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!
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!