WILD BEASTS (Italy - 1984; US release 1985) Written and directed by Franco E. Prosperi. Cast: Lorraine De Selle, John Aldrich (Tony DeLeo), Ugo Bologna, Louisa Lloyd, John Stacy, Enzo Pizzu, Monica Nickel, Stefania Pinna, Frederico Volocia, Leslie Thomas. (Unrated, 92 mins) Back in the day, Italian exploitation filmmakers were always quick to pounce on a Hollywood trend and milk it for all it was worth. Whether it was the torrent of exorcism movies that spewed forth following THE EXORCIST, the endless zombie gutmunchers that came after DAWN OF THE DEAD, the truckload of post-nukes after MAD MAX and THE ROAD WARRIOR, and the countless barbarian adventures that resulted from CONAN THE BARBARIAN, the Italians were the undisputed kings of the shameless ripoff. Though you could go back as far as FROGS and NIGHT OF THE LEPUS from 1972, the late 1970s saw a brief ecological, "nature-run-amok" craze with films like 1976's THE FOOD OF THE GODS, 1977's DAY OF THE ANIMALS, 1977's KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, 1978's THE SWARM, and 1979's PROPHECY, among many others.There were a few stragglers over the years, like three different rat movies coming out from 1982-83 with DEADLY EYES, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, and the final segment of the anthology film NIGHTMARES, but generally the fad, arguably popularized by JAWS in 1975, quickly passed. The Italians were fashionably late to the party when it came to the nature-run-amok subgenre. 1982 saw the release of Enzo G. Castellari's JAWS ripoff GREAT WHITE and the Ovidio G. Assonitis-produced PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING, which debuting director and future King of the World James Cameron still insists is "the greatest flying piranha movie ever made," and in 1984, Bruno Mattei directed the incredible RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR, a bizarre fusion of post-nuke and nature-runs-amok made unforgettable by one of the most ridiculous closing shots in all of Italian exploitation. 1984 also gave us WILD BEASTS, directed by Franco E. Prosperi, one of two Franco Prosperis known to Italian exploitation enthusiasts. One was a journeyman genre-hopper (MEET HIM AND DIE, THE LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH), while the WILD BEASTS Prosperi, along with Gualtiero Jacopetti, was one of the leading figures in the "Mondo" documentary scene that began with 1963's MONDO CANE. Prosperi and Jacopetti made several Mondo films over the next decade, ending with 1971's revolting ADDIO ZIO TOM, released in the US as FAREWELL, UNCLE TOM, an exploitative, shock value re-enactment of the slave trade in which the pair essentially function as the early 1970s drive-in equivalent of trolls in a comments section.
Other than 1975's MONDO CANDIDO, a Mondo spoof inspired by Voltaire's Candide that he co-directed with Jacopetti, WILD BEASTS remains this Franco Prosperi's only foray into both the horror genre and non-Mondo-related narrative. It's also the final work to date for the 88-year-old filmmaker, who's still with us and present for an interview on Severin's new Blu-ray release of the film. Though a narrative work of fiction, Prosperi uses his experience as a documentary filmmaker throughout WILD BEASTS, a ludicrous story of PCP-contaminated industrial waste polluting the water supply of "a northern European city" that's obviously Frankfurt judging from all the Frankfurt signs visible throughout. The contamination results in rapidly escalating aggression in animals, from a seeing-eye dog attacking a blind man to rats overtaking a parked car and devouring the canoodling couple inside to the animals in the zoo breaking out of their cages and pens and going on a city-wide rampage. The zoo's leading veterinarian Dr. Rupert Berner (Tony DeLeo, billed as "John Aldrich," and a discomforting mix of Christopher McDonald and Yanni) teams with constantly-snacking detective Braun (Ugo Bologna), following the trail of carnage as enraged animals run rampant throughout the city. There's a cheetah chasing down a driver (after she almost drives into them, Berner exclaims "She's not crazy! She's being chased by a cheetah!"), cows stampeding through an arcade, and elephants running through the streets, causing cars to pile up or go airborne, crashing into a places like a lamp and chandelier store in scenes of almost Blake Edwardsian destruction before they overtake an airport runway and cause a plane to crash (don't ask). Meanwhile, Berner's journalist girlfriend Laura Schwarz (CANNIBAL FEROX's Lorraine De Selle) is desperately trying to get to her daughter Suzy (Louisa Lloyd), who's trapped at dance class with other kids as a hungry polar bear wanders the halls.
