Cannibal Apocalypse

CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE (DVD)

Release Date: May 30th, 2010
Certificate: 18
Running Time: 93 minutes

Director: Antonio Margheriti

Cast: John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Cinzia De Carolis, Tony King, Wallace Wilkinson, Ramiro Oliveros, John Geroson, May Heatherly

Cannibal Apocalypse, starring John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardi Radice and Tony King and directed by Antonio Margheriti went on to become one of the original “video nasties” along with such other infamous titles as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left.

What are video nasties? Well, back in the 1980’s in the UK, a group headed by religious types, politicians and media professionals decided that other people should not have either the right or the choice to see certain films they deemed too violent, immoral or horrific, so they lobbied together and by 1984, the government passed the Video Recordings Act resulting in stricter censorship which lead to many films being banned from distribution. A list of films was published detailing what the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time thought was in breach of the Obscene Publications Act (OPA). This list came to be known as the “video nasties”.

The whole thing turned out to be a total farce though and then in 2009 someone realised that they failed to notify the European Commission, deeming the Video Recordings Act invalid since its introduction back in 1984!

What makes Cannibal Apocalypse such a curiosity for those who haven’t seen it, is of course its labelling as a video nasty. It has the lure of the forbidden and the mystery and promise of something so wild, terrifying and inhuman that a socially (and probably sexually) repressed bunch of conservatives thought it best to protect the entire nation from it for years to come.

The movie opens with Norman Hopper (John Saxon) and his men rescuing captive POW’s in Vietnam. The POW’s are kept imprisoned in a hole in the ground and starved so when a burning woman falls in with them, they proceed to tear her to pieces and devour her raw flesh. By the time Norman finds them, he is shocked to see the state they are in and as he lowers his hand to pull them out, he is bitten by one of the men, at which point he wakes up from his nightmare in his bed, safe and sound back home in Atlanta, next to his wife. He gets up, walks to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator to get a drink but finds himself eyeing up a tasty bit of raw meat instead.

The next day he gets a call from Charlie Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), one of the rescued POWS’s just released from psychiatric care; he asks Norman if he’d like to go out for a drink. Norman though is unwilling to recount tales with Charlie and would prefer to forget the whole thing so he puts down the phone and gives in to his teenage neighbour’s attempts to seduce him. She hoists up her dress and Norman goes down on her. Later on she comments on how much she enjoyed him biting her stomach just before her nagging aunt calls her away.

A rejected Charlie decides to spend his afternoon at his local cinema but his plans get ruined again when he takes a bite out of a woman’s neck as her boyfriend fondles her in the seat in front of him. This results in panic and chaos of course and in a strange turn of events a gang of motorcycle riders end up chasing him through a department store where a shootout ensues, ending up on a live news broadcast which Norman just happens to catch a glimpse of. A security guard at the store who doesn’t hear a parade of motorcycles reacts quickly at the sound of a gunshot though, but his prowess is no match for Charlie and he gets it in the gut with a bullet. Norman arrives at the scene and offers to talk Charlie out though and brings him out to the police.

They get him back to the hospital where Tom (Tony King), another rescued POW, is also being kept, but a sudden urge for human flesh gets the better of them again and they attack the doctors. One of the nurses is also attacked.

Back at the police station the police are all eating each other and at the hospital, the nurse who was attacked has a go at cannibalism herself. She bites off the tongue of the doctor as they kiss; it promptly slops on the floor as he bleeds out. After she finishes killing him, she frees the POW’s and they escape together to find more flesh to gnaw on. By this time Norman joins them and they chainsaw a mechanic’s leg for lunch.

On the run, they find refuge in the sewers, but they end up being cornered by police with flamethrowers! Only Norman survives and makes it back to his house where he is ready to die. His wife has also been bitten and is infected as well, asks him to kill her. Husband and wife lie down and die together, but across from them in the house next door, the horny teenage girl and her younger brother have just finished packing some human meat in the freezer. Her aunt.

One of the jarring aspects of the movie is the soundtrack score. Rather than a score composed of tense strings, bellowing horns and clashing cymbals, it is instead packed with 70’s disco-like guitars and bass making it feel more like an episode of Charlie’s Angels, The A Team or The Fall Guy verging on porn than an actual gore movie. It relieves the tension instead of building it and for me I found this is a drawback as I normally rely on a soundtrack together with a well crafted scene to build a movie and guide the viewer through the story. Others though have praised it and some have even been inspired by it.

30 years after it was first made, Cannibal Apocalypse is something of a disappointment to the first time viewer who might have already seen any of the Saw or Hostel movies. 1980 was a very different time in cinema though and the movie does have some merits, but not enough to herald it as a classic or to be one of the infamous video nasties. It does have flaws in narrative and continuity and it is never fully explained what the virus was, only what it causes. If it were to be released as a movie made today, Cannibal Apocalypse would sink without a trace, which is probably what would have happened 30, ironically, banning it saved it.

While many may view it as a commentary on how the Vietnman War devoured America or something with a political context I don’t see it that way. For me, Cannibal Apocalypse says more about repression, not

If the film is a comment on anything then it has to be about repression in society. While repression can be of great help in allowing us to move along with our daily lives while resisting urges to take what we want either for financial or sexual gain or to service other appetites it can also have harmful consequences as ego and id battle it out in the mind, something I am sure Freud and Foucault would agree with me on. Memories and urges can boil to the surface and the right trigger can turn a usually agreeable person into a slave to their desires, hungers and fetishes. This is what I ultimately see Cannibal Apocalypse as a film about. Norman wants to forget his experience in Vietnam. His wife fights her desire for a male colleague. The nurse has a secret affair with the doctor at the hospital. The teenage girl is forced by her aunt to control herself. Charlie has a weakness for women’s breasts. These are all people who repress urges in themselves which finally manifest as cannibalism, forcing them to tear others apart the way they are being torn apart inside.

But interpretations aside, with film being as subjective as any other art form, Cannibal Apocalypse has ignited a curiosity in me for other movies in this peculiar genre. Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox are definitely next on my list.