Director: Umberto Lenzi
Year: 1972
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Il paese del sesso selvaggio; Sacrifice!; Deep River Savages
Genre: Jungle Cannibal
Plot:
While on vacation in Thailand, a photographer is accidentally swept up into a primitive tribe of jungle-dwellers who take him hostage and plan to kill him, but after being saved by their leader's daughter is forced into the customs and way of life with the tribe and their brutal society.
Review:
On the whole, this is a solid if problematic start of the 'Jungle Cannibal' style. One of the film's bright spots is the means through which it demonstrates a rather intriguing lifestyle for the main character rather than an overabundance of exploitation tropes. Rather than focus on torture and cruelty for the sake of sensationalism, this one presents itself more as a retelling of life in the village that he has to follow to not get killed following his meeting with the villagers' daughter who takes a liking to him to save him from being killed. This starts the film on a nice note as the means of being inducted into their society and winning them over that comes about rather nicely overall.
With this in place, the film’s worth is centered around these customs and experiences while inside the tribe as he has to deal with their way of living to not be killed. Since the daughter is so enamored with him that she orders him not to be killed but must still be put through the paces as a member of the tribe, there’s a fine sense throughout here of the harsh conditions he goes through with their fishing system, ritualistic ceremonies, and punishment ordeals that must be played out where he finds himself systematically going through prodding with arrows, beaten with sticks, and exposed to the elements by being left tied to a stand left out in the blazing sun.
While all of this is quite fun and enjoyable, it also highlights the one main issue here that some might find fault with as there’s not much in the way of genuine exploitation here. As the film focuses more on the idea of him trying to become acclimated to their tribal customs and way of life, this ends up making the film play out like an adventure drama about this bizarre tribe in the middle of the jungle rather than a group of people encountering savage flesh-eating cannibals. This decided lack of focus on the salacious material normally featured in the genre is a product of its time by being the first but can make the film feel like it’s plodding along without much of anything happening.
Even with this, though, there’s still a big feature to overcome that would work itself into the genre to come with the scenes of useless and inhumane animal cruelty featured. Downplayed considerably compared to what would come later on, the scenes of a monkey being strapped down and scalped or capturing a wild pig to then later dismember and devour it are immensely unsatisfying to witness as while the pig is at least off-screen with the remains paraded about after the fact the other scene is shown in full-detail which is incredibly hard to stomach. It would be understandable not to follow through with it just for this but altogether, these factors bring this one down.
Overview: ***/5
A fine starting point for the Jungle-Cannibal style, that it’s thankfully not as barbaric as the later entries but still maintains some likable factors throughout leaving it as a strong curiosity piece more than anything else. Those who appreciate this type of genre, are curious about this one, or are fans of the creative crew will be the most likely ones for the film while most others who are turned off by the content should heed caution.
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