Eaten Alive! (1980)

 

Warning: This review contains scenes of nudity and bloody violence

 

AKA: Mangaiti Vivi!

Dir: Umberto Lenzi

Starring: Robert Kerman, Janet Agren, Ivan Rassimov, Paola Senatore, Me Me Lai, Mel Ferrer.

 

In New York City, several murders are committed using darts laced with deadly cobra venom. The murderer is hit by a truck and police are unable to find any clues to his identity. They do, however, find some film footage with the name of Diana Morris (Senatore) engraved on it. The cops call in Diana’s sister, Sheila (Agren), who explains that she hasn’t heard from her sister in weeks. The footage shows Diana in the jungle taking part in some sort of strange ritual. Professor Carter (Ferrer) informs Sheila that what she saw in the footage was a ‘purification ritual’ performed by a cult in New Guinea.  Determined to find her sister and bring her home, Sheila sets off for New Guinea where she tracks down Mark Butler (Kerman) to help her. Mark is reluctant at first, but is soon persuaded by Sheila’s offer of $80,000. After days searching the jungle Mark and Sheila are taken in by the cult who are led by the messiah-like figure of Jonas (Rassimov). Jonas conducts his followers to perform strange rituals and obey his rules. Those who disobey his command are banished from the sect and left to wander in the jungle where a vicious cannibal tribe lurks. When Mark and Sheila catch up with Diana it’s revealed that Jonas maintains his followers’ obedience by forcing them to drink brainwashing liquids. The three of them, along with a native, escape the camp only to run into the cannibals on their way and when Jonas realises that his perfect colony might be under threat, he asks that his followers perform one final sacrifice.

 

Despite its glaring cover art and scenes of tribesmen feasting on human flesh, Eaten Alive doesn’t quite feel like a full blown cannibal movie. Indeed the cannibals are on the fringes of things for most of the movie and don’t really make their presence known until the final quarter of an hour. This is more of a jungle adventure movie and a parable about religious cults that just happens to feature some cannibals. Although it’s an enjoyable enough watch it’s also handicapped by some familiar scenes that have been borrowed from other films and that controversial and unnecessary hallmark of the genre: animal cruelty.

Eaten Alive! Sees Umberto Lenzi return to the jungle and it acts as a slight precursor to Cannibal Ferox, which was made a year later. However, the two films are very different. Ferox is the perfect movie for those looking for some serious gut-munching mayhem. Eaten Alive!, while it has its moments, is not a quintessential cannibal movie. Its main story is inspired by religious cults and particularly by the famous People’s Temple cult. The character of Jonas is meant to represent that cult’s notorious leader Jim Jones and the film resembles several elements of the famous Jonestown incident: the jungle location, the rule that members are forbidden to leave, the mass suicide. Like the Jonestown residents, Jonas’ cult members are forced to drink liquids laced with poison. However, unlike Jones, Jonas does not participate in the suicide – we’re left unaware of his fate, though.  Thanks to the emergence of Scientology into the mainstream via the patronage of several high-profile celebrities, Jim Jones and the People’s Temple are often forgotten about now when we think of religious sects. But it was a huge story in the late ‘70s and when Eaten Alive! was released in 1980 its allusion to the incident would’ve been instantly recognisable by most audiences. The film may also have taken inspiration from Apocalypse Now, which was released the previous year. 

Much like many other films in the cannibal sub-genre such as Lenzi’s own Man from Deep River and Cannibal Ferox; as well Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust and Sergio Martino’s Mountain of theCannibal God, Eaten Alive! feels the need to employ real scenes of animal cruelty and slaughter as shock value. This practice has understandably been condemned numerous times by critics of these films and I don’t want to touch on this subject too much here. I will say that I do not condone the needless killing of animals for entertainment and thankfully such practices do not exist in movies today. 

You like rock [music]? No, I like whiskey

Like the topic of animal cruelty, another aspect that is regrettable about this film is that not all the scenes are original; in fact they’ve been lifted from three other films. A large portion of footage is lifted from Martino’s Mountain of the Cannibal God, such as when one of the natives is attacked by a crocodile, a scene of castration by the cannibals, and most of the animal violence. Some scenes are also used from Man from Deep River and Deodato’s Last Cannibal World. This method of lifting parts from other movies can be put down to either laziness on Lenzi’s part or that he was hampered by such a tiny budget that he had to add the scenes as padding. 

