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France
- Spain
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1981
Directed by Allan W. Steeve
Starring
Robert Foster
Pamela Stanford
Olivier Mathot
Color
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93 Minutes
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Not Rated
Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC)
Severin Films
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More
Eurocheese from Severin
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6 |
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10
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"Cannibal
ERROR" would
be a much more appropriate title. Better yet,
simply "REALLY Terrible Cannibal Movie"
—
it gets right to the point.
Completely
inept in every regard, this French-Spanish co-production
has often been mistakenly attributed to controversial
cult director Jess Franco. I assume this is because
it recycles a few minutes of footage from the
Franco-helmed Cannibals
(1980), which was produced by the same company,
Eurociné, and shares some of the same cast
members and filming locations. But even Franco's
worst films — "Uncle
Jess" certainly made his share of stinkers
— can't begin to
rival Cannibal Terror's
awfulness.
Nevertheless the movie does
have something to offer, entirely in spite of
itself: cheese. Parts of Cannibal
Terror are so astoundingly wretched — I'm
talking way beyond the goofy gaffes encountered
in the works of such Bad Cinema luminaries as
Ed Wood or Larry Buchanan — that one can't help
but laugh. Unfortunately, these (unintentional)
comedic elements are almost totally negated by
long stretches of sheer tedium and/or irritation.
Lensed in Spain but set somewhere
in South America, the film's geography is ridiculously
vague — one wouldn't know the story supposedly
takes place in the Amazon region until the cannibals
are mentioned. (The Iberian Peninsula doesn't
have any savage flesh-eating tribes that I'm aware
of.) Looking to score big, two petty crooks (one
of them played by Franco veteran Antonio Mayans,
AKA "Robert Foster") and a zaftig prostitute
hatch a scheme to kidnap the young daughter of
a wealthy business executive (Olivier Mathot)
and hold the girl for ransom. Before making the
snatch, they arrange for a hideout "across
the border" where they can safely lie low
while the money is paid. This trio of lowlifes
has an easy time with the abduction (which occurs
off-camera), arriving at the border crossing without
incident — but from then on things start going
seriously awry. Their guide/driver, a chunky,
sarong-clad female, tells them that everything
will be fine, that they needn't worry about the
cannibal tribe said to inhabit the jungle along
the border. Almost immediately her jeep breaks
down with a radiator boil-over. While filling
a jerry can at a nearby stream, the guide is captured
and butchered by the face-painted, machete wielding
(and ridiculously phony looking) savages. The
kidnappers, with hostage in tow, panic and take
off in the jeep, which miraculously runs just
fine even though the radiator was never replenished.
They make their way to the
isolated hacienda of their intended host, a middle-aged
farmer with a much younger wife (Sexy
Sisters' Pamela Stanford). Boredom sets in
— not just for the characters, mind you — as the
gang waits around for the ransom deal to go through.
One of the crooks spies on the farmer's wife as
she takes an outdoor bath, later tying her to
a tree and raping her; blowzy Hooker Gal seduces
the guitar-strumming handyman. Meanwhile, the
kidnapped girl's father gets a line on where the
abductors are hiding and decides to mount a rescue
operation, taking along his wife (Sylvia Solar)
and some hired guns.
Demonstrating that it's never
a good idea to molest the wife of the guy sheltering
you from the law (even though the victim doesn't
seem to mind that much!), Farmer Dude gets revenge
on the offending guest by presenting him as an
alfresco appetizer to the cannibals. The devoured
man's partners promptly flee into the cannibal-infested
jungle with their hostage (smart move, huh?),
the rescue party in leisurely pursuit.
You can probably easily guess
how this all plays out.
A movie that gives trash a
bad name, Cannibal Terror
is a stupefying procession of the ridiculous and
the dumb — every single element of the
film is monumentally LAME. Acting? Either
horrible or nonexistent. Direction? What
direction? (The use of an alias is quite understandable...)
Production values? Sloppy and embarrassingly
cheap. Writing? Insultingly stupid.
Musical score? Goofy — not in a good way —
and/or totally inappropriate for any given scene.
Special effects? The old 'pig guts for human
entrails' routine. T & A? Very little,
except for one of the most non-titillating nude
scenes ever committed to celluloid. (Was Pamela
Stanford freezing her ass off during that bath
scene?) Now I ask you, is it too much to expect
of a low budget exploitation film that something
— something — in it should
actually work? Normally, a cinematic achievement
of this caliber would score a "1" Film
Rating (and "Pure Dookie" icon) from
me, but I'm almost ashamed to admit that parts
of it did make me laugh. The English dubbing
is often insanely idiotic, as nutty as anything
in the crappiest '70s kung fu movie imaginable.
(The kidnapped little girl is looped by a grown
woman using a silly falsetto voice, for example.)
Characters do astonishingly dumb things, sometimes
behaving as if previous scenes never occurred,
when they're not staring off into space like zombies.
The completely unconvincing cannibals look like
drunken frat guys actin' a fool at a Halloween
party (with a few potbellied alumni cavorting
among them). Their bewigged tribal chief stands
around, arms folded, as if wondering, "Did
someone say cut? Is the camera still rolling?"
All this can be pretty funny.
Alas, the cheese aficionado's
"I-can't-believe-how-shitty-this-is!"
sense of bemusement rapidly dissipates, as the
film eventually concerns itself with following
various characters as they wander around aimlessly
in the bushes looking for the thoroughly predictable
climax. Enhancing the agony, the same 'jungle
sounds' foley is looped interminably on the soundtrack
whenever any portion of the story takes place
outdoors. A bird is heard shrilly squawking again
and again, over and over and over, with the rhythmic,
skull-piercing precision of some diabolical metronome.
It's incredibly annoying, the aural equivalent
of the infamous Chinese Water Torture. Arrrrgh!
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Without
resorting to any 'turd polishing' jokes, I can
categorically state that the good folks at Severin
have done a first-class job bringing Cannibal
Terror to North American DVD. Other than
the grainy, battered appearance of the opening
credits and some clumsily inserted stock footage
— a condition of the original source materials
— the 1.66 anamorphic transfer looks exceptionally
good. The nearly pristine print is backed by a
strong mono audio track, rendering the music,
goofily-dubbed dialog and every single squawk
of that goddamn jungle bird with digital clarity.
For supplements Severin has included a "spicy
deleted scene" (Stanford doing a drunken
striptease/topless dance) and the amusing English-language
trailer, in which the narrator sounds like he's
reading his lines phonetically without understanding
a good deal of what he's saying.
There's also an Easter Egg located on the Main
Menu screen. In a 5-minute interview segment,
a sometimes hard to understand Jess Franco, speaking
English, chats a bit about his involvement with
the Eurociné-produced Zombie
Lake (1980) and takes a few well-deserved
shots at the so-called director of Cannibal
Terror, "Allan W. Steeve" (Alain
Deruelle). 9/18/08
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