Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, it’s time for another tribute episode. We received the news recently that the famed Italian filmmaker, Umberto Lenzi, has passed away. Now, when I say famed, I mean within within kind of the place where our bread is buttered. Umberto Lenzi is kind of a legend. He had made, hundreds of movies, literally hundreds of movies because he was part of the Italian studio system back in the glory days of the Italian studio system where they just churned the stuff out like crazy. And I would say that Umberto Lenzi, who passed away at the age of 86 in Rome with no official cause of death, he occupied that territory where somebody would make a movie, it’d become a big hit, and then he would get called upon to make the knockoff. Okay. To kind of make the movies, in that vein or that style of that film that was a big hit, and then, and, you know, just kinda churn them out quickly and cheaply Todd try to ride the coattails of that more popular movie. Now that’s not to say that that’s every movie he ever made, but that was, generally speaking, his wheelhouse. I’d call him, like, a second tier Italian director, whereas you go up to, like, Dario Argento, and, even Fulci, in a way, kind of straddles a line between the 2, but I’d put him up a little higher. Those guys are a notch above, really. They were more the innovators. Umberto Lenzi, he’s a bit more of the hack job. Am I being too harsh? This is a great tribute, isn’t it?

Craig:  I know, like, you know, we do these, tribute episodes and usually it’s, you know, because these are people that we admire. I look, I don’t know anything about Umberto Lenzi. I know nothing about him. I’m sure he was a lovely man. This movie is garbage. Garbage. Like hot stinking garbage. Like, I feel really bad fans of Umberto Lenzi. Like, I mean no disrespect, but I am not gonna be able to hide my disdain for this movie. And you accused me last week of being an apologist and always being like, oh, well, it’s not that bad. No.

Todd:  You’re coming out with both guns blazing this time to prove me wrong, aren’t you? Well, I would agree with you completely, Craig. And the name of this film that we’re talking about, by the way, is Cannibal Farox, and it was done in 1981. Now something that Lenzi arguably, and I think pretty convincingly, can argue that he did actually start the cannibal genre of films.

Craig:  Whether No. Wait. That’s a great achievement. The cannibal holocaust came out in 1980. Right? So was was this his response to that movie, or were they, you know, independent of one another and and he didn’t know? I I I don’t know.

Todd:  Yeah. So what happened was, Umberto Lenzi did, a film called The Man From Deep River. And now, The Man from Deep River, you could say, is the first big cannibal movie. That was in 1972 that that film came out. This movie kind of set the stage. It’s about a guy who goes on an expedition. He gets captured by some natives, and he basically goes native after being tortured, and then joins in with them. So that was really the first of the Italian cannibal films. He was approached, and he tells the story all the time because he highly disputes that, Ruggero Diodaro, who is generally given the credit for cannibal holocaust, is kicking off that genre. He hates this guy who was getting all this credit for it. He said, I did The Man From Deep River. The distributors came back to me and said they wanted me to film a follow-up to it. He had absolutely no interest in doing a sequel. And so because he turned it down, they went to Diodaro and asked him to film the movie, and that is what became a cannibal holocaust.

Craig:  K. Makes

Todd:  sense. So so yeah. So I think it’s pretty well recorded. This is the argument he makes, and it seems pretty solid that that’s what happened. Eat a Life came out in 1980, so it was at least around the same time. So, yeah, dude. Cannibalism movies, this gosh. We probably need to do cannibal holocaust and then just stop doing this these for a while. It’s it’s I don’t think they tread new ground. They don’t tend to be very varied in their topics and their themes.

Craig:  Yeah. That’s the thing. Like, okay. So I I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust because it’s one of those movies that if you’re a big time horror fan, it’s like you have to see it. Like, okay. You have to watch this. And I’ve seen it and I don’t know, like, it’s alright, I guess. It’s totally exploitive and and and that’s kind of the point of these movies. You know, they’re they’re labeled as exploitation films and they’re kind of inherently racist. They have all kinds of problems. Yeah. I mean they they treat native civilizations as, you know, they’re they’re totally objectified. And the natives in that movie and in this movie, you know, they’re one note. They’re they’re just basically presented as savages. You know, like, I I wanna look at these movies and compare them to something of quality, and the closest thing that I can think of is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness which is the same kind of story and and really kind of treats native civilizations in the same way. But it and that that book is criticized for its portrayal of native populations as well it should be. But these movies, I can’t find anything really redeeming to say about them. I guess if anything, what they show is what assholes white people are, like. Generally speaking. Right. Generally, you know, it’s all it’s it’s always about or it seems to me based on the very limited view because I don’t I don’t seek these movies out. I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust. I’ve seen this one now. Thank God. Yeah. But, you know, it’s it’s these ignorant, terrible white people, totally misguided. You know, they have these, of course, from their white perspective, they have these ideas about what these native populations are about and they’re they’re just so culturally ignorant going into these native populations and then getting killed. I kinda like I am so I’m I’m struggling with anything to say because I just don’t know. Like in this movie, it’s the same kind of thing where you’ve got, okay so the main folks are this trio of Rudy, Gloria, and Pat. And Rudy and Gloria are brother and sister and Gloria is finishing up her doctoral dissertation and her dissertation is all about how cannibalism has never really existed. It’s just a construct created by the white man to try to make native populations look bad.

Todd:  It’s kind of a noble it’s almost anti what you just explained the films end up being. Right?

Craig:  Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be, but it comes across as just being so superior and, you know, like, I don’t know. Like like, she’s supposed to have these good intentions and yet the movie itself looks down its nose at these native populations and it’s just it’s it’s just troubling and unsettling from that perspective. Like, it’s just so off putting like,

Todd:  yeah,

Craig:  no gross.

