Cannibal Ferox - Lisa's Review

This movie is also titled 'Make them die slowly' which is a bit disturbing in itself. Its one Darren urged me not to watch as certain images would stay with me. considered it, but I like to at least 'try' to watch everything. If its too much, then the stop button is there to be pushed.

The movie starts with a young man who has just been released from a detox hospital after 5 weeks. He is looking for ‘Mike’… unfortunately so are a couple of unsavoury characters Mike has swindled out of £100,000 (we later find out they are from the Brooklyn mob). They fear this young man will tip Mike off that they are looking for him, so they dispense with him by way of a bullet through the chest. The police arrive and state everything which is obvious before we cut to 2 young women (Gloria & Pat)and a young cad – Rudi about to travel to……. to explore the concept of Cannibalism which has been reported as having occurred in this particular place - Patagwaya.

Gloria does not believe cannibalism exists,so she is setting out to prove incidents of cannibalism reported in a magazine have never happened. If she manages this, she’ll have an excellent dissertation for her degree. I have to ask what blonde Pat the obvious eye candy of the movie is doing travelling here with her fear of basically every living creature you can mention… but then again, perhaps I have answered my own question there.

They travel to their destination on a boat where they are given a Mongoose to 'protect' them from snakes as it has a lesser spirit and the snake will go for it rather than them... sadly we get to see this in all too much detail in the movie as a fucking massive Anaconda very slowly and painfully kills the animal. I pressed the Fwd button here as I felt way too much emphasis was placed on the suffering of the animal and its face. It wasn't required and didn't add to the story in any way at all. I thought this was footage taken from a documentary but reading Wills review, it looks like it wasn't and the Mongoose was tethered. Not impressed!!!!

After this, 2 new characters appear limping through the bushes - Mike Logan and Joe. Mike seems to be a bit of a tit who ‘doesn’t drink’ but has Cocaine around his neck that he likes to snort. He offers it around like sweeties and Pat has a taste. They tell tales of the cannibals they are running from and their 2 friends who have met a grisly end. One of them was tied to a stake and had his genitals cut off and eaten…. Wonder why that wasn’t in the movie?

Invariably Pat and Mike get it together, setting us up for some nudity late

In the morning, Gloria seems to have disappeared. We are ‘treated’ to another clip of a Leopard catching and eating a cute little monkey. His is the very reason I can’t watch nature documentaries (just in case). Pathetic I know as its life, but I just hate to see anything like this.

So far I’m finding this movie hard going…. Why these scenes are included when they have nothing to do with the story, I have no idea... Well I do, but its disappointing that there is a market for this kind of thing.

Next they come across a group of natives painted up in some sort of white paint. There are 2 horribly mutilated bodies, one of which is tied to a stake, so I assumed this was the unfortunate friends of Mike and Joe. The make-up here is very good and it does make you wrinkle your nose in disgust. Gloria is in a cage with a pig / hog which Mike kills to rescue her, he seems to enjoy it a little too much and tortures it.

Thankfully this is not shown… I’m a good one to be watching horrors when I can’t take animal cruelty, even implied or is this death real as well? I dread to think?

Joe has a fainting episode and they take him into a hut as he’s unwell. Mike agrees to stay with them (oh joy!) and insists on referring to them all as twats. He enjoys getting to know and share his drugs with Pat. After sharing some Cocaine and touching talk about back home in New York, they see 2 natives playing with a turtle.

They think it will be fun to scare them… unfortunately things get carried away when one shouts for help and he ends up shooting and killing a young girl.

Cue Rudi to the rescue when he hears the shot, him and Mike have a bit of a tussle but are interrupted by Gloria telling them Joe has taken a turn for the worse. Mike, the font of all knowledge suspects blood poisoning. Joe is now delirious. In a rare moment of clarity he tells them that Mike has been lying to them. He tells them about how they came across and befriended a young native they refer to as ‘Portugese’ as he knows a few words of the language, they get him to guide them to a river to pan for emeralds. He shows them 3 Emeralds he has as proof that there were there to be had. They fully intend to do him and his native friend over and steal whatever they have. They kidnap Portugese and his buddy and torture them.. which included tying him to a stake and cutting his genitals off… Hmmm, so not cannibals and their friend after all.

There is also a rather crap eyeball gouging scene.

Unfortunatey here there is also a scene of the natives cutting the legs off the live turtle leaving bleeding squirming stumps… not nice and again real.

The human stuff in here is fine to deal with, but I’m not enjoying the animal stuff AT ALL.

Mike & Pat leave and take all the equipment, maps, camera and money with them abandoning a dying Joe along with all round good eggs Rudi & Gloria.

We head back to New York next and a tour guide (Greta) showing some tourists around. She is approached by a Lieutentant Rizo and brought in for questioning. It turns out she is living with our bad boy Mike Logan. She met him in a bar and has taken him in as a lodger (lover?). Turns out this is the Mike that everyone was looking for at the start of the movie. Greta claims she has been away for 5 weeks so hasn’t seen him, but they put a tail on her round the clock anyway.

