When will young kids learn that you can’t pull murderous pranks without supernatural reprisals? Take the girls of St. Mary’s College, for example. They set up skinny, unattractive Kathy with Fred Vernon, that hunk of a gym teacher. But it’s all a trick — the minute Kathy starts jumping Fred’s bones, cars surround them and begin flashing their lights and honking their horns. Kathy runs from the embarrassment directly into the path of an oncoming car.
Now, Kathy is stuck in a coma while her weird mother, Mary, cleans the school and mopes. A new student, Eva, arrives and meets all of the girls. But Eva is possessed by Kathy and here to get revenge, starting with Mr. Vernon. While he styles and profiles in front of a mirror in preparation for a date with Eva, his own reflection strangles himself. The next morning, a police detective (hello, Lucio Fulci!) states that he died of a heart attack. Virginia, the next victim, is killed by snails (oh Fulci!). And every time someone is killed — or Eva suffers trauma — Kathy’s body reacts.
Dr. Robert Anderson notices. And he also notices Eva, who takes him on a date and seduces him. But their relationship is super intense, including dreams where Eva basically fucks him to death. Luckily, Eva’s mom takes her home and he can start dating Jenny, the only girl who has any remorse for what happened to Kathy.
And the other girls? Glad you asked. One of them is killed by a marble statue come to life! And Eva makes Kim see visions of her boyfriend being decapitated, ending by shoving her out a window. The camera pauses on a poster of Tom Cruise in Top Gun for no reason at all! And then Kim’s boyfriend is decapitated, with his severed head landing next to his girlfriend’s dead body! Fulci, you’ve gone and done it again!
At the hospital, Jenny meets the doctor for a late night date. However, she gets lost in the building and ends up confronting Evain the morgue. A battle ensues between the doctor and Eva, who suddenly falls to the floor, dead. Why? Turns out that Karen’s mother has finally pulled the plug, sending Kathy’s soul to Heaven.
Aenigma is not Fulci’s best work. But even his middling efforts — save some of his much later films — have something interesting within them. This pastiche of Carrie is a fine time waster. Just don’t expect it to be on the level of past glories.
You can find this at Diabolik DVD, along with all your Fulci needs.
“I wish this was 1981 and we weren’t having these be our movies. We deserve way better.” That’s what Becca said after watching this movie and she actually enjoyed this one. Yes, you may say that horror is on the rise, with It being the highest grossing genre film ever and Get Out being considered for major awards. But give us the 70’s and 80’s, when you had a murder’s row of slashers and horror flicks to choose from every week at the movies or drive-in, instead one or two to pick from.
Written by comic book scribe Scott Lobdell and directed by Christopher B. Landon (Disturbia, that’s not even a word), the elevator speech for this film is pretty simple: it’s Groundhog Day meets Halloween. Yes, every single day, Theresa “Tree” Gelbma wakes up and is horribly killed, only for the same day to start all over again. And again.
Tree makes the heroine’s journey from self-centered mean girl to action-ready final girl across the span of around two week’s worth of being brutally murdered. The twist that a serial killer is involved suddenly grounds the film where previously it seemed like it was shooting for the giallo, where everyone and anyone could be the killer. That’s where Becca checked out.
Me? I liked it. I didn’t like the end of the film allusion to Groundhog Day, with Tree admitting that she’d never seen it. It seemed like such a Scream way to get around the biggest issue this film has — it’s only original because it’s a mash-up of previously made movies. There’s also a scene set exactly like Sixteen Candles, but this is where I realize that I’m old and that this film’s target audience has probably never seen a John Hughes movie.
Happy Death Day was in development for a decade, starting as Half to Death with Megan Fox attached. Director Landon even did a rewrite way back when, so when the film’s producer remembered that at a meeting, she brought up the unfilmed script. Thanks to his work on the Paranormal Activity series, Blumhouse was quick to greenlight the film.
The baby mask was designed by Tony Gardner, the same guy who made the Ghostface mask for Scream. There was a chance that it almost was a pig mask, but the evil baby killer face that keeps showing up in the film is pretty unsettling.
There’s talk of a sequel, which probably wouldn’t have happened if the film ended the way it was originally intended to. In that version, we’d follow Tree to the hospital after meeting up with the real killer and she’s murdered in the hospital by a nurse — who ends up being Dr. Butler’s wife Stephanie, in revenge for the affair that she is having with her husband. What a downer, right?
