CANNIBAL LOLOCAUST, EPISODE ONE: THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER

Hello and welcome to the first episode of my Cannibal Boom retrospective, CANNIBAL LOLOCAUST. Tonight, we're gonna take a look at the film which got the whole ugly ball rolling, The Man From Deep River.

Synopsis:

Call me crazy, but if Man From Deep River reminds me of anything, it's goddamned Shogun. A weird, naked version of Shogun, but Shogun none the less. Even the main characters kinda look the same. They're both tall, handsome, lantern-jawed blond guys who are completely out of their element.

The only feature they don't share is acting talent.

OK, so the plot. And keep Shogun in mind, seriously. I hope I'm not the only one who saw the similarities. 

The film opens with a nice, travelogue-like montage of places in Thailand alongside a disclaimer about the "accurate portrayal of shocking stone age rituals" that will quickly become nearly required for these kind of movies. I really dug the opening; it had a kind of Mondo Cane/ In Search Of feel that actually managed to set a tone of realism. A tone that the movie almost immediately squanders when the rest of the damned thing kicks off.

We're introduced to our hero, Bradley, played by Richard Chamberlin  Ivan Rassimov. He's a photo journalist on assignment in Thailand, taking pictures for some undisclosed reason. Whatever. We all know the real reason he's here is to get eaten by goddamned cannibals. He farts around town with his girlfriend for a while, taking pictures of the local townsfolk. And let me tell you, after seeing the people he takes pictures of, I totally understand why Thailand is practically synonymous with ladyboys. Thailand is famous for ladyboys because someone there had to pick up the slack and be pretty. I shit you not; apparently Thai women are the UGLIEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD.

Miss Thailand, 2010.

Anyway, like the right manly chap that he is, Bradley goes to watch a Muy Thai match, which we get to watch with him via the wonders of stock footage. His girlfriend, who is not very interested in watching the fight, gets up and wanders away, presumably off the set to be eaten by Thai cannibals for real, because she's never so much as mentioned for the rest of the film. 

After losing his girlfriend and not so much as commenting about it, Bradley wanders into a bar, where he is immediately attacked by a guy with a switchblade. Proving himself unexpected badass, Bradley faces down his armed attacker, disarms the guy, and then stabs him in the fucking torso, and then runs out into the street. Yeah, good luck blending in, 6'4" blond guy. 

We immediately cut to the next day, where Bradley and a guide are getting ready to go up the river to take pictures of....fish, I guess. We get some of soon-to-be-obligatory stock footage of wildlife, codifying yet another cornerstone of the cannibal movie genre. The only vague reference to the fact that he fucking skewered a man to death in a raw bar the night before is when Bradley gives the guy he's renting his boat from some extra money to deny he came through there. That's it. Just like the missing girlfriend, the plot never touches on Bradley killing that guy again. At all. He gets away with it so scott-free, you have to wonder why it's in the fucking movie at all.

Got away with it, bitches.

So Bradley and his guide head upriver, until inevitably they are attacked by a primitive tribe and the guide is killed. Bradley is dragged off to the village, where he is forced to witness the torture of two cannibals from a neighboring tribe, who have their tongues cut out with machetes.

Wait, the tribesmen have fucking machetes?

Actually, not only to they have actual blacksmith-forged machetes, they also have goddamned crossbows and metal chicken coop/cage things. I thought these people were supposed to be stone-age primitives? When the fuck did they learn to forge iron? Where the fuck did they GET iron in the middle of the Thai jungle? And who the fuck taught them to make crossbows? Zhuge Liang?

Oh, just fucking look it up.

Bradley, tied up and kept in a bamboo hut, catches the attention of the chief's daughter, Maraya, played by the very often naked Me Me Lai. She's a pretty girl (Certainly the prettiest girl in Thailand) but she's not exactly my type. I'm a Laura Gemser guy, so sue me. Anyway, as you'd expect, she instantly falls in Me Love You Long Time with Bradley and takes him as her own personal slave. Trouble is a-brewing, however, because Maraya (pronounced as "Mara-ya" by the natives and "Mariah" by Bradley) is betrothed to the local badass with the scar on his face....Karen.

