Review of Cut and Run

Originally intended for American horror-meister Wes Craven – which probably explains the presence of Michael Berryman from his THE HILLS HAVE EYES movies – this was eventually made by controversial Italian exploitation film-maker Deodato (with whom I have had the pleasure of a long chat around 03:00a.m. at the 2004 Venice Film Festival) as an unofficial last entry in his "Cannibal" trilogy! While I'm no fan of the previous two (in fact, I similarly awarded them ** apiece), it's easy to concede that this is the least of the bunch despite (or perhaps because of) the bigger budget and relatively decent cast accorded it. Apparently, the presence of so many English-speaking actors – Berryman, Richard Lynch, Karen Black, Lisa Blount, Willie Aames, Richard Bright, Eriq La Salle, Penny Brown – required the film to be shot in English in direct sound (a rarity for Italian productions) but I'm a stickler for seeing movies in their native language and thus I opted to watch the film in Italian (despite the presence of a cobbled-together English-language soundtrack on the Anchor Bay DVD which reportedly reverts to the Italian one for certain 'lost' sections)! Anyhow, it's virtually impossible not to think of Lynch's character – an American Colonel 'finding' himself in the Amazonian jungles at the head of a tribe of cut-throats – as having been modeled on Marlon Brando's incoherent turn in APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) but Deodato is much too interested in filming extreme gore (copious decapitations, one disembowelment and Steiner's character literally being split in two!) and his current girlfriend (Valentina Forte) in the nude to let such comparisons or pretensions bother him in the slightest. As usual with Euro-Cult fare, the music is a standout and ex-Goblin Claudio Simonetti's disco-tinged score here is no exception.