7. Cannibals
As a vehicle for schlock and possessing a genuine 'yuck' factor, the Italian cannibal movies of the 1970s and 1980s deserve to be recognised as a demented sub genre all of their own. Several motifs pop up time and time again in the cannibal sub genre - greedy and unscrupulous Westerners enter the jungle for various reasons - to film natives, escape from crime etc.. They abuse the natives who eventually get ticked off and turn on them resulting in carnage. Some survivors will get away successfully, or they may all be killed. Real life killing of animals on screen is another feature of cannibal films. I think for a large part, cannibal movies derive their heritage from Mondo movies which also feature animal snuff and a 'Let's gawk at the savage natives' mentality. During the 1980s Video Nasty scare, a brave majority of cannibal films got banned - just the very word 'cannibal' in the title of a film got our moral guardians all hot and bothered. The three big cannibal films - Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Apocalypse, and Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly) - are the best known, most sought after and most loved of the cannibal sub genre. Each of them have their 'charms', and if you want to start a cannibal film collection - this is most likely where you would start. Cannibal Holocaust follows an Anthropology professor in his quest to find out what happened to a Mondo style documentary crew who went missing in Amazonia. He finds reels of film footage after he has gained the trust of the natives. When he gets back to NY, he watches the footage with growing dismay at the antics of the film crew and the brutality inflicted on the natives. There are plenty of grievous acts caught on film - rape, enforced abortion, the killing of a giant turtle, the torching of the natives' huts. Eventually the natives get sick of being pushed around and they deal out harsh justice to the film crew - the camera catches the dreadful climax of the film to the bitter end. Cannibal Apocalypse follows the adventures of Norman and his friends Tommy and Charlie Bukowski. All three men are Vietnam veterans and in Vietnam they were infected with some sort of disease that turned them into flesh hungry cannibals. Back in the USA, Norman has managed successfully to quell his desire for flesh, or has he? When his cannibal friends go on the rampage, Norman feels more disposed to eating human flesh and he must decide what his priorities are. Cannibal Ferox features the misadventures of Mike - a criminal who has fled to Amazonia and manages to seriously piss the natives off with his uncouth behaviour. Gloria is in the jungle with her pals Rudy and Pat to prove a dissertation thesis that cannibals do not exist. Of course she finds out that the Amazon is packed to the rafters with our cannibal chums, and after Mike's shenanigans they do not have a friendly disposition. Cue a hand being chopped off, castration, animal snuff and one of our protagonists strung up by hooks in her breasts. All cheerful, wholesome stuff. From the above examples it is safe to say that cannibal films feature lots of gut munching and animal innards. Third World actors chowing down on pig entrails is a common sight in cannibal movies. They usually do a pretty good job of convincing us that they are eating their favourite comfort food. If you want to go further into the Cannibal sub genre, I would recommend Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (a Black Emanuelle film featuring Laura Gemser) or Deep River Savages (in which Ivan Rassimov has a terrible time of it at the hands of marauding cannibals and then shags Me Me Lai).