I'm a badass. Tell me I'm a badass.

Now I have zero idea how the character's name is supposed to be pronounced, but it's written in the subtitles over and over again as "Karen" so I'm just fucking calling the guy Karen. Anyway, Bradley escapes (natch) and Karen and the world's worst savage hunters chase the giant pink man into the jungles and promptly lose his doofy ass. Eventually they stumble back onto him (by turning slightly to the right and seeing him standing there) and they fight. And of course, since Bradley is a badass and Karen is fucking named Karen, Bradley shishkabobs him. Before Karen's buddies can take Bradley down, however, the dying Karen pulls the whole noble savage thing and says not to kill Mighty Whitey, but instead take him back to the village to be put through an initiation into manhood to join the tribe, because Bradley is strong and brave and yatta yatta. And of course, initiations into manhood means being savagely tortured.

Pictured: Savage Torture

This leads to one of the film's more iconic scenes, where Bradley is locked in a spinning head-box contraption and repeatedly shot with blowgun darts. After that, he's left out in the sun to grow dehydrated, because dehydration is the defining characteristic of being a man.

Pussy.

Anyway, as we all expected, Bradley passes the tests, is accepted into the tribe as a man and marries naked Maraya. There's a lot of really listless, boring fucking, and-

Wait a second.

Isn't this series of blog entries called Cannibal Lolocaust? Like...as in, we lol at cannibal movies? Isn't this movie the cornerstone of the whole cannibal movie boom? So...where the fuck are the cannibals? Haven't you been reading this blog since you were eleven years old and have yet to see any goddamn cannibalism? I mean yeah, the guys who got their tongues cut off earlier were said to be cannibals, but that's about as informed an attribute as the cinema has seen since Anakin Skywalker was said to be both wise and powerful.

Karen?

Yeah, that's right, we're almost entirely through this fucking movie and there has been no cannibalism at all. I feel like I've let you down. We're getting there, I swear.

Anyway, Maraya gets pregnant from all their boring sex, and finally the goddamned cannibals attack. The cannibal tribe, known as the Kuru, attack a boy and girl who are out in the jungle. The boy is the killed, the girl is gang-raped, and then we get our only scene of cannibalism. It's brief, it's unconvincing, and it's too little too late to make me give a flying lemur about this movie, but it's there. It's a scene that takes less time to watch than it takes to read this sentence, but cannibalism does take place.

Bradley and his adoptive tribe fight off the cannibals with their machetes and crossbows, but upon returning, he finds that his dear, dear naked wife has fallen ill with a serious case of plot point. She is struck blind and Bradley decides that, despite the fact he has both a pending murder charge on his head and a girlfriend who will no doubt be slightly irritated he's been gone for months and came home with a pregnant naked blind woman, he has to bring Maraya back to civilization for treatment.

No points for guessing how far they make it before they're dragged back to the goddamned village.

The Kuru attack again, setting fire to the village in a scene which no doubt inspired the burning-village scene in Cannibal Holocaust. The villagers again fight off the Kuru, Maraya goes into labor, gives birth to a son, and then dies. John gets depressed, just as the movie draws to a close. In the end, he decides to stay with his tribe, which is probably a good idea because he has a fucking kid there.

Guh.

Cannibal Movie Rating Scale (From 0 to 10):

Sex: 

Alright, so I won't deny for a second that Me Me Lai has a fine looking backside. Her front side, on the other hand, is pretty much average. Any sex in the movie is either really really boring missionary or really really boring rape, none of which is gonna set anybody on fire. The brief shot of full frontal in The Howling is better stroke material than this.
Score: 3

Violence:

Now we really have to judge the violence in this movie by the standards of the day, and so special effects need to be given a little leniency. So what we need to focus on is the violence shocking or thrilling? And the answer is a resounding...."Meh." It's pretty much bog standard for this kind of movie, with quick jump cuts and thin, fruit-juice like blood.
Score: 3


