A Pistol for Ringo/The Return of Ringo (1965)

Both Directed by Duccio Tessari 
Both Staring Giuliano Gemma, Fernando Sancho, Nieves Navarro
98/95 minutes
Italy

1965 was an exciting time in the world of the Italian Western. Sergio Leone followed up on his mission statement, the previous years A Fistful of Dollars, with the bigger and better sequel, For A Few Dollars More, but the genre had yet to be taken to its apocalyptic apex with Sergio Corbucci's 1966 masterpiece Django. This was a time of experimentation, where Leone's films had signalled to jobbing directors that it was okay for them to innovate and subvert cliches within a genre that had previously been confined to imitating Hollywood. Enter Duccio Tessari. One of several uncredited co-writers on A Fistful of Dollars, who in 1965 would release a dulogy of films which would achieve great commercial success and launch the career of Spaghetti Western icon Giuliano Gemma (or 'Montgomery Wood', if you prefer). These films have recently been lovingly released on blu-ray on Arrow Films, and with the resurgent interest in Spaghetti Westerns in recent years thanks to a certain Mr.Tarantino, they're ripe for re-discovery. 

A Pistol for Ringo is probably the only Spaghetti Western one could make the case for being a Christmas film, as it takes place from the 23 - 25 of December. The Christmas theme never comes to the forefront, but its an interesting choice to stage the action at such a specific time of the year. The plot concerns the legendary gunslinger, Ringo "Angel Face" (Gemma) who kills four people out of claimed self defence but is arrested nonetheless. At the same time, a gang of ruthless Mexican outlaws cross the border and rob the local bank. Their leader Sancho (Fernando Sancho) is wounded when they try to escape, and so they take refuge in a local ranch, also taking the owners hostage. Sheriff Ben (George Martin) is reluctant to get involved as his fiance is among the hostages, so after a quick trial in which he is speedily acquitted, Ringo is set free and tasked with infiltrating the gang.

The character of Ringo is interesting in his subversion of the typical Spaghetti Western hero, exemplified by the likes of Django and The Man With No Name. Clean shaven, chatty, eschewing whisky in favour of milk (there is a tense scene in which the outlaws try to get him to drink with them), and with classic boyish good looks, if Tessari was looking to stand out from the ground and create his own spin on the classic western hero, he certainly succeeded, and its no wonder Gemma became such a beloved figure in Italian cinema. With a background as an acrobat, its highly entertaining to watch him leaping across the screen, giving the slip to the bad guys, and even in a dubbed performance his natural charm and charisma shines through. It's interesting that in spite of his seemingly clean-cut image, Ringo still exists in a brutal Spaghetti Western landscape, and he has the moral compass to accommodate this. After all, we're introduced to him playing hopscotch just before he brutally mows down 4 men in cold blood. When the sheriff asks him to help out, his interest is only piqued at the mention of money. "It's a matter of a principle", he tells us, "never enter into a deal for less than 30%", He may be handsome and witty, but like The Man With No Name, his primary interest is strictly money. When everything is wrapped up, he quickly rides away with his share of the deal, no time for sentimentality. As Morricone's lush theme song tells us "Ringo...now the story's told...that the only love he had...was for gold."

Ringo's great character holds up a plot which has a tendency to drag. There's a weird subplot in which one of the hostages falls in love with one of the bandits, which never really goes anywhere. Tessari seems to lack confidence as a director at this stage. He favours shots of up to four or five people in the same frame talking. This works well enough, but the domestic soap opera like squabbling can grow tiresome after a point. Thankfully he would improve.

The Return of Ringo isn't really a sequel. Though the title suggests a legendary character returning, it actually refers to Gemma's character here returning home from the Civil War. Gemma essentially plays a completely different character who just happens to also be called Ringo (no "Angel Face" this time). The film is loosely based on the ancient Greek story of Homer's Odyssey. Captain Montgomery "Ringo" Brown (Gemma) returns home from the war in which he was believed to have been killed, to find that his town and house has been overrun by Mexican bandits, and his wife engaged to one of the leaders, Paco Fuentes (George Martin). In an attempt to learn the truth, he dyes his hair and disguises himself as a peasant, gradually gaining access to his old house and discovering in the process that he has a daughter who is being used by Fuentes to keep a hold on his wife Hally (Lorella de Luca) in order to make her compliant in his desire to marry her.

