Last Cannibal World (1978)

the audience applauded

Amateur movie with Big budget

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

After catching Sergio Martino's stylish The Case of the Scorpion's Tails last night I decided to watch another Italian title that has been in my viewing pile for far too long. Finding his lone take on Italian Crime to be magnificent,and his late Gialli to be interesting takes,I decided it was time to at last enter Deodato's jungle.View on the film:Stating in the very interesting commentary on Shriek Show's DVD that the film was largely shot in natural light, directing auteur Ruggero Deodato takes the grit shown in 1976's Live Like A Cop,Die Like A Man to a more extreme level,with Deodato & cinematographer Marcello Masciocchi (with Lamberto Bava working as one of the assistant director)extensive use of hand-held cameras placing the viewer in the hot,sweaty heart of the jungle. Camping in the jungle with the cast,crew,and the real tribe of the land, Deodato dices the shots of animals being killed (which he claims were filmed by the producer as inserts) with gruelling psychological torture to Robert Harper, who observes his humanity from "The West" being raised in the (impressively filmed) caves of the tribe,and slammed down into a savage pulp.Adding an unexpected depth to Harper,Deodato crosses the shocks with gentle moments of silence that close in on the bond Harper makes with tribeswoman Pulan. Swinging Harper deep into the jungle, the writers give the first half an Adventure edge,which allows for excitement from the exploration of the jungle,and also a glimpse at Harper's innocence. Caving Harper in with the tribe, the writers tear all of Harper's beliefs and ideas to the bone,until he is thumping his chest in a battle with the leader of the tribe. The poster girl for the genre,Me Me Lai gives a fittingly relaxed performance as Pulan which neatly contrasts with the macho aggression from the guys, whilst Massimo Foschi gives an incredibly raw,passionate performance,as Harper gets lost to the jungle.

Last Cannibal World claims to be a true story about a stone-age cannibal tribe living on the Malaysian island of Mindanao who captures a 'modern' man named Robert Haper, who crash lands on the island. It seems that there is an oil mining crew camping out in the jungle while they search for drilling sites, and when a team flies in to check on them, the plane is damaged during landing and the drill team turns up missing. The pilot is sure he can fix the plane ("If I can find the wheel it shouldn't be too hard to put it back again!"), but won't fly until the following day, since it was getting dark.Before long, of course, the group ends up separated and being pursued by cannibals through the jungle, and then the movie becomes a strange mix of gruesome horror and a twisted look at the animal side of humans. Of course, cannibalism is not politically correct, so the cannibal tribe is presented as more like animals than humans, with the grunting and the throwing food at each other and the spontaneous copulation. These are evolutionary drop-outs if ever there were any, but the movie doesn't know where to stop in presenting their backwardness.Even the simplest animals have some instincts, particularly about things like eating and self-preservation, but not these people. One of the women tries to eat Harper's wristwatch, I suppose not possessing the basic abilities to distinguish between food items and non-food items, and for a tribe that has been living presumably for centuries or more in an alligator infested jungle, they sure spend a lot of time swimming and getting eaten or almost eaten by alligators. A woman gives birth by the riverside and, after detaching the umbilical cord with her teeth (and after an extreme close-up to make sure we know the baby is a girl – I didn't need that…), she goes for a nice little swim and gets immediately eaten along with her new baby. Smart.Gore fans should be happy, there is sufficient disturbing gore in the movie, although most of the effects (such as the decomposed head in the beginning) are pretty weak, as is the editing. But there is lots of grotesque feeding scenes which include lots of filthy savages stuffing flesh in their mouths with lots of nasty sucking sounds and twitching meat. Nice! Some of the movie doesn't make much sense, like the way they tie up one of the natives and put carnivorous ants on his arms, which slowly eat him while he screams his head off. It's one of the more disturbing scenes in the movie with all that screaming, but why would they do that? I thought it must be a sacrifice, but what kind of tribe sacrifices their own people rather than animals? And who is he being sacrificed to? The Ant God? Even if he was being punished, for a cannibal tribe to feed a man to ants seems like a waste of food, doesn't it? Harper spends a good part of the movie trapped in a cage, although I missed the reason for that too. They couldn't have been fattening him up to eat him because that would also be a huge waste of food. Maybe they were saving him for a special occasion. At any rate, they put in this bizarre looking bird with him, and it's strange that when Harper kills it, its squawking instantly stops and gives the scene a genuine finality of death that is more realistic than anything else in the movie. At least until it starts squawking again.There are two directions that the movie could go once a "sympathetic" jungle woman begins helping Harper – it could have Harper try to lift the woman out of the barbaric world in which she lives, or he could descend into barbarism himself. The most interesting thing that the movie does is that it goes in both directions, and actually does it pretty well. It's a pretty sharp indictment of Harper (especially if this really is a true story), given that, even after saving her from being sexually assaulted by another native, he rapes her himself. And he didn't just force himself on her, her beat her and then raped her. Are we still supposed to accept him as a protagonist?After this, it may be a little strange to see that she basically becomes his loving cave-wife, bringing him food and cleaning and caring for him, until you remember that these are savages and I guess this is just how women expect to be treated. And Harper is happy, of course, given that he has found himself a beautiful island wife, and with obviously man-made breasts, no less.There is a weak attempt at symbolism during Harper's brief descent to his most primal instincts, and then soon he meets up with another man from the plane, who laments that no matter how much mud he smears into a badly infected wound on his knee, it never gets better. He must not have been paying much attention in his Wilderness Survival class. All in all I guess the movie is as satisfying as a cannibal movie can be. At least you know what to expect, though. I think any movie with the word "cannibal" in the title is going to be pretty much like this. It's bad but it's a fun and disgusting kind of bad, the thing you can watch with your buddies over a few beers and have a few good laughs!

