[REC] - Lisa's Review

It's getting good climbing the Time Out 100 best horrors list... for one thing the movies keep getting better.  It's definately been more positive than negative of late and the same is the case for this weeks movie - [REC].

Weird title I hear you say, and yes, it is.  I'm sure it's something we all recognise as the abbreviation for 'Record'.  The title also has the little red circle which also denotes 'recording'.  As the movie is a 'found footage' movie taken on a video camera by a Spanish TV crew, the title makes sense.  The found footage in question is from the Spanish reality TV show 'While you were sleeping', which tasks itself with following people who make their living while the rest of the world are sleeping.  This movie is taken as the crew follow a Barcelona fire crew; pretty young presenter Ángela (Manuela Velasco) and camera man Pablo (Pablo Rosso).

The Silence of the Lambs - Lisa's Review

This week I had the pleasure of re-watching one of my all time favourite movies.  I first saw this movie in my late teens and I absolutely adored it from the start.  I fell in love with Jodie Foster and she has remained a girl crush to this very day.  It's just a pity she doesn't do as much in movies these days.  A real shame.  Antony Hopkins is still in my top 3 favourite actors all these years later.  It's a movie that has stayed with me and has never wavered from being right at the top.  I would be completely aghast if anyone reading this (again hello?) hadn't seen the movie, but for young'uns who perhaps haven't, I suppose I should talk about storyline for a bit.

Welcome To The Jungle - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

So this movie brings us back to our original 'Video Nasties' challenge, as it's a remake of banned movie Cannibal Holocaust.  I wasn't a fan of the original movie, mostly due to the use of footage with real animal deaths, something I abhore.  Lets see how I got on with the movie minus the animal nastiness.

When this movie started and for the first 20-30 minutes, I thought it was going to be quite good.  A decent amount of time is spent introducing us to the main 4 characters, giving us an idea of personality types, how the individuals are linked and allowing us to form opinions and have the potential for empathy later in the movie.

We have 2 couples (the established one having been together for 2 weeks, the other having just met) who decide to head from Fiji to the jungle outside New Guinea to attempt to locate Michael Rockefeller, son of New York Governor who disappeared in 1961.  Obviously with the area being full of indigenous tribes and there being armed criminals enroute, this is quite a dangerous jaunt.

So after the initial high hopes I had for the movie, when pretty much bugger all of interest had taken place within the first hour of the movie, I began to get a tad impatient.  

The couples began to grate on each others nerves and we went from bickering and squabbling to wishes of death upon each other.... funny you should mention that....

In the last few minutes of a very dull, slow, dragging movie we have one of the couples be chased by tribesmen and shot with arrows.  They're captured and the woman is hung on a large pole contraption which entered her mouth and exited the base of her skull.  This was all done off camera.  We don't see what happens to the young man until the other couple (the ones who wishes them dead remember...) arrive and find him.  First they find some bloody clothing, followed by the hanging woman.

If that's not enough to disturb them, they come across a pair of severed feet hanging in a tree.  It is then we see what became of the guy.  He is laying on the ground covered in leaves and is missing his arms and feet.   Lovely.  His friends decide to put him out of his misery and shoot him.

The tribesmen of course had been following our couple and they also end up being done away with by the tribe.  We also see an old white man walking away at the end of the movie, hinting that Michael Rockefeller is actually still alive.  There is no explanation as to why he hadn't been killed and eaten.

In conclusion, this movie was sloooooooooow and dull.  I was sat watching it, willing it to improve.... come ON already!!  It did pick up in the last 15 minutes, but I couldn't help but wish they had lengthened the movie a bit and extended the last 15 minutes to a half hour at least.  They could even cut some time from the first part of the movie.

I wouldn't recommend this movie, but neither would I advise you to avoid it.  It was an ok watch I suppose, but too little, too late for me.

Anthropophagous 2000 - Will's Review

Oh, what to say about this one? While the original was no masterpiece or summer blockbuster, one still has to question the wisdom of a bunch of amateurs re-making it on a budget of 27p; watching it though, that appears to be what has happened.

From the opening scene of the worlds most amateurish detectives, to a thunderstorm clearly filmed inside and achieved by going nuts with a dimmer switch. From an obviously pre-broken mast falling apart at its break line, to the some if the worst acting an SFX I've ever seen; for the first half hour I really thought this one was going to fall into the "so bad it's good" camp.

As with the original, a couple are introduced early in the film, simply to be dispatched; although this time around, a beach scene is replaced by a really bad soft-porn interlude in a tent.

The movie is german, with a german cast; so i was slightly puzzled as to why the aforementioned copulating couple were speaking English (with thick German accents). I can only assume they were playing English or American tourists? Either way it added to the batshit insanity, and I was at this point loving it.

We meet another Pair of campers, who, in the miday sun, declare themselves so lost that they may as well stop looking for the campsite and spend the night where they are (so lost, thy one of them decides to nip off down the pub).

Yes for the first half hour it is brilliantly bad.

Sadly, it isn't long before the rot sets in and it becomes jut another bad film, and incompetent remake of a movie that was never great to begin with.

Characters act in seemingly random ways ("where is the car", "I don't know <points>", "lets go" <walks in direction of pointing, finds car>), even the set decoration makes no sense ("Go away" is written on the INSIDE of a window).

Lodge full of corpses? Best stay inside feeling sick until someone else comes in and suggests you leave!

Been shot 6 times AND disembowelled yourself? That's no reason not to chase someone around the woods!

If it's ever classified (unlikely, given that the classification process costs more than i imagine the film itself did) then catch the first half hour when it finally makes it to the Horror Channel and laugh at it; Otherwise, Avoid.

Anthropophagous 2000 - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS *** (for what it's worth)

There are sometimes weeks when the movie isn't that hot, sometimes it's awful and sometimes we are very tempted to write "This was absolute shite" and leave it at that.  Sadly, for me, this was the latter.

