Monday, August 2, 2010

'Slave of the Cannibal God' has no surprises

Slave of the Cannibal God (aka "Mountain of the Cannibal God" and "Prisoner of the Cannibal God") (1978)
Starring: Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach, Claudio Cassinelli, and Antonio Marsina
Director: Sergio Martino
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Susan Stevenson (Andress) arrives in New Guinea to launch an expedition to search for her husband who has gone missing. A former collegue of is (Keach) reveals that he traveled secretly to a mostly unexplored island to study cannibals who worship a holy mountain. Suan convinces him to help her in her search, and they head into the unknown, along with her sociopathic brother (Marsina).


"Slave of the Cannibal God" is about what you'd expect from a movie with the words "Slave" and "Cannibal" in the the title, starring Andress, and made by Italians. I'd expected more gore, nudity, and sexual perversion, but I suspect I may have seen the "censored" version.

Storywise, the film was reminicent of a 1930s jungle adventure film, or a Joe Kubert-penned Tarzan tale--most of the explorers are in the jungle for reasons that are not at all what they claim they are--but production-wise, it's all cheesy Italian production from the 1970s. (You know you're not going to be watching the cream of the film crop when the first shots in a film are images of random animals in the jungle.


However, the film is mercifully light on filler animal footage, the acting is better than is usually found in these sorts of films, and the story moves along at a good pace. If you like jungle adventure movies, you can do far worse than this one. On the other hand, if you're looking for a gory cannibal flick, you should probably pass on it. I'm still not sure who the "slave" of the title is.)