Just like Brian Blessed being asked to shout "Gordon's Alive!" by fans all over the world, the same thing happens with Stacey Keach, only he's asked to utter to immortal line: "You don't forget the taste of human flesh!"
Yet another entry in the 'nobody asked for this' genre of Italian Cannibal films, Slave of the Cannibal God features slightly less animal cruelty that the more notorious Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox, but there's still enough of it to sour up what could have been a pretty good jungle horror adventure.
Ursula Andress stars as a woman out to track down her husband, who has gone missing in New Guinea. Taking her arrogant Teutonic brother along with her, she enlists the help of Stacey Keach, a man who knows the area and thinks that her husband has gone to the island of Ra Ra Me, which translates into English as "Horrible island filled with cannibals and booby traps". Why Keach knows about this is kept a secret for now. They also take along some locals to bulk up the number of victims a bit, including one guy who keeps eavesdropping on everyone's conversations.
Things get down and dirty right away when the guides don't take kindly to a spider being killed and end up sacrificing a lizard in the only scene in the film that involves a human killing an animal. Don't you worry though, as you'll get to see a lot of animals eating other animals in footage I thought was David Attenborough-level documentary stuff, but have since learned was staged by the filmmakers. Thanks for that.
Once everyone gets to the island they find a few corpses and it's about this time that freaky masked natives start springing traps that whittle down the non-white cast in various ways, from spike traps to the more up close and personal beheading. The white folk are fine though, so I guess that's okay. When the natives start making moves on Ursula, it's time for bitter irony to hit the screen as doe-eyed Claudio Cassanelli turns up as a guy working for priest Franco Fantasia, who has a mission on the island. The irony takes shape in Cassanelli's character - he's an animal lover who doesn't harm animals.
There's various twists and turns before the cannibals get involved and any semblance of taste goes out of the window as people are hacked up and eaten, rotten flesh is smeared on Ursula's face, and a dwarf literally gets his brains knocked out of his head. There's also seems to be extra footage in the version I watched most recently where a guy pretends to bugger a pig. What the fxck that's all about is beyond me. You get to see Ursula Andress naked but she doesn't float my boat to be honest.
Sergio Martino was a master of the giallo so why he chose to go down this road is beyond me.
Yet another entry in the 'nobody asked for this' genre of Italian Cannibal films, Slave of the Cannibal God features slightly less animal cruelty that the more notorious Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox, but there's still enough of it to sour up what could have been a pretty good jungle horror adventure.
Ursula Andress stars as a woman out to track down her husband, who has gone missing in New Guinea. Taking her arrogant Teutonic brother along with her, she enlists the help of Stacey Keach, a man who knows the area and thinks that her husband has gone to the island of Ra Ra Me, which translates into English as "Horrible island filled with cannibals and booby traps". Why Keach knows about this is kept a secret for now. They also take along some locals to bulk up the number of victims a bit, including one guy who keeps eavesdropping on everyone's conversations.
Things get down and dirty right away when the guides don't take kindly to a spider being killed and end up sacrificing a lizard in the only scene in the film that involves a human killing an animal. Don't you worry though, as you'll get to see a lot of animals eating other animals in footage I thought was David Attenborough-level documentary stuff, but have since learned was staged by the filmmakers. Thanks for that.
Once everyone gets to the island they find a few corpses and it's about this time that freaky masked natives start springing traps that whittle down the non-white cast in various ways, from spike traps to the more up close and personal beheading. The white folk are fine though, so I guess that's okay. When the natives start making moves on Ursula, it's time for bitter irony to hit the screen as doe-eyed Claudio Cassanelli turns up as a guy working for priest Franco Fantasia, who has a mission on the island. The irony takes shape in Cassanelli's character - he's an animal lover who doesn't harm animals.
There's various twists and turns before the cannibals get involved and any semblance of taste goes out of the window as people are hacked up and eaten, rotten flesh is smeared on Ursula's face, and a dwarf literally gets his brains knocked out of his head. There's also seems to be extra footage in the version I watched most recently where a guy pretends to bugger a pig. What the fxck that's all about is beyond me. You get to see Ursula Andress naked but she doesn't float my boat to be honest.
Sergio Martino was a master of the giallo so why he chose to go down this road is beyond me.