Here’s the weirdest part of the movie. There’s another film called Before I Fall that has the exact same plot, where a girl has to live the same day over and over again, trying to make things better but still dying. That’d be fine if the trailer for that film wasn’t on the DVD for Happy Death Day! Talk about weird placement. Hey — our film may only seem original until you see a trailer for a film that you may be confused into thinking is the same film you’re currently watching.
Maybe my steady diet of Sergio Martino and Joe D’Amato movies has made me crazy, because I expect more weirdness in every film I watch. That said, this is a mainstream Hollywood film made for teens and tweens, so perhaps I should have tempered my expectations. It’s good, but it never makes you jump, it never really makes you think (pther than the gigantic plot hole that if each death starts adding up, even after the happy ending isn’t going to be so happy, but that’s just ignored) and it passes by rather quickly.
There’s a scene in A Cat in the Brain where Fulci directs a Nazi orgy like a deranged madman. The results are what opens Sodoma’s Ghost, as a group of Nazi deserters and prostitutes are at play while Willy films the proceedings. Everyone dances to strange jazz music and claps their hands while watching films of the war, then the bombs fall. When you combine this intriguing beginning with a great movie poster, you can see why I picked Sodoma’s Ghost for a 3:25 AM viewing.
Years later, six American students — Mark, Paul, John, Anne, Celine and Maria — are traveling to Paris when they find the house we just saw in the opening. It’s abandoned but fully furnished, and by fully furnished, I mean it’s packed with all sorts of pornography on the walls. And oh yeah. It’s also duly appointed with Nazi ghosts.
Also, there is a flea market here, the Rossi Pop Up Market, that used to be a movie theater. You walk from theater to theater, some of which are turned into stores and some of which I am certain are now places where hoarders live during the week. This Nazi house looks like one of those theaters, with the seats all ripped out and a man in rags ready to surprise you as you search for old DVDs and only find his collection of old bags of Wonder Bread and stacks of old copies of Grit.
Is it politically correct of me to say that I would like to think that sex-crazed Nazis would have had better taste in decoration than this?
Also: It’s 21 minutes into a Fulci film and no one has lost their eye yet.
That night, Anne sleeps alone in a room when the ghost of Willy returns and slaps her around, bloodying her lip. He then licks the blood off and they have the most awkward kiss ever while the worst background music ever created plays and she bleeds all over the place. Evil Nazi ghost Willy is also a worse kisser than Randy West. He makes her confess that she loves it. She then wakes up all alone again, as it was all just a dream.
Every time the kids try to leave, they get stuck. The roads all lead back to the house. The car breaks down. The police station answers with evil voices. The phones are cut. And then they’re locked in the house. As cabin fever sets in, Maria starts to lose her mind.
Mark, drunk and wandering, finds some Nazis playing cards. He joins them only to play Russian roulette for Willy, which he survives and is rewarded with a prostitute. As he starts to touch her, his hands go right through her body and he’s covered with blood. He runs away and sees Paul as a Nazi, then tumbled down the steps to his death.
Maria then is seduced by a prostitute — who is also a ghost — who tries to turn her against her girlfriend Anne, who she claims is cheating with Celine. Speaking of Anne, a possessed version of her tries to get with Paul before turning into a corpse. Sex hijinks amongst friends was never this gory. Or ridiculous.
Paul and John find the film of the Nazis as Mark’s corpse begins to rot. They play the film and just as the ghosts arrive, the bomb drops again and the screen goes to black.
When everyone wakes up, Mark is back alive and it’s all a dream. The teenagers finally drive away, safe from the Nazi menace.
This movie just makes me sad. Anyone but Fulci could have directed it — it’s free from the trademark verve and spark of mania that he brought to films where you expected nothing, like Conquest. It’s rote and boring, with it’s running time feeling way too long. Honestly — any movie packed with Nazi ghosts, sex and violent death should be way more exciting than this.
It’s impossible for me to be objective. The House by the Cemetery is one of my favorite films ever. I cannot defend it’s lack of story, the fact that it’s influences are pinned to its sleeve or that it makes little to no sense. The first time I watched it — at a drive-in marathon that also included Zombi 2 — was an experience that burned the film into my brain.
