NOTE: This post is tagged "Will Recommends", Please be aware that this recommendation applied ONLY to the Directors "new" cut, and NOT the uncut version viewed for this review.
Sigh, Animal cruelty again...
To be fair, I knew in advance this time, and (but for the nature of this project) I would never have dreamed of watching the uncut version. Luckily for those of you not taking stupid self-imposed challenges, director Ruggero Deodato has a new edit of the film coming out which excises the cruelty, and I would recommend it as a rental, because the film itself is actually quite good!
Last weeks movie did hit a lot of the same beats (chunks of it were bluntest lifts from this earlier, better, movie); there's a castration, a turtle murder, cuts between the Amazon and new York, even lines like "We are the real cannibals"... Certainly, the makers of this would have every reason to scream "Ripp off" at the makers of Cannibal ferox!
This time, our New York scenes are much less intrusive, and do feel like part of the same movie - The setup is that a NY film crew have headed off into the amazon to film a documentary, and are now missing, presumed dead. A rescue party is launched, sponsored by the "Pan American Broadcast Company" and "New York University" and headed up my Professor Harold Monroe, an Anthropologist from said university. They do not find the missing crew (or rather, they do, but in the form of a grizzly shrine on human remains) but they do find their film canisters, which the native believe to be cursed and are all too happy to get rid of!
Upon the canisters' return to NY, the movie switches between a found-footage type film, and scenes where the TV company are trying to convince the Professor to host a multi-part documentary based around the footage.
We quickly learn that the lead Journalist / Director from the original film crew was a total scumbag, who would set up real tragedies, just to film them. The Movie attempts to criticise Mondo film making, and to make a political point about how uncaring and disgusting the media is, a point which is lost in the hypocrisy as we see a real pig getting kicked around and shot FOR REAL, just for this movie, and Deodato even finds an excuse to use some genine execution squad footage from Nigeria!
The acts we see the film makers commit against the tribes they encounter get worse as the film goes on, and it isn't long before we're siding with the 'savages' and looking forward to them getting their comeuppance, at one point, the three male members of the crew take turns alternately holding down a native girl, raping her, and filming the assault. Obviously, the female crew member objects to this; they cant use the footage, it's a waste of film! - the bitch only really gives a shit when her boyfriend takes his turn as the rapist!
The really interesting part about this movie though, is the trouble it caused here in the real world - Deodato paid the 4 leads to go into hiding for a set time after the film's release - he had to bring them out of hiding early in order to prove to the Italian courts that he had not made a snuff movie! Indeed, the effects hold up remarkably well even now (most especially the movie's iconic impaling) and it's easy to see how the use of stock footage and real animal deaths would cause someone to wonder.
Deodato has claimed in recent years that the use of animals was "a mistake" - the implication is that he regrets it, I suspect though, that he regrets the trouble it has caused him!
As I say, check out the new edit, and just be thankful that movies are not made this way any more...
Body Count: 26.5 (including many from a virtually unrelated army sub-plot and 4 real deaths from stick footage - .5 for a foetus)
Boob Count: 24 pairs (mostly from tribeswomen and girls)
Animal Body Count: 5 - all real (a 6th was killed in footage that landed on the cutting room floor)
Most Memorable Death: Native on a stick
Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.
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