Prosperi fumbles a bit in the middle with some pacing issues that a more experienced genre figure could've alleviated, but WILD BEASTS is an overall entertaining bit of batshit exploitation that doesn't skimp on the gore or other WTF? factors. The relationship between workaholic, absent mother Laura and sarcastic, self-reliant daughter Suzy has some passive-aggressive dysfunction that could use more exploration, and Lloyd is up there with Paige Conner in THE VISITOR, Veronica Zinny in MACABRE, the children in BEYOND THE DOOR, and Nicoletta Elmi in anything as one of the strangest and most off-putting kids in any Italian horror movie. And I haven't even mentioned the bizarre shift in the climax when things take a decidedly WHO CAN KILL A CHILD?-esque turn. Even with some staged sequences in the Mondo films, Prosperi is still a documentarian at heart and that's evident throughout WILD BEASTS in his sometimes distracting interest in extended shots of a newspaper going to press, firefighters and emergency responders on the job, animals attacking one another, and other mayhem presented in stock footage. He also captures some shots of the Frankfurt underbelly, from a trash-strewn street with a prominent Burger King bag to some CHRISTIANE F-inspired images of used needles along the steps exiting the Frankfurt U-Bahn.
Prosperi also careens into the arguably irresponsible, insisting on putting his actors in the same shots as dangerous animals (the reason non-acting circus performer DeLeo got the lead role--he had experience working with these animals and this remains his only film) or having streets closed off to accommodate elephants and bears running around (the cheetah vs. car sequence was actually shot in Johannesburg, South Africa). This commitment to realism is especially alarming late in the film when two child actors are clearly in the same shot as the polar bear chasing them down a school hallway. Prosperi kept a team of animal wranglers with tranquilizer guns and darts just out of camera view throughout shooting to prevent WILD BEASTS from becoming the second coming of ROAR, and it would seem that some of the animals might be slightly sedated at times (that polar bear in the school is moving, but he doesn't look like he's at 100%), but it's still representative of the kind of jaw-dropping risk-taking that no producer would sign off on today. Severin's new Blu-ray is packed with extras, including interviews with a still-vibrant Prosperi (who retired from directing after this film), an affable DeLeo, and editor Mario Morra. It's a nice package for such a relatively obscure film that was on the shelf of every video store in America back in the '80s (with a Lightning Video box that erroneously credited score composer Daniele Patucchi as the director), but has fallen off the radar in the decades since. It's a little clunky at times and the story calls for a Ruggero Deodato or an Umberto Lenzi to keep it focused, but flaws and all, it's Prosperi's, for better or worse, devotion to realism and his willingness to put his actors in harm's way that gives WILD BEASTS its cult appeal.
