Cannibal Ferox
Italy 1980. Director: Umberto Lenzi
Cast: Lorraine De Selle, John Morghen, Zora Kerova, Walter Lucchini
Aka: Make Them Die Slowly

In some review of Cannibal Ferox I read years and years ago somebody wrote: "Umberto Lenzi is the Italian Lee Harvey Oswald escaping from the asylum". That of course made me and everyone else want to see the film immediately. It had to be something special. It had to be great. And while the plot certainly feels as if it has been realised by a lunatic with a camera, the film is nowhere near great. It's completely bereft of substance and point of view and, frankly, anything to like. An anthropologist student (Lorraine De Selle) is trying to prove that cannibalism is a myth, and subsequently ends up being almost eaten alive by he cannibals herself. Ho hah. Umberto Lenzi doesn't even pretend that it's about anything else but the violence. The gore. The disgust. The viewer is brought into the Amazon jungle and just left in front of one goddamn scene after another of extreme violence against man and animal alike. One graphic death-scene is quickly followed by another while a bizarre soundtrack lead us through to a ludicrous ending: the real cannibal, after all, is the white man, the rasist intruder. Really. Classic or not, the only real point of Cannibal Ferox is to exploit, provoke and cash in.