As we take a day to honour our mothers,here at the Wop we'll be examining the mother of all exploitation films.You know you've been waiting for it.Some of you may have even been covering yourselves in dried mud,chasing your girlfriends around the apartment with foot long stone dildos in anticipation.Whatever stirs your mostaccioli,say I.Ruggero Deodato,one of my favorite directors bar none,first set foot in cannibal territory with his effort,Ultimo Mondo Cannibale(1977),but it wasn't until this entry,a tribute to the cinema verite' styles of fellow Italian documentary filmmakers Prospero,Jacopetti,and Antonio Climati,that he blew the lid off the sub-genre so effectively that he was forced to reveal his special effects in Italian and British courts proving that he wasn't guilty of murder(!),that his actors hadn't died(only their careers had!),losing his film license for three years anyway due to the real animal cruelty rampant in tonight's film.It's been cut and re-cut,banned and unbanned all over the world to date,and thirty years later,hasn't lost one iota of unapologetic kick-you-in-the-yambag potency,to the tune of over two hundred million rumored box-office dollars worth.
So what exactly do we have before us on the big screen once we've cut through the hype and controversy?A relentless,savage,unflinching look at the media and society as a whole.Though he offers no answers,Deodato asks some interesting questions.Are we as civilized as we think we are?Is "civilization" all that it's cracked up to be?Don't look at me for answers either,I'm a half-step away from a Neanderthal most of the time,especially when I'm running low on cigarettes.
"Run to the hiiiiiilllsssss!"sings Mvogo,an Iron Maiden fan from way back.
Professor Monroe(Kerman),an NYU anthropologist,leads a rescue team into the heart of the Green Inferno of the Amazon to find a documentary film crew who has disappeared without a trace.With the help of two guides and a Yacumo indian captured by a military raid,the prof first stumbles upon a Yacumo male using a stone dildo to rape his galpal on the muddy shore,then bludgeoning her to death with it,as punishment for adultery.Afterwards,they negotiate the release of their dusky prisoner in return for safe passage to the Yacumo village.Monroe senses that the prior film crew really effed things up,due to the tension among the natives,but Miguel,one of the guides,gives the savages a shiny switchblade to play with,before the men search further into the treacherous jungle.The next day they encounter two warring tribes of cannibals,the Shamatari(tree people) and Yanomamo(swamp people),the latter of which they save from certain gut-chomping rainforest death,and are invited back to the Yanomamo village out of gratitude.Monroe bathes in the river with several Yanomamo women,who snicker at and yank on his Euro-pecker,after which they take him to a makeshift shrine consisting of film cannisters and the bones of the film crew his party had been searching for.After showing the head savage how to capture himself wailing on a tape recorder,the tribesman trades him the reels of film the ill-fated crew had with them when they became so much prosciutto-in-khakis.
"Dear diary...I think Mbete hates my hat,and I'm still carrying around entrails?Is that what they call 'em?Yeah,entrails."
Back in New York,tv execs tell Monroe they'd like him to host the public airing of the footage the team captured before losing their lives.He agrees,but only after screening the film himself.They show the professor some of Alan Yates'(Carl Gabriel Yorke) earlier documentary work,The Last Road to Hell,stating matter-of-factly,that most of the executions on the screen were staged by the director himself,for more sensational results.The first reel documents the team's descent into the jungle,where one of the guides is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies.As they encounter a gaggle of Yacumo,Jack(Perry Pirkanen) shoots one in the leg so the crew can follow him without difficulty,raising protests from Monroe concerning their unorthodox methodology as the projectionist changes reels.As the second reel begins,the filmmakers force an entire village of Yacumo into their huts and burn them alive on camera,in order to stage a scene for their "documentary".He then sees native women performing a primitive abortion on a young tribeswoman,stuffing the foetus in the mud afterwards.The television execs decide to show the footage publicly,raising more protest from the professor,who beseeches them to watch the final two reels before making their decision.They witness the males gangraping a young Yanomamo girl,as script girl Faye(Francesca Ciardi) tries vainly to stop them.They kill the girl off-camera,impaling her ass-to-mouth on a wooden post,blaming it on the tribal elders as "an obscure sexual rite" on-camera afterwards.The Yanomamo then attack the film crew as revenge for the young girl,and when Jack gets impaled by an incoming spear,Alan shoots his friend so that the remaining three can escape while the cannibals castrate,eviscerate,fry up on an open fire,and finally chew on the bastard.The Indios then capture Faye,gangraping her in mid-air before beheading her,as Mark(Luca Barbareschi) films the girl's horrible come-uppance.The tribe finally locates the remaining two filmmakers as the camera captures Alan's final bloody death stare as the reel ends.Dumbfoundedly slienced,the execs wisely change their minds about airing the footage.
I know chicks who could shimmy down this post and back up again in time for lunch without batting an eyelash.
Deodato,who got his chops in the director's chair on Django as an assistant, would go on to direct genre staples such as "La Casa Sperduto nel Parco" with David Hess and Giovanni Lombardo Radice,and "Cut and Run" with Michael "Hills Have Eyes" Berryman,before scoring himself a cannibalistic cameo in Eli Roth's "Hostel:Part Two" in 2007.The maestro himself and most of the original cast make regular rounds in horror conventions,much to the delight of fanboys everywhere.Most recently,he's begun pre-production on "Cannibals",originally announced as a sequel to his masterpiece,later downgraded to "companion piece".Either way,I'll be eager to see it.I can't in good conscience recommend this amazing film to everybody,as the brutality included therein will no doubt overwhelm those of the weaker constitution,but for those who possess a love for over-the-top cinematic violence and have the cast-iron stomachs to back it up,this is an absolute must-see.The highest possible rating is well-earned in this case.Viva Deodato!
After a simple,yet primitive medical procedure,Jack Anders was finally a Justin Bieber fan.
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