EMANUELLE IN AMERICA
(Italy - 1977) Directed by Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi). Written by Maria Pia Fusco. Cast: Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Paola Senatore, Roger Browne, Riccardo Salvino, Lars Bloch, Maria Piera Regoli, Matilde Dell'Aglio, Stefania Nocilli, Giulio Bianchi, Efrem Appel, Lorraine De Selle, Salvatore Baccaro, Renate Kasche, Pedro the Horse. (Unrated, 100 mins) The most notorious of the tenuously-connected BLACK EMANUELLE series--at least in its uncut version--EMANUELLE IN AMERICA is, for the most part, another globe-trotting travelogue with freelance photojournalist Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) engaging in the usual spontaneous sexcapades. Made as a direct response to Just Jaeckin's X-rated, 1974 global phenomenon EMMANUELLE with Sylvia Kristel, 1975's BLACK EMANUELLE (note one less "m"), directed by Bitto Albertini, showcased 25-year-old, Indonesian-born Gemser in the title role (around the same time, she had a small part in the 1975 Kristel sequel EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN). Combining the erotic elements of EMMANUELLE with a nod to blaxploitation, BLACK EMANUELLE was successful enough that Gemser was soon starring in all sorts of softcore erotica that were often exported as EMANUELLE movies even though she sat out the first official sequel. 1976's BLACK EMANUELLE 2, also directed by Albertini, saw Gemser replaced by the George Lazenby of the series, one-and-done Israeli actress Shulamith Lasri, credited as "Sharon Lesley." Gemser, meanwhile, was headlining a slew of unofficial follow-ups that were often shot under one title but released as EMANUELLE movies, like Brunello Rondi's BLACK EMMANUELLE, WHITE EMMANUELLE (1976), which paired her with French actress Annie Belle and reinstated the extra "m" to the title; Enzo D'Ambrosio's boring EMANUELLE ON TABOO ISLAND (1976), which featured five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy at an all-time career low; Giuseppe Vari's nunsploitation outing SISTER EMANUELLE (1977); Mario Bianchi's sex comedy EMANUELLE IN THE COUNTRY (1978); and the Greek-made drama EMANUELLE'S DAUGHTER (1980). In 1978, perennial D-list producer and later serial Bruno Mattei enabler Franco Gaudenzi (STRIKE COMMANDO, ROBOWAR) tried to get a piece of the action, taking an unreleased mondo documentary and having Gemser host introductions to its segments, releasing it under the title EMANUELLE AND THE EROTIC NIGHTS, which received a US release in 1983 as an early acquisition of Bob and Harvey Weinstein's fledgling Miramax Films. So popular were these EMANUELLE films that Albertini would even be hired to direct Chai Lee as an Asian Emanuelle in the 1977 offshoot YELLOW EMANUELLE.
1976 saw a BLACK EMANUELLE reboot of sorts, with a returning Gemser and veteran cinematographer and journeyman director Aristide Massaccesi (better known as "Joe D'Amato") starting a long partnership that extended beyond just the BLACK EMANUELLEs. 1976's EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK was released around the same time as BLACK EMANUELLE 2 and more or less ignores it, with Emanuelle once again an independent, respected, and sexually-liberated journalist (Lasri's Black Emanuelle was a famous model) sent off to investigate something in some semblance of a plot that's just an excuse for a plethora of sex scenes. Gemser and D'Amato would make five of their own EMANUELLEs, with BANGKOK followed by three in a busy 1977: EMANUELLE IN AMERICA, EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD (released in the US in 1980), and the cannibal horror hybrid EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (released in the US in 1984, after the craze had passed, as TRAP THEM AND KILL THEM, presumably to draw in the MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY crowd). The final installment, 1978's EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE, was a quickie padded with significant amounts of recycled and redubbed footage from previous Gemser EMANUELLEs. Another Gemser/D'Amato collaboration, BLACK COBRA WOMAN (1976), co-starring a slumming and probably shitfaced Jack Palance, was sold in Japan as an EMANUELLE film, and several years later, Gemser would resurrect the Emanuelle-as-crusading-reporter act without D'Amato for a pair of Bruno Mattei women-in-prison movies, 1982's VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON (released in the US in 1984 as CAGED WOMEN), and 1983's immortal WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (released in the US in 1985).
Gemser and offscreen husband and frequent co-star Gabriele
Tinti. They were married from 1976 until his death in 1991.
