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February 2001
Download the word version, perfect for printing and handing out on street corners!
CULT PICK O' THE MONTH!: Cannibal Ferox *****
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Ash
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Finally, an Italian cannibal movie that raises some real social issues.
It's been a while since genital mutilation has been imbued with implicit
significance, but Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly) bucks the trend
and turns what is usually a popcorn-eating, summer blockbuster genre into an
insightful social commentary. Starring a bunch of people you've never heard
of and directed by a guy you'll hopefully never hear of again, Ferox takes
the Italian cannibal genre in exciting new directions, like brain-eating and
eye-gouging. The plot follows three 'Americans' (i.e. blond Italians) who
travel to the Amazon rainforest in order to cure those nasty genital sores
by having their bits and pieces eaten by mud-smeared savages. Along the way,
they encounter some more fodder in the form of two drug dealers who have
inadvertently slighted the natives' unholy pagan god merely by raping and
killing a few of the village women. The natives return the favour by
systematically dispatching the Americans in various grisly ways, including
dismemberment and the aforementioned brain-eating, which is accomplished via
an ingenious device similar in design to a guillotine tipped on its side. It
seems those natives are not quite as backward as everyone thought. Granted,
they still haven't invented clothes, or pre-cooked bacon, so they can't be
all that bright. It is during these systematic attacks that the general
theme of the film is voiced by one of the characters, who rather pointedly
asks whether the white man is in fact the true savage, for it is the white
man who has driven the natives to such barbarity. Well, in a word, no. Not
at all. For despite all the wars, environmental destruction and Reality TV
perpetrated by Western Civilization, I have yet to meet anyone outside of my
immediate family with a brain-eating machine. And as for myself, I may not
be a particularly pleasant human being, and I would hesitate to call myself
'civilized' in any sense of the word, but I haven't strung a girl up by a
meat hook jabbed through her bazoongas since I was a kid, something the
natives in this film are unable to claim. But despite its misplaced social
commentary, Ferox still manages to be a powerful and entertaining film,
based entirely on the fact that the genital feast ranks among the top five
castration scenes in film history. The fact that there even are five
castration scenes to rank makes me wonder if perhaps there is a little truth
to the film's thesis, which in turn forces me to question society in
general. For example, who is the true criminal, the hobo who breaks into my
house and steals my VCR for Listerine money, or me, for not giving him a
quarter just because he smells like a bag of month-old hamburger meat? And
also kicking him. Twice. And who is the true deviant, the person who
produces cheerleader/donkey porn, or me, for downloading it and using it for
title pages on my midterms? As you can see, the questions never stop, nor do
they stop incriminating me, but before you judge me too harshly, remember
this: who is worse, me for writing this drivel, or you for reading it?
That's what I thought.
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