The beginning will grab you in seconds, as a woman searches for her boyfriend in an abandoned house. She finds him dead, stabbed with scissors. Just then, she’s stabbed in the back of the head and the blade of the knife comes out of her mouth! We see her dragged away as the movie begins.
In one of the eeriest scenes in the film, Bob looks at a photo of the house and notices a young girl moving from room to room. This is the most subtle of all frights, a small moment where reality is not as it should be, and far more potent than even the goriest of grue that Fulci will soon serve up with glee. Only Bob can see this vision, which warns him to stay away.
As his parents get the keys to the house, Bob sees the girl again. Inside the rental office, Mrs. Gittleson (Dagmar Lassander, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) is upset that the couple has the Freudstein keys to Oak Mansion, but she promises to find a babysitter from Bob.
The mansion is a mess. Yet when the babysitter (Ania Pieroni, Inferno) comes, she enters the previously locked and nailed shut cellar door. Strangeness follows, like a librarian recognizing Norman despite never meeting him, the discovery of a tomb inside the house and a bat attack.
The Boyles demand a new house as Norman goes to the hospital. Mrs. Gittleson comes to tell them that she’s found a new property, but the Freudstein tombstone in the ground holds her while a figure stabs her in the neck. The next morning, Ann the babysitter cleans up the blood and avoids questions.
While the Boyles are at the hospital to treat Norman’s injuries from the bat, Mrs. Gittleson arrives at the house to tell them of a new property. Letting herself in, she stands over the Freudstein tombstone, which cracks apart, pinning her ankle. A figure emerges, stabs her in the neck with a fireplace poker, and drags her into the cellar.
The next morning, Lucy finds Ann cleaning a bloodstain on the kitchen floor while eluding Lucy’s questions about the stain. As they drink their morning coffee, Norman tells Lucy that the house was once home to Dr. Fruedstein, who conducted horrific experiments in the basement. He decides to go to New York City to learn more and on the way, he finds out that Freudstein killed his old friend Peterson’s family.
Ann can’t find Bob, so she goes to the basement where Freudstein slashes her throat and decapitates her. Bob finds her head and screams, but his mother refuses to believe the story. Bob goes back to the cellar but gets locked in. His mother tries to open the door, which can’t be unlocked. Norman returns and they make their way down to see Freudstein’s hands holding Bob. One axe slash later and the hand is cut off as the monster goes away to recover.
Inside the basement, Norman and Lucy find mutilated bodies, surgical equipment and a slab. Turns out that Freudstein is 150 years old and has learned to escape death. He returns and attacks Norman, who returns the favor by stabbing him. The twisted doctor replies by ripping out Norman’s throat. Lucy and Bon try to escape, but Freudstein drags her down to the basement where he rams her head into the floor until she dies.
Finally, the doctor grabs Bob, who is rescued by Mar and her mother, Mary Freudenstein. Mary tells them that it’s time to leave as she leads Mae and Bob down to a world of gloom and ghosts. The film ends with this quote:
House by the Cemetery is a mash-up of Frankenstein, The Amityville Horror and The Shining. And it’s another in the series of classics that Dardano Sacchetti (working with Giorgio Mariuzzo here) wrote for Fulci. If you think it’s nonsensical, imagine how early American audiences felt when the original VHS copies released in the U.S. had several of the reels out of order!
Seriously, this movie makes no sense whatsoever. There aren’t plot holes because there’s not even a plot. And sure, some say there’s too much gore. Yes, I’ve heard these complaints and I say no to all of them! Look, you’re either going to become an evangelist for this film (if you meet me in person, there’s a good chance I’ll have on a t-shirt with this film’s logo, I wear the shirt all the time) and you’ll think it’s the biggest piece of garbage ever made.
There’s a moment in The Black Cat where Patrick Magee is lying on a grave, begging a voice to speak to him while the black cat looks on with hatred in his eyes, as fog rolls across the graveyard, where you say to yourself: this is gorgeous art, far above the hack title that so many give to Fulci. In fact, this is a film packed with moments just like this.