Fans generally cite EMANUELLE IN AMERICA as the high point of Gemser's EMANUELLE run, but that seems most likely due to its shock value. It's rough going for the uninitiated, especially on Blue Underground's 2003 DVD release, which presents the film in its uncut, 100-minute version (VidAmerica's VHS ran somewhere in the vicinity of 82 minutes). It's a typical Gemser/D'Amato EMANUELLE set-up: moonlighting as a fashion photographer in NYC--with ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT PART 2 visible on theater marquees, Gemser riding the Roosevelt Island tram, and Big Apple pedestrians predictably gawking at the camera--Emanuelle is almost killed by a model's crazed boyfriend before calming him down the best way she knows how: with a blowjob. She then gets a hot tip about a sex trafficking ring involving wealthy asshole Eric Van Darren (Lars Bloch). Armed with her sneaky pendant camera with a seemingly endless supply of film, Emanuelle infiltrates his group of Zodiac-named women and going by "Virgo," she's privy to all sorts of high society, EYES WIDE SHUT transgressions, including one of the women (SALON KITTY's Paola Senatore), jerking off Van Darren's prized horse Pedro in a scene of explicit bestiality that was obviously cut from most releases. From there, Emanuelle follows Van Darren's duke friend (Gabriele Tinti, Gemser's husband and frequent co-star--they met on BLACK EMANUELLE and married in NYC around the time of EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's shoot, becoming the Bogie & Bacall of Italian trash cinema) to his villa in Venice, where she witnesses an orgy that includes some onscreen fellatio in shots that never involve Gemser. From there, she goes to an island where D'Amato stops the film cold for a solid ten minutes of hardcore sex scenes and money shots involving previously unseen actors (one of whom is Nazisploitation regular Salvatore Baccaro, best known for his credit "and Boris Lugosi as Ook the Neanderthal Man" in 1973's FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS). While on the island, Emanuelle witnesses a copulating couple carrying on as a brutal snuff film plays in the background. An investigation of the snuff film leads her to the nation's capital (why didn't they call this EMANUELLE GOES TO WASHINGTON?), where she's seduced by a corrupt senator (Roger Browne, a Cincinnati, OH native who spent his entire career in Europe) with a penchant for LSD and getting off on the kind of filmed torture tactics that would make him the ideal target for Videodrome. Then it all ends with a wacky, fourth-wall breaking finale involving Emanuelle and her boyfriend (Riccardo Salvino)--yes, she has a boyfriend--and some comical stereotypes of island natives.
Narratively speaking, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA is a mind-boggling mess with little flow and even less logic. But nobody's watching this for storytelling. The more conventional sex scenes are well-handled--a sweaty steamroom hook-up between Emanuelle and Gemini (Lorraine De Selle) is nicely done--and while it's not quite "Run Cheetah Run" from EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE, it's got a great catchy, "English-as-second-language" Nico Fidenco-penned theme song in "Celebrate Myself." But D'Amato just goes too far for the audience that watched these softcore Euro imports on late night Showtime back in the early '80s. Of course, the hardcore elements would've been trimmed (and were only shot by D'Amato as alternate takes for different territories in the first place), but while I see the demand for cum shots if there was potential for this on the XXX circuit, who other than Pedro really wants to see Paola Senatore (who, big surprise, was doing porn a decade later) give a horse a two-handed tugjob? Between that and the disgustingly graphic and very convincing snuff film snippets that D'Amato shot, I question EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's definition of "entertainment." Gemser is as lovely as ever here, but the enjoyment is significantly hampered by all the extraneous shit going on. I'll take the drag queen bowling alley brawl in EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE any day. D'Amato would continue dabbling in all sorts of genres (zombies, cannibals, CONAN and ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs) before his death in 1999, spending the final years of his career in hardcore porn. Gemser would be an exploitation staple well into the '80s, with appearances in 1976's VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED, the 1981 Rankin/Bass period epic THE BUSHIDO BLADE, and an unlikely co-starring role with Michael Landon in the 1983 NBC TV-movie LOVE IS FOREVER (where she was credited as "Moira Chen" when producers didn't want her sexploitation notoriety to be a distraction) representing her only attempts at mainstream crossover. A devastated Gemser would retire from acting when 59-year-old Tinti died of cancer in 1991, though she worked behind the scenes as a costume designer on a few more D'Amato productions (including the legendary TROLL 2) before withdrawing from movies altogether in 1993. Now 65, Gemser lives completely out of the public eye. She gave an audio interview for EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's 2003 DVD release, but her last on-camera appearance to date was in an interview for EMMANUELLE: A HARD LOOK, a 2001 British TV documentary about Sylvia Kristel's EMMANUELLE films by REPO MAN director Alex Cox.
