Cannibal Apocalypse (1980)

Original title: Apocalypse Domani

Director: Antonio Margheriti

Writers: Antonio Margheriti, Dardano Sacchetti

Composer: Alexander Blonksteiner

Starring: John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Cinzia De Carolis, Tony King, Wallace Wilkinson, Ramiro Oliveros, John Geroson, May Heatherly, Ronnie Sanders

More info: IMDb

Tagline: An American City Terrorized by Crazed Flesh-Eating Killers ... An Unbelievable Nightmare!

Plot: Giovanni Lambardo Radice and John Saxon are Vietman vets that bring back contagious virus that turn people into cannibals when bitten.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

See!  Vietnam flashbacks!  See!  A 15 minute shootout at an indoor flea market!  See!  Not much in the way of cannibal action or cannibals in general.  For about the first hour I was getting a little cheesed because I popped this in looking for some cannibal action and there's hardly anything like that.  The title doesn't lie.  It's got an appropriately bleak ending and everything that happens before is almost futile.  The title doesn't lie so I guess it was my brain filling in all kinds of possibilities of what this would be.  I didn't see the trailer until after the film.  If you go into it looking for a horror thriller that's more like a zombie apocalypse then you're more likely to enjoy it from the beginning.  Once I realized that that was what it was (with a half hour to go) I started to dig it more.  Saxon does a fine job in the lead and there are some fun scenes (like the biker chase and subsequent flea market shootout) but it's not the kind of picture I can see anyone revisiting much or at all.  If you digs on some Italian horror/exploitation then this is a must see but you won't exactly be telling your friends about it.  The score has some nice moments.  The Studio Canal/Image DVD (from their EuroShock Collection) has a great anamorphic widescreen print.  They've lined up some great extras.  You get a 55 minute making of documentary, a 6 minute tour of the filming locations, the European theatrical trailer and Japanese teaser trailer, poster and still galleries, an alternate U.S. opening sequence and a text treatment on the film's censorship issues.

Jungle Holocaust (1977)

Original title: Ultimo Mondo Cannibale

Director: Ruggero Deodato

Writers: Tito Capri, Gianfranco Clerici, Renzo Genta, Giorgio Carlo Rossi

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Can this modern man survive in a Stone Age world?

Plot: An oil prospector escapes from capture by a primitive cannibal tribe in the Philippine rain forest and heads out to locate his missing companion and their plane to return home.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

Over the past twenty years I've seen very little of the cannibal genre that the Italians had such a good time with.  After seeing THE GREEN INFERNO (2013) last year in the theater and being very disappointed, I was lucky enough to find a mess of cannibal flicks on DVD on the super, stupid cheap.  I'm slowly getting around to them and I'm having a good time, even with the not-so-good ones.  I expected something different than what this delivered.  It has the prerequisites of A) cannibalism, B) nudity and C) (my favorite) jungle fuckery.   I'm happy.  Kills?  Yeah.  Somewhat on the fucked up side?  Yeah.   Still happy.  It's actually pretty good and the story works well.  What's wilder is that the guy who gets captured and escapes to survive in the jungle is completely naked for most of the picture.  That opens up a whole other level of crazy as now I start to think of how fucked up of a situation that would be and how would I handle it if I were in that position.  It's wild, man.  Plus it makes the film more plausible.  It's not like he's going to find some slacks lying around the cave.  It'd almost be kind of fun if it weren't for everything that lives in the jungle seemingly designed to kill you.  The ending isn't surprising but it doesn't have to.  It's the journey that counts and boy does this fella go through some shit.  The only issue I have is the inclusion of two or three scenes of animals being killed on screen either by humans or each other for the sake of entertainment.  It disgusts me and I have to fast forward through that shit.  I can handle just about anything but that.  That's one downside to this genre in that you'll almost always see it, even if it's re-used footage from another cannibal film (which they did that shit all the time back then).  I noticed that this DVD sells for good dollars on ebay and I'm torn between making a tidy profit or keeping it as I know I'll watch it again in a few years.  White man's burden, Lloyd, white man's burden.

Eaten Alive! (1980)

Original title: Mangiati Vivi!

