Cannibal Terror

Cannibal Terror is one of those marginal Video Nasties that I'd never bothered with tracking down until now. I had the opportunity, having inexplicably seen a pre-cert tape on display in a local video shop in the early 1990s.

I still don't know why it was there. Were the shop's owners unaware of its status? Did they know, but figure that no-one who knew any better would notice? Or did they hope to get some rentals from ill-informed gore-seekers confusing it with a Deodato or Lenzi cannibal film?

Whatever the case, even then I knew enough of the film's reputation to be wary of spending the £1.50 or whatever it was, and went for Fulci's City of the Living Dead instead. It might have been without the drill through the head scene, but was still a masterpiece compared to this.

The film begins with two small time crooks, Roberto and Mario, trying to break into a boat, with unsuccessful results. Meanwhile their girlfriend/partner in crime, Lina, happens upon little young, Florence, whom she learns is the daughter of a wealthy vacationing businessman, Danville.

The trio decide to kidnap the girl, succeed, and hastily arrange with a local gangster for transport out of town to a safe house in the jungle.

They rendezvous with their contact, who warns them that they are in cannibal country, although everything should be okay so long as they can keep moving. Sure enough the jeep breaks down…

Unfortunately, only the guide gets picked off, meaning that there's still another hour or so before the others get offed and Florence is re-united with her parents in a cannibals-have-feelings-too-sort of way…

Cannibal Terror shows you why, even in these days of the most obscure crap being released on DVD, the majority of notorious French production company Eurocine's output is likely to remain in the vaults.

We're talking about a film which even Franco declined being a part of – apparently he did contribute to the script, but his name/pseudonym is absent from the credits – and which somehow contrives to be is even worse than his Oasis of the Zombies, Cannibals and The Devil Hunter by playing it straight and showing no awareness of its own ridiculousness.

The cannibal village, complete with nicely manicured lawn, is populated almost entirely by males. They're of varied ethnicities and physiques, the one constant being that none is convincingly Amerindian. Half can barely suppress laughing at the 'tribal' dances and rituals, while the others don't seem to know what they are supposed to be doing besides jumping around and waving their spears.

The final showdown between the bad guys, good guys – Danville, as played by Eurocine regular Olivier Mathot, seems to be an ex-special forces guy or something like that – and cannibals is laughably inept, shot and edited with utter disregard for situating the spectator in relation to the action.

The gore sequences, while few and far between, are decent by comparison, albeit perhaps because all that's needed is to cut in a dummy and then fix the camera on the performers as they knead, juggle and messily eat assorted bits. But with some of these bits looking suspiciously like bits of chicken in barbecue sauce the fundamental stupidity of the film and the utter impossibility of taking it in any way seriously are again much in evidence.

Sensitive types should note that the film contains none of the animal cruelty scenes for which the cannibal film is often reviled.

Anyone else would be well advised to give this a wide berth and watch Cannibal Holocaust or Mountain of the Cannibal God instead…