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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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6
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10 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Previously
available in the States only on VHS and in heavily edited form,
this unusual Italian thriller from director Antonio Margheriti
(Castle of Blood, Seven
Deaths In The Cat's Eye) comes uncut to Region 1 DVD as
part of Image's ongoing EuroShock Collection. It'd be
a mistake to automatically lump it with the Cannibal subgenre
so prevalent in Italian exploitation cinema during the late
1970s- early
'80s, as it shares virtually nothing in common with such films.
Cannibal Apocalypse isn't a jungle
adventure. Savage natives chowing down on ill-fated explorers
plays no part in the plot. And while certainly not for the squeamish,
the level of gore on display doesn't come close to matching
the excesses of Cannibal Holocaust
and the like. There are flesh-eaters in the film, but they're
"civilized" denizens of Atlanta, not primitive tribesmen of
the Amazonian rain forest.
Atlanta? Yes, as in Georgia, home
of the Braves and CNN. The movie opens, however, in the jungles
of Vietnam. The credits roll over stock footage from the war
of troop-carrying helicopters touching down at a remote landing
zone. U.S. Army Special Forces officer Captain Norman Hopper
(Enter the Dragon's John Saxon)
leads a platoon of soldiers in a search and destroy mission
against a Viet Cong cave complex. After methodically wiping
out the enemy they discover a caged-over pit in which the Cong
have been holding two captured Americans, Charlie Bukowski (Stage
Fright's Giovanni Radici, a.k.a. "John Morghen") and Tommy
(Tony King, Hell Comes To Harlem).
The captain is elated —
both men
are hometown buddies of his. But Hopper is horrified when he
peers within the pit only to see them greedily devouring the
flesh of a communist guerilla who fell inside. Then a snarling
Tommy leaps up and takes a bite out of Hopper's outstretched
arm. At this point Hopper wakes up from this feverish nightmare,
in bed with his wife Jane (Elizabeth Turner) in Atlanta years
after the war. The film's opening sequence was Hopper's Vietnam
Flashback of the incident. Hopper is troubled by the dream;
of late he's developed a strange attraction to raw meat. Fighting
this urge grows increasingly difficult, putting a strain on
his marriage. When the randy teenage girl who lives next door
comes on to him, Hopper almost loses it. ("Ive never had
anyone bite me like that before," she later coos.)
Meanwhile, Charlie Bukowski is released from
a local psychiatric ward, where he's been incarcerated since
the end of the war. Supposedly cured, on his first day of freedom
he runs afoul of a biker gang, attacks a woman in a movie theater
(biting a bloody chunk from her neck), then kills two people
at an indoor flea market and holes up there, armed and dangerous,
while the cops surround the building. Learning of Bukowski's
situation, Hopper appears at the scene and manages to talk him
into surrendering. The unrepentant Charlie bites a policeman
on the finger as he's shoved into the paddy wagon. Instead of
jail Bukowski is transported back to the nut ward, where he's
reunited with Tommy. Tommy goes berserk and bites a hunk out
of a nurse's leg, which gets him strapped down to a gurney next
to Charlie in the high security wing. The doctors determine
that both are carriers of a mysterious virus that somehow turns
them into cannibals. Later Hopper shows up at the hospital,
but he's not there to see his unfortunate war buddies —
it's getting
harder to control his strange impulses. Tests will be run to
determine if he, too, is infected with the cannibal virus. Slipping
over the edge while awaiting the results, Hopper helps spring
Charlie and Tommy from the security ward. The nurse infected
by Tommy joins them after biting the tongue from the mouth of
a horny physician; the foursome steals an ambulance and takes
off into the night. During their robbery of a gas station the
attendant is killed and his leg carved up with a power saw for
on-the-go snacks. The police, led by the crotchety, foul-mouthed
Capt. McCoy (Wallace Wilkenson, with the only authentic Southern
accent among the cast), engage in a frantic manhunt to stop
the cannibals before they can spread the virus further.
Essentially an action-drama with elements
of horror, Cannibal Apocalypse
is a pretty grim story with only the occasional nugget of humor
courtesy of the salty-tongued police captain.
("Ashes to ashes and shit to shit,"
he drawls at one point.) It benefits mightily from the solid
performances of Saxon and Radici and the surehanded, economical
direction of Margheriti, which elevate the movie a notch or
two above what one customarily expects from such exploitation
fare. The concept of a cannibal virus is certainly way out there,
as Hopper's wife admits in the script ("How can a social
phenomenon such as cannibalism become a contagious disease?"),
but it's as intriguing as it is far-fetched —
a good plot
hook to hang a low budget B-picture on. And no real animal deaths
are used in the film, a saving grace in comparison to the immorality
on display in flicks like Cannibal Ferox,
Cannibal Holocaust, and Slave
of the Cannibal God. Not that there aren't plenty of gore
effects to go 'round... Splatter freaks will revel in the gas
station "carving" scene and the infamous shotgun death
of Radici's character, now fully restored in all their visceral
glory. (The former sequence actually plays more humorously than
it does horrifying, as it's accompanied by totally inappropriate
disco-style action music.)
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Image
does an admirable job with its Cannibal
Apocalypse DVD. Video is clear and sharp, if a tad dark
in spots; the digital mono audio track is crisp and distortion-free.
The disc also contains a surprising number of bonus features.
The most significant of these is the documentary Cannibal Apocalypse
Redux, a 50-minute compilation of recent interviews with John
Saxon, Giovanni Radici, and director Antonio Margheriti. (The
actors speak in English; Margheriti's segments are in Italian
with English subtitles.) Saxon —
still looking
fit and trim at nearly 70 —
recounts his initial interest in the script's unusual theme, his
disappointment with the movie's use of gore, and the highs and
lows of shooting in Atlanta with a European crew. He also muses
on the appeal of horror films in general and the genre's direction
toward more graphically violent content during his heyday as an
actor. (Saxon personally doesn't care for "moist" horror flicks;
he readily admits to never having seen Cannibal
Apocalypse.) Margheriti discusses various aspects of the
production, working with the actors, etc., and seems greatly enamored
with the notion that Pulp Fiction
auteur Quentin Tarantino digs his movies. Radici, an odd but engaging
character, has the funniest tales to relate, including anecdotes
about toking joints between takes and working with gore effects.
Other Extras included on the DVD: the European
trailer, which gives away most of the goodies (apparently taken
from a poor quality EP-speed videotape); the 30-second Japanese
teaser trailer (highlighting the aforementioned shotgun death);
a poster/still gallery set to the flick's cheesy action theme;
the "alternate" opening sequence, running 8 minutes,
from the washed out, heavily-edited fullscreen American video
release under the title Invasion of the Flesh Hunters;
filmographies of Saxon, Radici, King and Margheriti; a text essay
entitled The Butchering of Cannibal Apocalypse, documenting
past censorship of the film; terrific liner notes by Travis Crawford;
and a very brief (and amateurish) shot-on-camcorder tour of some
of the Atlanta locations used in the production. The disc comes
with three hidden Easter Eggs as well. 5/20/02 |
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