cannibal [1980]

frank o'hara claimed that movies are better than poetry.  there are exceptions of course.  but there is no doubt that cinema has influenced poetry since the dawn of the moving image of the late 19th C.  but surely o'hara didn't mean the films of jess franco when he told the mothers of america to let their children go to the movies.

not for nothing but i do have a yen for franco's blitzkreiged visions.  many of his movies - the late spaniard was prolific as hell - are unwatchable even for the hardcore masochist of movies, like me.  according to authors cathal tohill & pete tombs in their study of european expliotation filmmakers, immoral tales: european sex & horror movies, 1956 - 1984 [st. martin's griffin; 1995], franco was such an obsessive of the art & craft of movies he would be happy to simply film the traffic outside of his window.

so any & every genre of movie-making was grist for the filmmaker's mill.  in the late 1970s - early 1980s european exploitation directors were outdoing each other in the sick-out, grossest shit they thought of.  thus was the invention of the horror movie sub-genre of the cannibal vomitorium.  it's just what you think it sound like.  a group of hapless suckers wander into the amazon jungles, run afoul of the locals, & get eaten alive for their troubles.

jesus franco couldn't resist the urge himself & dived head first into making a few of these films.  this one under discussion is the first movie of two cannibal films franco would make.  it's a hard slog to watch.  not because of graphic violence.  but because it is so fucking slow, tedious & awful.

italian film stalwart al cliver stars as the father of a young daughter & husband of a scientist.  they are steaming down the amazon to do some research.  they are attacked by a tribe of cannibals that eat the mother, take the arm of cliver & kidnap their young girl.  cliver escapes with his life minus the arm.  some years later he organizes a team to rescue his daughter from the cannibals.

but the girl grows into a young woman & becomes the tribe's queen.  she is even betrothed to a warrior.  here's the thing.  the tribe of cannibals are the silliest group of fakers you could ever see onscreen.  their make-up is laughable.  they are european actors in extremis to the eyeballs & good sense of the viewer.  it's fucking embarrassing & offensive.

the other thing: franco's muse & life partner, lina romay, is also in this flick.  she is a force of nature in most of her movies.  there is really no one in world cinema quite like romay.  & yet, franco gives her very little to do.  i don't even remember the name of her character.  character development?  you gotta be shitting me!  plot?  now you're asking for too much.

but franco tries to deliver on the cannibal part.  when it is time to munch on some human flesh franco slows the action to a trickle, goes in for extreme close-up, & stretches the sound out to a series of low echoes.  like a porno movie if the director spent her life studying the movies of bergman & godard.

gawd it was hard to sit thru.  i endured it.  i had to.  as much as i loathed this movie i still admire the cinema & wacked out visions of jess franco.  but cannibal vomitorium movies was not, in the words of austin powers: international man of mystery, franco's bag.