Director: Umberto Lenzi

Writer: Umberto Lenzi

Composers: Roberto Donati, Fiamma Maglione

Starring: Robert Kerman, Janet Agren, Ivan Rassimov, Paola Senatore, Me Me Lai, Fiamma Maglione, Franco Fantasia, Franco Coduti, Alfred Joseph Berry, Michele Schmiegelm, Mel Ferrer

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They didn't have a chance!

Plot: A young woman teams up with an adventurer to find her missing sister in the jungles of New Guinea and they stumble upon a religious cult led by a deranged preacher whom has located his commune in an area inhabited by cannibals.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

After seeing the disappointing Eli Roth picture, THE GREEN INFERNO (2013), I stumbled upon a whole mess of cannibal pictures at a local shop.  I'd seen most of them but it's been years and I was jonsing for some 70s and 80s Italian cannibal action.  Now, this picture is a mixed bag.  On one hand you've got some neat stuff centered around a cult leader in South America ala Jim Jones.  There's some nudity and gore (YAY!) and some familiar music that was later used to a much better effect in Lenzi's CANNIBAL FEROX (1981).  Oh, and the jungle location shooting is marvelous.  I love that stuff.  Part of the problems this picture has is the extraordinary amount of footage (cannibalism, kills and more) that was re-used from Lenzi's earlier films like THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972) and, even worse, is some of the dubbing (especially for Mark (Kerman)) and acting (Kerman is the worst offender) but that could be how Lenzi wanted Kerman to behave.  Still, it's an entertaining film despite (or because of) some of its shortcomings. The Shriek Show DVD has a good looking anamorphic widescreen print.  The extras include the original trailer (anamorphic widescreen), trailers for ZOMBIE 4, ZOMBI 3, ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, JUNGLE HOLOCAUST, the still gallery consists of only posters, lobby cards and VHS covers, and interviews with Lenzi (14 minutes), Kerman (15 minutes) and Rassimov (5 minutes).  Beware of the interviews as several of the questions asked are idiotic, ill-conceived and downright embarrassing.  SS did a great job with putting this picture out.  More, please.

The Green Inferno (2013)

Director: Eli Roth

Writers:Eli Roth, Guillermo Amoedo, Nicolas Lopez

Composer: Manuel Riveiro

Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Magda Apanowicz, Ignacia Allamand, daryl Sabara, Nicolas Martinez, Sky Ferreira, Eusebio Arenas, Richard Burgi, Matias Lopez, Ramon Llao

More info: IMDb

Tagline: No good deed goes unpunished.

Plot: A group of student activists travels to the Amazon to save the rain forest and soon discover that they are not alone.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

The end teases you with THE GREEN INFERNO PART II: HEADS ARE GONNA ROLL.  Just kidding.  It's been 8 years since Roth's last directed feature came out.  This one was made two years ago but there was some legal issue (so I heard) that kept this from being released.  Let's forget for a moment that I've been anxiously waiting that long to see it.  What a disappointment and big missed opportunity.  Wow.  I'm not going to spoil it.  There's not really much to spoil anyway.  It takes way too long for us to get to Chile which means there's too much time spent setting up plot in the big city with the college kids.  There's also some stuff mentioned about female genital mutilation that sounds like it's going to go somewhere later on but it fizzles out with a weak ass whisper.  It does get better for the last two thirds of the picture once we're in the jungle but there are things that aren't thought out well that bugged me.  I wasn't looking to pick this apart but there are so many plot holes that the picture starts to collapse on itself because of them.  Roth made this film because he's such a huge film fan of the cannibal genre that picked up steam in the late 70s and died in the early 80s.  I like those films, too.  Compared to those, GI is incredibly weak.  I thought I was watching a PG-13 film.  Just when you think there's not going to be a lick of nudity, we get just a scant amount and then she's promptly dressed with slender strands of rope fabric which barely covers her nipples and a rope fabric bikini bottom.  What kind of tribe does this?  Females of all ages (ALL, mind you) were covered this way.  Whatever.  I didn't come to see this for some bare chested women but it's a staple of the genre that's now over forty years old.