Based on the Edgar Allan Poe story, the film starts with the titular black cat hypnotizing a man and making him crash his car. He smashes through the windshield and catches fire, all while beautiful music plays and the cat explores his neighborhood. This sequence is so perfect, a wordless way to show how this cat can be seen as pure evil yet is above the morality of humanity.
We follow the cat to the home he shares with Robert Miles (Magee, who also appeared in Asylum and Tales from the Crypt), a medium obsessed with speaking with the dead. We also meet Jill Travers (Mimsy Farmer, Autopsy), an American tourist who is taking photos of crypts when she finds a broken microphone. She meets Sergeant Wilson (Al Cliver, The Beyond), who warns her that his father told her not to bother the dead. He reminds her that this is a small British town and not London, so even a cop can be superstitious.
Meanwhile, a young couple goes to a boathouse to have sex. However, the key disappears, the air conditioning breaks and they are left to die as the air runs out. Fulci cuts back and forth between what’s happening in the outside world and then dying hand in hand.
The girl’s mother, Lillian (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery) asks the police to help find her daughter, bringing Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck, The Beyond) from Scotland Yard. Jill seeks the owner of the broken microphone and discovers Miles. He explains how he can easily hypnotize her and make her do whatever he wants before the black cat attacks him, breaking his hold over her.
Later that night, the cat kills a drunk by causing him to fall in.a barn and get impaled. With no one else to take photos, Gorley asks Jill to take photos for him. She notices the dead man has scratches on his hands just like the cuts the cat gave to Miles.
Lillian begs Miles to find her daughter, even offering to fall back in love with him again. After falling into a trance, he gives clues that lead the police to the boathouse, where the bodies of the couple are found. However, the room is locked from the inside, leaving the murders a mystery. Hours later, the black cat kills Lillian in a house fire.
Jill accuses Miles of using his evil on the cat, but Miles claims the cat has possessed him. Later, he drugs the feline and murders it, but that only gives the cat more power. Even Gorley — an unbeliever — sees the cat, which puts him in a trance, causing him to walk right in the path of a car.
Jill then breaks into Miles’ house to listen to his recordings of the dead. He returns home and she hides in the cellar where the cat begins to appear and disappear. Miles finds her and says that the cat is attacking on his hatred of the townspeople. Jill tries to run, but is attacked by bats (oh Fulci, you do so love bat attacks) and then Miles knocks her out and traps her inside a wall.
However, Gorley has survived, leading the police to Miles’ house. While they find no trace of Jill, they do hear the cry of a cat from the basement. Jill is found at the last minute and the black cat leaves, defeating Miles in the end.
The Black Cat gives Fulci plenty of opportunities to fill the screen with foggy atmosphere. There are moments of gore, but it’s not drenched in the red stuff like his later films. You can see it for yourself on Shudder and for free with a membership at Amazon Prime. Or you can grab the Arrow Video reissue at Diabolik DVD.
I love Paul Bartel. He elevates any movie that he makes a cameo in. And if he only directed Death Race 2000, he’d already have earned my adoration. Additionally, I love Mary Woronov. Much like her frequent collaborator Paul, she also makes any movie better just for showing up for a few moments.
Together, they made Eating Raoul, a movie that for some reason I never watched until now. And it’s pretty much perfect.
Paul and Mary play The Blands, a wine dealer and nurse who dream of a better life. They’re prudes who only believe in hugging and kissing, saving their passion for food and drink. They’re also given to quick anger, which leads to Paul being fired from his job and those dreams fading. Throw in the fact that they live in a building full of swingers and things start to look bleak for the Blanks.
After one of those swingers breaks in, Paul kills him with a frying pan and they throw him into the trash compactor. One day later, they do the very same thing and realize that just by killing people and getting their wallets, all their dreams may come true. After all, the bank only tried to get into Mary’s pants (as everyone but Paul tries to do).
After meeting with suburban dominatrix Doris, the Blanks make an ad. Believe it or not, the film’s budget was so small, they couldn’t afford to make a fake ad. So they ran a real ad in L.A. Weekly, but it only got one answer.
Soon, they meet Raoul (Robert Beltran, Night of the Comet and TV’s Star Trek Voyager), a locksmith con artist who breaks into their house the night after installing new locks. While in their apartment, he falls over a dead Nazi that Paul had just killed and cleaned up. He agrees to keep their secret and sell the bodies for more cash. Sure, he’s selling those bodies to a dog food company, but he’s also stealing their cars and selling them.