Animal Death:

Ahh, the reason so many Cannibal Movies are infamous; the tendency to actually kill real animals on film. And despite falling behind in the sex and simulated violence categories, Man From Deep River definitely gets the ball rolling with two snakes killed by people and another fighting a mongoose, a cock-fight, a goat and an alligator being graphically butchered on screen. There's also a monkey getting the top of his head cut off but that MIGHT have been a special effect so I'm only giving half credit. Also, snakes are probably the animal we're least likely to get shocked at seeing die, since they are the physical manifestation of evil and all.
 Score: 4.5

Cannibalism:
For the movie that started the Cannibal Film Boom, there is next to no cannibalism in the movie. One quick scene does not a cannibal movie make, Umberto! 

Score: 1

Originality: As this is somewhat the Ur-example of Cannibal Movies, owing mostly to Mondo Cane, Man From Deep River gets a pass in this category. The guidelines it sets down will define future Cannibal movies, but hopefully, they won't be so goddamn boring.
Score: 9

Final Score: 4.1

Boring, disappointing and unsatisfying.

Let's hope they get better from here.

Coming Attractions: Cannibal Lolocaust!

Something I've wanted to do since I started this blog (all five entries ago) was to chronicle the span of one of my personal favorite little film niches. A niche filled with ugly little movies of practically no artistic value, devoid of anything other than cheap (sometimes very cheap) titillation, crass sexuality and over the top, often times completely unnecessary violence and brutality.

I'm speaking of course of Robin Williams movies.

No, I'm talking about cannibal movies! Now pretty much everybody out there has at least heard of the big daddy of them all, Cannibal Holocaust, but there are a pretty sizable amount of these movies, most them pretty fucking bad, and all of them the kind of thing I talk about on this site. So I decided that, using Wikipedia as my guide, I'm gonna go through and systematically review and rate all of these fucking movies, on a not terribly objective scale, which I'll outline in a second. Now I'm certain there are more of them out there than are listed on Wikipedia, which only lists the cannibal boom canon, so to speak. If you guys out there know of others that fit the genre, lemme know. But officially, I'm starting with 1973's The Man From Deep River and finishing up with 1988's Natura Contro. Not counting any heads-up I get from you devoted readers (ha ha) that means I'll be reviewing SIXTEEN of these things. The stuff I put myself through for the four people who read this blog.

"Has Killer Forklift updated yet? I need more Avenged Sevenfold jokes!"

Now onto the format. We're gonna do a more-or-less in-depth recap of the "plot" of the movie, and then I'm going to rate the movie from one to ten on the following patented Cannibal Movie Ratings Scale!

Sex: Let's face it, these are cheap exploitation movies. In the Sex category, I'll be rating the film from Erection Rejection (0) to Pause-and-Toss (10). The more attractive the naked people and the more porno the sex scenes, the higher the rating.

Violence: Following closely on the heels of sex as the reason exploitation movies get made, the Violence rating will encompass both how brutal and shocking the violence is, and how well made and realistic looking it is. As most of these movies were made in the early 80's however, we're gonna have to be a little loose with "realistic" and judge it by the time.

Animal Death: One of the disturbing trademarks of cannibal films is that they often times legitimately kill animals on film for the shock factor. This category rates just how frequent and unpleasant these scenes are in a given movie.

Keep begging, Bonzo.

Cannibalism: Believe it or not, some cannibal films are actually a bit light on the whole "cannibalism" thing. This category will rate how much cannibalism is actually in the damn movie.

Sameyness: Cannibal Movies, and alot of exploitation movies in general, tend to be kinda....oh, let's be charitable and say "homages to other films". The Sameyness category rates just how similar to previous movies the individual cannibal flick is. Granted, this gives The Man From Deep River a huge advantage as its kinda the ur-example, unless we wanna count Mondo Cane. And I really don't feel like including Mondo Cane, because it's a completely different kind of movie.

Anyone, on Thursday I'll have the first review up, Umberto Lenzi's The Man From Deep River!
Pray for me.

