Slave of the Cannibal God (1978)

Expected more

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Also known as La Montagna del Dio Cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal God and Prisoner of the Cannibal God, don't be fooled by the pedigree of having big stars like Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. This film may seem restrained at first, but it goes absolutely insane by the final ten minutes. I mean, when has Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) ever steered us wrong?Susan Stevenson (Andress, the original Bond girl) is looking for her husband Henry, an anthropologist who has gone missing in the jungles of New Guinea. Along with her brother Arthur and Professor Edward Foster (Keach), they travel to the mountain Ra Ra Me, a cursed place where the authorities will not allow expeditions.Of course, they go there. What did you expect? They're stupid white people. The jungle thanks them with attacks from spiders, snakes and alligators. And then Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?), a jungle guide, joins their party.Bad idea. Arthur has sex with one of the native girls, who is already married, but a cannibal attacks and kills both the husband and wife. A missionary makes them leave, as they have brought nothing but sin, adultery and death to his village. Don't screw in the woods. And don't bring your Western values to the jungle.It turns out that none of their reasons for coming to the island are altruistic. Susan and Arthur have no interest in finding her husband, but are instead looking for uranium deposits. Foster is there just to find the tribe of cannibals who had taken him captive in the past so he can wipe them off the face of the earth.On the way, a waterfall takes Foster after Arthur doesn't save him. And they reach the mountain, which isn't just a uranium mine. It's made from uranium. And how do we know that? Well, Suan's husband's body is being worshipped as a god because the Geiger counter he had keeps ticking, like a heartbeat.At this point, the film rewards you by going completely off the rails, descending into chaos. A native attacks Susan, but is stopped by the tribe and castrated, then his penis is cooked and eaten. Another villager has sex with a giant pig. Meanwhile, the drums build in a hypnotic rhythm as another female villager masturbates (this is from the "director's special selection" version, there are several cuts of the film). As this happens, Susan is stripped and smeared with orange honey by two naked female cannibals before being fed her own brother. Manolo is tortured. It feels like a nightmare you can't wake up from, one of the only moments where the Martino who delivered a quick succession of giallo a decade or so before rears his artistic head.Then, it's over, with Manolo and Susan escaping. I mean, one would think that there would be years of therapy after this. But I don't know. Perhaps she can get over this easier than most.This isn't a great movie. It might not even be good. It is entertaining for the last section, but there's also the problematic issue of animal torture in the film - a monkey is slowly eaten by a snake and lizard being cut apart. Martino claims he tacked on these scenes at the distributor's insistence. I guess the cannibal audience - an outgrowth of the audience for mondo films - needed more than just Ursula's breasts and a dummy of Keach getting killed for their kicks.

Being left extremely impressed by Umberto Lenzi's surprisingly elegant Man From Deep River and Ruggero Deodato's " rough'N' ready" Jungle Holocaust,I decided that I should finally go on a journey to the wild Italian jungle with a director whose work I have always been keen in taking a look at. The plot:Feeling uneasy over not hearing a single word from her husband Henry, since he left to do an expedition in a remote jungle based in New Guinea.Susan Stevenson decides that she has had enough of waiting by the phone,and is instead going to New Guinea in an attempt to find out what has been keep Henry so busy.Not wanting his sister to visit a possibly dangerous place on her own,Susan's brother Arthur decides to come along so that he can watch her back and protect her if any situation arises.Shortly after getting off the plane,Susan and Arthur enlist the help of mutual friend Dr.Edward Foster to guide them through the jungle which Susan suspects contains her husband.Talking to the local residents who live near by the jungle,the group are terrified to discover, that the residents have made it a rule that no one is allowed to enter the jungle of "Ra Ra Me",due to there being a legendary myth about the mountain surrounded by the jungle being cursed.View on the film:Unlike the rough,industrial documentary moments in Deodato's Jungle Holocaust and the impressively well chosen moments of calm in Lenzi's landmark Italian Cannibal film Man From Deep River,Co-writer (along with Cseare Frugoni) /director Sergio Martino gives the film an appearance which strongly looks back towards the Tarzan movies of the 1930's.Wanting to show off the films stunning New Guinea location,Martino uses a number of wide angles that along with allowing him to show all of the environment that the group are finding themselves up against,also allows him to give an equal amount of focus to the actors and the fantastic location that they are surrounded by.Despite being all shot on location,the last 30 minutes or so of the film set in a New Guinea mountain cave feel disappointingly "stagey",due to the location oddly not crating any atmospheric sense of "danger",and the residents of the cave being weird (a scene involving someone getting a little too friendly with a pig being a particularly strange moment!) but not being that frightening.Watching the bonus interview for this very enjoyable film on the Blue Underground DVD,I was surprised to see Sergio Martino being openly shown as lying about not knowing that the scenes of animal torture in the movie were not going to take place.Although the animal killing scenes are on the nasty side,Martino smartly goes for a much more matter of fact directing style of the scenes,and thankfully avoids the feeling of the scenes just being there to make the viewers jump out of their seats.Although I have not seen Dr No in a number of years,I feel that the great performance by Ursula Anderss (whose beautiful curves are put on full display for the films final) really helps to hold the film together,thanks to Andress showing Susan to be someone who is prepared to run straight into a paternally deadly situation,but is also someone who (most of the time) knows when to use her intelligence's and instincts to avoid the deadly traps that lay before her.For the excellent screenplay of the film,Martino and Frugoni initially make the film look like its going to be a fun Jungle adventure,until around the half way point.Where,Martino and Frugoni cleverly allow the gangs dark internal motives to slowly rise to the suffice,and make each of the characters look far from the innocents that they may have originally appeared.

