Cannibal ferox (1981)

 

Strap yourself in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Umberto Lenzi takes a third stab, or would that be bite, at the cannibal genre. In all fairness his previous effort, Man from Deep River, which launched the Italian cannibal cycle, was more of a jungle adventure/love story with a few cannibals thrown in for good measure. A year before Cannibal ferox he made his second meat eater tale with Eaten Alive, where he liberally edited footage from other cannibal films into his own feature. Anyway, has Umberto Lenzi learned anything before he once again went back to the jungle?

The story revolves around aspiring anthropologist Gloria (Lorraine de Selle, Emanuelle in America), who with her brother Rudy and their easy-going friend Pat set off into the Amazon jungle to disapprove the theory of cannibalism. In the jungle they meet the coke-loving, emerald searching madman Mike Lawson (Giovanni Lombardo Radice aka John Morghen) and his partner Joe. They have pissed off the local tribe and soon they are all up shit creek without a paddle.

The narrative isn’t exactly brilliant (would you expect it to be?). We follow our three main characters into the jungle, occasionally interrupted by New York scenes where both the local mafia and police are quite eager to catch Mike. But Mike is in the jungle too! While I initially thought the search for Mike would lead anywhere it proves to be more like a MacGuffin and thus rendering it utterly pointless. It took me out of the movie where I wanted to stay in the jungle.

A part of what I love about these cannibal films are that they are actually filmed out in the wild. It gives them an authenticity rarely seen today. The cast and crew were working in dangerous conditions. That immediately earns Cannibal ferox respect in my book. Apparently filming in the jungle was occasionally interrupted by drug smuggling airplanes passing by. Those were the days!

Gruesome effects for a gruesome movie. 

Now our cast Gloria, Rudy and Pat are decent folks. Pat is a little messed-up, but seems harmless. The real villain of the movie is Mike. Radice really excels in his role. His morals are off the chart and we are given ample time to hate him and wishing for his demise. Killing the local cannibals for no good reason is always something you should be careful about! He more than gets his comeuppance, while treating the audience to some wince inducing effects, including penis severing and a couple of outrageous decapitations. Yes, this is the kind of movie that delivers on its promise of graphic brutality. It does so in a more extreme way than even Cannibal Holocaust, in my opinion. Radice claims that Lenzi really liked seeing the violence (so do I), but there is something gleefully sadistic about the way it is shown. The scene where Mike kills a pig is especially uncomfortable. Radice wasn’t interested in killing the pig, so that job was left to someone else. The scene is brutal, but what really drives it home is the short dialogue exchange between Gloria and Mike immediately afterwards; “Did you have to torture it that way? What, do you get off on ecology? Huh? Twat.” It feels as if Lenzi is attacking opponents of his work methods here. Don’t tell me what to do! If I say that pig had to die, it had to die! I could of course be wrong. While I can’t say I really approve of these all too frequent animal slayings, but it is part of a movie genre that lived a thankfully short life. The animal killings blur the line between fiction and reality to disturbing effect just like it’s supposed to. Those were different times with different rules.

As for the technical aspects they work very well. The always economic Lenzi reuses his score by Roberto Donati and Fiamma Maglione from Eaten Alive. The intense doom-laden music does wonders for the film, but a funky track too often detract from the on-screen brutality. He also treats us to some beautiful landscape shots. It’s a nice contrast to the rest of the film. The alternate title, Make Them Die Slowly, perfectly encompasses the spirit of Cannibal ferox. Ferox is actually a Latin word meaning fierce, so it must be something to it!

In the end Cannibal ferox is a decent jungle horror for those of us that revel in extreme movies. There are definitely others in the genre that are better, but if you want uncompromising brutality this your kind of movie.

6/10