FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH (US - 1980) Directed by Matthew Mallinson. Written by Ron Harvey. Cast: Bruce Lee, Fred Williamson, Ron Van Clief, Adolph Caesar, Aaron Banks, Bill Louie, Teruyuki Higa, Richard Barathy, Gail Turner, Hollywood Browde, Louis Neglia, Cydra Karlyn, Annette Bronson, John "Cyclone" Flood, Ron Harvey. (R, 86 mins) When he died suddenly in 1973 at just 32, Bruce Lee was already a renowned figure in martial arts and his legacy would be cemented when ENTER THE DRAGON hit theaters a month later. The official cause was deemed cerebral edema but Lee's death was instantly shrouded in mystery and intrigue with conspiracy theories continuing to this day, with a bonus "family curse" added to the mix when his 28-year-old son Brandon was killed in a tragic on-set accident with a prop gun while filming THE CROW in 1993. In the years following Lee's death, the cash-ins and ripoffs--the "Bruceploitation" craze--never stopped, the best-known being GAME OF DEATH, the film Lee was working on at the time of his passing. He had the climactic fight scenes (including one with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) done in 1973 but ENTER THE DRAGON director Robert Clouse ended up creating a new plot around the existing Lee footage, using outtakes from past Lee movies and two unconvincing doubles (and, in one incredible shot that somehow didn't end the careers of everyone who thought it would work: a cardboard cutout of Lee's head attached to a mirror so it looks like it's his reflection). GAME OF DEATH hit theaters in 1979 and despite its dubious nature (and perhaps because the fight scenes Lee completed were among the best he'd ever done), it satisfied a public that still wanted all the Bruce Lee it could get, even if wasn't him. That demand was further satiated by tons of kung-fu movies featuring rechristened actors with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lea, Dragon Lee, Bronson Lee, and the unlikely Myron Bruce Lee, among several others. These guys starred in films like ENTER THE GAME OF DEATH, NEW FIST OF FURY, FIST OF FURY II, GAME OF DEATH II, THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE, and EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER just to name a few.
Legendary 42nd Street grindhouse god Terry Levene and his Aquarius Releasing were no strangers to scrounging in the exploitation gutter to make a quick buck, like driving a "Butchermobile" around NYC in 1982 to promote DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D., or releasing the same movie multiple times under different titles, so it was inevitable that they got a piece of the Bruceploitation action. Aquarius had titles like GOODBYE, BRUCE LEE: HIS LAST GAME OF DEATH and BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE in regular rotation in Times Square and on America's drive-in circuit, but 1980 saw their most shameless Bruceploitation con job yet with FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH, which has just been released by The Film Detective in a surprisingly nice 40th anniversary Blu-ray edition (!) with a top-notch transfer (!!), bonus features (!!!) and liner notes (!!!!), because physical media is dead (?).
It's hard to believe FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH actually played in theaters across America, but gullible Lee fans were so hungry for more of their hero that they'd plunk down their hard-earned cash to see any new stuff they could, no matter how many times they'd get hosed and leave pissed-off. Driven by sheer chutzpah, Levene decided to assemble a "new" Bruce Lee movie out of some footage from a black-and-white 1957 Hong Kong drama he acquired called THUNDERSTORM, which featured a 17-year-old Lee among the supporting cast. Aquarius staffer Ron Harvey found the two-decade-old film by accident while doing an inventory of titles in Levene's library. Harvey was then charged with constructing a story around the THUNDERSTORM footage, and what he and director Matthew Mallinson came up with can only be termed a "movie" in the loosest sense. It's set up as a TV documentary hosted by then-busy grindhouse trailer narrator Adolph Caesar, who would get a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination four years later for A SOLDIER'S STORY and co-star as Old Mister in Steven Spielberg's THE COLOR PURPLE a year after that. Caesar is covering the 1979 World Karate Championship at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden and interviewing various talking heads about the legend of Bruce Lee. That includes event organizer Aaron Banks, taking on the role of conspiracy theorist and insisting that Lee's death was caused by "The Touch of Death" as punishment for revealing too many of the secrets of Chinese martial arts. Banks then proceeds to reveal more secrets of Chinese martial arts by detailing a move called "The Vibrating Palm," which can be laid upon someone in a certain way and lead to death in three to four weeks.