The very next day, while Paul is buying groceries and a new frying pan (as Mary doesn’t want to kill and cook with the same pan), a hippie client (Ed Begely Jr.) arrives late and tries to rape Mary. Luckily, Raoul arrives and kills the man with his belt. Soon, he and Mary are smoking the man’s weed and making love.
Raoul soon falls for Mary, despite her continually saying that it’s all wrong and needing marijuana to relax. The lusty locksmith tries to kill Paul with his car (after a sequence where John Paragon plays a sex shop salesman. Paragon is better known as Jambi the Genie and the voice of Pterri the Pterodactyl on Pee Wee’s Playhouse, as well as collaborating with Cassandra Peterson on her many Elvira projects), which leads to our hero working with Doris the Dominatrix to start a gaslighting campaign against Raoul, climaxing with prescribing him saltpeter pills that keep him from getting hard.After a giant swinger party, Paul ends up killing tons of rich swingers, taking their cars and money, finally able to achieve the dreams he shares with his wife. This leads to a drunken Raoul breaking back into the Bland house, disclosing the affair and telling Paul that he is taking Mary away. Of course, he has to kill Paul first, so he asks Mary to bring him the frying pan.
Instead, Mary shows her true colors and love for Paul, killing Raoul. But wait! The real estate agent is on his way and there’s no time to make him dinner! Of course, there’s always…Raoul.
The film ends with our cute little couple standing in front of their new restaurant, Paul and Mary’s Country Kitchen, with the caption, “Bon Appétit.”
Bartel shot this film on odds and ends of stock in between projects. Some of the longer runs of stock given to the production had been rejected by others because their cases had mold grown on the cans that house the film. Often, the crew would have no idea if the film they were shooting was even usable. That said, this movie has a quick, bouncy, punk rock energy that seems improvised throughout.
Sadly, there was a never-made sequel to this movie ready to go into production called Bland Ambition at the time of Bartel’s death. The Blands would be happily working at the Country Kitchen when the governor of California (Chevy Chase) would shut it down in retaliation for them not giving him special treatment. The Blands would then run against him for his office and even get a daughter, who would be a parody of The Bad Seed. Oh man! How I wish this movie had been filmed!
There was even a comic book released along with the movie by Kim Deitch (Waldo the Cat) that I need a copy of! Sure, Eating Raoul isn’t packed with the human eating spectacle of every other film this week, but that shouldn’t stop you from watching it. It’s pure joy from beginning to end!
Legend has it that David Cronenberg for the idea for the torture TV channel that lends its name to his opus Videodrome from this Joe D’Amato film, which is also known as Trap Them and Kill Them. Think of this — a film that upset Cronenberg for its mash-up of snuff, cannibalism and sex. Take it from me. This one totally lives up to its promise. Or lives down. You almost have to appreciate it for how lurid it is, as if it just screams at you, “I am the kind of movie you should feel ashamed for watching.”
First, a history lesson. This film isn’t about the French film Emmanuelle, which starred Sylvia Kristel and had an extra “m” in the title. Nope, that series was made to cash in on the trend and features Laura Gemser, an Indonesian-Dutch actress who is more dark brown than black. But why quibble? This is exploitation filmmaking, after all. The Black Emanuelle films follow the formula of the original, all about a young woman discovering her sexual identity. But I have no idea how they morphed into a series where she becomes an investigative journalist who increasingly discovers more and more depraved behavior. Is there a thin line between swingers clubs and cannibals in the jungle? I would hope that there is. After five increasingly batshit Joe D’Amato vehicles, Gemser teamed with Bruno Mattei for two women in prison movies starring the titular heroine.
It’s really Emanuelle in America that sets up the craziness of these films, as D’Amato casts her up as a journalist that goes from learning how the rich and famous have sex to seeking out a snuff film conspiracy to giving up on journalism altogether when her story gets, well, snuffed.
Somewhere in between that picture and this one, our heroine has had a change of heart and is back in the yellow journalism game.