Todd:  You’re right. It it’s it’s problematic at so many levels. It’s problematic in the plot and the themes, and then it becomes problematic in the actual production of the films. Yeah. And maybe it’s kind of unique in horror from that way. I I think it’s worth discussing. It’s worth talking about for that because there’s not a lot of we’re not gonna talk at length about how wonderful this movie is and how wonderful the cinematography is and how great the acting is and how skillful the writing is because it’s absolutely none of those things. But these movies make cannibal this movie makes cannibal holocaust look like Citizen Kane. And, actually, I really like cannibal holocaust. I can’t wait for us to do that episode because I completely came around on that and I think even by comparison, this movie existing elevates cannibal holocaust a couple more notches. I’m not saying that cannibal holocaust doesn’t have some of the same problems, but I think that that movie comes from a better moral center than this movie. You know, all of these cannibal films, if you wanna go back even further, they all kind of have their roots from the Mondo films back in the early late in the sixties. Mondo Kane came out, which purports to be, and it some ways is a documentary. It’s an exploitive documentary. Basically, guys went out and found footage that you would find shocking about native tribes or other cultures around the the world and their practices, their sexual practices, their eating practices, their funerary rights and things where sometimes, you know, they burn the bodies and then eat the the sludge, you know, that kind of comes off of them if after they’ve been out rotting for a while. You know, just these true things that do exist, but they’re presented in this documentary not as an academic process, but as a, hey, everybody. Let’s look at how backwards and messed up and screwed up everybody else is. Let’s look at how primitive these people are so we can be shocked by them, feel good about ourselves. It’s it’s complete exploitation. And then the Mondo Cane was so successful. Even even the song, the theme song was got an Academy Award for best song that year. Mondo Cane was so successful that it spawned a ton of copycats where people would go out and do all this filming or they would find footage that already existed and stick it together. So it became a real exploitative genre of film. No doubt about it. These cannibal movies are almost essentially fictionalized, you know, versions of that. They don’t even pretend to be documentaries. Right? But they tend to be shot in this documentary style as though they’re giving us a kind of window into these native cultures. And what they do then in order to save money, essentially, is they go out and into the jungle and find one of these native tribes and pay them to act in it. So they they can pay these people peanuts because they’re absolutely poor and living in squalor, and they’ll do anything for this movie. They don’t even understand really what they’re doing. Right. And so there’s that aspect to be uncomfortable about as well. Right? That maybe what you’re seeing in this fictional movie, some of these actors themselves are being exploited. You you’re always questioning, like, do these people realize how they look on screen? You know, these people who probably will never see this movie finished, who don’t maybe have never seen a movie in their life, do they realize what they signed up for, and would they be happy with that if they knew?

Craig:  Well, and that’s that’s the thing, like okay. I don’t love Cannibal Holocaust. I’ve only seen it once, and I’m sure you’ll make me watch it again, whatever. That’s fine. But, it it like but but you’re right. Seriously, compared to this one, it seems much better. Now, I do know that with that movie they did pay this actual tribe to participate in the movie. And I, you know, as shocking as the world found Cannibal Holocaust to be, again, this native tribe had never seen anything on film ever and the filmmakers did, they showed them the movie or or at least footage from the movie and the native people thought it was hilarious. Like all these things that we found so shocking they thought it was hilarious. But I don’t know, you know, I looked around to try to find stuff about this movie and there just wasn’t really all that much information out there. Was that the case here? Like, were are the natives that we’re seeing on screen in this movie, are these actual native people or they are okay.

Todd:  Yeah. Now just like, what and what they do a lot of times in these movies is they’ll all almost all of them will be native people. But if there’s something a little too extreme even for a native person to agree to do, like a rape scene or something like that, they’ll sometimes sub in An actor. Yeah. Who knows what they’re doing in there or if it’s a part that really requires no. In this case, I actually had that very same question, and I did a bit of digging. There’s an excellent interview with, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who is the guy who played Mike in this film. It’s it’s a text interview. I actually went and I saw a video interview with him. He as bad as he is in this movie, he seems like outside of this movie, he’s actually probably a pretty good actor. He comes across really well in his interviews, and he talks about this movie. And one of the things that he says is that, yeah, they came in, they paid these natives, and he was also very mixed about in his feelings about actually, he he hates this movie. He doesn’t even like, he’ll talk about it, but he doesn’t ever think about it. And he thinks that his performance in this film is the worst performance he’s ever given in any film before or since. But, yeah, he said that, you know, the thing is that these tribes, they will do anything, he said, because they are completely poor, and you’re coming in and you’re bringing them some money. Of course, they’ll agree to do it. And he said for what it’s worth on the set and everything, nobody seemed to have any problem. None of the tribe, you know, members seemed to have any problems with what was going on.

Craig:  Well, that doesn’t really I suppose in this movie, it doesn’t really surprise me that much because the native people are really used as props more than anything. I mean, they they just stand around. Yeah. And and again, like, that’s another thing that just bothers me. Like, they’re not even treated as like they’re human characters. Yeah. I mean they’re they’re just like props and and then eventually they kind of become a threat. But as is the case with, if I remember because it’s been a long time, but as is the case with Cannibal Holocaust Todd. Like they’re just kind of these props to stand around and then eventually they kind of become a threat to the white people. But deservedly so. I mean, that’s even the people, you know, like, in in theory, Gloria, who is doing this doctoral dissertation, in theory, she has, you know, some compassion and and some feelings of humanity towards these native people, but it just doesn’t even read that way because it it’s just so exploitive. I guess, okay, so it opens up in New York City, and if I have anything at all positive to say about this movie and it’s very tongue in cheek saying this it’s the music. Like, it it opens up with this amazing disco music overlooking this city bay. And, they bring the funk. They do bring the funk. Yeah. It oh, totally. And my other and this is totally going out of sequence, but this funky, peppy music will just pop up at the most random times. Like, somebody will die and they’ll be like, oh my Todd. That’s so sad. And then

Todd:  It’s it’s it’s true. It’s so discordant that you wonder, like, is it supposed to be that way or is it just really enough filmmaking?

