also have a great time playing with his dick. But then such treatment is pretty mild compared to the punishment they mete out to their own. One native is tied up, his wrists sliced open, and is left for the bugs; by morning, his arms are little more than bone and gristle. Robert needs to get out, and he takes a young native girl with him - she becomes his lover after he rapes her doggy-style then beats her up - but their relationship is cut short when her kinfolk catch up with her; she makes an ideal family meal when her gutted cadaver is filled with hot coals and her decapitated head roasted in a fire.
Deodato managed to win a little more critical acclaim for his notorious Cannibal Holocaust (1980), allegedly a big influence on The Blair Witch Project, thanks to its documentary style - although the similarities end there. Blair Witch depicts no gory amputations, decapitations or castrations, no woman clubbed to death after a forced abortion - the bloody, foetal meat buried in riverside mud - and certainly never offered the grotesque sight of a woman impaled on a stake that entered via her nether regions and exited through her mouth.
Composed of seemingly 'real' footage recovered from a scummy film crew's final expedition, Cannibal Holocaust can be seen as a fairly profound statement on immoral media exploitation - which should abolish any guilty feelings you may experience after sitting through 90 minutes of non-stop carnage.
Not to be outdone, Lenzi returned to the table that same year with Eaten Alive, in which the apparition of a murderous, dart-blowing Indian in New York leads a filthy-rich hillbilly chick to hire a half-drunk Vietnam veteran to help find her missing sister. It seems sis has joined some weird back-to-nature hippy cult and is now living in Purification Village, hidden deep in the jungles of New Guinea. Anyone wishing to leave finds themself in cannibal country, so it's better to stay in the village, safe in the shadow of dildo-wielding leader Jonas. Cult members seem to lead a fairly simple life - when they have finished killing off the local wildlife they behead one of the natives - all in good fun of course. Eventually, Jonas-town is wiped out by a batch of bad wine, but not before the inevitable final bloodbath.
Surely it is cruel irony that the same PC leftists wandering into the jungle to prove that anthropophagy - cannibalism - is a racist myth spouted from the mouths of early colonials are the first to end up in the pot. The three students in Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly!, 1981) seeking to do just this find their luck takes an even sharper turn for the worse when they run into New York drug dealer Mike Logan. It seems Logan has fled the Big Apple just before his best customer, Shitface, was blown away by the mob and is now spending his time hunting for coke and emeralds. But his (fairly civil) relationship with the locals turned a little sour after he tied one of them to a stake, hacked off his cock and then poked out his eye with a dagger. And the guy's so fucking high, the fact that the tribe's hunters are about to return doesn't faze him one little bit!
When they finally do return, they don't hold back - the comparatively undeserving Rudy's death by blowdart in a piranha-infested river is a mercy-killing compared to that of wild playgirl Pat: in the film's most infamous scene, she has huge metal hooks forced through her tiny tits and is hung up to die. But Mike's punishment is most fitting - they cut off his dick, chop off his hand, then crack open his skull and tuck into his brains.
While Lenzi and Deodato were the cannibal heavyweights, a few other Euro-sleaze directors also cashed in. Joe D'Amato, for instance, got in early with Emmanuelle And The Last Cannibals (1977). Needless to say, anyone expecting a dose of tedious softcore erotica would have been horrified to see images of nipple-mutilation and intestines pulled from a knife-hacked snatch.
Emmanuelle wasn't the only jungle diva - an explorer who inexplicably turns his dangerous expedition into a family holiday sees his young daughter become the White Cannibal Queen (Jess Franco, 1981). Some years later he returns - minus an arm - to seek out this English-speaking tribe and leaves just fine when the cannibals exhibit a sense of fair play. Paternal instinct also drags one man into the jungle to search for his daughter in the god-awful French effort Cannibal Terror (Alain Durvelle, 1981). Yet again, these side-burned, medallion-wearing maneaters - living just half-an-hour from civilisation - have a decent grasp of wrong and right and only get their teeth into bad guys. Anyone who claims these films just aren't classy enough may want to have a look at Sergio Martino's Prisoner Of The Cannibal God (1978) - although the presence of even Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress did nothing to keep this gory adventure from the Nasties list.
But these are just the leftovers - tastier, but less substantial, meat can be found in Indonesia, the only place outside Europe to do the cannibal thing. Jungle Heat (Ratno Timoer, from fuck-knows-when!) sees yet another jungle queen and her headhunting warriors fighting off both diamond thieves and the neighbouring, monkey-chanting cannibals. There are too many soppy love scenes, though, to make a really good meal. Sisworo Gautama Putra's endearingly atrocious Primitives (1978) is a much better bet, with student explorers fighting off rubber snakes and crocodiles as well as savages. Anyone bored with regular castration may enjoy the sight of an attempted rapist having his balls smashed in with a rock, while surrealism freaks will perhaps have their minds blown when a native's rubber axe becomes a boomerang and returns to cut his throat.
No redeeming value. That's the best way to describe these films. Movies made simply to promote nothing but violence, violence and even more fucking violence. Fuck! Even snuff movies carry a little shred of artist irony! And if you admit you enjoy it, some self-righteous little twat is gonna start waggling their finger at you. But be calm; tell them to just look around: murder, rape, prostitution, drugs, pollution are all happening in our very own concrete jungle. Then, with a straight face and cynical sniff, look them straight in the eye and tell them, just like in the movies: "I wonder who the real cannibals are." Then tear off their cock and pop it on the barbie.
Deep River Savages, Cannibal Holocaust, Eaten Alive, Jungle Heat, Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Terror and Emmanuelle And The Last Cannibals are out now on DVD
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