We start in a New York City mental hospital, where Emanuelle is undercover, looking for a lesbian nurse who is abusing her patients. Her idea of undercover is wearing lots of makeup and carrying around a stuffed animal. And how does she get her info? Well, once she learns about a girl who was raised by the Apiaca, a tribe of cannibals thought to be lost, she meets the girl and has sex with her. We realize this girl is a cannibal when she bites a girl’s nipples off within her first minute of screen time. That’s the kind of movie this is, one where the heroine makes out with a girl who just ate a piece of someone’s tit.
Again — I’m warning you. You’re in for some real scum here.
She contacts Professor Mark Lester (Gabriele Tinti, husband of Gemser who also appeared in Enter the Devil and Lisa and the Devil), a curator at the National History Museum, and gets him to join her on a visit to the Amazon. How does she convince him? Well, she has sex with him. Come on. Get with the program.
They’re also joined by several others, including Isabel, MacKenzie (Donald O’Brien, Dr. Butcher, M.D.), Sister Angela and Maggie (Nieves Navarro, All the Colors of the Dark).
The film alternates between Emanuelle in danger and Emanuelle having sex. There’s a scene that defies logic with Emanuelle and Isabel making out while a monkey steals their cigarettes, lights one up and watches. Yes. A real, honest to goodness monkey.
Look — if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching cannibal films. most of the white folks aren’t on the straight and narrow. MacKenzie is really after some diamonds and his wife, Maggie, is just here to sleep with the natives.
Soon, much like Shakespeare — if the bard had dared to make a film that combines a Cinemax After Dark film and an Italian gutmuncher — everyone dies except Isobel, Lester and our girl. She covers her body with tattoos — pay attention, Dr. Butcher, M.D. — and convinces the natives that she is a goddess. Everyone escapes on a rubber raft and gets over it, surely after plenty more sex.
Trivia note: American hardcore band Trap Them take their name from this film.
Gemser would become a costume designer after acting, working on several films, including Beyond Darkness, Quest for the Mighty Sword and Door to Silence. She also created the most demented costumes ever for the movie Troll 2. And she also was responsible for this, which I found thanks to the Found Footage Festival:
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals isn’t the kind of adult film that’ll get you in the mood, unless you’re a maniac. But when you get bloody peanut butter and sexy chocolate together, you get a movie that should not, cannot and yet does exist.
After all of that, if want to watch Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals for yourself, Shudder has it right here. Even better, Severin has just re-released this on blu-ray with all the attention that it deserves. Make that more than deserves.
Also known as La Montagna del Dio Cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal God and Prisoner of the Cannibal God, don’t be fooled by the pedigree of having big stars like Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. This film may seem restrained at first, but it goes absolutely insane by the final ten minutes. I mean, when has Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) ever steered us wrong?
Susan Stevenson (Andress, the original Bond girl) is looking for her husband Henry, an anthropologist who has gone missing in the jungles of New Guinea. Along with her brother Arthur and Professor Edward Foster (Keach), they travel to the mountain Ra Ra Me, a cursed place where the authorities will not allow expeditions.
Of course, they go there. What did you expect? They’re stupid white people. The jungle thanks them with attacks from spiders, snakes and alligators. And then Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?), a jungle guide, joins their party.
Bad idea. Arthur has sex with one of the native girls, who is already married, but a cannibal attacks and kills both the husband and wife. A missionary makes them leave, as they have brought nothing but sin, adultery and death to his village. Don’t fuck in the woods. And don’t bring your Western values to the jungle.
It turns out that none of their reasons for coming to the island are altruistic. Susan and Arthur have no interest in finding her husband, but are instead looking for uranium deposits. Foster is there just to find the tribe of cannibals who had taken him captive in the past so he can wipe them off the face of the earth.
On the way, a waterfall takes Foster after Arthur doesn’t save him. And they reach the mountain, which isn’t just a uranium mine. It’s made from uranium. And how do we know that? Well, Susan’s husband’s body is being worshipped as a god because the Geiger counter he had keeps ticking, like a heartbeat.
At this point, the film rewards you by going completely off the rails, descending into chaos. A native attacks Susan, but is stopped by the tribe and castrated, then his penis is cooked and eaten. Another villager has sex with a giant pig. Meanwhile, the drums build in a hypnotic rhythm as another female villager masturbates (this is from the “director’s special selection” version, there are several cuts of the film). As this happens, Susan is stripped and smeared with orange honey by two naked female cannibals before being fed her own brother. Manolo is tortured. It feels like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, one of the only moments where the Martino who delivered a quick succession of giallo a decade or so before rears his artistic head.