Though they're difficult to compare as they have a much different plot and general tone to one other, to me this is a much stronger film than its predecessor. It has a much operatic quality which is achieved through the way in which Tessari combines Morricone's reliably excellent music with his visuals. The scene in which Ringo sees his previously unknown daughter for the first time and Tessari focuses on the heartbroken look on his face as the score builds to a crescendo is classic Spaghetti Western exuberance (the music here is so good that Tarantino used part of it for the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds). Pistol took place in the sweltering heat, Return takes place in a windy desolate town. There are some fantastic shots of Ringo sulking about the place he once called home which is now unrecognisable to him. Also striking is the shot of Ringo's silhouette in the doorway of the church as he gatecrashes his wife's forced wedding, defiantly announcing "I've come back!".

It's a shame that a somewhat dark film is slightly spoiled by Tessari's penchant for comic relief characters (which Alex Cox so disdainfully calls the "cute/funny" in his fantastic book 10,000 Ways to Die). Though in A Fistful of Dollars they fit with the films playful gallows humour, and in A Pistol for Ringo they fit with the films more lighthearted approach, they seem to clash in a film which otherwise tells the bleak story of a broken man. In particular its bad in this film because the comic relief takes the form of a florist played by Manuel Muniz, who has an extremely bright house covered in flowers in the middle of what is otherwise a ghost town. It also doesn't help that the name of this character is literally "Morning Glory". I probably wouldn't mind so much but this character is vital to the plot as he is the only man in the town who will initially give Ringo the time of day, taking him in  at his lowest and helping him to find his way back. I don't know but it's a bit jarring to me when one of the main characters in your otherwise serious film is an old man who lives in an extremely bright flower covered house and is literally named after an erection joke.

Though they aren't on the level of a Leone or an upper rank Corbucci, the Ringo films have enough cool things about them for me to recommend them to fans of both Spaghetti Westerns and cult films in general. They represent a point in a time where a genre cycle was only just reaching its peak, and jobbing directors were making exciting and unique films with their own spin on a previously thought tired genre.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

aka Godzilla Resurgence
Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi
Starring Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, and Satomi Ishihara
119 Minutes
Japan

Godzilla, a genuine pop culture behemoth. Ever since his debut in 1954, he's starred in 31 films, become recognised one of the most iconic symbols of Japan in the west, and went from villain to hero and back again, but more often than not been something in between. Gareth Edward's 2014 american Godzilla, though a highly flawed film, was a great attempt which treated the character with the respect and reverence he deserves, and served the job of bringing him back into the public consciousness. The time could have not been better for Toho, the Japanese company responsible for the franchise in the first place, to reboot Godzilla in his first film produced in his home country since 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars. They did so with a serious statment of intent, getting famed anime postmodernist Hideaki Anno to direct. What they have delivered, is arguably the darkest iteration in the franchise to date, the most horrific incarnation of the king of the monsters, and one the best films in the series since the original.

Notably this is the first time that Toho have rebooted the series completely, with zero links to any past entries. Previous times that they reintroduced the character, they have at least acknowledged the events of the 1954 original as cannon, whilst ignoring everything in between, such as in 1984's The Return of Godzilla. Here though, it is made explicitly clear that this is the first time that Godzilla has appeared. It's a wise creative decision, as it allows the filmmakers to speculate just what it would be like if Godzilla appeared in the present day, with the government being totally unequipped to deal with the situation. This is brilliantly demonstrated in early scenes where Godzilla is captured in a viral video, which most of the government officials pay no attention to and assume the source of the recent destruction to be natural phenomenon. Sure enough, footage of a tail coming out the ocean is seen on the news and government is forced to acknowledge the existence of the creature. The Japanese Prime Minister then holds a press conference to assure the public that there is no way that said creature could come on land, a scene which is brilliantly intercut with the creature coming ashore and causing devastation. Shin-Godzilla works not only as a monster movie but as a biting satire of ineffective politicians and bureaucracy. The older members of the cabinet in film are portrayed as being totally unequipped to deal with a crisis of such magnitude, seemingly more concerned with protecting their own positions at the costs of lives of civilians. There are long scenes of ministers talking other each other and getting nowhere which are darkly contrasted with scenes of Godzilla causing destruction. In a year when more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the political landscape, it joins I, Daniel Blake as a seething indictment of bureaucratic redtape and laissez faire attitudes (as odd as it seems to be pairing a Godzilla film with a Ken Loach film). Just as the original Godzilla was a chilling metaphor for the dangers of nuclear weapons, Shin Godzilla is a political satire which warns of the pitfalls of the political system in a crisis situation, and just like the original, it demonstrates that monster movies don't just have to be dumb popcorn entertainment but can say important things about the world we live in.