 

Some familiar faces show up in Eaten Alive! Robert Kerman puts in another good performance in the lead role of Mark Butler. Unlike the more restrained role of Professor Harold Monroe in Cannibal Holocaust, Kerman looks to be having fun as the macho adventurer Mark. As well as Deodato’s classic, Kerman would also show up in a minor role in Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox.

Swedish actor Janet Agren is also decent here as Sheila. She plays a type of southern belle in Eaten Alive and is quite a resourceful woman who can hold her own up against the brash Butler. Her quest to save her sister is noble but she’s terrified of the cannibals and, at one point, begs Mark to kill her before the natives do. A former model, Agren also features in Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead and alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Sonja.

Ivan Rassimov is particularly menacing as Jonas. He is also a veteran of the cannibal movie, having starred in both Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World. As is Me Me Lai, who has a minor role as a native woman who helps Mark, Sheila and Diana escape from the camp. Finally the very beautiful Paola Senatore will be familiar to fans of Joe D’Amato’s Nunsploitation film Images in a Convent.

"Their idea of lunch is fresh, hot entrails
 soaked in blood" - Jonas

Eaten Alive is a strange film because of the patchwork effort created by the aforementioned borrowed scenes. Of course, if you’ve not seen those other films, I guess you won’t notice anything untoward. You will feel let down though if you’re expecting anything like Cannibal Ferox. This movie isn’t at all bad by any stretch of the imagination and is good fun. If you can stomach the animal violence it’s worth a watch.

Don't Go Near the Park (1979)

Dir: Lawrence D. Foldes

Starring: Aldo Ray, Meeno Peluce, Tammy Taylor, Barbara Bain, Crackers Phinn, Linnea Quigley

Here’s another one of those awesomely bad films that should’ve disappeared a long time ago. However, Don’t Go Near the Park survives because of its inclusion on the DPP’s Video Nasty list. It does make you wonder what all the fuss was about because, not only is this a really amateur waste of space, but there’s nothing particularly ‘nasty’ about it at all.

The movie begins 12, 000 years ago as a brother and sister are condemned to an eternity of old age by a witch after murdering several children. Fast forward to the present day, and the prehistoric pair are reduced to feasting on the guts of children to reclaim some of their youth. They’ve waited centuries for the planets to align and must now sacrifice a 16-year old virgin to capture eternal youth.

No really, stay away.

The trouble with Don’t Go Near the Park is that it has such a convoluted narrative but doesn’t have a clue how to tell it. Therefore we get a very dull and confusing film. For instance we see the brother of the ageless siblings rent a room and then attack his landlady. The film then jumps to them getting married (what?) The story implies that he uses some sort of mind-control on the poor woman but this is not really explained well. Then the film jumps to her giving birth to their first child. The movie just doesn’t put the effort into letting the audience know what’s happening and leaves everyone scratching their heads as to what just occurred during this short sequence.



"What? Is there something on my face?"
The one and only Crackers Phinn.

 

This amateur form of storytelling inevitably brings up a few hilarious, and quite bizarre, moments. For instance, Sixteen-year-old Bondi (??) inexplicably hitches a ride with a group of creeps who attempt to rape her. Thanks to a necklace her father gave to her, she is teleported to safety while her
assailants’ van flies off a cliff and explodes (with the tow rope still clearly visible). Also, during the movie’s climax, it’s randomly decided that the villains have the ability to, like, shoot lasers from their eyes (!)

There’s also surprisingly little violence here. All we get is a few moments when the – let’s call them vampires – attack a few kids that wonder into the park (well they were warned) and have their guts ripped out in quite unconvincing style.

A gut-wrenching scene

Horror fans will recognise scream queen Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) as Bondi's mother.

Aside from the few surreal moments, there’s nothing to really recommend Don’t Go Near the Park. It’s a really boring film that’s extremely light on horror and devoid of any sort of suspense.  I generally enjoy watching films that fall into the ‘so-bad-they’re-good’ category, but there’s no fun to be had here. For the Nasties collectors, this is on the lower end of the scale. Don’t go near it.

Bad Taste (1987)

Even the best have to start at the bottom.  More than a decade before he filmed the spectacular and heavily lauded ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, Kiwi director Peter Jackson began his career in movies with this no-budget, gory action comedy flick. Bad Taste is a cult classic for B-Movie fans and showcases Jackson’s talent as a director at a very early stage.

