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Reviews
Mangiati vivi! (1980)
For the Die-hard Cannibal Fans Only...
Eaten Alive follows a young woman (Janet Agren) who searches for her lost sister. Turns out her sister have joined a sect that has disappeared into the jungles of Borneo. With Vietnam veteran Mark at her side she sets off to find her sister.
As per usual, the acting isn't of the highest quality but you do get cannibal flick poster girl Me Me Lai spending most of the time on screen with her breast bare, female lead Janet Agren covered in gold paint and abused with a dildo dipped in snake blood among other things. Now that's gotta count for something!
But, I must say that I find it bit hard to recommend this title. If you are fan of the genre, you will most likely recognize every gore scene in the movie bar a select few. And I mean that literally. A lot of the gore scenes are lifted straight out other Cannibal movies, like MAN FROM DEEP RIVER and LAST CANNIBAL WORLD. There's probably more movies stuck in there.
Ultimately, this is one for die-hard fans to check off their list. If you haven't seen any Italian jungle movies, you'd be better off watching CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and if you're an avid fan, you have seen most of the gore scenes in other movies.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
Lee Ermey is scarier than Leatherface...
...and that's this remake's redeeming quality.
I could've easily seen this remake a movie standing on its on own two legs with Ermey as the star villain and writing Leatherface completely out of the script and calling it something else, but that perhaps would've been too risky for Hollywood. Better to cash in on a well-known franchise, sadly.
Ermey does his typical character, his pivotal role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from "Full Metal Jacket", but jacked up on acid. He may be forgiven for it because he does it so well and steals every scene he's featured in.
On the other hand, the remakes Leatherface is little more than a movie monster. Whereas the original made us see that there is a real human behind the dead skin mask.
The original Leatherface was a character of great strength and size but limited intellect. The scary, and sad, thing about him is that you could easily see him growing up - well, relatively normal - under other circumstances.
The remake's Leatherface is supernatural. Possessing superhuman strength he stops at nothing, not even getting his armed hacked off. He just pause to shake the severed limb free off the chainsaw so he can resume the hunt for human prey. Personally, I felt the Leatherface part of the movie is the weakest.
All in all, the remake does feel prettied up. The female lead is hotter, the kids are cooler, and Leatherface is more monstrous. Lost somewhere is the genuinely creepy atmosphere from from the original.
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)
Required viewing for fans of C-grade "Killer Creature" flicks...
Really, this title is best viewed when hungover, together with a couple of your equally hungover best buddies.
Here's what you get; stock footage of various sharks, Styrofoam shark fins, terrible CGI, one of cinema's finest pick-up lines ever and some of the most hilarious "death-by-giant-shark"-scenes shown on the screen.
Some of the death scenes late in the movie literally had me squirting Coke out of my nose from laughter.
So, if you're a fan of those really cheesy "Killer Animal/Creature"-flicks, pick this one up. You will not be disappointed.
August Underground's Mordum (2003)
A home video from hell...
...is what the folks behind the August Underground movies want to show you.
The closest thing in mainstream movies to this is perhaps Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.
Just remove the plot, any kind of explanation to the main characters behaviour, turn up the gore, sadism and general misanthropy by a few thousand percents and catch it all on a 500$ video camera and you have an August Underground movie.
This is basically 1 hour and twenty minutes of screaming, swearing and shaking camera with very graphic sexual torture, extreme violence and all out sadism thrown in between. Watch this one with the volume turned up will surely make your neighbours wonder what the hell is going on.
This is purely shock and no scare, and if you're not easily shocked or disturbed you might find yourself a bit bored.
The antics of the movie's three drunken and psychotic main characters adds to the home video feel but it really starts to drag after a while. This is the main problem with these kind of movies really, it's all visuals and no psychology. After you've seen a few minutes you have really seen it all. People get humiliated, degraded, tortured and finally murdered and our three anti-heroes giggles, screams and swear at their victims. That's basically it.
If you are easily shocked, yes, then this will probably shock you. Some of the gore scenes do look fairly realistic, I have to give the producers that. If you are not, you will be neither shocked or scared and since these movies has nothing going for them except the shock value you'll find it hard to sit through the entire thing because it will end up boring you senseless.
Wolf Creek (2005)
Good Horror flick free of Hollywood clichés...
What is so great about this movie is that it is no Hollywood Slasher.
On the other hand, if you're just looking for a quick gore fix this is not your movie.
The pace is deliberately slow and starts and plays out like a road movie for the better part of its length.
Whereas Hollywood slashers paint their characters with broad, heavy brush strokes (the joker, the annoying kid which you actually get happy when he is offed, the hot and easy but dense cheerleader-type girl, the junkie, the jock, the very hot heroine which the camera kindly often focuses on her heaving breasts barely concealed under a thin top) these three youngsters comes off as likable and real.
Equally, the killer comes off as very real, too. He doesn't come up with ingenious traps and plots that would make Macgyver green with envy. He doesn't come up with any master plans on how to kill his victims in increasingly insidious ways.
He comes off as half likable, half disturbing. I had moments where I thought that the killer wasn't yet introduced, thinking that it can't be this guy, he is far too likable.
There are some genre pitfalls in the later part of the movie (killer comes back from the dead, the female character HAS to go back to the killer's lair etc, etc) but still, this not your standard horror fare.
All in all, this is not the movie you want to rent on a hangover Sunday to go with the pizza. This is a movie for people who like movies like Cannibal Holocaust, The 1974 Texas chainsaw massacre, Last House on the left to mention a few.
When it finally plays out, it is intense and will leave you with a lingering feeling of uneasiness.
8/10
La montagna del dio cannibale (1978)
Rises above the usual cannibal flicks...
Well, as far as the standard cannibal flick ingredients goes, this one has them all:
Animal Attacks: Check
Animals being disemboweled while still twitching: Check
Randomly inserted animals killing each other: Check
Castration scene: Check
At least one fairly close-up shot of a woman's hairy crotch: Check
Sexual violence towards women: Check
Cannibalistic natives covered in dried mud: Check
Cheesy and out-of-place soundtrack: Check
So, pretty standard as cannibal movies goes, as said.
*minor spoilers* This one though, rises above genre standards due to a bit better acting and a somewhat tighter story, with a bit of a twist at the ending. It's no Cannibal Holocaust but still...
Like a few other commented, it actually plays out more like an adventure story with the cannibal movie genre's ingredients sprinkled in between. It falls short story wise in some places. Stacey Keach's character, (who is the male lead for the better part of the movie) who has the most interesting reason for returning to the mountain of the cannibal god, is killed off and hastily replaced. It is a major error and it would've made for a better movie if his character had been kept alive.
One thing I've never understood though is the random scenes of animals killing each other. Those scenes that seems to be in every other cannibal movie. In this case, an anaconda eating an unfortunate monkey. It's not incorporated into the story but just seems to be there for its gruesomeness. Is it an attempt at some sort of crude symbolism or just giving the audience a bit of blood while not having to spend anything of the limited (I guess) graphic effects budget? I don't know...
What I do know, is that if you are into Cannibal movies, this is a decent watch, both for having all the right ingredients, Ursula Andress' naked body (despite being over 40 years old when this movie was made, she is nothing short of stunning) and amazingly, a somewhat decent story and acting.
Within its own genre this is a clear 7 from me.