| Sweet Lord above is ANTHROPOPHAGUS a greasy little movie.
Even if you're only a casual fan of vintage, 'video nasty'-era Italian terror, chances are you've at the very least heard of exploitation director Joe D'Amato's sickening and sloppy paean to Mediterranean cannibal madness, the dire, dreaded ANTHROPOPHAGUS. This notorious slab of sleaze has been corrupting both the innocent and not-so innocent from every shore under a myriad of monikers (I first saw it in its severely cut US edit called THE GRIM REAPER) since its release in 1981. Recently, my good friends at ultra-cool Italian media imprint BEAT records sent me their official Italian language double disc DVD release of this sweet little sickie and I gave it another long, lurid look.
I'm happy to report that ANTHROPOPHAGUS is as cheerfully tasteless now as it was then.
For those of you faithful BSB readers still scratching your scabby skulls wondering what in the wide, wide world of sports an ANTHROPOPHAGUS is, read on and let's have a look
Wide-eyed Yankee tourist Tisa Farrow (sister of Mia and starlet from Lucio Fulci's immortal ZOMBIE) and her pals, on a vacation in prettier than humanly possible Greece, decide on a whim to visit a nearby island that's been cut off from the rest of the country. Big mistake for them, blood spattered bliss for us. Seems said isle is completely deserted, save for a shell shocked lass in a nearby abandoned mansion, who keeps babbling on about a beast that's prowling about the place looking for victims. She's right of course. A beefy, putty faced man-eating monstrosity played by George Eastman (from many a D'Amato joint, including the legendary porn-horror EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD and who also co-produced this creeper) a Frankenstein like lunatic, has apparently killed and eaten every living thing on the island and is now tracking our intrepid, invasive heroes with lethal intent to snack.
If you've ever seen a non-porn D'Amato picture (his real, non-anglicized name, incidentally, is Aristide Masseccesi) then you know what to expect from ANTHROPOPHAGUS: cheap production values, leering cinematography, brutish, cruel, humorless sensibilities and buckets of brutal, sloppy violence. Outside of his ultra-disturbing necro-romance BUIO OMEGA (arguably his finest work) ANTHROPOPHAGUS is his queasiest, slimiest and, ultimately, scariest film. This is a relentlessly dark, mean and nihilistic picture, one whose outlook on the world is far from pleasant and whose sole purpose it seems, is to make you sick. And it works.
The chief reason this movie ran into so much international censorial difficulties are two unbelievably, almost supernaturally sickening sequences that turned tummies and caused more conservative countries to shave them down and, in some cases, cut them from the prints entirely. In one, Eastman's brutish titular menace (Anthrophagus means, literally, cannibal) corners one of the put-upon tourists, who just happens to be with child, and, in a Tate/Manson murders twist, rips the squirming fetus from her living womb as she shrieks away in horror.
But that aint the end of the bit. Eastman then proceeds to scarf down the unborn child, umbilical cord and all. It's a cheap, nauseating effect that pushes the boundaries of , um, good taste and is guaranteed to send expectant mothers howling for the exits in outrage.
The other less offensive, but far stranger, stretch occurs at the climax, where the now dying, almost defeated monster collapses, and with nary a victim in site, rips out his own guts and valiantly trys to eat himself! It's an insane set-piece to be sure, but it also serves to illustrate how dedicated D'Amato is in his quest to shock.
But the sleazy stomach churning gold of ANTHROPOPHAGUS doesn't end there as the picture is padded out with all manner of madness that fans of these films devour like so many of Eastman's human hors d'ouvres. There's loads of excess blood and gore, including a scalp ripping effect whose shoddiness only adds to the yuck factor; there's the gleefully inept, zombified performances by the terminally confused international cast; there's a fantastic, completely inappropriate electronic music score by D'Amato regular Marcello Giombini; there's exquisite location footage and eerie illustrations of the natural world inhabited by something horrifically unnatural.
Is ANTHROPOPHAGUS a good movie? Depends on your definition. I think D'Amato (who died in 1999) was too unsophisticated a filmmaker to concern himself with something as bourgeoisie as, y'know, quality cinema. He approached horror like he approached his scores of porno films, pointing the camera and honing in on various squirting fluids, penetrations and gynecology. But he also had an almost animalistic instinct to show the un-showable with a bleak, primal power. ANTHROPOPHAGUS is slow, severe, sickening and truly upsetting. It sticks with you long after the last of Eastman's spleen falls from his blood crusted lips.
To order the deluxe, Italian special edition DVD I saw go to www.beatrecords.it.
You say D'Amato, I say Massiccesi, we all say ANTHROPOPHAGUS
bon apetit.
Alexander out.
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