Cannibal Ferox (1980)

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) There is such a clear kinship between Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust that the two movies share a subgenre (cannibal horror, obviously), a plot premise (first-world young people go exploring the lost tribes of the Amazon), a clear intention (disgust viewers with gory effects) and an overall appreciation (Yuck.) No one will be surprised to find out that the true narrative is one of characters slowly being killed in gory ways. There really isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two—in both movies, there’s a little bit of first-world irony (here, one of the characters heads out to the wilds to prove her theory that cannibalism is a myth—while that’s probably the case in reality, she clearly doesn’t know the movie genre in which she’s stuck), some nature footage that quickly turns to horror once real-life animal abuse sets in and a nearly-everybody-dies-horribly ending with exposed internal organs. Even when the film is “effective,” it’s only in disgusting viewers. Cannibal Ferox’s violence against animals is particularly hard to watch, not so much when animals are at each other’s throats (oh, a cute tiger, oh a cute monkey, UH-OH THE TIGER IS EATING THE MONKEY!!) than when the filmmakers are clearly abusing or killing animals. In comparisons, the human gore effects are nausea-inducing but clearly within the realm of practical special effects. There was, unaccountably, a true wave of Italian cannibal horror movies around 1980, and I’m only watching tripe as Cannibal Ferox to round up my movie education. I would welcome any opportunity to never watch or even think about it again.