Craig:  Well, I read that the director, I used the exact same music that he had used for one of his other movies. So I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t have

Clip:  a budget for a sound designer. I don’t know.

Craig:  I don’t know. Maybe they spent all of their sound design money on the terrible, terrible English dubby. Oh, God. Okay. So this film was made in Italy. Well, it says at the end that it was shot on location in the Amazon and in New York City, which fine, maybe it was. I don’t know. If they were speaking English when they originally filmed it, then it must have been so bad that they still felt the need to dub it. Because it’s entirely dubbed. And what was funny to me is sometimes you could tell that they had to get more English dialogue than actually matched up to what the actors were saying. So sometimes, they’ll

Clip:  be like, like, they’ll be talking super fast

Craig:  to try to get it to match up.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Let me yeah. Okay. Check. There’s one thing I hate about the movie. Okay. But there’s okay. So it’s this city bay and there’s this smarmy guy walking around and he turns out to be this junky and he goes to this apartment and he’s looking for Mike. Mike is his dealer or whatever, but there’s some, like, drug lords there who are also looking for Mike because Mike owes them money or something, and so the drug lords kill the guy. And, and, like, all of this that I’m talking about is like this kind of wrap around story that makes no difference. Like, they could have cut it out entirely, and I wish they would have because it’s stupid.

Clip:  Come on, shit face. Where is he? I tell you, I don’t know. I don’t know. This is how you know when Mike’s got coming to him for ripping his off, pig face. I I had nothing to do with it. Let me go, please. Okay? Just let me go. Sure. So you can tip him off. Sure, face.

Craig:  So, anyway, then eventually we get to the Amazon River.

Clip:  Like, oh, like, what? Oh, Todd.

Craig:  And we meet okay. And then we that’s when we meet Rudy and Gloria, brother and sister. Gloria is the doctoral student. And Pat, who is just, like, some hooker that they’re friends with.

Todd:  Literally a

Clip:  hooker as we find out later.

Todd:  Which God.

Clip:  Oh my word. To be fair,

Craig:  she’s pretty. Todd for her. And they’re looking for a village called Manyoka, which the officials tell her is, if it even exists, it’s impossible to find because after you cross the Amazon River, it’s like 80 miles on foot or something. But they’re like, no. We’re gonna find it because Gloria’s gonna prove that cannibalism doesn’t exist and

Todd:  Which is terrible logic, by the way. She quotes she quotes, I think it was a newspaper story that this particular tribe in Manyoka had practiced cannibalism. And so she thinks that it’s the clincher for her thesis that she goes to this one tribe where it was claimed that cannibalism existed and proves that they didn’t do it, that basically solidifies her case.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  I don’t know which university that would hold up in, but, that’s a that’s a pretty bad leap of logic. Somebody needs to tell her there could be other cannibal tribes out there besides these people.

Craig:  Well, Todd. That oh, there are so many terrible things about this movie. Like, her her theory her theory actually kind of makes sense. Like, it would make sense that the imperialists of England who were trying Todd, you know yeah. You know, they were totally raping Africa and and all of these other places of all of their resources and whatnot, you know, trying to make the natives look bad. That totally makes sense. But then the, the movie is just so deaf culturally. Like it’s so stupid. Like, so when, when they eventually get there and I’m sorry for going totally out of sequence, but these things just like keep coming to me. Like when they finally get there, as it turns out, what the conclusion that they come Todd, or that Gloria comes to, is that, oh, cannibalism does exist, but only because the white man has driven them to it. And like, Oh Todd. It’s so dumb.

Clip:  Like It’s it’s this I guess

Todd:  we’ll get there. Yeah. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. We’ll talk about it for sure. So, anyway, they meet up with the the authorities and whatnot, and the authorities tell them blah blah blah. Good luck. And these three people venture out on this in this Jeep. The Jeep gets stuck and

Craig:  Thank Todd. It’s so stupid, Todd. They they they get they get dropped off on this beach with this Jeep. And I swear to Todd, they do not drive 50 yards before they get stuck in the mud. Like literally not even 50 yards before they’re totally stuck. And another thing, while they’re on the ferry or whatever it is to get across the river, these other, not native people, but people native to, yeah, locals, give them this animal. I don’t even know what kind it looked like a, like, a mongoose or something to me.

Clip:  I don’t know what

Craig:  it was. They give them this animal and say, here this can be like bait or whatever. I don’t know. Like the snakes will go for it instead of going for you. And so they get stuck in the mud 50 feet from where they started. And so then they have to start walking and and eventually they camp out and, they tie up this poor ant to like a post or whatever. And then we get this totally gratuitous, scene of like, an anaconda attacking and killing this animal. And this is par for the course for these movies with these like graphic real life animal deaths. And I just can’t stomach it. I just can’t. Like, I get it. I get that that’s the way of the world. I get that that’s nature, that animals, you know, eat one another. But just the thought that they took this animal that these actors have been carrying around and petting like, you know, this sweet animal. Yeah. It’s totally cute. And then they tie it up. And again, I get it. Giant snakes eat little mammals. I get it. And if I’m watching it on the Nature Channel, that’s one thing. I still don’t like it. But the, I, I’m, they, you know, they set this up, you know, like They

Todd:  set this animal up to die for the film.