CANNIBAL FEROX aka MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY (Italy - 1981; US release 1983) Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi. Cast: John Morghen (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), Lorraine De Selle, Bryan Redford (Danilo Mattei), Zora Kerova, Robert Kerman, Venantino Venantini, John Bartha, Walter Lloyd (Walter Lucchini), Meg Fleming (Fiamma Maglione), "El Indio" Rincon, Perry Pirkanen, Dominic Raacke, Jake Teague. (Unrated, 93 mins)
The Italian cannibal genre is always a touchy subject. Its origins are in 1962's MONDO CANE and the subsequent mondo documentaries of the 1960s and into the 1970s by Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi and others. There's also the influence of the 1970 Richard Harris hit A MAN CALLED HORSE, which spawned Umberto Lenzi's 1972 Italian ripoff THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER. In HORSE, Harris is an English aristocrat abducted and treated like an animal by a Sioux tribe until he eventually comes to earn their respect, abandons his privileged upbringing and ultimately becomes the tribe's leader. THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER took a very similar concept--with Ivan Rassimov as a British wildlife photographer in the jungles of Thailand--but steered it in a Mondo direction that a Hollywood film wouldn't dare venture. THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER, a fixture in American drive-ins throughout the 1970s under various alternate re-release titles (DEEP RIVER SAVAGES, SACRIFICE!), offered sparse but still graphic depictions of cannibalism, sex and rape involving subgenre mainstay Me Me Lai, and brutal animal killings, and though it's rather tame compared to what would come later, it's almost universally considered the first Italian cannibal film.
While Lenzi is generally credited with creating the Italian cannibal genre, it was Ruggero Deodato who established it as a legitimate craze with 1977's THE LAST CANNIBAL WORLD, released in the US in a cut version in 1978 as THE LAST SURVIVOR, but best known today as JUNGLE HOLOCAUST. A far more graphic riff on THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER and featuring Rassimov in a supporting role, THE LAST CANNIBAL WORLD stars Massimo Foschi as an oil prospector stranded in Mindanao after a plane crash. He's abducted and humiliated by a cannibal tribe and eventually resorts to cannibalism to earn their respect. Allegedly based on a true story, THE LAST CANNIBAL WORLD raised the bar for what the Italian cannibal genre was willing to depict. Here was the more aggressive barrage of flesh-eating, graphic rape, Foschi and Lai (again as a tribe girl/sex object) completely nude for a good chunk of the film, and on-camera animal slaughter, hands-down the most troubling element of the genre. Sergio Martino hopped on the cannibal bandwagon with 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (released in the US in cut form as SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD), which got a minor boost in class thanks to the presence of Ursula Andress as a socialite venturing into the jungles of New Guinea to find her missing husband, and Stacy Keach as the experienced guide she hires, traumatized by his own experiences being abducted by a cannibal tribe years earlier. MOUNTAIN's really foul elements, including a monkey obviously being thrown into a snake's mouth, a borderline pornographic cannibal orgy that showcases gratuitous masturbation involving a female cannibal, and one really unpleasant depiction of simulated bestiality with a cannibal and a water buffalo, are mostly confined to the climax, don't directly involve Andress or co-star Claudio Cassinelli, and happen long after Keach's character is killed off, a certain indication that Martino pulled a CALIGULA on his cast and shot the really vile stuff when they weren't around.