This movie is a remake of 1980 movie of the same name (removing the 2000).  While the original movie wasn't all that hot, this one is just absolute bollocks!  I suppose I should elaborate as to why I felt this was the case?

I'm not going to go into detail as to the premise, as I very much doubt anyone will want to see this movie on the strength of my review.  Man kills his wife when she refuses to let him eat their dead child to survive after an accident at sea.  He eats them both and then goes mad and kills and eats other people.  That should about sum it up for you.  Why didn't I enjoy it?

The acting was probably amongst the worst I have seen.  The gore looked like something a GSCE art student produced (that's probably an insult to GCSE art students).  Victims are replaced with what looks like a rubber model of themselves (that bears absolutely no resemblance to them) and then over the top, unrealistic, ridiculous gore is spattered upon us.


 In one specific scene I struggled to understand what actual body part is being tugged out of one victims mouth... it looked like intestines (much too long for the tongue), but since the killer put his hand to the back of the victims throat and pulled, it's anyones guess.

Arms and heads are forcibly pulled off simply by the sheer strength of our bad guy.  Various bits which should be anatomically there are not and vice versa.  Victims flail about and make no attempt whatsoever to run.  A pregnant woman flounders on her back and allows her stomach to be cut open and her unborn baby to be lifted out and bitten into, with nothing more than a few squeals.

The bad guy himself tugs out his own innards and chews on them after being shot multiple times and STILL has the strength to give chase to the last survivor and try to kill him!

If the gore scenes are laughable, then you have to see the sex scenes.  I have never seen such passionless love making in all my life.  The actors looked positively bored shitless!  On one positive point, nice to see tattoos, piercings and long haired dudes in movies.

I don't think there is much else I can say about this movie.  I HATED it.  I didn't even laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.  I didn't have to think twice about slapping a big fat AVOID on its ass!

Coffin Baby - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

Before I watched this movie, I noticed from a little online research that it wasn't especially popular.  Actually that's me being kind.  People seem to HATE this movie, thinking it a poor sequel to the remake of Toolbox Murders, so I wasn't expecting very much.

Did I hate the movie on the same level as most other people who submitted their opinions online?  It seems not.  It's an odd one.  There were aspects of this movie which were great!  I loved how it looked, the scene settings, the bad guy looked awesome, the gore was incredible.  Some of the scenes were amongst the most gruesome I have ever seen in a movie.  When I say most gruesome, what I mean is, they look very real.  There is no faffing about and suspense here.  It's in for the kill - pun intended!

Our basic premis here involves a young woman who is kidnapped by a murderer who is responsible for killing her sister.  He holds her captive and makes her watch while he tortures and murders others in front of her in many different adventurous ways.

The plot itself was sadly full of holes and raised many questions which were never answered or addressed.  Some details which seemed imporant throughout the story seemed to have been forgotten and were just left hanging.   In places the acting was a bit 'hammy' and overdone.  I have seen much, much worse though.



Moving on to the positives, the first murder scene in the movie is almost impossible to watch without registering some form of disgust or cowering away from the scene you're witnessing.  It involves a very graphic facial mutilation before the actual murder itself, which had me cringing and thinking I may find it too difficult to watch this movie if there were more of the same.  The special effects, sounds and general way this is depicted all seemed very realistic to me.  So realistic it made me actually feel pretty damn uncomfortable watching it.

Did the gore continue?  Well yes, but I think that particular scene was the one which freaked me out the most.  Another scene starts off quite amusingly where a young black man has got out of his car (egged on by his mates) to move a random trolley that's blocking his way.  Cue our bad guy who is not best amused that his belongings have been tampered with.  An argument of sorts ensues where the young guy is wildly gesticulating at our bad guy.  I was chuckling away when the mood changed very quickly and some more gore is thrown our way.

This theme does continue and there are many more good examples of these effects to keep all gore hounds happy.     There are a couple of rather nasty beheadings (one of which was particularly realistic and not something I enjoyed watching at all) and a woman who is tied to a table and has slices of her flesh cut out and cooked to be eaten while she is still alive.  The killer makes our hostage eat the flesh also and as she is starving, she is unable to help herself.  A man is cut in half from the groin to the head with a table saw... the list continues.

Now, where the movie falls down.  As I said earlier, the plot-line is very weak, there are inconsistencies everywhere, the acting, while it is not the worst I've ever seen is a bit over dramatic in places.  It all seemed to end very quickly for my liking and without any proper kind of justice.  Also a supernatural element that there really was no need for is introduced.  This actually detracted for the movie for me.

All in all, it wasn't as awful a movie as reviews online would have you believe.  I certainly didn't feel like I'd wasted my time in watching it, like is sometimes the case, but I doubt it's going to make many peoples top 10 movie list.

I would only recommend to anyone I know likes a bit of gore and isn't bothered about depth of story.

Mother of Tears - Lisa's review

*** SPOILERS ***

So a little late due to power outages with our weather, but I'm finally getting around to my review.

So the last in the trilogy of our Argento movies and I can't say I'm sad to see the back of them.  I'm just not a fan at all I'm afraid, so you can imagine where this review is going....

Something I will give this movie is that its not afraid of the old gore.  I have to admit to liking the copious amount of nasty and imaginative ways to meet the end in this movie, but it did have the same disjointed, confusing feel to it.  I suppose I just watched it for the next 'good bit'.

The basic premis surrounds a coffin being unearthed with the remains of the old mother in it.  There is also a smaller casket secured to the top with various artifacts inside.  What happens isn't hard to imagine... casket is opened and power of evil is released... even with the stereotypical 'blood from accidentally cut hand' awakening things.... yawn.

The only things for me worth mentioning are the deaths and the lovely piece of music at the end courteousy of 'Cradle of filth'.  