Craig:  Yes. And and we have to watch it in all its gory detail and this animal is screaming. And this is only the first of several horrible, horrible animal, you know, like mutilations and deaths. And I mean, that that enough is enough to just turn my stomach, and I wouldn’t watch this movie again if you paid me Oh,

Todd:  no. $4. Just what you had to pay to get it from Google Play. My goodness. You know, it it’s indefensible. I mean, bottom line, it’s indefensible. Of course, it was a different time. Of course, we didn’t have the the strict rules at the time of of how you treat animals on movie sets, and all kinds of terrible things were done to animals, not not even this explicitly, but, you know, off this off the set. Todd doesn’t excuse it. It’s the excuse that the filmmakers will often use, like, say, look, it was a different time, but even Humberto Lindsay has come back and said, look, obviously, I’m not proud that we did that, and I would never do it again for what it’s worth anyway. At least they acknowledge that this is, that was a bad idea.

Craig:  And Well, and it’s it’s just for shock value. I’m gonna go ahead and bring it up now because it really makes no difference to the plot at all. But but one of the other scenes is the native people, and again, I understand they have to eat whatever, I get it. But they pull this giant, I guess it’s not a sea turtle because they’re not on the sea, but like a river turtle, this great big turtle, and they chop it up while it’s alive. And to be fair, they chop its head off first. I guess that’s merciful. But it’s still alive and they just continue to chop it up and like they’re chopping up its limbs and you can see this animal trying to pull its limbs, even once they’re chopped off, trying to pull its limbs into its shell. And it’s it it just made me sick. Like Yeah. It’s gross. I don’t wanna see that.

Todd:  Oh, it is a stomach turning, and it’s meant to be shocking. And it also, for what it’s worth in the artistic aspect of the film, it helps to blur that line. Right? It helps to make the film seem a little more documentary. It’s it helps to be like, okay. If what you’re seeing here is real, then maybe your brain will also associate the other stuff as being real as well. So when you throw in the real stuff along with, the fake stuff, they’re trying to not only shock you, but also and I think that’s why you only really see this level of animal cruelty and this kind of animal cruelty in these films. And it seems like every one of these Italian made animal films, of which there are, like, a dozen. It’s not like it’s a monster genre or anything. But it seems like you said, it’s par for the course. Like, they’re required to have this, and it is sickening, and it’s hard to watch. And, again, with this turtle thing, Lindsey also said, look. These guys, they eat the turtles. They this is actual delicacy for them, so we were just filming what they do anyway. Okay. Mhmm. Whatever. We still don’t wanna see it. Right.

Craig:  You know. Right. I get it, you know. I I eat meat. I understand that the animal has to die, like, I get it, but oh man, is it painful to watch. Oh Todd.

Todd:  For sure. The

Craig:  the okay. So I guess it’s it’s so difficult. You know, I I I have a page and a half of notes And why? Why? Because there’s there’s no reason. I mean, okay. So these these three people, they get stranded and they’re like

Clip:  So what do you wanna do? Go on or go back? There’s nothing marked on this map. Nothing but swamp. It’s simple. Let’s toss a coin. For me, it’s no problem. Either way, I don’t give a shit. Okay, bitch. Heads, we go on, and tails, we give in. Dionne? Flip it. Okay.

Craig:  First, I feel like they run into there are things that I don’t even understand. Like, Rudy is hacking through the brush with his machete, and they come across this native guy with blood and pus all over his face just like sitting. It looks like he’s sitting on a toilet. I don’t even know. And he’s like eating something. Like, I don’t even know what that was about. I don’t know what was

Todd:  Oh, it was just meant to be shocking. But but but what didn’t make sense was that here they are. They’re looking they’re they’re stranded. They’re looking for civilization. There’s this very real possibility that they’re going to get lost, and so they’re looking for this tribe, and they’re finding no people. And the first person they run across, they look at them and they go, ew. Let’s keep going. And just keep moving along like again, it’s like you say, they Todd from the very beginning, they’re treating these people like props.

Craig:  Yeah. You know? So, like, as as soon as they walk past that guy, like, all of these young, virile boys stand up out of the brush like they’re watching or whatever. And then immediately they come across these 2 white guys, and these 2 white guys are Mike and Joe, and Mike tells this whole story about how they came here thinking they could like find a bunch of cocaine because Mike does coke. That’s established like, hey, I do coke. Like, okay, thanks guy. I’m glad you told me that. His story is they ran across some Peruvian who was, like, in the emerald trade or whatever, and they thought that they could hook up with him and, do, like, an emerald coke co business.

Todd:  And you’ve got to diversify. That’s the number one rule of business is to diversify.

Craig:  But he says, but the the cannibals caught us and and they killed the Peruvian and castrated him and killed him and and whatever. Now as it turns out, this story is not true. The truth of the matter is they were there. I don’t know why they were there, probably for coke reasons or whatever, but they came across this this this native guy from the tribe who said, Yeah, we have emeralds, in the river by our tribe. And so they took him back to his tribe and when they couldn’t find emeralds, then Mike just went on a crazy mad Coke binge and killed a bunch of people.

Todd:  But it was it’s better than that because Mike enlisted the people to help start sifting

Clip:  Right.

Todd:  For emeralds, which it was explained they were more than happy to do.

Clip:  A Portuguese and his buddies sure weren’t expecting it. They thought white men were all fair and honest.

Craig:  I don’t do coke. I don’t encourage anybody to do coke. I don’t know.

Clip:  Like, I don’t know if it

Craig:  drives you Craig. It makes you wanna kill people. I don’t know. Stay away from drugs, kids. I don’t know. But, but the reason this, all of this, that’s, that’s like a half an hour of the movie that I just explained. But the reason that I raced through it was because when the 3, the original 3, Rudy, Gloria, and Pat are going through and they find that pussy, gross guy and all those, you know, young guys stand up and are like watching them. Then, you know, when they find the the 2 guys, Mike and Joe, they’re like, yeah, we fled the village and thank goodness. All of the young men weren’t around. They were off on a fishing trip. They were off on a fishing trip, like 50 yards away. Like, I Clearly. It’s the stupidest. It’s so stupid. Like, Mike ran this whole, like, murderous spree, and he was able to do it because the young guys were away on a fishing trip. They were, like, around the freaking corner. That’s true. So dumb. Yeah. Oh, gosh. I don’t I don’t know. I don’t even know where to pick up from there.