Also, on a "Thusfar unrelated to cannibalism" note, I want you all to go and check out my buddy Bill's blog, Porno Paycheck. It's about the many harrowing and hysterical experiences of working at a shifty porn store. NSFW, but very very funny.

I Hate "The Last Airbender"

There was a point, about three quarters of the way through "The Last Airbender" that I thought to myself  "I made it all the way through "Salo". I can make it through this."

Believe me when I say that this movie was one of the most painful, badly written, badly acted, incoherent jumble of horseshit I've ever sat through. I was all geared up to talk about my favorite Italian Cannibal movies with this entry when my girlfriend suggests going to see this and the entire course of my life was changed. Everything. It's not just films. The taste of my food has been altered. My very body chemistry has been changed by watching this movie. 

Lemme start by muscling through what I will loosely term "the plot". Bear with me though, I'm not entirely sure I get it.Also, there might be spoilers only because I'm not sure which plot points are a) common knowledge in the Airbender mythos, b) badly telegraphed in the movie due to terrible screenwriting or c) being completely misunderstood by yours truly.

Ok so the movie opens with both an opening crawl and a voice-over narration, because if you're going to use one hackneyed, drama-murdering exposition technique, why don't you use two?

"Why didn't I think of that?"

The crawl and voice over inform us that the world is split into four nations based on the four elements of Hellnic physics; Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Which is sort of weird, because as we'll soon see, this world is very, very, very Asian (except for the white people, more on that later), so it probably would have made it ring a little truer if it was based on the Chinese elements of Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, and Wood, but I suppose "The Last Woodbender" doesn't really sound all that mythical. And hey, if I can give the Legend of the Five Rings a pass on that, I won't harp on Airbender too much for it (although maybe I should, because it came nowhere near providing me with as much joy as L5R does).

 Anyway, I guess the Fire Nation are kind of a bunch of dicks, because they want to take over the rest of the world and, as we learn a little bit later, want to overthrow the power of the Spirit World, which is sort of a parallel-dimension where kindly spirits watch over the mortal realm and give us guidance and protection and candy and stuff. Now I'm not really sure WHY the Fire Nation want to severe mankind from the otherworldly protection of benevolent immortals, but I'm sure they have a good reason. Maybe the Spirit World levies really exorbitant taxes on protection and guidance. Or maybe the Fire Nation are just a bunch of determined militant atheists.

Typical Fire Nation Resident.

Anyway, in continuing with the whole Hellenic physics thing, each of the four elemental groups (The Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads and the Earth Anarcho-Communist Collectives) occasionally birth wizards who can manipulate their elements. These wizards are called Benders. 

Benders can control, throw, move, and otherwise use their respective elements to beat the holy hemorrhaging fuck out of other people. Once in a while, somebody called the Avatar is born, who is the only person who can manipulate ALL the elements and talk to the Spirit World. And naturally, The Fire Nation want to stop the Avatar from talking to the Spirit World because....they're the villains, and shut up.

Now we start off with the two whitest Eskimos in the world finding a little boy and a bantha frozen in a huge ice ball. The girl whiteskimo is called Katarra and her brother is called FUCK YOU I HATE YOU SO MUCH DIE YOU OBNOXIOUS CUNTBAG. Or Sokka, for short. Sokka is a complete simpering moron who can't do anything, while Katarra is a fledgling waterbender. They free the boy and the bantha (who can fly), bring them back to their little Aryan-Inuit hunting village, and wouldn't you know it, before you can say "the Mighty Quinn", their beloved peasant village is beset by the legions of the Fire Nation.

"Sup?"

The Fire Nation are a bunch of Indians (dot, not feather) in samurai armor and pimp coats, under the command of the kid from Slumdog Millionare, Prince Zuko. It turns out Prince Zuko was thrown out of the Fire Nation by his dad for...