So now we know who Mike is (I’m sure the more astute of you will have tied these together already – I hadn’t), we go back out to Rudi and Gloria. Joe has just died so they agree to follow the river upstream to get out. As they exit their hut, they are greeted with a rotten papaya which apparently denotes a curse on them. After they’ve left the hut (but are still able to see whats going on), the natives go in and carry Joe out. They stick a rather thick stick into his abdomen and pull him apart and his innards out. They then proceed to eat his organs. Rather gross and obviously real animal organs used here so excellent effect again. Our next scene shows Rudi and Gloria running screaming from the scene. You don’t say!!! Unfortunately they are surrounded and captured by the natives. Guess who has also been captured!! Our man Mike and Pat. He is tied to a stake as the rest are held captive in cages and his genitals are hacked off and eaten in front of him… hehehehehe, can’t say I didn’t find that satisfying. Meanwhile Pat is screaming her ass off from inside her cage due to the trauma of a leech on her wrist.

We cut back to New York again (why do we keep doing this?) and the 2 heavies from the start of the movie have caught up with Greta and are trying to find out where the elusive Mike is. She gets beaten about a bit before the police show up and they clear off. She tells them where he is (why she didn’t earlier, who knows). The action heads back to Mike having his wounds cauterised and everyone heading upstream in canoes with the white-painted natives. Gloris tells how she dropped her necklace, credit card and sunglasses hoping someone will find them and come to their rescue. Someone does… the locals who are left behind. On getting out of the boat Rudi manages to make a break for it with a little crap distraction from Gloria, several locals with very large spears give chaseunfortunately he cuts his leg in the undergrowth and choses a piranha infested lake as a hiding pace. His screams alert everyone to his presence and as he screams for help, it arrives in the form of a poisonous dart to the chest. Bye Bye Rudolph.

In the new location the girls and Mike have been taken to, Mike is lowered into a pit and the 2 girls are encased in a mud hut. Gloria come to the conclusion, they are responsible for the cannibalism, not the natives. Their violence towards them is the reason they have turned to cannibalism. A organ (I think it’s a heart) is lowered into the hut for them to eat. Obviously they decline and instead start to sing??? An attempt to bring some humanity to the proceedings I think. The camera pans around the various unmoved faces of the tribe.

The police meanwhile are catching up with Mike completely oblivious as to what they will find. They find out he passed through Bogata so they are on his trail in a plane with Great in tow… why they need her who knows?

We are treated to another horrid animal death of a baby crocodile being slit throat to tail next. They certainly like the animal killings in this movie. Someone Mike has managed to escape and thwarts the attempts of a sympathetic native trying to free the girls with a rope. He cuts the rope and leaves his friends in the hut while he makes his escape, killing anyone who gets in his way. We now want to see the bastard eaten alive!!! As he hacks his way through undergrowth, the plane passes overhead and he yells to be saved, but it doesn’t see him. His yelling however alerts the natives to his presence and he is soon surrounded as the plane flies overhead again and again looking for him. He is laid down on a fallen tree and his hand chopped off quite realistically as well I thought.

We’re back at camp again and Mike is tethered again. Gloria is slapped but left clothed and tied by the arms to a frame, for some reason Pat is stripped to the waist and has very large hooks put through her breasts and is strung up. The plane continues to fly around overhead and this time they see something and land nearby. The first thing they see is an abandoned car. Some natives who just happen to be around give him Mikes engraved watch, which Greta says she gave to him. When enquiring as to what happened, they are told all the white folks have been eaten by crocodiles when their canoe overturned. Meanwhile Pat dies, assumably from blood loss and what follows is one of the best deaths I think I’ve ever seen and well deserved. Mike is laid on his knees and a table with a hole just big enough for the top of his head is put on top of him. His head is then quickly sliced off somewhat like cutting the top off a boiled egg and they eat his brains – lovely! A native decides under darkness to release Gloria, but as he helps her escape, a bamboo spiked trap is triggered and impales him in numerous places, leaving Gloria in the jungle alone. A boat with some poachers passes by and hears her screaming so they stop to investigate.

They see her naked, covered in mud and with sores all over her face crawling on the ground.

They obviously rescue her as the next scene is 3 months later back in New York at The University where she is being awarded a doctors degree in anthropology. She has written a book called ‘Cannibalism – End of a myth’. So she has obviously decided not to go into any detail about anything that happened as she blames the western world for everything that went on.

Her friends are regarded as killed when their canoe capsized and they were eaten by crocs.

So the movie ends…. As much as I found the animal bits in this movie too much for me personally and I was unable to watch most of them in any detail – nor did I want to, the movie itself was very good. Suspenseful, well acted, good make-up, grotesque story and even more terrifying – believable. I would thoroughly recommend this to any fans of proper horror who genuinely want to be disturbed.

This is the first movie where I understand placement on the infamous list, as the animal scenes are very shocking and the head ‘capping’ was probably very ground breaking when this movie was made.

Although you can tell this is an older movie from the quality of the camera used, the makeup certainly doesn’t let it down.

A genuinely disturbing horror with a good story and satisfying ending.

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