Todd:  So they go, and, basically, they’re, like, help us get to the river. So they get to this river, and they tell the story. And then, Gloria, they they they camp again. And when they wake up, after the camp, which, by the way, every time they camp, it’s clearly the same set. Uh-huh. Gloria is missing, so they immediately go out to find her. On the side, a cheetah kills a monkey. We get to see that. Mhmm. Then, again, they supposedly went how many miles

Craig:  I don’t know.

Todd:  To get away from the village. But in their 5 minutes of looking for It was supposed to be

Craig:  80 80 miles. 80 miles. It’s it’s a 100 yards, if that.

Todd:  Clearly, they stumble upon the camp, which Mike’s like, oh my god. This is the village, and, we can’t be here.

Craig:  They’re like, oh, well,

Todd:  let’s just look around a little bit because it seems like everybody’s gone.

Craig:  Now Except the old people who just sit around and look at them.

Todd:  Yeah. Which isn’t creepy at all, which

Craig:  I I I wish that, like, eye rolls were audible so that you could so that the audience, our 2 listeners could just hear my eyes constantly rolling And they get to this village and like, I don’t know, maybe this was a real native village, I can’t imagine, but it was just like 8 huts in a circle around a fire. When they go inside these huts it looks like huts out of, like, Tahitian resort. It looks like a Palatine

Todd:  at Disney World. Yeah. These huts. There’s a normal bed. There’s like a bed with a mattress and everything like that.

Clip:  Oh, God.

Todd:  They maybe need Craig. So the set design is stupid. Everything is hokey. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s probably not why people are watching this movie, though.

Craig:  Probably not. Why? Why are they watching it at all?

Todd:  The movie. Bigger question. Well, they do find Gloria. She’s stuck in a trap, with a pig. There’s, like, a wild pig in this trap. And so Mike immediately jumps in, and is and saves her by cutting the stabbing the pig with a knife.

Craig:  Yeah. And and I read that this actor, and I applaud him for this, was totally against all of the animal abuse in the movie and he wouldn’t do it, like he refused to do it. So his, double had to do it and, but they needed a shot of him stabbing and they wanted there to be blood splatter. So their answer was, okay, well, we’ll have your double hold a bowl of blood and you’ll just stab into the bowl of blood, and it’ll splash out, and we’ll get our shot. Well, he did, but it was just a freaking bowl. And so he stabbed through it into the hand of his double and like severely injured his double. Oh, god. Filmmaking at its best.

Todd:  Which he felt was was poetic justice for killing the pig.

Craig:  And and that’s the other thing Todd. Like, she falls in and, like, I guess we’re supposed to believe that this pig poses some threat to her, but really it just seems like this poor, sad little piglet that, like, got thrown in this pit with her that’s, like, terrified itself. Like, it’s not bothering her.

Clip:  That’s that was stupid.

Todd:  And as opposed to all the other animal killings that we saw in this movie, this was a quick flash. I mean, it was really a waste, to be honest. If you’re gonna kill an animal for a shot, and for that shot, it could have been an already dead pig puppet or something that they had stabbed. That’s how much you see of this actually happen. It’s it’s also really really sad. I saw Giovanni Radice, the actor involved, said that Roberto Lindsay was telling him, like, oh, come on. You could do it. You can do it. Robert Todd Niro would do it. And Radice responded. He said, De Niro would kick your ass all the way back to Rome. It is probably true. He did not like this guy. He did not like this, this director. They did not get along on this film at all. And he and Lindsay did have this reputation for really pushing people beyond their comfort zone. Even though he did work with a number of people repeatedly, and people do you know, it it’s like anybody. He’s a complicated guy, I guess. People speak fondly of him, but there are other people who are like, the guy was a total asshole, and he was basically doing anything for a buck, which was the system, honestly, at the time. When he talks about these movies and he talks about, just in general, the films that he did and especially these cannibal films, he’s tired of talking about he was tired of talking about them. He didn’t understand why people focused on them. He himself said that the movies were crap, that they were cheap, and there’s no acting in them, and there’s no plot, and no nothing, but they were what his distributors wanted. And so he basically dumps a lot of that off onto his distributors and said, look. You wanna know why I have this scene in the movie? The German distributor came to me and said, for the next movie, could you please, include a scene of a white man sodomizing a native woman? And, like, okay. I’ll write that scene, and he puts it in.

Craig:  I guess that makes me feel a little bit better about talking bad about it. At least he recognized that it was crap because it is. And what it turns into then is, like, I guess, you know, these white people are just kinda hanging out in this native village and the natives aren’t bothering them. And at at some point, Joe gets sick, and somebody else, I think it’s Rudy, says

Clip:  How come all the younger indios, they’ve left the village? And when we we go near those old ones over there, why do they act so scared? I told you the whole story. How could they not be up tight after what happened? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it’s like you say, but they seem scared of us, of our white skin, as if we were gonna do something to them. Should be the other way around.

Craig:  But Joe gets sick, and the other jerk, Mike, is like, well, let’s just leave him here. And they’re like, no. And he’s like, okay. But he’s like, we’ll stay. But if the natives come back, I’ve got 4 rounds left in my gun, and I’m gonna shoot us all because they’ll torture us or whatever. And they’re like he’s like agreed, and Gloria’s like, okay.