Caesar jabbers endlessly about this tournament being the deciding factor as to who will be the successor to Lee's legacy. Among those interviewed are actor and ex-football star Fred Williamson, who's introduced in a comedy sketch where he gets a late wake-up call and is exhausted and spent from satisfying his woman (Hollywood Browde) all night long (she begs for more, and Fred replies "Five times ain't enough?"). A running gag has everyone mistaking Fred for Harry Belafonte, including a would-be tough guy named Jasper Milktoast (played by Harvey) who tries to start shit with Fred by stealing his cab. Fred ends up catching a ride to the Garden with Caesar, who talks incessantly about Lee's TBD successor while Mallinson provides us with some vintage shots of 1979 Times Square, with movies like 10, HALLOWEEN, STARTING OVER, ANIMAL HOUSE, and APOCALYPSE NOW on theater marquees. Caesar also talks to full contact karate champ Ron Van Clief, who's shown doing his workout routine before agreeing with Banks and emphatically declaring that there's no way Lee could've died from natural causes. Dr. Van Clief is then shown beating the shit out of some creeps hassling an attractive women in the park. "How can I ever repay you?" the woman coos to a beaming Van Clief, as a presumably leering Caesar coyly quips via voiceover, "I'm sure Ron has some ideas of his own." Canceled.
Then comes what Caesar calls "The Halftime Show," where he delves into Lee's past and what made him the martial arts legend he became. Cut to over 30 minutes of footage from THUNDERSTORM, which has been dubbed over with ridiculous American voices to become a story of a teenage Bruce Lee being pressured by his family to pay attention to his studies when all he wants to do is keep practicing karate and get tickets to "the karate show." The black-and-white THUNDERSTORM footage is periodically interrupted by another detour into completely different stock footage, as Lee's mother tells him about the legend of his kung-fu warrior great-grandfather, which plays out in scenes taken from 1971's in-color and Bruce Lee-less INVINCIBLE SUPER CHAN, another import that Levene forgot he owned and would eventually release on its own in 1983 as FORCED TO FIGHT. Of course, it didn't matter to anyone that INVINCIBLE SUPER CHAN was about a samurai warrior and not a kung-fu fighter, but hey, whatever helps pad the running time by 30-plus minutes. And the THUNDERSTORM footage is the sketchiest way possible at Levene's disposal to justify giving Bruce Lee top billing in a movie being hastily assembled to take advantage of his name seven years after his death.
There's another haphazardly-stitched together scene of Lee having a conversation with Banks (of course, never in the shot together at the same time, and the scene is tinted to make it all match), and the Lee side of it is just badly-dubbed stock footage from either an old interview or a TV show (possibly taken from his recurring role on the short-lived 1971 ABC series LONGSTREET, which starred James Franciscus as a blind insurance investigator), followed by Mallinson cutting to World Karate Championship contender Bill Louie (seen earlier in a hilarious staged shot yanking out an opponent's eyes and tossing them into the crowd) going after some muggers in Central Park while dressed as Lee's Kato from THE GREEN HORNET. Caesar continues to ask anyone within earshot about who will carry on the legacy of Bruce Lee, including a ringside sitdown with a seemingly irritable Williamson, followed by a desperate crawl to the feature-length threshold by showing the final two rounds of the World Welterweight Full Contact championship bout between Louie Neglia and John "Cyclone" Flood. Neglia wins but Caesar, who's spent the entire movie pestering everyone with the same inane questions about who will inherit Bruce Lee's crown, decides it doesn't matter. On the subject of handing off Lee's legacy, he asks "Why should we?" and concludes that Lee is irreplaceable, which is interesting since no one was even talking about it in the first place except Adolph Caesar.