Let's talk about Godzilla himself. He's one of the most iconic movie characters of all time, so it stands to reason that a reboot should reinvent him just enough for the modern day whilst staying true to the origins and spirit of the character. Shin Godzilla's way to go about this is to the revisit the franchise's roots, by making Godzilla as much a sympathetic victim of the nuclear age, but at the same time updating him to make him appropriately scary for today's audiences. He's depicted in this film as a horrifying abomination, reminiscent of the works of Junji Ito and Hp Lovecraft. On his first appearance he doesn't  quite resemble the Godzilla we know and love, as he evolves throughout the film until he reaches his final and most recognisable form. Each time, it's quite clear he's in immense pain just from existing. When he roars he stretches his mouth  stretches back unnaturally wide, and several times in the film he excretes a blood like substance from his gills. His final form almost resembles a zombie Godzilla with its exposed muscle and dead black flesh. Later in the film, when he first unleashes his trademark atomic breath, its the most devastating and brutal display of the power ever seen. This is a Godzilla which is, anatomically horrific, totally unpredictable, and dead set on revenge against the race which has caused him to be living such a miserable existence.

Towards the end of its run time, Shin Godzilla begins to lose some its momentum. Though the ongoing debate scenes were great in the early part of the film for establishing the urgency and helpless of the situation, after a certain point they begin to drag on a little two long. The film does leave you wishing for a little more focus on Godzilla, though on the one hand that could be considered a positive in the sense that the film leaves you hungry to see more and not overdosed on action in the way that so many modern blockbusters do. It's certainly a much different story from the 2014 Godzilla which would tease you with Godzilla and then cut away as he was about to do something. Overall the latter part of the film could have used some tighter editing, perhaps bringing the film down to an hour and forty five minutes rather than two hours.

As I mentioned in my revice of Kong:Skull Island, Shin Godzilla is just one example of how the Kaiju genre is more alive than ever in 2017. A film that includes all the amazing spectacle you'd want to see but also transcends the genre and becomes a political satire. It's essential viewing for Godzilla fans, and i'd recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in these kinds of films.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman and Brie Larson
118 Minutes
United States

Thanks to the success of Marvel and the Avengers, "Cinematic Universes" are all the rage nowadays, with everybody seemingly determined to kick start their own cash cow franchise. DC continue to fail spectacularly in every way Marvel succeeds, Universal are bringing back their famous Monsters for an all Universe, and Legendary Pictures' 2014 Godzilla was the start of what has now been dubbed the "Monsterverse", an american series of Kaiju (the Japanese word used to refer to films about giant monsters) movies.

The series is due to introduce other Toho monsters in 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters, before culminating in what will surely be the rematch of the century, 2020's Godzilla vs. Kong. Before we can get to all that though, we need to establish the eight wonder of the world himself, which is where Kong: Skull Island fits in. Set in 1970s, it sees a group of scientists and Vietnam soldiers travelling to the titular island for supposed research purposes (organised by the secret government organisation MONARCH which first appeared in 2014's Godzilla). When they get there they make the big mistake of dropping bombs to try to lure out Kong, which goes about as well as you expect as Kong smashes the shit out of all their planes. The team end up split after this, with vindictive Vietnam veteran Packward (Samuel L. Jackson) swearing revenge on Kong for the deaths of his men. At the same time, the rest of the group including tracker Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), photographer Weaver (Brie Larson) and MONARCH official Randa (John Goodman), encounter the natives of the island. They initially appear hostile until it is revealed that they have living among them a stranded World War II veteran named Marlow (John C. Riley) who crash landed on the island after being shot down over the Pacific. Marlow reveals that to that the natives see Kong as their King, protecting them against the more malevolent creatures of the island, including the lizard-like Skullcrawlers, who previously did battle against Kong's parents and reduced him to the last of his kind. Both parties are determined to reunite and get off the Island, however Packward is still dead set on revenge, and the bomb blasts have brought forth hordes of Skullcrawers and other monstrosities to the surface....

