Cannibal World

Cannibal World Directed by Bruno Mattei. Starring Helena Wagner (2004).

  Ah Vincent Dawn what a great pseudonym, as Bruno Mattei he has carved out a nice little career stealing from other directors who stole from somebody else more talented, In past reviews I mention the concept of the pasta yacht, that's the vessel of supreme Italian success you want to be attached to and hitch your sinking rotten ship onto all the more known celebrity directors, your Argentos, Fulcis or in this case Deodato. 

  Then again why would you possibly want to remake Cannibal Holocaust? In 2004 (when this came out) Eli Roth was recommending it, The pristine Criterion style version courtesy of Sage Stallone & Grindhouse Realeasing was on all the shelves and Holocaust was more of a media darling than it had ever been in its heyday. So it makes perfect sense to try and get in on some of that cash-flow and notoriety, right? Armed with his rinky dink Fisher Price camera in order to get that lawyer commercial or "Overdrawn At The Memory Bank" film stock quality Mr. Mattei went to work, no one could blame him for trying!

  In my mind Mattei has two great films under his belt, Rats: Nights Of Terror and Virus: Hell Of The Living Dead and he's also the butt of many Cinema Snob jokes. http://thecinemasnob.com/categories/263/the-bruno-mattei-show.aspx

Cannibal World starts off with news anchor footage that looks like the same technology they used for the "You Might Think" video by The Cars as we see Grace Forsythe and Bob Manson lick their lips and gleefully watch a native woman have her baby cut out of her belly. What should be vile and impossible to watch comes off unintentionally funny, the delayed English Kung Fu style dubbing helps the comedy get off to a good start. 

  In Hong Kong some Mouths later (theres a typo on the film that's not me this time). Grace shows up and yells in another language while her english dialogue clumsily catches up. Her media trash show "Face to Face" is getting canceled by, as she puts it by "a bunch of boneless dicks" and snozzwagglers. 

  According to her network, the Iraq war has made the public increasingly more bloodthirsty and their new programs have to satisfy the audience. It's weird to me how ahead of its time Cannibal Holocaust was (even though I find that film repulsive) in that media prophetic way, it was sort of genius, but this film is embarrassing in the logic of its own time period, I mean Fox News and reality TV is even outdated by the time this film was made, they could have made it more relevant to todays media cesspool but they mangled it. I didn't expect much from this director.

  Bob Manson is stuck out in the jungle (or the "pukey shit hell" as Grace puts it), she meets him out there to offer him a million for a story about cannibalism. The bad dialogue is sometimes on par with Showgirls! 

  They made this film as a marketing ploy and its doesn't follow the story of the original Cannibal Holocaust at all, other then exploiting the same types of native cultures for media attention and using a few lines.     

  Garcia the indian guide joins them on their canoe ride, the news ladies get topless and scare him away. He also slap happily cracks open a real baby alligator to eat. 

  They find some flesh eating cannibals in the jungle and soldiers with machine-guns. One of the black soldiers has a "Peter Lorre" accent. Bob and Grace do a lot of talking to the camera and pretend to be grossed out as they show the TVN executives back in Hong Kong watching the footage. Their over enthusiasm is infectious and the footage consists of alot of broke foreigners in bad wigs eating raw pork covered in kayro syrup. The audience is supposed to believe that this cannibal reality show is a smashing success!

  Bob Manson has a slight case of morality and isn't sure if its worth it to venture further into the jungle, maybe he's the Robert Kerman of this Cannibal ripoff. They encounter a tribe feasting on various bodies and one of the crew members barfs up Nickalodeon slime.   

  There's no element of real danger when they burn down the villagers hut, it's all obviously staged. I'm grateful that they only killed one animal and the only reason to enjoy this film is to crack open some cold ones, pop some pills and laugh about it. The whole premise of the producers going through the motions and questioning whether they should air it or not makes even the dullest cannibal film smarter than this one, I think two of the TVN executives are based on Dick Cheney. They also manage to recreate the rape scene as the camera crew sexually abuses a native girl. The famous recreation of her punishment by way of a pole run through her body sticking out of her mouth, is pitifully orchestrated here. If Cannibal Ferox is Holocaust on training wheels, this one is the equivalent to an informercial on crutches. Not worth tracking down. 

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