Director: Umberto Lenzi
Year: 1980
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Mangiati vivi!; Doomed to Die; The Emerald Jungle
Genre: Jungle Cannibal
Plot:
When a mysterious assassin is killed, a woman hires an ex-soldier to guide her to her sister’s location in New Guinea amongst a tribe of cannibals headed by a maniacal religious leader attempting to usher in a special worldwide cult based on his followings and must try to escape.
Review:
This wasn’t all that bad of a film, and it had some good stuff going for it. One of the main selling points is that there are a lot of aspects that give the film a really dirty and sleazy vibe, like most good exploitation films. The central setup starts off a great bang, with the mysterious assassinations and following the perpetrator across various US landmarks manages for a really fun intro as this lets the eventual discovery of her location in New Guinea be worked out and setting up the expedition to go there, as this brings about the kind of adventure-trek through the woods this type of genre is famous for. Featuring a series of hardships mostly associated with the style, from land traps used to catch interlopers and water-based animal obstacles that offer up a slew of violence against both man and animals as they make their way to the tribe’s compound. The observation of the various rituals and ceremonies that take place there, including the burial process, which includes setting up the widow to marry again, and other forms of combat, ensuring that the followers are kept in control through fear of the outside world, gives this the kind of adventurous atmosphere so that the requisite sleaze can be integrated well enough.
The fact that there’s a ton of extreme gore in here is another area that it gets right, feeling suitably dirty at the best of times. This is helped out by the huge body count, as along with a series of stabbing or impaling with spears, there’s a brutal decapitation, one is castrated with a huge machete, arms and legs are ripped off, a huge slew of dismembered and half-eaten bodies, some of which come while they're still being feasted upon. None of these, though, compares to its infamous scene where two victims are, in graphic close-up detail, sliced open, dismembered, amputated, disemboweled, and feasted upon. It's one of the strongest scenes in the film, and despite being borrowed, this double-killing sequence is far stronger than anything else in the film and is still one of the strongest scenes in Italian horror cinema. The sight of the still conscious women lying on the bloodstained ground as their limbs are eaten in front of them, and after one of them has her breast graphically sliced off and consumed, leaves a satisfyingly nasty taste in the mouth. The later one a few seconds later, sliced open and with the ribs being cracked open with all the inner organs pulled out and devoured in extreme close-up, is just as vicious and exploitative, making it a real double-treat of extreme matter. Even some of the tribal maneuvers are quite extreme, as the footage of the scarring ceremony that the tribe undergoes and a later ritual, where the cult's leader presides over a series of native rituals that include a widow having sex with her three brothers-in-law on her dead husband's ashes is certainly among the more obscure rituals presented, giving this a lot to like overall.
The film does have a few problems with it, though. The biggest issue is with the fact that this one manages to borrow footage from two other entries in here, mainly the big butchery sequence, but also a few insert shots of the cannibals and animal violence here and there. The fact is that the original effects that lead up to this footage are very good anyway, and there was no need to cheapen the film with such obvious plagiarism, as the film quality noticeably changes during them. Sadly, we are also still treated to lots of animal snuff, the most vicious of all being a sickening scene of a monkey being fed to a python. There’s a way to know that the monkey was fed to the python, and had not fallen from the trees, which the film tries to make out, because a crudely painted bunch of leaves suddenly appears on the edge of the screen, obviously covering up an arm pushing the monkey into the creature's jaws. Even more animal footage, of a crocodile being hacked up and a small lizard being stripped of its flesh and devoured, is just as sickening and is just plain unnecessary and tough to get into. The cannibals on show are a motley bunch as well and have none of the authenticity of true jungle tribes, as most of them look like normal people blackened up, while the others are just adorned with exotic trinkets and clothes. These are what really hurt the film, beyond all the animal footage, but overall, it's still a fairly enjoyable entry in the genre.
Overview: ***.5/5
Although it has a few problems, this is another solid addition to the long line of Italian cannibal entries that has the usual series of positives and drawbacks found here. This is highly recommended for those with a taste and tolerance for these kinds of films, a European horror aficionado, or fans of sleaze, while those with little to no tolerance should heed caution with it.
This review is part of our ongoing series of reviews for Italian Horror Month, every November on the site:
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