...ok really I'm trying. They do explain it, and there's even a flashback to show it, but I'm not sure I followed. Prince Zuko had some friends who were going to die in some battle and he did...something to stop them from dying and his dad-king got mad and said you're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. Zuko had 

to... fight in a magic duel (Zuko is a firebender, as is EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF THE FIRE NATION WHO GETS A NAME) to...prove he was innocent? As punishment? No, no, being kicked out was the punishment, so the duel had to be a trial. Anyway, Zuko refuses to fight in the duel and his dad burns his face and then tosses him out but still gives him a big steampunk death ship, a retinue or armed guards and allows his uncle to travel with them. The Fire King says ol' Zukes can come back when he catches the Avatar, who the Fire King somehow knows is still around, even though they massacred the monastery the Avatar was supposed to come from a hundred years ago.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, to absolutely no-ones surprise, the little kid from the ice ball is the Avatar. They know this because he is an Airbender, and all the airbenders were supposed to have been killed a hundred years ago at that Monastery. They capture the kid, whose name is Ang, and take him onto their deathship, from which he immediately escapes and flies away with the two Caucasian Eskimos to his monastery, which of course is a hundred years abandoned and full of skeletons. It turns out Ang did the classic "I don't want to be the savior of the earth" thing and ran away right before the Fire Nation came storming in a fucked up all the monk's shit. 

The reason he did this kind of baffles me, because as Ang relates the story, the monks told him the Avatar can't have a family and I guess Ang really, really wanted to have a family, because that's enough to make him go "Fuck my destiny, I'm flying away on my sky-bantha and crashing into the ice and being frozen in stasis for a hundred years! That'll show you for ruining a nine-year old's dreams of domestic tranquility!"

"I WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE IS!!!!!!! I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME!!!!!"

I found this really weird because he was raised by MONKS, one of which he said was basically like his father. And he was surrounded by other children, who would certainly have been like siblings. So he sort of already has a family, which means I can only assume they mean he can't get married. And why would he have wanted to get married, even before he found out he was the Avatar? He was raised by monks, clearly with the intention that he too would be a monk. Why would he even consider getting married? Wouldn't it have been ingrained in him from very, very early on that as a monk, he wouldn't get married, and that by denying himself that, he would be more enlightened since he wouldn't waste his energy on sex and banking and re-shingling the roof and quietly resenting the heifer in stretch pants that had once been the tight nineteen year old waitress he married?

So Ang confesses to Sokka and Katarra that because he was a big old baby and ran away from destiny, he never learned any of the other Bending techniques, and they  decided they have to bring him to the Northern Water Tribe to learn how to waterbend since that's the "next element in the cycle"(whatever). Despite the fact that they have a flying bantha, and despite the fact that they bring the audiences attention to this by saying "Hey, we have a flying bantha. We should ride on it to the Water Tribe!", they seem to walk the whole way, stopping by other villages and fighting the Fire Nations as they go. Aren't they trying to avoid being captured?

I have another question.

They couldn't have gone THAT far from the Sokka and Katarra's village, right? Why didn't they just go back and learn about waterbending there? I mean, I know Katarra is said 

to be the last of the Southern Waterbenders, but her mom was a waterbender, wasn't she? She probably has some books on it, is all I'm saying. Katarra isn't learning her own waterbending in a vacuum.

So in addition to being dogged by Zuko, they're also being chased by the Indian guy from the Daily Show, who is a general in the Fire Nation. He not only wants to 

capture the Avatar himself, he also wants to kill Prince Zuko because....

...

Anyway, there's a lot of painfully bad dialog, Ang gets captured by the guy from the Daily Show and rescued by Zuko in a ninja costume, and then Zuko gets knocked out and Ang runs back to his friends, they get to the Northern Water Tribe and Ang begins to learn waterbending. Daily Show Guy somehow figures out that the ninja who rescued Ang was Zuko and reports this back to the Fire King, because Daily Show Guy can be anywhere at anytime should the script dictate it. The Fire King says for Daily Show not to harm Zuko, but Daily Show blows up Zuko's deathship anyway, and then the Fire Nation sails to attack the Northern Water Kingdom, because in addition to being able to see through demonic ninja masks and being able to teleport, Daily Show can also figure out precisely where Ang and his friends are going, out of all the places in the ENTIRE WORLD.