Todd:  It’s it’s the most casual suicide pact in cinematic history.

Craig:  Yeah. Oh, god. It’s so stupid. And then Pat and Mike hook up and and they have sex or whatever. And Yep. Again, there’s nothing good to say about this movie, but this scene where it just like cuts to them laying naked and like there’s a post, like a pole holding up the structure or whatever that they’re in, which very conveniently covers Mike’s genitals. But that’s the only thing that is covered up, like she’s just laying there totally naked and she’s talking and they’re talking very casually and he’s just like playing with her nipple like

Clip:  it’s it’s

Todd:  it’s kind of uncomfortable you don’t see that level of It is

Craig:  uncom when when I was watching it, I was actually thinking, you know, there’s there’s really nothing to be said for the acting in this movie because it’s not Todd. But I actually kind of applauded this lame actress who played Pat because I’m like, the fact that you can just lay there and tell a story. I mean, it it felt kind of it Todd did. I mean, like, you know, it it You don’t,

Clip:  You don’t

Craig:  you don’t see that in in them up very often, but I mean, you know, that you know, that could

Todd:  happen. It’s the honest and realistic sex scene. They they used real nipples for this scene. Yeah.

Craig:  Real nipples. And, she confesses that she had been kind of like a casual hooker. Like she had worked in a hotel and he was like, oh, did you ever get any extra tips? And she’s like, yeah, sometimes from these certain guys or whatever, like clearly implying that, you know, she would bang for money or whatever. And then he’s like, but you had to come out here because you could never really get a full thrill, right? And she’s like, Yeah. And he’s like, Let’s go take a Native girl. And this made me very uncomfortable, like, Oh my Todd, they’re gonna go get one of these young native girls and rape her, which, again, would not have at all been out of the ordinary for these types of movies.

Todd:  Not at all.

Craig:  But they go and they find these 2 young people, a young man and a young woman at the Riverside, and, he, like, pushes the guy aside and he takes the girl and he gives Pat a knife.

Clip:  What are you waiting for, Pat? Come on. Enjoy. Make her scream. Don’t be shy. She’s all yours. Go ahead, man. She’s my little filthy little cannibal. Cutter.

Craig:  And then it was only at the last minute when she’s holding the knife at this girl’s breast, she’s like, oh no, I can’t do it. So that’s how we figure out that he’s a monster. And when the young girl tries to run away, he just kills her and, you know, he shoots her in cold blood. And and that’s when Joe who’s sick and dying, tells us the real story about how really it was Mike who terrorized this community and mutilated their guide and castrated him and all in this effort to find the emeralds. So we know that really it’s Mike who’s the villain and it’s the white people who brought all

Todd:  of this horror into this tribe, which apparently then led them to cannibalism. Like, they weren’t cannibals before, but since they’ve been terrorized by these white people, they are I guess it’s trying to sound academic, but it’s stupid and terribly insensitive notion that she presents that they’re regressing to their primitive selves. So the idea being that when they’re when, you know, humans are pushed far enough, they’ll keep progressing and keep progressing until they’re, you know, to their most primitive state, which, it goes without saying, would make them cannibals. And in this case, because they are so primitive, you know, one more notch in being pushed, they’re gonna become cannibals. So yeah, it’s it’s really bad. And I’d love also in this scene just talking about fantastic writing. But just before Mike and Pat leave, Joe and and the rest of the gang so that Joe can actually tell the story about what really happened. Joe is relapsing and they’re talking about how they’re worried about him. And Mike gives this long speech that basically is is an argument for leaving him to die.

Clip:  You know what the Indias call blood poisoning? The sickness within the sickness. If one of them happens to get it, they separate him from the others and let him die. And crows arrive to keep the guy company. 100 of them, screeching and cawing and biding time till they come on. Drop it, will you? Okay, baby. Okay. There’s the root of a plant, the so can a. It can bring fever down. I’ll go look around for some. Be back before dark. Okay. Yeah.

Todd:  It was either leave him to die horribly or, oh, I I I do know of some medicine that’s available in the woods that might that might serve this purpose. I suppose that we could do that instead.

Craig:  I didn’t write down any of the actors’ names because most, if not all of them, were actors who I’ve never heard of, and I don’t think that our listeners would ever know. But the guy that played Mike, he’s a handsome guy. He’s a blonde haired, blue eyed guy, and and he’s handsome and charismatic. And he plays all of his scenes, especially once it’s been revealed to us that he’s crazy. He plays them within such intensity. He’s like Matthew McConaughey on crack. Like, he’s he’s just got these crazy eyes and, like, he’ll be delivering lines that seem so innocuous, but he, like, he’s Craig. Like, But I I at least appreciate that he went balls out with it. Like, he’s he’s just he’s totally a dick, and we know it.

Todd:  I think we’re gonna see this guy again in other movies because there’s a short list of Italian films I still wanna see, and he’s in a lot of them. This guy is pretty cool. Actually, you should really, if you’re at all interested, there are some cool interviews with him, even now. He’s a pretty accomplished stage and screen actor. He’s one of these guys who is just always, as far as the screen goes, just always in these low budget movies where you never made it big, unfortunately, for him, but, has done a lot on the stage. He has he’s a very intelligent. He speaks 3 different languages. Wow. Yeah. He’s really, an insightful, cool person, and it his perspective on this film is really worth seeking out and reading because, he has some interesting things to say about it. Giovanna, Lombardo Radice is his name.

Craig:  Yeah. I I’m not surprised that he had a career because he is even though he’s really arguably the villain of the movie, he’s he’s pretty charismatic, and he’s the handsome guy. So I’m not I’m not surprised that he went on to do other things.

