$hubes

2/10

Not my first time (hopefully my last, though!) to watch this; watched it years ago - back in the mid 1980's - as the U.S. release _Make Them Die Slowly_ and watched it again a little over a year ago. Didn't leave any comments (wish I had) but I recently watched its "sister" movie, _Cannibal Holocaust_ and decided I would watch this one in tandem just to make notes of the small differences. These two films ( _Cannibal Holocaust_ and _Cannibal Ferox_ ) are somewhat similar (but certainly not identical, as thought by some) by different directors trying to outdo each other in the gore/realism/cannibalism factor. Both movies suck but this one starts off with at least a more glaringly fictional start. Where _Cannibal Holocaust_ starts off with a news reporter and a feeble attempt to seem somewhat realistic, _Cannibal Ferox_ starts off with a drug-addled goofball _"just trying to score some horse, man!"_ when he breaks into his source's apartment, only to be faced down by two would-be mafia types who are also looking for his friend. The first thing I rolled my eyes at was the porn-movie soundtrack...total 1970's type music (actually, it might even be geared more towards the late 1960's, but in any event, it doesn't fit, and is just as cheesy as the acting.) Although somewhat identical (both films are centered on a group of young people who foray into the Amazonian jungles), the stories take different turns: One would think _Cannibal Ferox_ was released first, and _Cannibal Holocaust_ came after as _Holocaust_ centers on a group of students who set out to locate a "group of friends who disappeared in the Amazon jungle and were never heard from again". Oddly, _Cannibal Ferox_ is the story of "a group of friends who disappeared [at least most of them] in the Amazon jungle and were never heard form again."_ Surprisingly, however, I discovered that _Cannibal Ferox_ was released in 1981, a year AFTER the 1980 release of _Cannibal Holocaust_ . I don't know; maybe this was meant to be the "prequel" (that is so prevalent in today's films)? haha (Yes, that was spoken sarcastically; the stories are both so horribly awful and the acting so cheap that it's difficult to believe either director or production company would have a clue as to what filming a prequel or backstory would mean.) The "torture" or gore that, back in the mid-1980s, was so horrific and wonderfully gruesome, by today's standards is almost laughable. Granted, it may be an unfair comparison, as the advent of computer technology and CGI effects today have the ability to make things look much more realistic and gruesome but still... the worst you get here is a cut-away scene of a male being castrated (and his penis subsequently served up as an appetizer) and the infamous scene of the blond chick being meathooked through her boobs and (I assume?) dying of exhaustion after hanging there for some time. I still don't understand why the "cannibals" only stood around and stared at these white people instead of carving them up and having them for lunch. There's a brief and hard-to-understand backstory of the "cruelty of the white man" that initiated the monstrous revenge on them by these "savages" but even that is hard to follow in this story. In _Cannibal Holocaust_ the same storyline is at least portrayed more brutally so you can understand why the Amazonians came to hate (and exact their brutal vengeance on) these white interlopers. While a part of me really does regret wasting another hour and a half (over three hours total if you count both films) of my life in watching these, there's a part of me that's glad I did it; I can say now that the two movies **are not** identical (granted, they _are_ similar stories) and the torture/gore/cannibalism scenes are uniquely different. The acting is equally awful in both films, and neither deserve your time or attention. Both have laughably bad moments but those moments are far too rare to merit sitting through either of these films in its entirety. If you're looking for a gruesome, bloody-disgusting movie, there are far better ones out there (the entire _Hostel_ franchise comes to mind, along with Eli Roth's modern spin on these particular films, _The Green Inferno_ .) that - for the hardest of die-hard "gorror" fans, are worth sitting through. I can't recommend either _Cannibal Ferox_ or its predecessor, _Cannibal Holocaust_ for any reason. Even by 1970's standards, these were both just completely awful.