Starring:
John Saxon
Elizabeth Turner
Giovanni Lombardo Radice (as John Morghen)
Cinzia De Carolis (as Cindy Hamilton)

Dir: Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony M. Dawson)

The urge to get the DVD of this cannibal exploitation movie was completely impulsive on my part as soon as I found out John Saxon was in it.

Saxon has been a cult favourite in my house since an afternoon of watching movies with my housemate gave us an inadvertent Saxon double-bill when we watched “A Nightmare on Elm Street” followed by “Enter the Dragon“. As a lover of cult, gory, and generally just bad movies, the combination of John “The” Saxon and Italian cannibalism was too much to resist. I had to see this film.

The opening sequence had a lot of my favourite movie elements in it – War, stock footage, breasts, someone on fire, and a suicidal dog.

It was a great start.

Antonio Margheriti’s direction in “Cannibal Apocalypse” is hit-and-miss at best. Logistical or budgetary obstacles are clumsily stumbled through rather than gracefully overcome. Despite this, the movie plods along at quite a nice pace, even with pedestrian direction akin to the kind you’d expect in low-budget TV movies. Then seemingly out of nowhere, you’re hit with a beautiful shot that takes your attention away from the dialogue completely. That’s not at all a bad thing though. The screenplay is terrible. “Cannibal Apocalypse” has a pretty good story to tell (at least by exploitation film standards), and it’s told badly.

There were some great performances in this film. In particular, Bobcat Goldthwait lookalike Giovanni Lombardi Radice (credited as John Morghen), as positively mental Vietnam Vet Charlie Bukowski.

Special mention must also be made of the movie’s jailbait wank and token Lolita, Mary, who was a well-written character portrayed particularly well by Cinzia De Carolis (credited as Cindy Hamilton). She seemed to have really got into the character’s head for the role.

Saxon on the other hand was Saxon as he always is. His emotional range is as terrible in this movie as in every other movie he’s in. Whether he’s angry, confused, scared, happy, Kung Fu-kicking or doing sex scenes, his face is always that of a man whose internal monologue is “I’m sure I left my keys on that table”. If you see only one John Saxon movie in your life (and let’s face it, you only need to see one to see his acting range), make sure it’s “Enter the Dragon“. There’s a reason that it has been committed to the National Film Registry and “Cannibal Apocalypse” hasn’t.

The soundtrack to “Cannibal Apocalypse” is incredibly jarring. Some mellow, soul funk music plays over every violent sequence. Perhaps it’s a way around censorship so that the violent sections are taken with a big, fat slice of tongue-in-cheek pie, but to say it jars would be an understatement.

I have to say that “Cannibal Apocalypse” surprised me. I was expecting several shades of celluloid crap when I started the DVD, but was taken off guard by what was actually an above average flick. The amount of gore and cannibalism was kind of tame. The only reason it was seemingly a Video Nasty was because of a two second shot of a burning rat. The “twist” at the end was obvious from about fifteen minutes in when that strand of sub-plot begins.

An unbiased critic would probably give “Cannibal Apocalypse” three stars. But the very fact that Hollywood’s roundest head has the lead in this movie elevates it to the upper tier of my DVD collection. John Saxon, you are my Bruce Campbell.

*****

“Cannibal Apocalypse” was also distributed under the following titles:

• Apocalipse Cannibal
• Apocalipsis Caníbal
• Apocalisse Domani
• Apokalypsi 2
• Apokalypsi Avrio – Erhontai oi Kannivaloi
• Asphalt Kannibalen
• Asphalt-Kannibalen
• Cannibal Apocalipsis
• Cannibal Apocalypse
• Cannibal Massacre
• Cannibals in the City
• Cannibals in the Street
• Demain l’apocalypse
• Invasion of the Fleshhunters
• Pulsions cannibales
• Savage Apocalypse
• Savage Slaughterers
• The Cannibals Are in the Streets
• The Slaughterers
• Virus
• Zontanos Stohos 2

Tags: Anthony M. Dawson, Antonio Margheriti, Bad Movie, Bad Movie Review, Cannibal, Cannibal Apocolypse, Elizabeth Turner, Exploitation, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, John Morghen, John Saxon, Video Nasties, Video Nasty

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Bad Acting, Cannibalism, Exploitation, Gore, Low Budget, Reviews, Zombies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.