Okay I know that with the title I saw it under "Slave of the Cannibal God" I shouldn't have expected much, but I did expect something. It had Stacy Keach in it for heaven's sake to my mind that signified that I would at least see real actors acting.But alas.Icky people go to find other icky people and hopefully some treasure. Blah blah blah. Every animal and person in New Guinea is alternately demonized or tortured. Blah blah blah. When we finally hate EVERYONE in the entire movie two of them escape and I for one was extremely disappointed, I wanted them to get et too. And yikes I knew Ursula Andress couldn't act but I didn't remember that she couldn't even change facial expression.I love bad movies but this was more worthless than bad.

Ursula Andress is the wife of a British archaeologist who has been missing since going on an expedition into a New Guinea jungle and desires to find his whereabouts. She enlists the aid of Stacy Keach, another professor / archaeologist, renowned but eccentric and just a little aloof. Andress' brother, Antonio Marsina, insists on accompanying them and they set off for a specific island which just might contain a cannibalistic tribe known as the Puka. Keach harbors a secret, he was once associated with the Puka and suffers horrible nightmares as a result, emotionally scarred for participating in their tribal ceremonies in order to co-exist with them and survive. While on the island, Andress, Keach, and Marsini encounter a mission operated by a priest who leads a group of people which inhabit it. Andress is almost killed by a Puka hunter, covered in chalk and wearing a hardened mask carved from tree trunk, saved by Claudio Cassinelli, an outsider who has lived on the island for some time. Cassinelli reluctantly agrees to lead Andress, Keach(..whose knee was crushed by the stone battle ax from the Puka warrior who just so happened to be his guide and helper), and Marsini to the mountain..facing unprecedented trials and danger along the way, including violent rapids and a scary ascent up a waterfall mountain. Soon Cassinelli will discover to his horror Andress and Marsini's true motives for ascending up the mountain..Relatively well made and exciting adventure, featuring exotic locales and numerous elements which will definitely attract the cannibal genre crowd. Martino includes excerpts of animal violence, particularly a sickening act where we see a lengthly sequence showing a monkey's head caught in the mouth of a python(..the fact that this was purposely committed by the crew makes it a pretty repulsive scene, completely inappropriate and incorrigible). Groovy croc attack on one of Keach's guides(..biting the poor guy's arm off), along with an animal trap seizing another member of his crew, causing sharpened stones to stab him multiple times while hanging upside down and powerless. You also have a beheading and castration, along with a disemboweling, including a cracked skull revealing damaged brains. Cassinelli is extraordinary as the man Andress depends on, assuming the heroic role that seemed meant for Keach, who isn't quite the same after the attack that leaves him crippled / wounded. As expected, the intended audience get their shocking "dinner scene" as the cannibal tribe have a grand feast after removing organs and guts from a murdered human. Andress is stripped of her clothes and is completely naked, being prepared by the Puka, "painted" and ward-robed as their goddess, even forced to eat human meat! Keach is fascinating to watch, expressing underlying emotional distress and determination. The film establishes him in the early going as the leader of the expedition, with Cassinelli entering the picture midway through. Cassinelli has this terrific scene where he is able to secure snakes which offer possible harm to Andress and Marsina. The film's true villain is Marsina who slowly reveals himself to be a self-absorbed cretin, letting someone die because he was holding him back in his personal quest to satiate his avarice.While I found some of the violent animal footage effective, if tiresome, I thought the monkey being devoured by the python was rather too gratuitous, and while I don't want to beat a dead horse, the way this is executed by Martino and his handlers is not only inhumane, but despicable.