Can you imagine paying to see this in 1980? What is this movie? Is it even a movie? It's part documentary, part mockumentary, part sketch comedy, part sporting event coverage, part proto-JACKASS, and it was all sold as a new martial arts epic teaming Bruce Lee, Fred Williamson, and Ron Van Clief ("The 3 Greatest Masters!"). The Blu-ray features interviews with all the major surviving players, including Levene (who's in his 90s), Mallinson, and Harvey, plus Williamson and Van Clief are interviewed together (Caesar died in 1986). They all have a sense of humor about it, with stories of creating forged credentials and equipment adorned with a "WAQU-TV" (for "Aquarius") logo so Garden security would let Caesar and a cameraman into the event, thinking they were with an actual TV station. Harvey also shares a hilarious memory of Caesar (described by Mallinson as "not drunk, but he had a couple drinks and was feeling good") nailing some lines of dialogue before Harvey realized he missed a couple of sentences, and started shouting to get Caesar's attention "like I was Arthur Miller trying to preserve the sacred texts." It's hard to recommend FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH to anyone but the most die-hard Bruce Lee completists or Bruceploitation masochists, but one almost has to admire the audacity of its very existence, along with the nostalgic reminder that there was once a time when some straight-up bullshit like this could make money in theaters. I feel sorry for any '80s kid who decided to do a book report on Bruce Lee and thought watching this would be a good way to get around the reading ("...but all he really wanted to do was get tickets to the karate show").
FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH
opening in Toledo, OH on 11/14/1980
EVILS OF THE NIGHT (US - 1985) Directed by Mardi Rustam. Written by Mardi Rustam and Phillip D. Connors. Cast: Neville Brand, Aldo Ray, Julie Newmar, John Carradine, Tina Louise, Karrie Emerson, Tony O'Dell, Bridgett Holloman, David Hawk, G.T. Taylor, Kelly Parsons, Bonnie J. Karlyle (Dawn Wildsmith), Amber Lynn, Paul Siederman (Jerry Butler), Shone Taylor, Jody Swafford, Lisa Stanyo (Crystal Breeze), Traci Escobar. (R, 85 mins) Though they've made a name for themselves with their restorations of classic 1970s and early 1980s hardcore porn films, Vinegar Syndrome has also become a devoted curator of some of the worst genre films of the 1980s. After giving new life to forgotten batshit Z-listers like THE EXECUTIONER PART II (1984) and NIGHTMARE WEEKEND (1986), among others, Vinegar Syndrome has just released the 1985 sci-fi/alien/slasher/T&A hybrid EVILS OF THE NIGHT in a new Blu-ray set that includes the 85-minute theatrical cut and an extensively re-edited 93-minute TV version. A legitimate contender for the PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE of its decade, EVILS OF THE NIGHT has an inane plot that takes forever to get going, primarily because director/co-writer Mardi Rustam spends an inordinate amount of time on several softcore sex scenes involving minor, extraneous characters played by moonlighting porn stars like Amber Lynn, Jerry Butler, and Crystal Breeze (these actors are completely cut from the TV version). That's not necessarily a bad thing, but by the time everything is finally set in motion, it looks like Rustam is hastily piecing together three or four different movies and hoping it all works itself out. That's actually perfectly fitting, as Rustam got his start producing haphazardly-assembled Al Adamson stitch jobs like the legendarily awful DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971).