If THE LAST CANNIBAL WORLD got the ball rolling on the cannibal craze, it was Deodato's infamous CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) that really caused the movement to explode. One of the key films in the genesis of found-footage that was used so effectively nearly 20 years later with 1999's THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and became practically standard after 2009's PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is a horrifying and intensely disturbing experience--go to a midnight showing of it with a snarky audience that's ready to mock it MST3K-style and you'll see them grow silent about 25 minutes in as the shell-shocked crowd starts really thinning out by the one-hour mark. It remains one of the very few irony-proof films that separates the players from the pretenders when it comes to cult hipster fandom. You don't simply watch CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST--you survive it. Deodato's handling of the found-footage element--the second half of the film consists of a professor (Robert Kerman, better known at the time as porn actor R. Bolla) watching increasingly damning footage left behind by a documentary crew who vanished while investigating the existence of cannibals in the Amazon--has yet to be equaled by any of its countless faux-doc/found-footage offspring. Deodato's film was so believable that Italian authorities actually thought he made a snuff film and he had to prove he didn't kill off his unknown actors. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST has legitimate statements to make about the comparisons between the stone-age jungle and modern civilization, evidenced in the way that the tribes are generally peaceful but only end up turning on the documentary crew when the raw--no pun intended--footage shows the crew (civilization) acting like sociopathic assholes and goading them into acts of increasing savagery and abhorrence. One of the film's most telling moments involve two of the crew raping a tribe girl, who's later punished in one of the film's iconic images: impaled on pole that enters her vagina and exits her mouth. Lead filmmaker Alan Yates (Gabriel Yorke) is smirking and visibly amused at the horrific punishment until one of the other guys says "Watch it, Alan...I'm shooting," at which point he turns serious and melodramatically declares "Oh, good Lord! This is horrible!" CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is an intelligent film with moments that remain prescient today in an era when there is no depth to which the media won't plummet to sensationalize or outright manufacture a story. But any indicting aspirations it has to being the NETWORK of Italian cannibal movies is negated somewhat by Deodato also wallowing in the same exploitation and sensationalism that he's criticizing, whether it's turning his camera on the gruesome slaughter of a helpless animal (the turtle scene is arguably the most revolting thing ever filmed for a commercial movie, and co-star Francesca Ciardi's vomiting is real) or playing up the graphic exploitation elements.
Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Umberto Lenzi
on the set of CANNIBAL FEROX
Even with its ultimately heavy-handed message ("I wonder who the real cannibals are," muses Kerman's pipe-smoking professor), CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was as smart as the genre ever got. After that, there was nowhere to go but down, and Umberto Lenzi was happy to oblige. A veteran journeyman who went wherever genre trends took him (he really found his niche with 1970s polizia), Lenzi returned to the cannibal genre he helped create with EATEN ALIVE (1980), which fused the cannibal craze with the then-topical Jonestown massacre, with yet another wealthy young woman (Janet Agren) hiring a guide (Kerman, again) to find her missing sister (Paola Senatore), who's run off to Sri Lanka and fallen in with a religious cult led by the insane Jonas (Rassimov, again). EATEN ALIVE is grimy, trashy, and cheap, with animal slaughter scenes pilfered from MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, ears and breasts being sliced off, perpetual subgenre abuse object Me Me Lai being gang-raped, Senatore being sodomized by a cannibal, Rassimov inducting Agren into his cult by penetrating her with a venom-dipped dildo, and a seriously slumming Mel Ferrer, no doubt questioning the state of his career while appearing in his second movie in three years titled EATEN ALIVE, as a professor dropping exposition to a NYC detective (gay porn star Gerald Grant) about how cannibal tribes still exist.