Amongst 'delights' we have a woman being strangled with her own intestines, a horrid double eyeball puncturing device, A severe head bashing on a puclic transport door (that one was a bit funny), poor Udo having his throat cut and his face caved in, a horrendous death by way of a metal pole inserted between a womans legs and emerging from her mouth, a rather disturbing man on fire chase scene, arms being torn off, lots of stabbings (including with spears and a BIG rock) and shootings, cannibalism.  A baby is also chucked off a bridge and hits its head on the way down.  That's absolutely horrid, even moreso than any of the rest for me.  Its all there!

So I suppose its maybe worth a watch for the sheer amount of deaths in there.  Also the end theme is quite cool and worth a listen.

Would I put an avoid or recommend on it.  Afraid not!

Prisoner of the Cannibal Gods - Will's Review

It's hard to believe that this one is older than most of the other cannibal movies on the list (I believe only Deep River Savages is older) because it seems to borrow elements from most of them; in reality it seems that the similarities are either coincidental, or the other movies each 'borrowed' their favorite parts from this one, stoping short of lifting the plot wholesale.

Either way, I could pretty much write an outline for one of these things in my sleep by now...

Prisoner Of The Cannibal God - Lisa's Review

*** SOME SPOILERS***

So, another Cannibal movie in our list.  I thought we had exhausted them all with the passing of 'C', but nope, here's another entry.

This movie left me a little cold.  Not for the obvious hatred of close-up scenes of animal deaths (which this movie contains), but because I found it so monumentally dull.  To be fair, I think unless I adore or hate a movie, if its somewhere in the middle, it is very much dependant on my mood how I will find it.  Maybe on a different day, I would feel this one 'wasn't too bad'.  I don't think I would ever go as far as even describing this movie as 'good', but I found reaching the end of this one a bit of a struggle as I had absolutely sod all interest in how it ended.

Don't go near the park - Will's Review

SPOLERS


12,000 Years ago a tribal elder gets pissed off at her son and daughter, and curses them - already things are a little mad here; Their crime is killing children in order to gain eternal life and youth, the punishment is... Eternal life, with the option of killing children in order to stay young! - That'll learn 'em!



Even stranger, the Curse includes 10x aging speed (so.. they'll have to kill more often then!) AND a get out clause, whereby if a virgin (one bread half of the Tribe and half of a mortal) is sacrificed in 12,000 years (there's an astrological significance) they get to keep their life AND youth forever!

11,984 years later (or 16 years ago) the brother and sister decide that he should find a woman to give him a child to use as the sacrifice (why the sister doesn't find a man to give her one I don't understand, she could have a plethora of one-night stands to ensure pregnancy, and custody would be easy... oh, whatever), so he meets, charms, marries and impregnates a mortal woman, nipping off to the part the whole time to eat young people and maintain his youth.

The next 16 years are a brief montage, until we reach the film proper; The sister is living in a shack in the park (the park is on the site of the films opening, which makes me wonder what these Caucasian people were doing in America in about 10,000BC), the park is rumoured to be cursed (which even in the 1970's is apparently enough to keep people out), the brother hates his wife, and his daughter is a young woman.

If anything the film is too full - the basic story isn't great, but it isn't terrible, but the film-makers are far too busy telling other plots: the sister (from her shack in the woods) seems to run a centre for runaways; she lives with an 8 year old necrophiliac (see clip) and a "hunky" 16 year old called 'cowboy', after a compleatly superfluous attempted rape scene, she takes in Bondi (Her niece, although Bondi doesn't know it). On top of that, the 8 year old befriends a writer, who just happens to be working on a history of the park.

Oh, Well THAT'S aright then!!!

Speaking of the superfluous attempted rape scene; Bondi (not the brightest girl) accepts a lift from 3 strangers (all men) in a van with painted out rear windows. No sooner are they on the road than two of them are groping her, eventually pulling her into the back of the van in order to...  forcefully kiss her neck and chest (through her blouse, even though they have torn it open)... More offensive than the scene itself though is that just a short time later (after dreaming the entire opening of the film) she's recovered completely, and starts hitting on 'Cowboy'!

Probably as a result of it's being overcrowded, the film seems to lurch and stagger forward, giving the impression that short connecting scenes have been cut - for instance, Bondi is running from the wreckage of a crash and then, without warning, she's following a dog into an abandoned shack...

And then, at the story's climax, our immortals suddenly have Super powers - It's a moment of 100% WFT (not from concentrate) - out of nowhere, she can start fires with her mind, and he can control animals and shoot lasers from his eyes?!? Its like a scene from a different movie with the same actors!

The effects are sub-hammer, the acting bearable (barley) and the film goes on for what feels like about 15 mins (actually 5) after iot should rightly have ended. Oh, and the last shot of the movie is spoiled on the poster!

All in all, I wouldn't advise you to run screaming form this one, but I wouldn't come close to recommending it either...




Body Count: 10
Boob Count: 3 Pairs
Animal Body Count: 0
Most Memorable Death: Exploding rape-van

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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.

Don't go near the park - Lisa's Review

***SPOILERS***

So after a couple of weeks of late reviews, here I am on the first day of the week with the movie in the bag. Yay me!!

So another one in the series of 'Don't go' movies and thankfully they seem to have absolutely nothing to do with one another. We start with some text telling us that the movie, although fictional is based on occurances throughout centuries... Okaaaaaaaaaaay. I'm sure just about anything committed to celluloid has happened through the centuries, but we'll go with it.

The basic premis here is.. 12,000 years ago a woman puts a curse on her 2 children who have messed about with the sanctity of the secret of eternal youth and been naughty so and so's. The curse sentences them to a lifetime of ageing without the ability to die. They will age 10 years for every 1 year of life. The only way to break the curse is to sacrifice a 16 year old virgin female in 12,000 years time (something to do with a when the moon is covered).. blah blah blah. The irony is, the only way they can stay young is to kill and eat the innards of young people...kind of what they were being punished for in the first place, but anyway....

