Slave of the Cannibal God (1978)

Claire Donner (0:04)

Hello, my name is Claire Donner. I am a film critic and researcher whose work you may have enjoyed on other Severin releases. I am also the online branch director of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and I would like to have a long conversation with you about Sergio Martino's Slave of the Cannibal God. This is a particularly odd entry in the Italian cannibal cycle, and I will explain why that is as we go along. Usually, these movies are thought to descend from the Mondo shockumentaries, and you're getting a good dose of that from all of this ominous nature photography. If you are hearing my voice right now, then this is probably not your first Gut Muncher rodeo, but I'm going to read the Sleazoid Express introduction to this genre anyway, just because it's such a fun string of words. Bill Landis says, Italy's most dubious horror achievement was birthing the cannibal vomitorium genre. These are among the most appallingly violent movies ever made, a deranged hybrid of jallow melodramatics and Mondo movie disgust. The violence promised by the zombie movies is delivered in amplified spades and sometimes can be shockingly real. The film's subplots about Westerners lost in the jungle are mere frameworks for some of the most grotesque outbursts of violence ever recorded on film. Cannibal movies take you on a carnival ride to hell, where scenes of actual animal abuse alternate with hideous simulations of natives dining on other human beings. They are among the most morally reprehensible of all exploitation films.

Thank you, Bill Landis.

So that is a pretty typical way for these movies to announce themselves with the claim of anthropological objectivity acting as kind of a smokescreen for voyeuristic racist fantasies. But it will soon become clear that this movie is not just another dip in the Mondo gutter. What it mostly is, is an old-timey adventure story with roots in Victorian literature, which are two words you probably did not expect to hear during this commentary, but we'll prove it. We are not going to see any cannibals for quite a while, but then they're really going to cram it in, so don't get too relaxed from all the river rafting.

We're about to get into what is like a fairly typical cannibal narrative here, which invariably involves white people chasing other white people into the jungle. And the following dialogue is going to support my explanation for where this movie comes from.

SPEAKER_2 (3:29)

All members of the search parties in the Maripatta jungle have proved unavailing, and we have decided to call off the search. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_3 (3:36)

Your husband's expedition, as the chief of police has already told you, was not authorized by the authorities of independent Guinea, and therefore they had no kind of contact with him, not even by radio.

SPEAKER_2 (3:48)

Your husband was carrying out his ethnological investigations without our knowledge or permission.

When your brother informed us of Mr. Steveson's disappearance, we intervened. If our search was a bit tardy, that's not our fault.

SPEAKER_4 (4:05)

I waited here at Port Moresby one month or more until the established date for him to return. Also, as you know, my brother-in-law has a profound knowledge of that area, so I had no real motive to be worried about him.

SPEAKER_2 (4:20)

You can never know the jungle well enough. This clandestine expedition was imprudent, apart from being an insult to our government.

SPEAKER_4 (4:29)

My brother-in-law is a world famous scientist.

Claire Donner (4:31)

I think this movie might have the whitest white people of any of them.

SPEAKER_2 (4:36)

Air search parties have been out looking for signs of life in the jungle for several days. If they were perhaps still alive, they'd have surely attempted some signal.

SPEAKER_4 (4:45)

Maybe they weren't able. In the jungle so dense, there's no real chance to see anything.

We have to organize an expedition to go into the jungle.

SPEAKER_3 (4:53)

Look, please keep calm. We have every intention of helping you to find Henry Stevenson.

But now it's up to the local authorities to organize, help and make all decisions in the matter. We have done all we can.

SPEAKER_5 (5:07)

Please help me.

Claire Donner (5:10)

Xanadu.

SPEAKER_5 (5:11)

But until I'm certain that he's dead, I'll keep on looking for him. Even if I have to do it alone.

SPEAKER_2 (5:17)

I understand how you feel. But it's my duty to be honest.

If we have given up, it is because we are certain that after three months in that jungle, there could not possibly be any survivors. I'm sorry, Consul Burns, but I have to leave.

SPEAKER_3 (5:34)

Of course. And thank you.

SPEAKER_2 (5:37)