Lenzi quickly followed EATEN ALIVE with CANNIBAL FEROX, the most infamous Italian cannibal film after CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, and one of the most notorious films ever made. HOLOCAUST at least had something to say and broke new ground, but EATEN ALIVE and CANNIBAL FEROX are pure exploitation all the way. Abandoning any illusions of restraint and not about to be told "Don't go there!" Lenzi goes all-in with CANNIBAL FEROX as NYU anthropology grad student Gloria Davis (Lorraine De Selle), her brother/research assistant Rudy (Danilo Mattei, billed as "Bryan Redford"), and her friend Pat (Zora Kerova) venture deep into the Amazon to prove cannibalism has never existed. Of course, they're wrong, but cannibals aren't their only problem: they soon fall in with Mike Logan (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, using his "John Morghen" pseudonym) and Joe Costolani (Walter Lucchini), a pair of on-the-run, small-time NYC lowlifes who ripped off $100,000 from a mafioso (John Bartha) and fled to South America to make their bones in the cocaine business. It doesn't take long for Mike to expose himself as a dangerous psychopath whose actions only stir up the natives who, in true CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST style, turn on the white interlopers. Whether it's animal killings or cannibal mayhem, Lenzi holds nothing back in CANNIBAL FEROX, with the most horrific punishment reserved for the much-deserving Mike, who's paid back in kind after he ties up a tribesman, gouges out his eye, and chops off his penis. Since Lenzi goes for maximum tactlessness, Mike is given the further indignity of having his dick not only chopped off but devoured by a cannibal in loving close-up. Mike's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day continues when he gets his hand hacked off before being restrained under a table with his head poking through and locked in place has the top of his skull is macheted off and his brains picked at like hors d'oeuvres at a dinner party. And then there's one of FEROX's iconic images: Pat's punishment for her part in Mike's murder of a native girl by being strung up with hooks through her breasts.
Where Deodato tried to make a statement with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, Lenzi just unabashedly goes over the line time and again in ways not telegraphed by the film's opening theme that's so "'70s cop show" that you almost expect to hear an announcer intone "Previously on CANNIBAL FEROX..." (Lenzi opened EATEN ALIVE with a similarly incongruous Budy-Maglione number). CANNIBAL FEROX was acquired by Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing--the company behind the cannibal/zombie crossover ZOMBI HOLOCAUST's transformation into DOCTOR BUTCHER, M.D.--and released in 1983. under the instantly legendary title MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, advertised with Levene's typically hyperbolic hucksterism ("Bizarre Human Sacrifices! The Most Violent Film Ever! Banned in 31 Countries!"). A grindhouse and drive-in staple well into the fall of 1984, MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY became a fixture in video stores and scarred many budding gorehounds in those mid-1980s glory days of PMRC outrage and Satanic Panic. We knew slasher movies and zombie movies, but the Italian cannibal films were another beast entirely. To those who cut their teeth on horror in that era, MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY and its ilk were as far as grossout cinema could possibly go, which of course, was part of its charm (plus, grindhouse gorehounds in America saw it before most of the others: CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and EATEN ALIVE, the latter as both DOOMED TO DIE and later on VHS as THE EMERALD JUNGLE, didn't turn up in the US until 1985). Of course, CANNIBAL FEROX is garbage. Of course it's indefensible and utterly reprehensible. But it has its charms and it left its mark. In many ways, it's the ultimate exploitation movie: it's trashy, sleazy, sloppily-dubbed; has some incredible late 1980 time capsule NYC location shooting (DIVINE MADNESS, HOPSCOTCH, FAME, and THE EXTERMINATOR all playing at one NYC theater!); a pointless Manhattan mob subplot that Lenzi simply abandons; gratuitous nudity; delirious overacting by Radice; supporting roles for NYC-based porn actors (Kerman is present once again, this time as rumpled cop Lt. Rizzo in scenes shot at the same precinct Lenzi used for Ferrer and Grant's scenes in EATEN ALIVE), over-the-top violence, ridiculous dialogue ("Hey bitch, where's your stud?" and one of the greatest lines of all time as a starved Pat is tempted by a piece of meat: "No! Stop! It might be Rudy!"), and one of the most unforgettable and effective retitlings ever, even utilized by Rob Zombie for an early, pre-fame White Zombie album. You remember a movie called MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, even if it has a trailer as unappealingly narrated as this one:
After CANNIBAL FEROX, there was really nowhere else for the cannibal subgenre to go. By this point, they were all following the same template and audiences quickly grew fatigued with the repetitive mayhem. Joe D'Amato tried to get into the act with the softcore/cannibal fusion jams EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (1977), released in the US in 1984 as TRAP THEM AND KILL THEM, and PAPAYA, LOVE GODDESS OF THE CANNIBALS (1978), and Jess Franco inevitably chimed in with DEVIL HUNTER (1980) and CANNIBALS (1980), both borrowing Lucio Fulci regular Al Cliver and Sabrina Siani for Italian legitimacy purposes but nevertheless exhibiting Franco's tendency toward amateur hour and his expected lack of attention to detail, whether it's a cannibal sporting a visible wristwatch or another with a disco perm, porn 'stache, and sideburns. There were a few later stragglers, like Michele Massimo Tarantini's MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY (1985), Mario Gariazzo's AMAZONIA (1985) and Antonio Climati's dubiously titled CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST II (1988). Italian hack Bruno Mattei tried to restart the cycle with a pair of 2004 shot-on-video atrocities, MONDO CANNIBAL and IN THE LAND OF THE CANNIBALS, both of which shamelessly rip off CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, and Jonathan Hensleigh (THE PUNISHER, KILL THE IRISHMAN) directed the justifiably little-seen 2007 American found-footage dud WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, with two dipshit couples encountering cannibals while on a get-rich-quick plan to retrace the journey of Michael Rockefeller before his disappearance in New Guinea in 1961. Eli Roth's long-delayed THE GREEN INFERNO, shot in 2012 and finally due in theaters in fall 2015 after some distribution snafus, is purported to be an overt homage to the entire Italian cannibal subgenre.
MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, opening in my hometown of Toledo, OH on 9/14/1984
MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY playing at
the Liberty in Times Square
The legend of CANNIBAL FEROX has grown over the years, and is cemented by Grindhouse's recent Blu-ray release, which is without question the definitive edition. Packed with extras, including Calum Waddell's feature-length documentary EATEN ALIVE: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ITALIAN CANNIBAL FILM, and the instant-classic commentary with Lenzi and Radice--recorded separately--ported over from the 1997 laserdisc and later DVD edition. The commentary is one for the ages, with Lenzi's repeated defending of the film alternating with scorn and derision from Radice. The actor is known for his early '80s horror film work and being on the receiving end of the legendary drill scene in Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), but whose first love has always been the stage, more or less admitting that he took these roles for the money. He doesn't hold back on the commentary, whether he's dissing Lenzi or repeatedly declaring that he's ashamed of CANNIBAL FEROX, citing it as the only film he regrets making. Radice also appears in a new interview segment, as do Zora Kerova and Danilo Mattei (Lorraine De Selle, retired from acting since 1988 and now a successful producer for Italian TV, is MIA). Grindhouse's two-disc Blu-ray set gives this landmark bit of drive-in scuzz the veritable Criterion treatment. CANNIBAL FEROX obviously isn't for everybody, but as Eli Roth points out in the Blu-ray's accompanying booklet of essays, "Lenzi's film was reviled for many years but for many of us, the film is a treasure." It's also a snapshot of a bygone era when something as vile as MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY could play in American movie theaters and drive-ins, a time when impressionable young fans were devouring everything they could find at the holy sanctuary that was the video store. It's an era that's passed and the likes of which we'll never see again. It's more about sentiment than quality, especially since it's not even the best of the cannibal subgenre, but Grindhouse's CANNIBAL FEROX brings those memories and images and that sense of discovery back in all its sleazy, offensive, gut-munching HD glory. You'll probably need to shower after watching CANNIBAL FEROX, but that's not a criticism--that means it did its job.