Oh, Zuko also magically survives being blown up. There is no explanation for this.

So they get to the Northern Water Nation, who are less like Eskimos and more like Tolkien elves trapped in the It's a Small World ride for all eternity, and Ang begins to learn waterbending while Sokka yearns to put his little woodbender into the Water Princess.

This  "romance" "subplot" is perhaps the worst part of a movie full of parts that would already be the worst parts in a dozen different movies. Sokka and Princess Snowblood or whatever her name is are onscreen together four times in the whole movie, never for longer than a minute and a half at a time. They only actually speak to each other in the third scene, and by then, its clear that they're deeply, deeply in love. Or at least, it's clear that their dialog wants us to believe they are deeply, deeply in love. All I got out of it was a feeling that this movie was originally fourteen hours long and they cut out all the character development to get it under two hours. This is the worst romance in cinematic history. Anakin and Padme had a more believable courtship than this.

"Sand."

As the Fire Nation's ships approach, we learn that Daily Show has found the location of the Spirits of the Ocean and the Moon, the two powerhouses which influence waterbending. His plan is to kill these spirits and therefore leave the waterbenders' magic impotent and ineffective. So as this huge battle is going on, Daily Show and Zuko's uncle sneak into the cave where the spirits are to kill them. The spirits have taken the form of two fish, Yin and Yang, and are merrily swimming around this little pond in the cave. Daily Show grabs the Moon Fish and is about to stab it, when Unkie has a change of heart.

Again, I have some questions.

I understand that both the Moon and The Ocean god-fish would have affect on waterbenders, because of the moons effects on the tides, yatta yatta. But wouldn't it seem...I don't know...a hell of a lot more sensible to KILL THE OCEAN GOD-FISH? To cripple the power of the moon is one thing, but if you destroy the physical incarnation of the OCEAN, don't you think it will have an even more devastating effect on people who manipulate water?  But no, whatever Aasif, kill the Moon god-fish thing, whatever.

Wait, I'm not done questioning this scene.

Like I said, Unkie has reservations about killing the fish-god. Destroying one half of Yin and Yang, he says, will have a devastating effect on the natural order of things. The World will be thrown into chaos, the elemental balance will be undone, blood will rain from the sky, cats and dogs will live together, etc. etc.

And what does Daily Show say?

He says "This is no time for childish superstitions." as if his killing of the fish will have absolutely zero effect on anything, and Unkie is completely retarded for worrying about magic and elemental balance. And then he kills the fish.

Hold on a cotton-pickin' second there, Aasif. What childish superstitions are you talking about? You mean the childish superstitions that these are God-fish with magical powers that affect the strength of primal Water? One of the very real elements that infuse and surround the world you live in? Another of these elements being Fire, which you yourself, as a FIRE WIZARD, are able to manipulate? That childish superstition? The one that forms the very backbone of YOUR ENTIRE PLAN OF ATTACK? The one you were planning on being true, because the whole point of killing the fucking fish in the first place was to fundamentally damage the elemental cycle and throw everything out of balance? You know, THAT CHILDISH SUPERSTITION?

AGAGAGAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

God, at this point, who gives a shit anymore. The bad guys lose, the good guys win, the elemental balance is restored, Daily Show graphically drowns in a water-death-sphere, and Zuko might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says "I WILL BECOME A GOOD GUY." There's a hook for an inevitable sequel, which hopefully, after how bad this one wound up, will now become a whole lot more evitable.

There isn't an ounce of charm in this movie. The acting is terrible, wooden, Star Wars prequel level. The plot is a tangled mess of dangling threads and gaping holes. Everything feels rushed, condensed, and underdeveloped. The special effects were actually pretty decent though, although as I understand it if you went to see the 3D version it looked like total crap. 

I hate this movie. 

I could have been talking about Italian cannibal movies, but noooooo.

There is nothing in the world worse than "The Last Airbender." Nothing. I can't even make an Avenged Sevenfold joke here. To call this movie the worst movie ever is an insult to Battlefield Earth.