Then, it’s over, with Manolo and Susan escaping. I mean, one would think that there would be years of therapy after this. But I don’t know. Perhaps she can get over this easier than most.
This isn’t a great movie. It might not even be good. It is entertaining for the last section, but there’s also the problematic issue of animal torture in the film — a monkey is slowly eaten by a snake and lizard being cut apart. Martino claims he tacked on these scenes at the distributor’s insistence. I guess the cannibal audience — an outgrowth of the audience for mondo films — needed more than just Ursula’s breasts and a dummy of Keach getting killed for their kicks.
If you have Shudder, you can watch this movie right now. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Also known as Zombi Holocaust, the American version of this film features a sequence from an unfinished film called Tales That’ll Tear Your Heart Out, a different music score and some edits for pacing. It’s also got a much better title: Doctor Butcher, M.D. (Medical Deviate). And let me warn you right here and now. This is a film that takes no prisoners. It’s everything horrible about horror films, the kind of Satanic panic nightmare that your clergyman warned you about. It is vile, reprehensible garbage. And it’s entertaining as hell.
New York City in the late 70’s is a bad place to be. Even in the hospitals, a maniac is caught cutting off body parts and escaping with them. All the higher ups want to keep the story out of the paper, but morgue assistant and anthropology exert Lori (Alexandra Delli Colli, New York Ripper — imagine having those two movies on your IMDB history!) grew up in the Moluccan islands, where the cannibal came from. Let’s forget what a coincidence this is and just savor the madness that is to follow. As soon as she learns the truth, a journalist named Susan (Sherry Buchanan, Escape from Galaxy 3, Tentacles) breaks into her place. And right after she kicks her out, her ceremonial dagger gets stolen! How could this happen!? And how coincidental — again — that a killer who works in the same hospital as Lori would steal it, get caught and give chase before falling to his death from a rooftop (and magically turn into a mannequin before crashing to the pavement)?
Maybe Lori’s hospital isn’t that unique because this is happening all over town, all with hospital workers baring the same tattoo. Dr. Pete Chandler (Ian McCulloch, Zombi, Contamination), Lori’s anthropologist friend, suggest that she join him and his friend Pete on a trip to the islands. And oh yeah — Pete’s girlfriend is Susan, in another coincidence. God only plays dice in Italian zombie films.
Once they arrive, they meet Dr. Obrero (Donald O’Brien, Ghosthouse, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals), who warns them that the natives are more like wild animals and will not take kindly to strangers. To prove his point, one of them leaves a maggot-ridden severed head in Lori’s room. At this point, any sane person would just go home. But then, we would not have a movie. Obrero sends Moloko, his assistant along with them on their journey. Is it weird that he has the same name as the island?
Within minutes of the running time of the film, all of the party’s guides and porters are dead, other than Moloko. Soon, George and Susan are raw meat and the rest of the party seem like they are soon to be dinner, too. That’s when zombies attack, sending the cannibals off into the jungle. And strangely, Dr. Obrero gets to them faster than they expected with help.
Let me spoil this one for you — Dr. Obrero is Dr. Butcher. He got the natives to rediscover their cannibal ways and they provide him with the raw material that he needs to create his zombies. He uses them for experiments, moving science forward as he works on the same set as Fulci’s Zombi. He’s a decent fellow, though. He lets the natives keep the scalps, after all.
After killing a zombie with a boat motor, Chandler breaks into the doctor’s office, where he is transplanting Susan’s brain, who is bald because, you know, they took her scalp. Also, she’s still alive. The doctor takes Chandler captive and Lori is taken by the cannibals, who the natives see as some kind of god. You know, blonde hair and white skin and all that. They paint her with flowers as if she were Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In and she lies in a body shape on the altar that looks like the tattoos we saw earlier. Somehow, again through total coincidence, she fits perfectly into the impression.
Lori uses her power over the cannibals to attack the doctor and his zombies, freeing Chandler and allowing them to head back to civilization. Where, you know, they’ll both get over this with no issues at all.