The movie cuts to 12000 years in the future (the present day) and we see the brother and sister looking much older and greyer. They both kill a few people, eat their insides and hey presto, youth is restored again. There's not much more to it really. The guy meets a woman. He oddly does this by breaking into her house and into the bathroom when shes in the shower, yet she still offers him a room as a lodger, sleeps with him, marries him and goes on to have a daughter with him. This all happens in the space of about 10 minutes in the film. After the daughter is born, they quickly separate as we find out he no longer has any use for his new wife, now that he has a daughter... Hmmmmmm I wonder what he intends to use her for... (long scratch of chin)

So yup you got it. He intends to use her as the sacrifice. The ending is monumentally pants and so predictable I almost laughed out loud when I watched it played out. I won't put it here in the vain chance that anyone actually reads this and wants to watch the movie. We can but hope...

When I thought the special effects were shite, nothing prepared me for the laser beams shooting out of the eyes in the finale. Now that effect deserves to be documented. Check out 5 mins 58 seconds into the review below (or if you want, watch it for a much more detailed and educational review than this one).

The Nasties Review: Don't Go Near The Park (YouTube)

I can't really make my mind up about this movie. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen (see last weeks review for that) but then again it wasn't very good either.

The acting is ok (meaning its not laughably awful) but it held no intrigue for me and the gore was pants. There was also a rather distasteful scene with the young 16 year old 'virgin' with a few young lads in a van that I could've done without... another one of those 'for tittilation' pieces. Not a lot was shown fair enough, but the idea that these movies need to keep showing sexual attacks just for kicks just p*sses me off. The fact the teenager jokes about it later to a young boy she meets (and is also in the mood to come onto another lad the same day as her attack) just about sums up the thought put into this movie.

I wouldn't watch it again but it wasn't the hardest to sit through by any stretch of the imagination.

The Devil Hunter - Lisa's Review

So to this weeks nasty and just when I thought things couldn't get any worse than last weeks offering. So ok, it maybe wasn't quite as bad in that I could make sense of it, but thats very loosely speaking as I'm not sure a lot of work went into the storyline.

I could give you a blow by blow account of the movie, but I've decided doing means readers (if indeed there are any) have no need to watch the movie as I've pretty much covered it in its entirety...

So rough idea? A pretty model is kidnapped and held for ransom in a jungle full of cannibals. Making her a model was just an excuse to show a pretty women naked I thought, but as the movie progressed, I could see this director didn't need any excuse for pretty much constant nudity.

The cannibals have a cannibal king/god who is obviously supposed to be menacing but just looks ridiculous with something that resembles half ping pong balls with red lines drawn on over his eyeballs. Sacrifices of nubile young women are made for him... hence more excuses for naked women.

There is pretty much nothing to say, 2 guys (Vietnam vets as is becoming commonly the case in these movies) come in to try to save aforementioned model and basically f*ck up from start to finish.

What we have here is an excuse to show women naked and tied up, being raped, assaulted and abused as much as possible. Its a sexploitation movie thats for sure and its one of the kinds I abhore. While I'm not a prude and have no problems with all manner of things, I have always had an issue with these kind of scenes being shown for obvious tittilation. The long lingering shoots (and close ups) of the most intimate of areas shall we say prove that this is purely for kicks and not to put across the barbarity of such acts. The assaults are played out as sex scenes with the protesting of the female 'victims' just adding to to kick for the viewer.

Maybe it was an ok movie, I don't know, but this pet peeve of mine being rattled over and over again just p*ssed me off so much, I had no interest in paying much attention. I'm no feminist, but women being used in such ways in movies just irks me immensely.

There was nothing in here for the horror fans but plenty for men who sexploitation appeals to. BIG thumbs down from me.

Deep River Savages - Lisa's Review

*Spoilers*

I probably watched almost all of this movie. I tried my best, honest I did. After managing to sit through Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust, I thought I would have no problems, but in my opinion, this movie far surpasses either of those for animal cruelty of the worst extreme.

I could sit and detail the story, as, like I said, I've probably seen most of it, but my disgust prevents me from wanting to. The basic premis is a guy who ends up in the jungle with a bunch of savages (who happen to be cannibals) as he wants to escape a murder he committed back home (which happened to be in self defence). Long story short, he eventually is accepted by the tribe and even ends up with the very beautiful (and mostly very naked) daughter of the tribes chief, she dies and he ends up staying with the tribe and becoming as barbaric as they are... doing things he initially was disgusted by.

I hated everything about this movie. The acting, the premis, the way it was acted out, the rape for titillation scenes that were littered throughout it, but none of these things came close to the absolutely disgusting scenes of animal cruelty and deaths in this movie. I'm not going to detail the deaths, but needless to say they were all real, all VERY graphic and all very long, drawn out affairs with the maximum level of suffering inflicted possible. They even introduced animals fighting each other to the death for fun..... The general feeling when watching this, apart from the obvious disgust at what you're viewing, is that the director put this together for the blood thirsty, brain-dead morons who love this kind of 'real' suffering.

I for one am not among that crowd and although I can watch 'most' things, although some may be difficult, I refused to watch another minute of this piece of trash to see another innocent animal needlessly suffer. If any readers do watch the movie, despite this warning.... I managed to reach the scene where Mariya (the wife of the star) dies. I only made it that far as I left it on in the background while I typed my review. I had decided after a nasty crocodile death that enough was enough.

I cannot think of any reason anyone would want to watch this one, so I advise against it with every pore of my being.

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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.

Deep River Savages - Will's Review

*Spoilers*


Sigh, another Canibal Movie, another round of Animal Snuff...

It's always hard to talk about these things without sounding like a cruelty apologist; I'm not, I'm one of those people who doesn't watch 'Fear Factor' not because it grosses me out (it doesn't) but because I object to t way cockroaches are treated in the show (kill 'em because they're in your house - fine, it's a hygiene thing. Eat 'em alive for 'entertainment' - get the hell out if my sight m*therfucker!)