Two oil men, Robert(Massimo Foschi in a very demanding role)and Rolf(Ivan Rassimov)get lost in the wilderness and have to fend for their lives in the jungle populated by a Cannibal tribe whose methods hearken back to the Stone Age. They get separated after an unfortunate incident riding a river when their raft breaks apart on top of rocky rapids. Robert especially finds himself in a precarious position. He is taken by a tribe, raped of his clothes, and imprisoned for use as an alligator target(they use various animals to trap alligators for their meat). Somehow Robert must find away out of their clutches and back to the airstrip holding the airplane that brought him to the godforsaken jungle. With a female Pulan(Me Me Lai)he will need her to introduce him to foods or means of nourishment to stay alive. But, the presence of those cannibals always weighs on Robert's mind.More of a survivalist drama than a horror film shows various snakes feeding(such as a fruit-bat & Gila monster)and does show the cannibals partake in a human meal. Stnningly photographed and quite exciting, this film surprised me a bit as we see Robert slowly descend into a primitive in order to make it in this beast of a habitat.

Wasn't quite sure what to think from this earlier film from Ruggero Deodata, who brought us the universally "infamous" CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. I figured it wouldn't be nearly as rough or "controversial", and I was right. But JUNGLE HOLOCAUST is still a good film in it's own right...The film starts with four people (Robert, Rolf, Charlie, and Swan) flying into the jungles of Malaysia to meet up with some of their camp. Upon landing, the plane breaks a wheel (of course...) and it's found that the camp-members have all disappeared. Knowing that the area is in "cannibal territory" and expecting the worst for their colleagues, the four decide to wait out the night in the plane and fly out in the morning. Swan decides she has to take a leak, so she gets out of the plane - big mistake. She gets abducted by cannibals (of course...) and the three remaining chivalrous adventurers decide not to go looking for her til morning. The next day, they go out to search for Swan, and Charlie (the pilot) is killed by a trap that the cannibals have left. This leaves Rob and Rolf, until they decide to build a raft to try to follow the river back to their plane, and Rolf goes overboard (of course...). This leaves Rob who is eventually kidnapped by the cannibals. They don't kill him, but instead they tie him to a rock, strip his clothes off, and play with his wiener for a bit (I guess no one ever told the cannibals that playing with another man's ding-ding is not good manners). They end up sticking Rob in a cage with a weird annoying bird that steals the little bit of slop that the natives throw down to him. Rob eventually ends up spotting a sexy cannibal native (smokin' hot Me Me Lai) who sports an impressive set of miraculously implanted tits (I hear they have good surgeons in the jungles of Malaysia...) and she frees him. They run off together in the woods and with Rob all the while smacking her around like Ike Turner. Eventually Rob gets horny and rapes Me Me (hey, you can hardly blame the brother...) and after that she seems to feel a "connection" for our "hero", and she keeps them alive by picking local roots and stuff and finding some sort of really tasty looking mud-fish. They eventually run into Rolf who's suffering from a nasty leg-wound and has holed himself up in a cave. The three end up making a run for the plane, but Me Me gets captured and dispatched in typical gory cannibal-film fashion. Rob ends up fighting and killing one of the natives and cutting him open and chewing on his liver to show the other natives what a bad-ass he is - then Rob and Rolf get to the plane and escape. THE END...Although I may have over-dramatized for the sake of my review, JUNGLE HOLOCAUST is actually a very decent "survival" film. It's not the blood-bath of some of the other notable cannibal films, like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or CANNIBAL FEROX, but as a film about a few people trying to survive in the wild, it holds up very well. There are a few animal killing scenes, but the ones that are perpetrated by humans are for the preparation of meals, or are authentic battles between jungle animals. The gore is lighter than I would have expected, with only 3 scenes that I can think of that showed any decent amount of the red-stuff. Overall, JUNGLE HOLOCAUST would be of interest to those that dig the Italian cannibal films, but don't expect a gore-fest - you'll be disappointed - But Me Me Lai and her big fake tits are a definite bonus...7.5/10