For me personally, Kong: Skull Island demonstrates the perfect way to tackle one of these big budget reboots of a popular character. While it gives you all the monster battles and destruction that we've come to expect out of a popcorn flick, the whole thing is treated with an intelligent and cineliteracy that makes it stand out from the crowd. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has clearly done his homework. Updating the Kong origin from the 30s to the 70s was nothing short of inspired. Roberts evokes Apocalypse Now with scenes of gung-ho american GI's dropping bombs on a lush jungle environment to Black Sabbath's Paranoid. This is followed by Kong's grand entrance, as he fights back against the invaders on his territory, and this scene personally left me exhilarated. I can't really put my finger on it, but taking one of the most iconic scenes from one of my favourite films of all time (Apocalypse Now) and giving it that Kaiju twist really clicked with me. God knows Apocalypse Now did feel like a horror film a lot of the time, with the imposing nature of the jungle and the sense of going into the unknown, both of which can be applied to Skull Island in the original King Kong. In fact, it makes it so much sense to do a Kong story against the background of Vietnam I'm kind of surprised no one has done it before it now (VietKong if you will). The film takes influences from a range of other sources too. There's a surprising visual reference to Cannibal Holocaust, and Packard's vendetta against the giant ape recalls that of Ahab's against the titular whale in the classic novel Moby Dick.

Kong himself has more in common with his Toho iteration from the 1960s than the original 1933 film. Not only is he similarly beefed up in size compared to the original (after all both versions were designed to be able to fight Godzilla), but he's portrayed more as a more benevolent creature than the confused brute of the 1933 film. This characterisation made sense in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla, as Godzilla was still a villain in his own series at that point and Kong was introduced as the underdog, clearly the one Toho expected audiences to root for. Just like in that film, it's clear Kong is a gentle soul who never goes out of his way to cause destruction, though here he's been made even more tragic through explicitly being the last of his kind. In this way, the Monsterverse is doing right what the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla did wrong. The monsters are characters in and of themselves, not being portrayed as mere animals whose purpose in the film is merely to cause destruction. Between the Monsterverse, 2016's Shin Godzilla and the upcoming Godzilla: Monster Planet anime, the heart of the Kaiju genre keeps on beating, and it's a great time to be fan.

Oh, and stay after the credits too. I got chills.

Amer (2009)

Directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Staring Cassandra Forêt

90 Minutes

France and Belgium 

Amer is a 2009 Belgian-French co-production which comes to us from the husband and wife director team of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Though often named as one of the forerunners of the “neo-giallo” movement which has emerged in recent years, the film plays not like a tribute to the 70s proto-slasher movement and more like the best of Argento and Bava filtered through a nightmarish acid trip. What I really commend Cattet and Forzani for doing here is taking their melting pot of influences and using them to create something truly fresh, showing off their talents as film makers in the process. For all intents and purposes, Amer represents an avant garde approach to genre film-making; from its unconventional narrative structure, suffocating sound design, and absolute minimum of dialogue throughout the running time.

Amer unfolds across three parts which chronicle the sexual development of a young woman, Ana, on the French Rivera. The first part, set during her childhood, is a series of nightmarish set-pieces which plays like a tribute to the ‘Drop of Water’ segment of Mario Bava’s ‘Black Sabbath’, in which she attempts to steal an antique pocket watch from the fingers of her grandfathers corpse. This sequence culminates with her walking in on her parents having sex, which then shifts into the second part of the film. Here, a teenage Ana visits the local village, and her blossoming femininity attracts the attentions of the local males. In the final, and most conventionally Giallo, of the three parts, an older Ana returns to her childhood home from the first segment, where she is stalked by a switch-blade wielding killer.

Whilst I have no doubt that Cattet and Forzani have the skills to make a more traditional horror flim, and a highly entertaining one at that, what they have opted for here is a damn sight more memorable for bearing little resemblance to any other film in the genre. It isn’t for everyone. Those who prefer a more conventional approach to Horror might be put off by the slow pace, the near total lack of dialogue, and the ambiguity presented in every shot. However, for those more inclined, the combination of these elements with some gorgeous cinematography, the beautiful French locations, and a soundtrack combing some choice cuts from Morricone, Nicolai, and Cipriani, combine to create a world that is as haunting as is beautiful.