That said, I'm going to try and talk about this film on it's merits (such as they are) and save lambasting it's treatment of animals until the end of the review.


'Deep River Savages' is not (despite how it may appear) a horror movie. In essence it is a drama with grizzly bits; it's closest cousin would probably be a POW movie.

It also isn't a cannibal movie - there is one cannibal scene in the whole film, and even that isn't committed by our 'main' tribe - who are a primitive, cruel, barbaric people, but not (as far as the film implies) cannibals.

In fact, it's closest ancestor (plot wise) is 'a man called horse'.

After we see english photographer John Bradly's girlfriend kidnapped while at a kick boxing match it Thailand (a pointless scene - he assumes she has just wondered off, and seems okay to leave it that way) we witness him stab a man to death in self defence, then flee the scene and hop on a train.

The train takes him to the destination he'd apparently been planing to go to anywhere (a guide with a motorcycle rickshaw is waiting for him) - a river cruse on the border between Thailand and Burma (where, the opening crawl tells us, many primitive tribes live).

After rickshaw guy makes him a meal of water-snake (which he enjoys, until finding out what it is, at which point he spits it out and throws what's left overboard - I don't get that - how is it worse than any other meat?)  Bradley goes off to do some underwater photography, before falling asleep on the boat.

Upon waking, he finds that he is alone; looking around, he sees his guide's body floating in the river, before promptly being captured in a large net, and dragged back to a village.

How much candy do you think they keep in these things? 

According to the opening crawl, the 'tribe' in this movie are genuine savages - I'm not buying that for a second! For one thing, some of them are the best actors in it, and for another the clothes at time (on the women anyway) seem a little too modern. I suspect the 'genuine tribe' bit was a lie to justify the animal snuff - either that or the 'extras' are genuine tribespeople, but our leads are actors.

After spending days hanging around (literally) in a net, and making flirty-eyes with the tribal 'princess', Bradley is tethered to a leash and put to work - catching turtles and helping with building work an so fourth. He also discovers that one of the old women in the tribe was kidnapped as a little girl, and actually speaks English; this is a secret at first, as she plans to help him escape, but about half way through the movie she speaks to him in his own language in the presence of the whole tribe and no one seems to care, or even notice...

Anyway, Stockholm syndrome sets in, and he starts to work willing with the tribe, eventually gaining their trust (and the anger of the tribe's which doctor) when he saves a young boy via a bamboo tracheotomy.


It's during the "enforced (but becoming willing) labour" portion of the film, that current favourite movie scene happens:

IF ONLY they had used the Wilhelm Scream, this would have been perfect!

After a series of nasty trails (they treat their inductees worse than their prisoners) he is made a full tribesmember, and therefore  gets to take part in the princess' husband selection... thing.

The princess sits blindfolded and naked, in a hut, next to a small window - the men of the village file past, and get to reach in and have a grope - with her picking her favourite groper to be her husband. Now, the first 2 guys either don't know much about women, don't want the job, or have figured they aren't gonna be picked, so the may as well have a cheeky fondle - one just goes straight for a boob, while the other does the same before progressing for a quick dip in the ladyparts! Our man Bradley though knows his stiff - he just caresses her arm, then holds her hand - Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

They marry, have sex (a lot), and she falls pregnant - and ill. she dies in childbirth and Bradly stays with the tribe anyway (going so far as to hide from a potential rescue chopper).

Apart from a couple of invasions from a neighbouring tribe, that's about it. Some of the acting is a bit shonky (but no worse than I've come to expect in these things), there are a couple of unresolved plotlines (Whatever did happen to his girlfriend who got kidnapped? did Bradley's constant, and unintentional, pissing of of the witchdoctor lead to his wife's illness?) and the dubbing is a bit odd in places, having chosen to match the lip sync, rather than a suitable English-language pacing, but all in all, it's not a bad movie...

...but for the animal stuff.

This has hands down the most (and the worst) animal cruelty of any of the films we have seen so far, in-fact, Lisa watched this before I did, and tried to warn me off of it! and there is NO WAY I can recommend this film in it's uncut form. even the BBFC passed version has less than 4 mins of cuts, so I can only imagine that they've only got rid of the worst of it! (I won't be watching again to find out). I am slightly confused as to how a film that remains cut to this day got dropped from the DPP list?!?

Although I feel that animal cruelty in the name of entertainment should be banned outright, I still think the "Likely to deprave and Corrupt" line is bullshit! If you don't already think that Crocodile snuff is a good idea, there is nothing here to convince you, if you do already think that Crocodile snuff is a good idea, you are ALREADY corrupt (and actually seeing it might convince you otherwise anyway).

The atrocities in full after the usual Boob / Body / Critter / Memorable Death bit, for people who want to read that, but not the cruelty bits.

Body Count: 11
Animal Body Count: 11 (sadly, 10 of them real and on-screen)
Boob Count: 9 pairs (approx - a lot of the tribeswomen looked very smiler to each other)
Most Memorable (non-animal) Death: Comedy mask-drop (of death)


Animal cruelty list:
A boar is killed (off screen) this may or may not have been done humanly. We later see it's meat.
2 Fish are caught in a net and one is speared (probably shouldn't count these if you eat fish - I do)
A turtle is thrown (non fatal)
A cock-fight is staged (outcome unseen)
A Mongoose (on a leash) is made to fight a Cobra, to the death (the cobra's). - very prolonged and distressing.
A River snake is cut up for dinner (Probably not overly cruel - would have died instantly)
A Monkey is clamped into a table, and the top of it's head removed.
A Snake is cut in half as part of a fertility ritual (due to the way it is cut this is much crueller than the river snake)
A goat has it's throat slit.
A crocodile has it's throat cut, and is the slit up it's belly while squirming. It is obvious that the first cut takes out the windpipe (the blood bubbles) so it MAY have died quickly - the squirming being involuntary twitching.

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Cannibal Terror - Lisa's Review

My first thought on switching this on was, what extremely strange music for the start of a movie about cannibals. A kind of upbeat and chirpy ‘La Bamba’.

