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.