Todd:  He’s just not given any room to do anything. You know? It’s just he’s a one

Craig:  Except the except the asshole and Yeah. Crazy. And that’s fine. Whatever. Well, so Pat and Mike run off together, but eventually they get caught. And so all and the young men from the tribe come back from their 50 yards away fishing trip. Now they’re in trouble, and they’re, you know, all the white people are captured, and they’re put into cages and and stuff like that. And fortunately, they go after Mike first, and and they tie him up to a big post just as he had done to their guy, and they castrate him, which is fairly unsettling for our male viewers. Yeah. What’s interesting and funny to me is that they, I think too much about things. They castrate him and eat his wiener. And, but then like they cauterize the wound, and and then it seems like he’s pretty much okay. Like, I’m thinking if my wiener got cut off and then cauterized, I would I might be a little uncomfortable, but, he seems alright. And, like, and I’m I’m Todd, I’m I’m so stupid. I’m like, how does he pee?

Clip:  That’s not

Craig:  but he’s okay. He’s alright. And then it really just kinda becomes, you know, like they’re moving them around. And, like, why are they moving them around? I don’t know. Because Obviously, they’re just gonna kill them all. And at one point, Rudy tries to run away, but he falls down and he hurts his leg and, like, gets a gash in his legs. So then he tries to hide in the river and then anacondas attack anacondas, not anacondas. What am I looking for? Piranhas. Piranhas.

Todd:  Which the shots look like they were they were shot through it like an aquarium. Yeah. It looks like little guppies in an aquarium. They don’t even have teeth. Oh, it’s so funny.

Craig:  Yeah. So, like, piranhas attack him. And so, like, he screams and reveals himself, and they kill him with a, blow dart, like a poison dart or whatever. And then meanwhile, while all of this is going on, we’ve forgotten the people in New York City, and it keeps jumping back to New York City. Again, we haven’t talked about it because it’s totally unimportant, but they keep jumping back to it. And every time they jump back to it, you get the awesome

Clip:  Sometimes it’s

Todd:  the Salvation Army Band playing.

Craig:  And so, like, Mike’s girlfriend and the cops are looking for him, and at some point, they come to the Amazon and they’re looking for him. It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t pay off. Way out. Yeah. Then they, like, they throw the 2 remaining girls, like, in some kind of big, like, mud hut or something.

Todd:  And Giant ant hill. Yeah.

Craig:  The giant ant hill. Yeah. And they throw Mike in some other cage or something. I don’t know. And then there’s a part that I feel like was supposed to be poignant.

Clip:  Please, god. It’s not. Get it out of here. Don’t come here. Let’s sing something. Sing. Yes, hon. To keep our spirits up to show they can’t break us down. Alright. So they so they sing,

Craig:  but remember the Red River Valley?

Todd:  Not the best choice of

Clip:  song when you’re in a situation like this.

Craig:  And, like, we get these shots where, like like, the native people are, like, moved by their singing. And I think we’re supposed to believe that maybe that’s why one of them, like, tries to help them escape in a little while.

Todd:  Thank you for explaining that to me. Because when the one guy comes in and helps them escape, I was like, where did this guy come from, and why is he suddenly on their side? It made no sense to me whatsoever.

Craig:  Oh, it makes even less sense when you really think about it because I’m pretty sure that that guy who helped Gloria escape is the same guy Yes. That witnessed his friend get murdered. I don’t know if it was his girlfriend or his sister or whatever. But but when Pat was there and and Mike murdered that young native girl, it’s the same guy. So it wouldn’t make any sense that he would wanna help them, but

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Whatever. It wouldn’t

Todd:  make any sense at all. Well, and what makes even less sense Todd, I love the part where they drop down a piece of meat hanging on a skewer. Mhmm. Which and then, like, Pat, who’s the most squeamish of them all, immediately leaps to it

Clip:  to get the Todd. And

Todd:  then Gloria has to be like, no. What if that’s Mike? Yeah.

Craig:  Oh, gosh. And then okay. So they put I don’t remember which one happens first. This all happens very quickly at the end. They put Mike in this rigged up table that has, like, a little hole cut in the Todd, and they stick the top of his head up through it and slice the top of his head off so they can just pick at and eat his brains. It’s convenient that they weren’t cannibals before, but they still had this brain chopping table.

Todd:  Brain chopping table. And a skill

Clip:  to do it. Yeah.

Todd:  I, I read, actually, there was a funny interview where they talked about, the this brain chopping sequence, and, apparently, the brains were a mixture of mashed banana and stage blood. And I guess some stage blood is really gross. And so when the natives, were eating this, of course, they’re not actors. So they had, like, these extreme looks of disgust on their face, and they had to keep shooting this over and over and over again to get shots where the natives looked like they were at least not retching at eating the brains that they just got out of this guy’s

Craig:  god. I

Todd:  thought that, honestly, like, of all of the goofiness and, you know, whatever special effects in here, that aside from the animal killings, that was the one thing that I found the most uncomfortable that kind of turned my stomach the most. Well, maybe maybe the castration, but number 2 was definitely the brain thing. I thought that that was, for what it’s worth, well executed.

Craig:  Yeah. In a different movie, I might have appreciated it more, but at this point in this movie, I was just Todd, like, whatever. It’s just to

Todd:  be done.

Craig:  Is this movie over yet? And and then they also pull off Pat’s shirt so she’s topless and she’s like she’s looking at Gloria like Gloria, Gloria like help me and they take this giant hook, I don’t know what they use this giant hook for except for to poke it through her boob and, they they end up doing that. They poke the 2 giant hooks through both of her boobs and hang her up by her boobs, which kills her pretty quickly. And there’s a, like, Gloria is looking at her like

Clip:  Please let her die soon. Oh, let her die soon. And let

Craig:  I don’t feel sorry for you. And nothing that this movie is going to do at this point is gonna make me feel sorry for you. Like, yes, I’m sorry that you got strung up by your boobs. I’m sure that’s really uncomfortable, but seriously, is this movie over yet?