What I quickly learned is that this movie is so bad in every possible way that it is laughable.

Gone is the sinister undertones and creepy feel of the last 2 cannibal movies (Holocaust, Ferox), to be replaced with a movie that I struggle to find a good word to say about.

The acting it awful, the dubbing is so out of sync its too distracting to forget about, the authenticity of the tribes people in the jungle is clearly questionable, the plot is beyond weak, the acting is non existent, the soundtrack is amongst one of the most annoying I’ve ever heard!

The basic premis here is 2 fuckwits kidnap a girl for ransom and as they are so incredibly stupid, end up out in the ‘jungle’ (if that’s what you can call a few trees in a field) which is inhabited with cannibals. The cannibals actually looked like they wanted to burst out in laughter in some scenes where they were chowing down on organs. The first eating scene we are treated to went on too long and was just daft.

They obviously wanted to show you the animal carcass they were tearing apart so you could marvel at how clever the special effects were. Although in 1 part, it looked very similar to cooked chicken...

I can’t be bothered wasting my infrequent free time when the baby is sleeping to dissect this movie and write about its storyline in any detail as it just isn’t worth the time.

There is organ eating, there is more rape for titillation, but this movie sets out to be an exploitive cannibal movie and just ends up being dross. The men are irritating and so sexist and banal, its infuriating, its not even funny. In one scene, a braless female actor is advised she could do with having her ‘flippity floppity tits’ fixing, but ‘that costs money’…*le sigh*.

For the record her tits looked perfectly ok to me.

Later we have a naked woman and the wife of the host to these 2 ‘tards (Manuela – I thought that was a mans name) bathe in a big bucket later as a peeping tom spys on her supposedly seductively washing… she is then tied to a tree by aforementioned man as her protests look more like moans of ecstasy. Again titilation scenes and I really can’t be arsed. I generally question the actresses who agree to partake in scenes like this which are obviously played out for kicks. The only thing is, this movie is so damn bad, you can’t get sufficiently pissed off at it. I think the ‘idea’ of what they’re ‘trying’ to do is the only thing you could get irked at. As this scene is progressing, we cut back to Ms flippity floppity tits who is making moves on a guitar playing man who thinks repeated rubbing of her backside and leg is arousing, all while a parrot looks on.

Manuelas husband finds her and a bit pissed off as you can imagine ties the perpetrator to a tree to be left to the cannibals…

Blah blah blah, crap crap crap. Don’t watch this movie, its crap. If you’re a teenage boy and want to look at tits, I’m sure the internet has a lot less dull ways to do that. Avoid!!

Cannibal Holocaust - Lisa's Review

This is one I wanted to get over with as soon as possible after the contents of Cannibal Ferox and the knowledge that this contained similar scenes. In fact, I found this movie much more disturbing, disgusting and really wanted to switch it off after half an hour. The fact I wouldn’t have completed the challenge stopped me, coupled with the fact it would be kind of wet to switch off a movie because I found it hard to watch when I’m watching a list of all the banned movies. What’s to be expected really…

There is a warning as the movie starts about the graphic nature of its scenes and the fact we can only be glad this sort of thing is no longer tolerated… how true.

This movie, like Cannibal Ferox is set in the Amazon rainforest among the indigenous tribes people and centers on the concept of cannibalism, although that is the least disturbing part of the movie. We cut between New York

and the amazon as a search party are sent out led by Harold Monroe, an anthropologist sent to find out what happened to a documentary crew who went to film the tribes people but have been missing for 2 months.

Like Ferox there is unforgivable animal cruelty and 7 actual real animal slaughters. I was just absolutely disgusted and for only the 2^nd time since I started watching movies from this list, I agreed with the banning of this movie.

It should never have seen the light of day and the fact there is a market for people who enjoy this kind of thing is staggering.

After 1 animal slaughter and a disgusting sexual torture and death scene for a woman who had apparently been unfaithful carried out by her husband, we see the second group gaining the trust of the tribes people by saving them from a rival tribe.

They witness some horrible atrocities, tortures of women in the tribe and rapes.

Eventually they come across the video footage of the lost documentary crew and start to discover what happened to them. This is where our story switches from our second recovery team to our original documentary crew. At the start of the footage that is found, there looks to be real documentary footage of executions and horrible shootings. I’m not sure where its from but it definitely didn’t look like movie footage to me. Apparently the director staged some of the scenes for effect.

I’m starting to get more and more peeved at this film the further we go into it.

We then move on to the group starting their trek through the jungle and another downright graphically disgusting and nasty death of a turtle. I thought I coped quite well with Ferox but it had absolutely nothing on this. Ok so I’m angry now. The makers of this documentary just seem set on shock and disgust at any costs. The turtle is killed for food as they have been trekking for 6 days, so they dissect and eat it. As they move further on, one of the group is bitten by a snake and has to have his leg amputated by way of a large machete. Well deserved I say!

It doesn’t save him and he dies anyway… well at least he experienced some of what the turtle did before he was dispatched!

After getting out of water just in time for a crocodile and anaconda not to catch them (damn) they come across some tribes people killing monkeys (for real) in the most grotesque of ways (I’m sickened) . They shoot one (native) in the leg to slow him down so they can follow him to the village. Once they reach the village, they shoot a little pig (yup for real)…. I actually want to get my hands on the makers of this and carry out some torture of my own!!! They round the tribes people into a hut and proceed to set it alight to stage a scene for the documentary.

Nice people then…

They just continue to disrespect them by pissing in their streams, killing and wasting animals they use for food, filming in a nonchalant manner an old womans last moments when she has slunk off to die, which is something the tribes people do. I found the next scene confusing. The tribes women string up a young pregnant woman, remove her unborn baby and bury it in the mud. The documentary team say they have to eliminate weakness from their tribe? Not getting this at all.

They then proceed to bash the womans head in with rocks.

