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Before Sunrise (1995)

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The Mountain of the Cannibal God
(Sergio Martino, 1979)





I'm quite fond of these cannibal exploitation films. They combine Indiana Jones-style adventure with sleaze and gore and male castrations. The Mountain of the Cannibal God isn't as hardcore as later entries in the subgenre, like Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust (one of my all-time favorite horror films), but it's still brutal and nasty and perverse. Most people condemn these films for containing real-life animal killings. Those scenes might be hard to stomach, but they add to the effectiveness of the horror. When you've seen real deaths occur on screen, I think it temporarily tricks the mind into thinking that the actors themselves are in danger -- that the stakes are for real. With the exception of an iguana that's gutted and eaten, most of the animal killings in this movie are a result of other animals, even if it's obvious that they were pitted together by the crew. For instance, a poor monkey that was thrust into the mouth of a python. The helpless, resigned look in the monkey's eyes as its skull is slowly crushed by the snake's jaws is the most haunting moment in the film.

The cannibals don't show up for a long time. That might be a detriment for some viewers, but I enjoyed the journey along the way. Mountain of the Cannibal God is just as much about man vs. nature as it is man vs. flesh-eaters. One of the things I love so much about these cannibal films is how the jungle essentially becomes its own character. The exotic locales add an authenticity that can mask the flat acting or poor dubbing or whatever other flaws typically come with the genre. Stacy Keach gives a better-than-usual performance for an exploitation film. Former Bond girl Ursula Andress is her usual bland self, but she seems undaunted by the physical challenges required of the role, so kudos for that. The gore is excellent. Compared to its cannibal peers, Mountain of the Cannibal God is relatively tame, but it more than makes up for it with a bat-***** insane climax that threatens to overdose on bizarre perversity. We get topless tribeswomen rubbing an orange substance all over Ursula's naked body. A long, lingering shot of a woman finger-banging her pubic jungle. Cave orgies. A severed penis. Disembowelment. A deranged cannibal midget. Then one of the most memorable images I've seen in awhile: a tribesman raping a giant pig. It was at that moment that I went from merely enjoying this film to outright loving it.