Todd:  You were saying, please let me die.

Clip:  Please let me die.

Craig:  So this young native boy helps Gloria escape and she runs away, but then he gets killed by some trap. Again, I don’t really understand why the natives are setting this trap because they only serve to kill themselves. That’s right. They only kill And then okay. So then we see some, like, animal poachers going down the Amazon, and they hear a scream, and they find Gloria. And I don’t know, like, it seems like we’re supposed to believe that she’s been wandering around in the Amazon by herself for a couple weeks because she’s got blisters all over her face and she’s covered in mud. Then we cut to her graduation ceremony where she’s getting her PhD. She’s being celebrated for her wonderful doctoral dissertation about how cannibalism isn’t real, and they’re talking about how she went through this harrowing experience, with her brother and some other people, and they had all been eaten by crocodiles, but she had survived. And fortunately, she had survived to be able to prove with firsthand experience that cannibalism doesn’t exist. And she just looks dead eyed, and she gets her diploma and, medal and the end. Thank Todd. Oh, my god.

Todd:  It’s mean spirited, you know. You’re

Craig:  yes. This movie definitely makes a lot of the bad movies that we’ve seen so far. You know, I love a a good bad movie. I love a good bad movie. This is not a good bad movie. I am not gonna recommend this to anybody. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you are a horror enthusiast. I don’t care if you are a horror completest. Just skip it. You don’t need if if you need to see this kind of movie, which I’m just not a fan of this genre, period. But if you need to see this kind of movie, watch Cannibal Holocaust.

Clip:  Oh, without a doubt.

Craig:  I don’t I don’t like that movie either, but it’s better than this one.

Todd:  We will do cannibal holocaust because it seems obligatory with on this podcast, and I’m gonna do my best to convince you that despite its flaws, that’s a good film. But you’re right. I completely agree with you. This movie is trash, and it’s mean spirited, and there are all kinds of problems both in the film and the film making. Well acknowledged by all involved, so we’re really not saying anything new here. I was continued to get shades of the green inferno which we saw.

Clip:  Yeah. Yeah.

Craig:  And and we didn’t like that movie either, and I it was so funny to me because that I feel like we got more response from that episode than a lot of our episodes because people, like, what are you talking about? This is a good movie. And I was, like, okay.

Todd:  And that movie, you know, Eli Roth really cited Deonado, the cannibal holocaust guy and that film as his inspiration and brought the guy to the premiere and threw out the red carpet for it and the whole deal, whereas I feel like his movie was more a retelling of this film.

Craig:  Absolutely. And I thought the exact same thing. Mhmm.

Todd:  Even even the sequences with the in the cages and all that stuff. Now, I mean, a lot of this carries, but the the ending is exactly the same.

Clip:  Mhmm. Mhmm.

Craig:  Yep. Gosh. I didn’t even think about that, but you’re absolutely right.

Todd:  So how could he not acknowledge, and maybe he did somewhere, but why do you roll out the red carpet for the guy whose movie you didn’t completely rip off instead of the guy whose movie you took the beginning, middle, and end from. Mhmm. That I don’t understand, and I’m gonna I don’t really care that much.

Clip:  But, you know Oh my god.

Craig:  Right. I I doubt Eli Roth will be knocking down your door. Think. So

Clip:  but, you know, kinda like,

Todd:  I have this thought in my head that maybe Eli Roth himself is embarrassed to to admit that he ripped off this movie.

Craig:  Look. Eli Roth, you know, you love him or you hate him. I’ve got an appreciation for him, but I don’t think he’s embarrassed about anything.

Todd:  Fair enough. Yeah. This would

Craig:  be the part where I would generally apologize and be like, well,

Todd:  Mark Nope. Marked state. Craig said don’t watch this film under any circumstances.

Craig:  Okay. Alright. Well, here comes the apologies in me, I guess. You know, Humberto Lindsay, you said that he’s he made what? More than, like, 80 films or something like that?

Todd:  Almost 200.

Craig:  Almost 200. Okay. Now that is to be admired, and I have mad respect for that. I do not like this movie, and as you have indicated, he has, or he had, and when he was living, you know, spoken out about how he said it wasn’t a good movie and I applaud him for for saying that, but I I have to give respect to a guy who was so proliferate in, the genre, and I appreciate that. So, even though I think this movie sucked, mister Lindsey, I still raise the glass to you, and it’s it’s unfortunate that you won’t be here to give us 200 more.

Todd:  I’m just gonna tag on to that to say that he did lots of other films, in the crime genres, in the mystery genres, in the giallo genres, in other more traditional horror genres, dramas. I worked with some big named actors. He even worked with Esther Williams early in his career.

Craig:  Oh, wow.

Todd:  So the fact that this is one of the more notorious of his films doesn’t mean that it’s one of his best. As you said, he wasn’t proud of it. He said it was a cash grab, pure and simple, just doing the distributors wanted. And he said, I’m still making money off of Eaten Alive and this movie. Every time they show on TV, every time they show anywhere, he gets a check for, like, €2,000.

Craig:  So Something to something to be said for that. You gotta make a living.

Todd:  At least those animals didn’t die for nothing.

Craig:  Yeah. Okay.

Todd:  Was that tasteless? Okay. It was. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoy it, please share with a friend. You can find us on Itunes, Google Play, and Stitcher.

Clip:  You can also find

Todd:  us on Facebook where you can like us, our page there, and leave some comments about what you thought of this film, as well as any films you’d like us to watch in the future. Until that time, I’m Todd

Craig:  and I’m Craig

Todd:  with 2 Guys With A Chainsaw.