We keep cutting back to New York where a member of the second rescue team has obviously made it back with the footage and the TV execs are viewing it and want to air it. He keeps trying to persuade them not to such is the graphic nature of what is on the reels.

Undeterred they want to go ahead.

Back to the amazon and our documentary makers capture a very young tribes girl and they all proceed to rape her one at a time. The woman in the group - Faye doesn’t seem keen on wat they are doing, but doesn’t seem to do an awful lot to stop it apart from whine and whinge. Her main problem seems to be when her boyfriend joins in. Their friend and camera man hold her down while her boyfriend ‘has his turn’. All the while the tribes people are in hiding watching whats going on. Again disgusted and one of those scenes which went on longer than it needed to and seemed to be played for male titillation rather than the vile act it is. They impale her on a wooden pole (thankfully not shown) and the camera man has to remind his friend to take the smile off his face and look disgusted at what natives are capable of, as they’re getting the blame in the footage. A powerful message here of what man in general is capable of I think.

Just goes to show, we’re all the same when supposed civility is stripped away. How they did the pole effect here deserves some credit as it was remarkably realistic.

We’re approaching the end… I’m breathing a sigh of relief. One of the team – Jack is hit by a spear and they decide to shoot him to see what the natives do. What would we do with friends like this?? What follows is probably the best and most realistic make-up work and effects Ive ever seen. I can see why it was thought to be a snuff movie as the barbaric disecting of the body by brutal force and the way the carcass behaved looked unbelievably realistic. The severed head looked real and the organs were obviously real animal organs. Very realistic, very well done and very disturbing.

Next Faye, the lady in our group is captured and is brutally raped (which again goes on for far too long. She is finally beaten and beheaded. All the while her ‘friend’ is filming all of this. He meets a nasty end as well though as the camera drops to reveal him lying on the ground covered in blood getting the same bludgeoning as Faye just got. Come-uppance? I think so…

So the TV execs have seen all the footage, they finally agree it isn’t for public consumption and ask for it all the be burnt.

The final question posed is.. I wonder who the real cannibal is?

My thoughts? Well I think I made it pretty clear what I thought about most of this movie. I hated it. Would never watch it again. Thought it contained unnecessary suffering, the animal bits were unforgivable and the rape scenes were played too much for titillation, one of my pet peeves. It seemed to do anything to shock rather than concentrate on producing a good movie. Whats a shame is that the effects and gore were fantastic and probably the best I've seen. They rival anything out there today, but for sitting through the rest of it… simply not worth it. Best avoided unless you’re sick in the head.

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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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Cannibal Apocalypse - Lisa's Review

So starts the first of many cannibal movies. I can’t say I’ve ever watched many before so this will be a completely new experience for me.

The credits tell me this movie is from 1980. I don’t know what would have made me feel the year was earlier, but I was surprised at the year. I could tell even from the credits that this was going to be a movie granted a larger budget than most of our offerings so far, so that bode well.

We start the movie in Vietnam amidst many American helicopters ad soldiers destroying Vietnamese villages oddly by way of blowtorch making sure all underground caves were rid of hiding inhabitants. In one of these caves however are 2 american soldiers, so our first worry is that they will be burnt to death by their comrades, we are quickly shown though that these 2 soldiers are not the run of the mill guys they appear. While we worry about this we go back to battle and a cute alsation dog approaches a soldier with something that couldn’t be anything other than a explosive device around his neck… you would think a soldier would know better than to try to remove it and ask what it is… really!! The dog invariably explodes killing itself and the soldier flying into to the air, the wooden toy dog somersaulting here is worth noting. Another couple of amusing observations were a psychic soldier who is blown off his feet by an explosion, before it actually explodes and a slim Vietnamese lady wearing a very thick and cumbersome burns suit as she runs through the shot on flames and jumps into our 2 soldiers (who we later learn are called Bukowski and Thompson) cave. This is where we discover, not all is well with these guys. After a weird opportunity for a boob shot from this burns victim, they both tuck in and start eating their barbecued meal.

Enter our star Norman Hopper who makes to save his subordinates (he is their commander officer) but he is duly bitten on the arm by Thompson. Here we cut to Norman in bed with his wife having a nightmare. We are left wondering whether or not what we have just witnessed is a dream.. in that he was bitten. A trip downstairs to take some pills and his salivating reaction to a dripping bloody cut of meat in the fridge sort of puts us in mind that it was no nightmare.

Another character which deserves a mention is Dr Mendez who obviously has some history with Normans wife Mary and can’t help but constantly refer to the the fact, including telling her she should have married him when she confides in him about her fears about Norman and his dreams. He pops up periodically to irritate you and be sickeningy sweet towards Mary.

We continue getting ‘hints’ about the fact Norman is a cannibal when his reaction to the teenage next door neighbour who hits on him is to take a bite of her… which she strangely seems to enjoy, odd girl. Next when Bukowski (or Charlie to his friends) is released from the dubiously named ‘Hospital for Nervous Disorders’ he makes a call to Norman and seems to confirm that it is not all in his mind and he was indeed bitten in Vietnam. He hangs up on Charlie and turns down his offer of meeting for a beer.

A bit put out by the rebuffal Charlie takes himself to the cinema and ends up sitting behind the most amorous couple I think any cinema has ever seen. They’re really going for it with scenes that most people keep for a bedroom and in the ladies lustful abandon (where the head is always thrown back with neck full on view) Charlie seizes his moment and bites a big chunk out of her neck, lol. I found this oddly funny! He is of course chased by all the cinema patrons and ends up holed up in a supermarket after having blown away some guy called Carlos who was chasing him(which pisses a lot of people off) and a security guard. The police arrive and we meet Captain McCoy who was my favourite character in this movie. Some of his lines are fantastic… including “He’ll be singing out of his arsehole when I get my hands on him”. I loved him. Reminded me a lot of Leslie Neilson actually… anyways, back to the story… Norman catches wind that Charlie has gone a bit stir crazy and is in the supermarket so he goes down and offers to help the police bring him in.

