Cannibal Ferox (1983)

Overrated

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

Three friends out to disprove cannibalism meet two men on the run who tortured and enslaved a cannibal tribe to find emeralds, and now the tribe is out for revenge.Of the Italian cannibal films, this is the first one I ever saw. It did not offend me as it does many people, but it certainly intrigued me. Was the film defensible? Were the acts of animal violence cruel, or were they natural? And could they be explained away by this being a very thin metaphor for European colonialism? I do tend to think most of the animal violence is not as bad as many think. It may seem cruel, but if the natives truly eat the animals, how is this different than what we (Americans) do to pigs and cows? For all practical purposes, there is no difference.The film itself is decent, though not great. The dubbing is rather silly at times, and the soundtrack could use a few more tracks. We hear the same musical cue over and over. But for the sort of low-budget stuff Lenzi was pumping out, this may be among his better works.

(Credit to IMDb) Three friends out to disprove cannibalism meet two men on the run who tortured and enslaved a cannibal tribe to find emeralds, and now the tribe is out for revenge.What an utter disgrace this movie is. As a guy who hated Cannibal Holocaust, I'm not sure why I decided to revisit this cheap knockoff. Lenzi clearly made this to cash in on the Cannibal Holocaust controversy. This was around the time where there were movies about cannibalism. Not only is the film grainy, but painfully dull. When you aren't busy being bored half to death, Lenzi tries to repulse you by killing real animals. This movie is a gorefest, but it is NOT enjoyable. Lenzi's blatant in your face direction during the animal killings angered me beyond belief. There are extreme close-ups that made me wince and look away. How could a man be so cruel? It tries so hard to be offensive that it becomes incorrigible. For those that wonder, there is a lot more. Innards are eaten, birds are eaten, a penis is eaten and castrated, etc. I wasn't able to enjoy it. The dubbing is predictably atrocious and the dialog is inane. The performances are nothing noteworthy. Lombardo's intense performance is probably the only solid thing in this movie. He's a bit TOO intense actually. Ostensibly, he clashed with Lenzi on set. Can't say as I blame him. Lenzi is a jackass. Most of the characters were unlikable. Anything else positive to say? The cinematography was decent.You may need a shower after this movie. There is nothing redeeming about this movie! Not a damn thing. All it did was P**** me off and nearly put me to sleep when it wasn't busy being offensive. I love horror movies that cross the line. This movie goes beyond that line and accomplishes nothing, IMO. I'm sure some sick puppies will enjoy this sort of thing. All the more power to you!DUD

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