“A jaywalking iguana! That’s all we need now!”

This is essentially a replica of Holocaust with a bunch of hapless idiots venturing into the jungle to disprove the existence of cannibalism (place your bets on the outcome of that) intercut with a New York story which in this case does nothing but help make the movie feature-length. Where Holocaust, I found to my surprise, ultimately had something pretty heavy to say, however, this one is more interested in getting to the 10 minutes or so of gore in the finale.

The heroine staring into the camera at the end having denied the whole thing ever happened hints at the way Holocaust implicated the entire audience in the ordeal by virtue of their mere watching; and yes, that final gore is pretty nasty (I’m sure the movie makers were glad that girl had bigger boobs than Francesca Ciardi, lol …) ... but overall it’s all pretty pointless. Hmm … let me clarify that, since most of these movies are overall pretty pointless lol; I mean in a bad way here.

... aka a lot of other things, lol. I had three of these things lined up and as I started to read about all the alternate titles and versions etc I realised, crap – I’m gonna end up with three versions of the same movie here, aren’t I? But thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Anyway … this one is wonderfully cheap, wonderfully gorey, and most of all I was happy to find I haven’t seen it before. I’m just not sure I find the idea of cannibalism as terrifying as I once did (I’m sure they used to be up there with Gorgons for me or something). If the idea of cannibalism in itself doesn’t send chills down your spine, all you’re left with in most of these movies is a bunch of indiscriminate killing of people usually ultimately proven to be practically deserving of their fate through some form of idiocy. Since there are certainly gorier cannibal movies than this one and this has little else to offer, I’m afraid I really can’t recommend it unless you’re an obsessive of the genre.

I can’t really do better than the stock TV guide summary for this one – it is, indeed, a “sleazy Italian horror”, lol. Switching on midway, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a far better Dario Argento movie – the camera style, the music, the disembodied dubbed voices, are all very familiar – but if you stuck it out you’d find yourself incredibly disappointed. The story makes little sense, if any; and if you’re looking for gore, you’d be better off with an episode of E.R. Of course, if you’re drawn in by the title (and what 13-year-old boy wouldn’t be?), you certainly won’t be disappointed by the nudity – the movie opens with an inexplicable shot of a woman running naked through a forest, a kinky scene where the heroine’s clothes disappear, and even what has been described recently on the IMDb message board as, “Seventies-style porn!” towards the end. That may or may not be enough to take your mind off the god-awful fake spider effect. I almost want to give this 2 stars ‘cos even I don’t mind seeing boobies every now and then … but then, even The Wicker Man has those, so I’m going to be sensible and give it 1 … I mean, it’s at least unique …