Long story short, he goes in, Charlie gets arrested eventually and is returned to the hospital where he and Thompson get together to bite a young nurse and infect her. All hell breaks loose from this point… people are bitten and infected, people are eaten (nothing overly messy though), a professor has his tongue bitten out and is bludgeoned to death with one of those nice little crystal stone thingys by his much younger, more attractive girlfriend nurse. She then frees Thompson and Bukowski who have been tied to a bed for their earlier demeanors, Norman appears as the hero of the half hour and kills someone trying to call for help from the hospital.

In the midst of all this, a point worth noting is that when a victim is being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, just before she dies, she scratches our Dr Mendez on the back of the neck. Hmmm that’s bound to come back at some stage….

We move on to the next part of the story as our 4 cannibals set off from the hospital armed with big guns… (it is here that I wondered why don’t cannibals eat one another?). I felt the movie went downhill from here as the earlier friends of Carlos who was despatched by Bukowski try to seek their revenge and don’t get very far. The police also join in the chase including our lovely Captain McCoy. We end up underground in a sewer system with everyone taking pot shots at one another. The nurse meets her end when she refuses to go into rat infested water (but she’ll bludgeon people to death and eat people???) and gets shot by the police who are trailing them. It sort of stopped being a horror movie about cannibals at this stage and became any boring old police chase movie, although the shots Wakowski takes through the middle which blow a perfect and very large hole straight through him were worth noting

Thompson is seen off next with a flame thrower (would’ve been easier had they done it out in Vietnam), so Norman trawls on wounded by a stray shot while trying to help Bukowski earlier. He finally manages to exit the sewer by scaling a wall (no mean feat with a shot in your leg). He makes his way home and after a boring supposedly tense search, his wife enters a room in the house to find him fully dressed in his army uniform pointing a gun at her. She obviously runs away and just as we think Norman is possibly going to take his own life with the gun, enter Dr Mendez!!! Ahhh we remember earlier he was scratched on the back of the neck by a victim just before she died. He sinks his knashers into Mary as Norman watches and we end the movie with Norman dying on the floor from blood loss and Mary asking him to kill her with his gun.

We cut back outside, a gunshot is heard and the chief and ambulance pull up outside and collect the bodies with the immortal words “Tell him this fucking nightmare is over”…. We get tinkly creepy music and we see the next door teenage girl (who Norman bit earlier in the movie) looking out the window watching it all with a bandaged finger. The End!

This movie was ok, but I enjoyed the first half much more than the second half. It changed into something it wasn’t in the last half and there wasn’t enough horror and gore. The movie seemed to forget it was about cannibals and I ended up feeling quite bored. In saying that, it wasn’t too bad and probably I would put it 3^rd on my list so far of the movies I’ve watched.

I’m still waiting for something shocking and disturbing please!!!

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Cannibal Holocaust - Will's Review

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

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Cannibal Apocalypse - Will's Review

Well, over on the Facebook group I said that this weeks movie was the "First in six weeks of Cannibal movies", and it almost isn't... Don't get me wrong, it centres around people who eat other people; but when I think  "Cannibal Movie" I think of tribespeople in the middle of nowhere in grass skirts, chowing down of hapless westerners (like the dude on the cover of "Cannibal Holocaust" ) - The 'Canibals' on this movie are New-Yorkers, infected with a virus that causes the desire to eat human flesh.

Which brings us to the second thing that makes the movie hard to classify; "infected with a virus that causes the desire to eat human flesh" sound like a zombie movie, but the infected here retain thier personalities in there entirety, save for said people-munchies, so I suppose its a 'non-zombie cannibal virus outbreak movie', which has to be a pretty small sub-genre (if you can think of another example, or a better genre title, let me know in the comments!1).
Classification problems out of the way, what of the movie itself? meh, not bad, not great either. One thing that bugged the hell out of me was the inconstancies in the time it took the virus to take hold. Our "patent zeros" (or is that "patents zero"?) are Nam vets Sgts. Bukowski and Hoffman who, when we meat them, have been trapped down a hole by the Vietcong. When Cpt. Norman Hopper (John Saxon, Nancy's Dad from A Nightmare On Elm Street) they are already fully under the influence - as witnessed when one of Hopper's men sets a Vietnamese woman on fire and throw her chard, but living, body within reach of the pit, but one of them bites Norman and it's FIVE YEARS before the urge starts to strike him, for the rest of the cast who get bitten (and survive) the cannibalistic seems to kick in anything from instantly, to a few hours after the bite.

As I indicated above, the bulk of the movie takes place 5 years after the POWs were rescued from the pit, starting on the day one of them is released from psychiatric care, seemingly the little woman-eating episode was put down to emotional damage, and the virus remains unknown.

Upon release Bukowski decides the first thing a traumatised war-vet should do upon release from a psychiatric institution is go to see a war move - but it isn't the action on screen that sets him off - it's the flesh of the ludicrously amorous couple in the seat in front of him, it's not long before he's breaking his buddy Hoffman out of the institute, and their old captain is joining them as they capture, infect and carve up everyone from nurses to gang members in a badly explained plan to get back to Vietnam and finish the job(?).

The Gore is quite good, especially in a scene where a victim is carved into manageable chunks with some kind of power tool borrowed from a garage, but I recommend you see the UK cut version - you won't miss any of the fake gore, but you will miss the unforgivable (unfaked) shot where a live rat is hit with a flame-thrower and runs burning to water.

A very average time-killer, the most interesting thing about it is that during the Video Nasty raids, hapless police seized copies of "Apocalypse Now" believing it to be this movie; but Quinten Tarrentino is a fan, so what do I know?



Body Count: 29 (many in war scenes)
Animal Body Count: 2
Boob Count: 2 pairs



1 - See how I acted like we actually have any readers there?!

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