Jess Franco fans like myself are kind of like drug addicts, always watching another film, hoping against hope to again capture the initial rush of something like "Succubus", "Venus in Furs", or "Eugenie--Story of her Journey into Perversion". Usually, we just wind up with mediocre dreck that leaves us vaguely dissatisfied. Sometimes though we REALLY get burned, like with this film. To be fair jungle action films are not Franco's forte--his films often fail to maintain a basic suspension of disbelief that they were NOT filmed in European zoo. Cannibalism is not Franco's thing either, for instance, he doesn't seem to realize that even cannibals COOK their food before they eat it. Franco actually used the same long, slow-motion takes of people eating raw flesh in extreme close-ups at the climax of one of his WIP movies, but in that context it was pretty sickening (if that's a plus). Here though it's just tedious and dull--the only way this rates a "99 on the vomit meter," as Joe Bob Briggs supposedly said, is if extreme boredom causes you to somehow throw up.
Naturally, with cannibal scenes this laughable the film is nowhere near as potent as one of your better Italian cannibal epics (although they don't slaughter any real animals, at least). But one thing I certainly would expect from a Franco film is sex and nudity--and that's were it REALLY disappoints. Lina "Mrs. Jess Franco" Romay is in the cast, but Franco uncharacteristically keeps her under wraps except for a brief t-shot when she's being eaten (literally). She is by far the most talented actor in the movie, but still what a waste of an actress who had one of the best bodies around in those days. You have the opposite problem with Sabrina Siani, playing the same barely-legal jungle girl character played by Alice Arno, Katja Beinert, and Ursula Fellehner in other Franco movies. Siani spends the entire movie half-naked, but she's such a terrible actress even that gets boring, and her one sex scene can best be described as somnambulistic. I also couldn't help wondering how the dark-haired little girl in the beginning grew up to be a blonde teenager (albeit with dark roots). Where did she find peroxide in the jungle? (Of course, she had to be blonde or this "white goddess" wouldn't have looked any whiter than the obviously European "cannibals").
But I'm forgetting something--oh yeah, the plot. Well, it's pretty much the exact same plot as "Diamonds of Kilimajaro", but with more inept "cannibalism" scenes and less gratuitous nudity. Watch that one instead.
Naturally, with cannibal scenes this laughable the film is nowhere near as potent as one of your better Italian cannibal epics (although they don't slaughter any real animals, at least). But one thing I certainly would expect from a Franco film is sex and nudity--and that's were it REALLY disappoints. Lina "Mrs. Jess Franco" Romay is in the cast, but Franco uncharacteristically keeps her under wraps except for a brief t-shot when she's being eaten (literally). She is by far the most talented actor in the movie, but still what a waste of an actress who had one of the best bodies around in those days. You have the opposite problem with Sabrina Siani, playing the same barely-legal jungle girl character played by Alice Arno, Katja Beinert, and Ursula Fellehner in other Franco movies. Siani spends the entire movie half-naked, but she's such a terrible actress even that gets boring, and her one sex scene can best be described as somnambulistic. I also couldn't help wondering how the dark-haired little girl in the beginning grew up to be a blonde teenager (albeit with dark roots). Where did she find peroxide in the jungle? (Of course, she had to be blonde or this "white goddess" wouldn't have looked any whiter than the obviously European "cannibals").
But I'm forgetting something--oh yeah, the plot. Well, it's pretty much the exact same plot as "Diamonds of Kilimajaro", but with more inept "cannibalism" scenes and less gratuitous nudity. Watch that one instead.