Dis­cov­er the grainy deprav­i­ty of this noto­ri­ous can­ni­bal horror

The 1970s and ​’80s saw a boom in can­ni­bal films. These were most­ly cheap Ital­ian pro­duc­tions, although they some­times boast­ed inter­na­tion­al casts, and were often shot in Asia or South Amer­i­ca. Born out of the ​‘shock­u­men­tary’ sen­si­bil­i­ties and sen­sa­tion­al­ism of the exploita­tion mon­do genre, these films typ­i­cal­ly pit­ted sup­pos­ed­ly civilised char­ac­ters against anthro­pophagous natives, sea­son­ing the pot with scenes of rape, tor­ture and ani­mal cruelty.

The most noto­ri­ous – and also the most sophis­ti­cat­ed and influ­en­tial – is Rug­gero Deodato’s 1980 Can­ni­bal Holo­caust. Yet the film that began the whole cycle was Umber­to Lenzi’s Man from Deep Riv­er (aka Sac­ri­fice!) from 1972, a rip-ff of Elliot Silverstein’s A Man Called Horse with added, large­ly inci­den­tal can­ni­bal­ism. Lenzi returned, again glanc­ing­ly, to the theme with Eat­en Alive!, a film more pre­oc­cu­pied with a Jon­estown-like cult than with can­ni­bal­ism (despite one promi­nent scene which gave the film its title). Yet it was with 1981’s Can­ni­bal Fer­ox that Lenzi, for the first and last time, tack­led the top­ic head on, both as a myth and as a high­ly cir­cum­scribed real­i­ty. The results make for deeply dispir­it­ing viewing.

Like Can­ni­bal Holo­caust, Lenzi’s film opens in New York City, an urban jun­gle that we are implic­it­ly being asked to com­pare and con­trast with the green­er vari­ety where most of the remain­ing film will be set. Just released from hos­pi­tal where he has been under­go­ing drugs reha­bil­i­ta­tion, Tim Bar­rett (Dominic Raacke) struts along the city’s streets look­ing to buy his next fix from Mike. In an apart­ment, Tim is inter­cept­ed by two mob­sters also look­ing for Mike, and shot down in cold blood. The act intro­duces us to a crim­i­nal dog-eat-dog tribe hap­py to rob, cheat and mur­der each oth­er, with­out com­punc­tion or humanity.

“My the­sis claims that can­ni­bal­ism as an organ­ised prac­tice of human soci­ety does not exist, and his­tor­i­cal­ly has nev­er exist­ed,” says anthro­pol­o­gist Glo­ria Davis (Lor­raine De Selle), as the film’s action shifts to Colom­bia. ​“Let’s say it was an inven­tion of racist colo­nial­ism which had a vest­ed inter­est in cre­at­ing the myth of the fero­cious sub­hu­man sav­age fit only for exter­mi­na­tion. The myth­i­cal lie of can­ni­bal fer­ox was only an ali­bi to jus­ti­fy the greed and cru­el­ty of the con­quis­ta­dores.” Glo­ria is putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on her dis­ser­ta­tion, but is first trav­el­ling with her pho­tog­ra­ph­er broth­er Rudy (Dani­lo Met­tei) and their friend Pat John­son (Zora Kero­va) to the remote vil­lage of Man­ior­ca, in the hope of putting to rest once and for all reports of actu­al can­ni­bal­is­tic activ­i­ties there.

Lost in the jun­gle, the trio runs into the very same Mike (played by sleaze mae­stro John Morghen, aka Gio­van­ni Lom­bar­do Radice) who was miss­ing from New York – and who has been down south, along with his injured friend Joe (Wal­ter Luc­chi­ni). Mike spins a good yarn about the sav­agery of the locals, but the truth is he has been behav­ing like a mod­ern-day con­quis­ta­dor, per­pe­trat­ing atroc­i­ties upon the peace­ful pop­u­la­tion in his crazed pur­suit of cocaine and emer­alds. If the natives are now con­duct­ing them­selves with extreme feroc­i­ty, that is only because they are respond­ing in kind with behav­iours learnt from their sadis­tic, mur­der­ous oppressor.

Can­ni­bal Fer­ox is a sto­ry in which dif­fer­ent sto­ries com­pete: the mag­a­zine arti­cle on can­ni­bal­ism in Man­ior­ca ver­sus Gloria’s insis­tence that can­ni­bal­ism itself is noth­ing but a colo­nial­ist bed­time sto­ry; Mike’s account of what hap­pened in the vil­lage ver­sus Joe’s cor­rec­tive ver­sion of the same events; and the sto­ry about the fate of the grin­goes told by the Ama­zon­ian tribe to the author­i­ties – a false nar­ra­tive which a trau­ma­tised Glo­ria ulti­mate­ly main­tains to end the myth of can­ni­bal­ism. Var­i­ous char­ac­ters refer to the Ama­zon­ian jun­gle as a ​“poi­soned par­adise”, filled with hos­tile wildlife and prim­i­tive prac­tices, but by the end it has become clear that the real tox­i­c­i­ty has been intro­duced by the ​“so-called civilised peo­ple” and their sup­pos­ed­ly ​“supe­ri­or society”.

Shot in the Colom­bian jun­gle on grainy 16mm, the film has been sub­ject­ed to the same sort of muti­lat­ing cuts as some of the char­ac­ters, in par­tic­u­lar in the sequences expos­ing the slaugh­ter of ani­mals. Either way, Can­ni­bal Fer­ox remains a hard watch, play­ing a duplic­i­tous game with our own sense of moral ori­en­ta­tion as it both feeds and con­demns our desire for the taboo sen­sa­tions promised by its title. After all, even as Glo­ria sets out to debunk the very notion of can­ni­bal­ism, it is pre­cise­ly what we view­ers, as rub­ber-neck­ing, rapa­cious tourists enter­ing these vir­gin inte­ri­ors, have come – and hope – to see.

Accord­ing­ly, Lenzi adopts Gloria’s anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, observ­ing the ​‘law of the jun­gle’ in esca­lat­ing scenes of ani­mal-on-ani­mal, human-on-ani­mal and human-on-human pre­da­tion, and defies us to be enter­tained by all the hor­ror. It is not a pret­ty spec­ta­cle, but then, we, as a species, are as much the sub­ject of this film as any of its char­ac­ters – and if Lenzi’s sto­ries offer a rather ugly pic­ture of human deprav­i­ty, in the end he shows that the lies of fic­tion can some­times be more con­ve­nient than uncom­fort­able truths.

Can­ni­bal Fer­ox is released on the 30 July on Blu-ray by Shame­less Films.