The gore is even kept to a minimum.  There's not much imagination in this picture and that's especially shocking considering it came from Roth.  I really dig this guy's pictures but he's taken a big misstep here and he's delivered an under-cooked story that lacks a lot of what made those early cannibal pictures so great or at least memorable.  And the ending? Are you kidding me?  It's just another one of those plot points that's flimsy and not as solid as it could be.  I actually liked the attempt at doing something different with the ending but it was the last straw on a camel's back that broke a half hour ago.  I didn't hate the movie although it sounds like I did.  It just saddens me that I waited two years to see it and spent $20 for a ticket and concessions to wash it down.  The best scene in the movie is when someone commits suicide.  It was fast, unexpected and fucking awesome as shit!  At least there's that.  His next one, KNOCK KNOCK comes out in a couple of weeks.  I'll be there. 

Nuns That Bite (1977)

Director: Yuji Makiguchi

Starring: Hiroko Fuji, Maya Hiromi, Yoshihiro Igarashi, Ryuji Katagiri, Nenji Kobayashi, Tadashi Naruse

More info: IMDb

Plot: This weird mixture of period splatter movie and Japanese Nunsploitation is about a girl called Omino, a young woman who flees from her master and ends up in a convent full of man-hating, murderous nuns.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? If some English subs show up, absolutely.

Part of the Nunsploitation Project (July & August 2013). Click here for more naughty nun insanity!

This is some fucked up shit right here.  So you've got this broad, Omino, who's been wronged by her master, see, and she makes her getaway the first chance she gets.  Along her travels she's abused and raped by some weird fucking dudes but she does meet one nice man that treats her as a human being.  For some reason they don't continue together (no English subtitles, see, so I can't know everything that's going on) and she makes her way to a convent run by cannibal nuns who kill every man that happens upon them (the keep one mute dude to do the chores).  Soon, Omino's nice guy shows up and you can guess what happens to him.  It's a bloody finale as Omino's shit hits the Japanese fan.

Fun flick although I hadn't a clue as to what was being said.  For the most part you can follow it but I sure would like some English subs next time.  As you can see there are some really wacky images in this very short picture (69 minutes).  Before you know it, it's over and you've had an eye full of nudity, blood and gore.  Isn't this genre fun?

Ravenous (1999)

Director: AntoniaBird

Starring: Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, David Arquette, Jeremy Davies, Jeffrey Jones, John Spencer, Stephen Spinella, Neal McDonough, Joseph Runningfox, Bill Brochtrup, Sheila Tousey

More info: IMDb

Tagline: You are who you eat

Plot: Captain John Boyd receives a promotion after defeating the enemy command in a battle of the Mexican-American War, but because the general realizes it was an act of cowardice that got him there, he is given a backhanded promotion to Fort Spencer, where he is third in command. The others at the fort are two Indians, George and his sister, Martha, who came with the place, Chaplain Toffler, Reich, the soldier; Cleaves, a drugged-up cook; and Knox, who is frequently drunk. When a Scottish stranger named Colquhoun appears and recovers from frostbite almost instantly after being bathed, he tells a story about his party leader, Ives, eating members of the party to survive. As part of their duty, they must go up to the cave where this occurred to see if any have survived. Only Martha, Knox, and Cleaves stay behind. George warns that since Colquhoun admits to eating human flesh, he must be a Wendigo, a ravenous cannibalistic creature.

My rating: 10/10

Will I watch it again? Of course!

When this hit theaters I was away on a business trip for a little over a week.  When I returned it was gone.  It didn't last long in that town and I was bummed out.  Trailer looked fantastic.  The bumminging worsened after I finally saw it on DVD and I was so blown away by it that it was killing me that I missed it in the theater.  Oh, well.  I've seen it many times since and I've watched the extras, listened to the commentaries and the soundtrack.  Besides the craziness of the story and performances and Antonia Bird's clever direction, it's the brilliant and odd score by Mychael Nyman and Damon Albarn that brings it alive and in a big way.  It was strange to grasp the first time but it grew on me and I kept thinking about it long after.  I bought the soundtrack and spun it like mad and it quickly became one of my favorites.