Everywhere Ana goes men are starring at her, and the film creates the impression someone could leap out and attack her at any moment. The film does a fantastic job at putting at making us identify with Ana, feeling the vulnerability of the female form in a suffocatingly male dominated world, a theme that bubbles underneath the surface of just about every Giallo and Slasher film ever made. In distilling the genre down to such a minimalistic form, Cattet and Forzani get at the beating heart of the uneasy relationship Horror continues to have with female sexuality, and craft a vivid fever of sexual awakening which is as beautiful as it is mind-bending. The result is what might have happened if Argento in the early 70’s had crossed over from the Grindhouse into full Arthouse, or maybe if Stanley Kubrick had been a genre film maker in Italy at the same time.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2016/08/30/amer-2009/)

Alien 2: On Earth (1980)

aka Alien Terror, Strangers

Directed by Ciro Ippolito

Starring Belinda Mayne 

92 Minutes

Italy

Alien 2: On Earth is an unofficial Italian sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film ‘Alien’. Making an unofficial sequel to a big American hit was a popular practice with jobbing Italian directors of the late 70’s and 80’s. Lucio Fulci produced a follow up to Dawn of the Dead with his Zombi 2 (its name indicative of the original Dawn’s Italian title), and Bruno Mattei  gave us his version of Terminator 2, beating James Cameron to the punch by 2 years. Alien 2 was directed by Ciro Ippolito, an obscure director not known for his Horror, Alien 2 represents his sole sanguine tinged opus.

As the world awaits the return of a crew of astronauts (I assume this is supposed to be the Nostromo even though this film takes place in the 1970s and Alien took place in the place in the far future but whatever), a young woman named Thelma (Belinda Mane) appears on TV talk show to discuss caves. The film attempts to make a connection between these two disparate plot points by establishing that Thelma is a psychic and experiences a painful hallucination , which I think is supposed to have been caused by the return of the spacecraft to Earth (?). We learn that the spacecraft returned without its occupants, and there after get great a scene in which a little girl discovers an Alien object on a beach and is then discovered by her mother with her face ripped off (in general Italian Horror is far less shy about showing children being killed than Hollywood). Thelma and her husband Roy (played by future director Michele Sovai) meet up with their friends for a exhibition to explore a cave, and the film from this point follows the group being pursued by the alien force through said cave.

If you were expecting Xenomorphs you’re going to be disappointed, but Alien 2 nevertheless manages to conjure up an interesting villain. We never really get to fully see the Aliens,  but they seem to resemble a red bloody mass perturbing with tentacles. Sometimes it is portrayed with shots of its own point of view, in  with most of the screen is taken up by a mass of pulsating tentacles (as seen in the poster above). The film makes full use of the fear of the unknown by never giving us a full view of the creature, and is a good example of the filmmakers making use of their limitations, as it is unlikely that on a low budget production like this they would have been able to construct a full creature, yet alone one to compete with H.R. Giger’s monstrosity. In spite of its low budget, Alien 2 also manages to shine in its gore department. After a slow start, the second half of the film takes a gleefully grisly turn. Forget a chestburster, this film features a face burster scene! This seeming attempt to up the ante of their Hollywood inspirations and make them seem tame by comparison is part of what makes these low budget Italian shockers so appealing.

Where Alien 2 falls down in comparison to its Hollywood original however, it in the departments of plot, performance and pacing. Starting the film out with a TV report on a spacecraft returning to earth and then following that up with a story about a group of people exploring a cave was an odd decision, and its never really explained how the Aliens managed to populate the cave. The characters are all exceptionally dull, even more so than you would expect in a film like this, and I really can’t say anything about anything about any of them. However, whereas these first two points are sort of per the course for a film like this, Alien 2 really suffers from its poor pacing. This is one of those films that is dragged out with needlessly long scenes of people doing regular stuff like backing out of their front drives, a personal pet hate of mine (if you’re going to include scenes like these just make the bloody film shorter!). Overall though, I’d still recommend Alien 2. Just don’t go into it expecting Xenomorphs or non stop action.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/alien-2-on-earth/)