The ad campaign for this film, such as the stolen image of Salvador Dali and lurid copy on the poster, push this movie into a transgressive art experience. And that’s before the Butchermobile hit the road. A rented truck with posters plastered on every side that dripped blood, it cruised the streets of downtown New York City promising that Dr. Butcher, M.D. could deliver an experience that other lesser films could not.
You can learn all of this and more with Severin’s jam-packed blu ray release. From interviews with Aquarius Releasing’s Terry Levene, the men who drove the Butchermobile, Ian McCulloch and Sherry Buchanan to a tour of today’s Times Square, you could almost make the case that the extras are worth a release of their own. Throw in two versions of the film — both the American cut and the original Zombie Holocaust Italian version — and you have a release that simply cannot be beat.
If you ever watched a movie and wondered, “I wish that people got eaten and torn to bits every twenty seconds while loony synth music played,” I have some good news for you. Your horrifying prayers will be answered by this movie.
You can also enjoy High Rising Productions’ Calum Waddell’s documentary Eaten Alive! The Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film (2015), which is featured on the Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray for Cannibal Ferox in the U.S. and the U.K. Blu-ray for Zombi Holocaust by 88 Films. Our much adored Umberto Lenzi, Ruggero Deodato, Sergio Martino, along with actress Me Me Lai offer their genre insights for the documentary.
You can watch this movie as Zombie Holocaust on Shudder. Maybe don’t eat dinner while you’re watching it.
What happens when you throw assassins in New York City, cannibals in the jungle and a Jim Jones-like cult leader into a big pot and set it to boil? You get Eaten Alive!
Sheila (Janet Agren, City of the Living Dead, Hands of Steel) is searching for her sister, Diana (Paola Senatore, Emanuelle in America)who has disappeared in the jungle. She hires Mark (Robert Kerman, Cannibal Holocaust) to help her find her way through the jungle. Oh yeah — and there are killers in the city using blowdarts. That doesn’t matter so much once we’re in the jungle.
When they find Diana — after being chased by cannibals — they learn that she has joined the cult of Jonas (Ivan Rassimov, everyone cheer when he shows up to make this movie awesome), who abuses, murders, manipulates and mindfucks everyone and anyone he gets close to. Seriously, the minute Jonas shows up, this film goes off the rails. First, he burns a man on a funeral pyre and then orders his wife Mowara (Me Me Lai, who thanks to appearances in this film, Last Cannibal World and Man from Deep River is pretty much to this genre as Edwich Fenech, Barbara Bouchet or Nieves Navaro are to giallo)to be ritually raped. Then, he hypnotizes Sheila and takes her on an altar using a snake phallus covered in venom and blood (yep, really).
Jonas preaches the Book of Isiah and pretty much owns everyone he can get his hands on, but Mowara, Sheila, Mark and Diana all attempt to escape. Diana and Mowara are overtaken by cannibals, with Diana graphically devoured while her sister and Mark watch helplessly. A helicopter arrives at the last minute to save them while the film goes into full exploitation mode, with the cult killing themselves ala Jonestown, leaving only one female survivor.
Director Umberto Lenzi knows how to make a down and dirty film. He also knows how to keep it entertaining. Just witness other films he’s done like Ghosthouse! Plus, he’s the master of recycling, as this film re-uses the crocodile death and a woman being eaten from his 1972 film Sacrifice! (also starring Rassimov and Me Me Lai), Me Me Lai’s death from Ruggero Deodato’s Jungle Holocaust and a castration, a monkey being devoured and a man being eaten by a crocodile from Sergio Martino’s Slave of the Cannibal God. You could say he…cannibalized those movies! Sorry.
Again, keep in mind that these are rough films. They’re nearly indefensible, to be honest. I kind of wish the story of Jonas and his cult was more of the movie, with less of the cannibals. But you know, I can’t send notes back to Lenzi with a time machine or anything!
You can find this at Severin, who just put out an insanely detailed reissue, along with alternate slipcases, t-shirts and a Lenzi enamel pin! You can also watch it on Shudder.
PS – Amazingly, it wasn’t until I read this review that I learned that Eaten Alive was three different movies — Jungle Holocaust, The Man from Deep River and Mountain of the Cannibal God (look for that in a few days!) — along with some Jim Jones thrown in.
Sheila (Janet Agren, 
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