The population of a small New Zealand village disappears and their place is taken by aliens who wear the villagers’ skin as a disguise.  The extra-terrestrials have killed the village’s inhabitants and packed their remains into boxes with the intention of selling the human remains as fast food.  Meanwhile a government task force, who apparently specialise in this sort of thing, are dispatched to find out what the hell’s been going on and try to stop the aliens.

The filming of Bad Taste was a long and difficult process and it is a testament to Jackson’s talent and determination that the film turned out so well or was even finished at all. Jackson shot the film on weekends over the course of four years, financing the film out of his own pocket, using friends as actors and designing the movie’s props and masks himself.  Jackson even plays two of the film’s roles himself, including its most memorable character: Derek, the spectacled ‘special forces’ member who has the back of his head ripped open and goes on a mad rampage with a chainsaw  – “I’m a Derek and Dereks don’t run!”

 

Despite the films financial handicap, Bad Taste never wavers in terms of ambition. The film never lets the budget (or lack thereof) get in the way of the films action. It is incredibly entertaining and the scenes of gore are some of the most sick and gruesome that had ever been filmed at the time.  The film is also very funny at times too and I have no doubt that ‘Bad Taste’ was probably a lot of fun for Jackson and his mates to film. It’s a perfect lesson in shoe-string budget filmmaking.  Jackson is an ambitious filmmaker and his love of spectacular special FX set-pieces is on full display even at this early stage of his career.

I had wanted to see Bad Taste for a long time and finally got round to seeing it this week. I loved it and the film is a must for fans of cult films and B-movies, not to mention Gore-hounds. Highly recommended viewing.

Nightmare City



By chance, this week I viewed two movies back-to-back: Nightmare City (1980) and David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975). These two films made for a fantastic and appropriate double-bill because they both provide an interesting spin on the Zombie flick.

 



Umberto Lenzi is credited with establishing the Italian Cannibal genre with 1972’s Deep River Savages (aka The Man from Deep River) but, in-between two other Cannibal romps – Eaten Alive! (1980) and the notorious Cannibal Ferox (1981) – he tried his hand at the Zombie film. The plot goes like this: after an unidentified plane exposed to radiation lands at the airport of an unnamed city, a horde of zombies emerge and go on a rampage, attacking anything in their way.

 



This film is different from a lot of the other Walking Dead movies from around the time. The creatures in Nightmare City are not the same as George Romero’s undead or of other Italian gore films like Zombie Flesh Eaters or Zombie Holocaust. Lenzi’s ‘Zombies’ are not the dead rising from the grave, but living people who have mutated after being exposed to radiation which has enhanced their strength but also given them an insatiable thirst for blood. These, as Lenzi puts it, ‘infected people’ are not living corpses, shuffling about, relying on impulse; no, they can run and retain the mental capacity to use weapons and even communicate with each other. They do, however, retain some of the hallmarks of Romero’s flesh eaters: they can infect a victim with a bite and can only be stopped by a gunshot to the head.

 

The movie plays on a common theme in 1980s horror flicks: fear of the dangers of nuclear power. The people on the plane were exposed to high levels of radiation and thus became mutated and developed a taste for human flesh. The film also briefly explores themes such as freedom of the press, the military industrial complex and human-kind’s tendency to play God.

 

  Nightmare City is a fun film to watch and is (ahem) a feast for the gore-hounds out there. It’s an orgy of over-the-top violence as the Zombies, sorry ‘infected people’, rampage through the city. Necks are bitten, guts are chewed, eyes are gouged and there’s even a scene of a woman’s breast being ripped off! It’s a spectacularly awesome Italian exploitation flick; with loads of action and thrills. People who love this sort of movie will have a blast.

 

 

The Werewolf & The Yeti

This obscure Video Nasty is extremely difficult to find and I wouldn’t be surprised if the original pre-cert cassettes change hands for, what I would call, ‘silly money’. I did manage to watch The Werewolf & The Yeti (AKA Night Of The Howling Beast and La Maldicion de la Bestia), however, on the internet – without having to exchange a ridiculous amount of cash!

This cheap, rough film does have a sense of adventure about it, which makes it quite fun to watch. Werewolf & The Yeti sees Spanish exploitation lothario Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina Alvarez) once again reprising his role as Waldermar Daninsky as he attempts to track down the mythical abominable snowman. However, Daninsky falls under the curse of two mountain demonesses, which causes him to sprout hair and claws whenever there’s a full moon out.