There's the extended Skinemax-style sexcapades of the porn actors. There's some camping teenagers (among them Karrie Emerson and HEAD OF THE CLASS' Tony O'Dell, both on their way to the next year's CHOPPING MALL) who appear to have wandered in from a FRIDAY THE 13TH ripoff. There's a team of alien doctors--John Carradine in a silver spacesuit as Dr. Kozmar, Julie "Catwoman" Newmar in a low-cut dress as Dr. Zarma, and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND's Tina Louise looking frumpy as Cora...yep, just Cora--who have arrived and commandeered an abandoned rural hospital where they're harvesting the blood and plasma of abducted teenagers in an effort to keep their species eternally young (one look at 79-year-old Carradine and his arthritic hands and you'll conclude that their efforts are failing). Then there's Kurt (Neville Brand) and Fred (Aldo Ray), a pair of dipshit mechanics being paid in some kind of alien space tokens (unconvincingly portrayed by a handful of quarters) to abduct the teenagers and keep them captive at their garage until Kozmar needs them. This hardly cuts into their workload, since every time we see them, Kurt is sweeping the same spot or thumbing through a Playboy, while Fred paints the same wall red, all of this despite having several cars in the garage that are waiting to be repaired. EVILS OF THE NIGHT is that kind of movie. Nothing makes sense and no one seems to be on the same page. Watch the scene where Emerson's character is fleeing for her life from Ray's crazed Fred, but can't really convey the urgency of the situation because the most she bothers mustering is a leisurely jog to elude him.
Rustam was better known as an exploitation producer, with Ray Danton's PSYCHIC KILLER (1975) and Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE (1976) being his most noteworthy productions. Distributed to the drive-in circuit in the fall of 1985 by Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing, EVILS OF THE NIGHT was Rustam's first released attempt at directing a movie himself, as his EVIL TOWN was shot mostly in 1977 but unreleased until 1987. Still going strong at 85--he's interviewed on the EVILS Blu--Rustam's third and last film to date as a director is the Casper Van Dien-starring 1997 biopic JAMES DEAN: LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG, which is only notable for being the final film appearance of the legendary Robert Mitchum. Even in his early days with Adamson, Rustam always managed to corral enough cash to get some slumming name actors in his productions, but EVILS OF THE NIGHT goes a bit further by mixing up old Hollywood vets like Carradine, Brand, and Ray (the latter two probably crocked) and veteran porn stars who probably saw this cheap project as their ticket to legit cinema or, at the very least, a SAG card. That extends to Rustam co-writing the script with veteran XXX writer Phillip D. Connors, whose credits include such titles as ORAL MAJORITY 2: THE BIG GULP, DEEP THROAT III, and BACKDOOR SUMMER II.
Carradine, Newmar, and Louise visibly hold the material in contempt while carrying themselves like pros, but Brand and Ray are a pretty sorry sight. Ray was used to junk like this and had even taken a supporting role in the hardcore porno western SWEET SAVAGE a few years earlier. Brand (1920-1992), one of the most decorated American soldiers in WWII and a long way from his days as Al Capone opposite Robert Stack's Eliot Ness on the classic ABC series THE UNTOUCHABLES, was no stranger to Rustam productions (his sustained level of amped hysteria in Hooper's EATEN ALIVE must be seen to be believed, and both he and Ray were in PSYCHIC KILLER). but seeing him here, thumbing through nudie mags, gorily drill-killing a scantily-clad young woman, and grunting "Sure would like to hump one of 'em" after stringing up his latest female victim for the aliens is a little depressing. Brand's career had been declining for years (though he had a solid supporting role in William Peter Blatty's 1980 cult classic THE NINTH CONFIGURATION), but this was hitting bottom, and that includes his jerking-off scene in Bert I. Gordon's insane THE MAD BOMBER. Though it would be another seven years until his death from emphysema in 1992, Brand retired from acting following EVILS OF THE NIGHT, making it a particularly demeaning swan song for the veteran character actor. Also featuring laser beams, future Fred Olen Ray regular Dawn Wildsmith, and some songs by none other than Eddie Mekka (Carmine on TV's LAVERNE & SHIRLEY), EVILS OF THE NIGHT isn't quite on the level of jawdropping insanity as THE EXECUTIONER PART II and NIGHTMARE WEEKEND, though it comes close in the final third, right down to a surprisingly clever and funny climactic callback to Kurt's too-long shoelaces becoming his undoing that's almost proto-Larry David in its timing and execution. EVILS OF THE NIGHT is a total piece of shit, but the bit about the shoelaces shows that at least some thought went into it.
DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (Italy - 1982) Directed by Frank Martin (Marino Girolami). Written by Frank Martin (Romano Scandariato). Cast: Ian McCulloch, Alexandra Cole (Alexandra Delli Colli), Donald O'Brien, Sherry Buchanan, Peter O'Neal, Dakar, Walter Patriarca, Franco Ukmar, Angelo Ragusa, Romano Scandariato, Roy Frumkes. (R, 82 mins) One of the most notorious Italian gorefests of the 42nd Street grindhouse glory days, DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. benefitted from an attention-getting ad campaign courtesy of its US distributor, Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing. The Australian Levene became a successful B-movie distributor and theatrical exhibitor in NYC, with his office located just above the marquee of the Selwyn Theater on 42nd Street. He acquired the US rights to the 1980 Italian horror film ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, a low-rent gut-muncher that hopped on two trends at once with its inclusion of both cannibals (Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST) and zombies (Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE). It even utilized some still-standing sets seen in ZOMBIE, courtesy of producer Fabrizio De Angelis, who also brought along co-stars Ian McCulloch and Dakar. Directed by veteran comedy filmmaker Marino Girolami (father of Eurocult icon Enzo G. Castellari) under the pseudonym "Frank Martin," ZOMBI HOLOCAUST was a serviceable entry in the gore galore cycle that followed the template of many Italian horror films at the time (opening 20 minutes set in NYC with some vintage location shooting before the action shifts to a jungle and/or tropical island) but suffered from a low budget, unconvincing latex and rubber effects, and some sloppy filmmaking, as evidenced by what is hands-down the greatest dummy death in film history.
When Levene got hold of ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, he wanted to make it look and sound more American. He bought a few minutes of footage from TALES THAT WILL TEAR YOUR HEART OUT, an unfinished and abandoned anthology film that began shooting in 1976. The mastermind behind TALES was Roy Frumkes, later to gain horror notoriety for his DAWN OF THE DEAD documentary DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD (1985), along with the Tenafly Viper-swilling cult classic STREET TRASH (1987), and his most high-profile mainstream gig, a co-writing credit on the 1996 Tom Berenger hit THE SUBSTITUTE. Levene and his editor Jim Markovic took a couple of minutes of Frumkes' footage--featuring Frumkes himself as a shambling zombie--and turned it into the opening credits sequence of BUTCHER, intercut with a couple of shots of ZOMBI HOLOCAUST's zombies, but having nothing whatsoever to do with Girolami's film (Frumkes is credited with "Title Sequence" on BUTCHER). Levene also whittled down some ZOMBI scenes for pacing reasons (Alexandra Delli Colli's character walking into her apartment and burning some incense, a long dialogue scene during the ride to the jungle compound of the villain), and replaced most of Nico Fidenco's far more appropriate score with one by NYC-based musician/inventor/producer Walter Sear, the owner of Sear Sound Studio and a pioneer in the use of synthesizers. Sear's work on DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. will not go down as his finest hour, as his endless and amazingly tuneless assault of random bleeps, blips, and bloops sounds like an unsupervised kid fucking around on a Casio keyboard in Radio Shack circa 1982, undermining any kind of suspense that might've been building. At the same time, it's a key ingredient in what makes DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. so endearing to fans of trashy movies. It's not like ZOMBI HOLOCAUST was a serious film--it was already a crummy movie with idiotic dialogue ("I could easily kill you now...but I'm determined to have your brain!") and laughable gore effects before Levene got his paws on it--but its Americanization into DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. gives it much of its Bad Movie charm and takes it very close to the level of Eurotrash grindhouse Nirvana rarely rarely experienced with movies not titled PIECES. And when it was ready to go, Levene wanted the denizens of 42nd Street to line up, so he promoted the hell out of it in a very memorable way: with a trailer narrated by Adolph Caesar (two years away from an Oscar nomination for A SOLDIER'S STORY) that promised "DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D...Medical Deviate!," poster art that misled people into expecting a slasher film ("...and he makes house calls!"), and most effectively, by renting a flatbed truck and adorning it with DOCTOR BUTCHER artwork and driving it around Manhattan in the days prior to the film's release on May 7, 1982. The "Butchermobile," as it was soon dubbed, was seen by everyone and word spread like wildfire. DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. was an instant 42nd Street legend thanks to Levene's canny marketing.