 

Naschy is the closest thing the grindhouse has to a James Bond. He’s smooth, charismatic, tough and always gets the girl. Werewolf & the Yeti was the seventh time Naschy played Waldermar – I’m reliably informed he played the character in over a dozen films.

The film was obviously made for very little capital but I think manages to make do pretty well with it’s limited resources. I thought the locations were impressive and added to the gothicness of the movie - although, when it comes to special FX, that’s clearly a bloke in a Werewolf costume. Unconvincing the costume may be, but it reminded me of Lon Chaney’s portrayal of the ‘The Wolf Man’ so it wasn’t too distracting.

Werewolf & The Yeti is notorious for being one of the 72 ‘Video Nasties’ banned in the UK (and remains to this day) by the Director of Public Prosectutions (DPP) in the early 1980s. Once you finally see the film, it’s surprising that the DPP even bothered with it because there’s nothing ‘nasty’ about it really; there are scenes of sex and violence, but they’re so frivolous that it becomes difficult to call the film offensive  – even more surprising is that it was one of the 39 films that were successfully prosecuted! I’ve touched on the issue of how or why certain movies ended up on the Video Nasties list, and how their appearance appears arbitrary when you compare and contrast with other non-Nasties, so I won’t proceed with this argument any further. What I will say is that Werewolf & The Yeti is further evidence of what a nonsense the Video Nasty scandal proved to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bloody Moon

 
 
 
 





In his 200 plus film career, Jess Franco has never been afraid to adapt to the times. As well as his usual skin flicks, he’s tried his hand at the Zombie movie, the cannibal movie and the slasher. The latter is what we have here with Bloody Moon. Even for someone like me who is a relative newcomer to Franco’s films, ‘quality’ is not usually a word you begin to associate with the European sleaze king. ‘Bloody Moon’ is no exception but, as I’m beginning to see with a lot of Jess’ repertoire, it does have a certain charm to it. Hell, this might just be me. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, so they say.

 

The film follows Angela, (Olivia Pascal from erotic classic Vanessa) a student at an all-girl (naturally) language school in Spain, who is being stalked by a mysterious killer who bumps off her friends one-by-one. This is a good Jess Franco film for the non-Franco fan as there’s not many of his trademarks here (no zooms or crotch shots).

 



Let’s start with the faults. Bloody Moon isn’t a bad who-done-it movie, but Franco seems incapable of adding any other sort of suspense.  Scenes often plod along at a snail’s pace and the (attempted) shocks just don’t, well, shock you. Then we have scenes that involve reactions by the characters that are so odd. For instance, when Angela catches a glimpse of Miguel, who is hiding in her bathroom, she is naturally petrified and runs from the room. But after about two minutes, she suddenly relaxes and gets on with things. Uh, did you forget about that creepy guy in your bathroom? Then you have the film’s most famous scene where Inga is decapitated with a giant buzz saw (see the clip below). The build up to this set piece is so absurd it’s comical. Inga (Jasmin Losensky) let’s a mysterious masked man, who she’s only just met,  tie her to rock with no objections what so ever, because, as she puts it, “It’s a little perverse, but I’ll try anything; as long as I get back to the club in time”. I think you need to worry about something more than being late for class, Inga. Did you not see that giant buzz saw behind you? What did you think was going to happen? Rounding out the negatives are some dubious acting, unconvincing special effects and crap music (bad disco!) – all three not unusual for Franco’s films.

 



But enough whining, like I say, this film has charm despite it’s shortcomings. First and foremost, Bloody Moon looks beautiful. Say what you will about Franco, there’s no denying that a lot of his movies are photographed exquisitely. The luscious Spanish countryside is captured stunningly and perfectly complements Franco’s always great looking female cast members. The main reason I can’t be too critical of this movie is because it’s fun to sit through. The negatives above can be taken for ironic laughs. The characters bizarre actions are just so bonkers it’s hard not to have giggle. The SFX are mostly poor but do try to be gory and, as set pieces go, they are fun and memorable – sometimes for the wrong reasons: Angela almost gets flattened by the most obviously fake boulder in movie history.

 

 

‘Bloody Moon’ is an example of Franco having a stab at a different genre. Though he’s attempting an American-style slasher, I feel his European-filmmaking tendencies have got the better of him here because it plays more like an Italian Gialo. But whatever Franco was trying to accomplish here it’s a blast none the less and is definitely a film that you can sit through on more than one occasion.