The plot, such as it is, deals with a Manhattan hospital morgue beset by a serial mutilator who's helping himself to the limbs and organs of cadavers. The culprit turns out to be an orderly with ties to a Caribbean cult that worships a cannibal god called Kito. This is deduced by nurse Lori Ridgeway (Delli Colli, credited as "Alexandra Cole" in the BUTCHER version, and best known for her performance as the doomed, high society nympho in Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER), who also dabbles in anthropology on the side and even has a priceless Kito dagger in her apartment. That dagger is stolen and her apartment is ransacked, which sends her and NYC health department chief Peter Chandler (McCulloch), along with his associate George (Peter O'Neal) and pushy reporter Susan (Sherry Buchanan), to the Moluccas, a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea. They're welcomed by Dr. Obrero (Donald O'Brien), a famed researcher who's secretly been conducting brain transplant experiments on unwilling victims. Those victims have become his slave-like zombies, which eventually leads to a clash of zombies and cannibal natives, with the NYC interlopers caught in the middle, and with rare exception, becoming either a zombie or dinner. One could argue that ZOMBI/BUTCHER was imaginative in the way it combined two Italian horror trends in zombies and cannibalism, and it's interesting to see the initially threatening cannibals get scared off by the walking dead and eventually coming to the aid of the remaining New Yorkers when they're under attack by Obrero's zombies. But that's about all the credit one can give DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. on any creative level. It's a rudimentary splatter movie that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons, and its attitude toward indigenous people is barbaric at best, as evidenced by George's stunning lack of sympathy toward their native tour guides. When one is brutally killed, the remaining two--dubbed by voices that make them sound developmentally disabled--are understandably frightened, to which George barks "Bury your friend here...and be quick about it!" When the last of the hapless guides is impaled, clinging to life and gasping his last final breaths, the Big Apple intruders gather around and basically shrug while impatiently waiting for him to die, looking more inconvenienced than afraid. O'Neal's George is a complete asshole, so it's actually a crowd-pleasing moment when he's attacked about halfway through and endures what's probably the film's grossest death scene, if you don't count Peter shredding a zombie's head with a small outboard motor.
I love DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D., and it's been hard to see in that form for quite some time. While a Paragon VHS could be found in any video store in the 1980s, since the advent of DVD, the only version readily available in the US was the original ZOMBI HOLOCAUST cut, released by Media Blasters in 2002. It featured the Frumkes footage as an extra, but did not include the drastically altered and rescored BUTCHER cut that caused such a sensation in Times Square in 1982. That's no longer the case, thanks to Severin's new two-disc Blu-ray set, which features both DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. and ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, with each disc accompanied by a ton of extras--the best being an interview with the now 86-year-old Levene and a tour through 42nd Street history with Frumkes and Temple of Schlock guru and exploitation historian Chris Poggiali--plus a limited edition barf bag! It's as close to a definitive, Criterion-level last-word on all things DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. as you're going to get, though Severin did make the curious decision to add a strange scene that was unique to the BUTCHER cut--McCulloch and Delli Colli encountering a couple of cannibals as she falls into a pit trap--back into the ZOMBI HOLOCAUST version. This scene isn't discussed on any of the bonus features, but sticks out like a sore thumb. McCulloch's clothes are darker than in the scenes before and after and his prominent bald spot, seen throughout Fulci's ZOMBIE, is clearly visible (it's covered with either a combover or a small hairpiece in the rest of the film), and Delli Colli's straight hairstyle is suddenly crimped. This scene was clearly shot after ZOMBI HOLOCAUST was made--did Levene commission it? Though this scene wasn't in ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, Severin put it there for this edition, and that's the only questionable decision of what's otherwise one of 2016's most essential Blu-ray purchases for cult horror fans.
The Butchermobile cruising the streets of NYC in 1982.
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.