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Directed by S. Craig Zahler

Starring Kurt Russel, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons and Richard Jenkins

132 minutes

USA

Recent years have seen a Western revival of sorts going on. The massive success of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit re-imagining and Tarantino’s rambunctious Django Unchained seems to have spurned this on, with everyone from the big studios to indie productions throwing their cowboy hat into the ring. Results have varied from the Seth McFarlene’s dire excuse for a genre spoof, A Million Ways to Die in the West, to John Maclean’s awesome directorial debut Slow West. Just like with the indie Horror bomb in recent years, new talent has been coming up with ways to make a genre nearly as old as cinema itself feel fresh, as today’s film demonstrates.

Bone Tomahawk is the brainchild of seasoned writer – first time director S. Craig Zahler. Its story is as classic a tale as one could be imagine. On a frontier town in the 1890s, a man and woman are kidnapped by couple of strangers in town, leading to a posse of four men to ride out to rescue them. So far, so John Ford, but Bone Tomahawk is no Channel 5 mid afternoon film. Without giving too much away, the  aforementioned strangers in town are not bandits or Indians, but cannibals. Bone Tomahawk is just as much a Horror Film as it is a Western, and is a supreme example of genre mash-up that doesn’t feel forced or gimmicky.

A great deal of Bone Tomahawk feels minimalist. There’s very little music. Like, any great Horror or Western, it has a slow build up. We spend a lot of time getting to know the characters, and all of them are well defined with great personalities brought to life by the brilliant cast. Snake Plissken himself, Kurt Russel, is as bad ass as he’s ever been as Sheriff Franklin Hunt. Richard Jenkins provides great comic relief as the decrepit, motor-mouth deputy Chicory (a memorable moment sees him randomly debating on the logistics of a flea circus after a particularly violent display of bloodshed). Matthew Fox plays the slimy gentleman gunslinger John Brooder, who considers himself superior to the other men because “smart men don’t get married”. Rounding out the posse is Patrick Wilson as Arthur O’Dowey, a man refusing to let a little thing like a a broken get in the way of him riding out to rescue his beloved wife. And Lilli Simmons is no mere damsel in distress as Samantha O’Dowey, a woman unafraid to berate her would be – rescuers for some of their more questionable decisions.

The slow pace of Bone Tomahawk might put off some viewers. This is a film that takes its time, letting the viewer get to know the characters and the world, which just makes the second half of the film all the more terrifying. In the final act, Bone Tomahawk feels like the characters from a John Ford Western have entered into a torture porn film. The violence is extremely brutal, and no one is safe. Characters who might consider sacred cows in a standard western are fair game here. An equal parts engaging and grisly debut, I look forward to seeing what Zahler will follow this with.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/bone-tomahawk-2015/)

Man From Deep River (1972)

aka The Man from the Deep River, Deep River Savages, Sacrifice! 

Directed by Umberto Lenzi    

Starring Ivan Rassimov, Me Me Lai

93 minutes

Italy

Umberto Lenzi’s 1972 Man From Deep River, is often listed in the same breath as other Italian cannibal films such as Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox, but the film isn’t really like those at all. As the film which kick-started the whole cannibal trend, Man From Deep River suffers form early installment weirdness, in that it is essentially a story of ones man’s journey into a tribe on the border between Thailand and Burma, and from there becomes a combination of a showcase of the tribes customs and rituals and a love story. It is much more influenced by Mondo movies and the 1970 western A Man Called Horse (hence the similar title), which featured a white man who became integrated into a tribe. What little cannibalism is featured, is done by a tribe who themselves are feared by the tribe that is the films main focus, and it is not lingered on or indulged in as it would be in later films in the cannibal genre.

The dreamy Ivan Rassimov is our star as the British photographer John Bradley, on business in the Thai area to photograph the local culture and customs. He gets into a bit of trouble in a bar brawl and subsequently makes it to the Bangkok border where he has made plans to travel down river to get some shots, but it isn’t long before he finds himself at the mercy of a native tribe who believe him to a fish-person. John is subsequently subjected to a series of humiliating tortures, but along the way he and the tribe start to become more understanding towards one another. He befriends the sole English speaker in the tribe, a missionary child left their years before, and develops a romantic interest towards the beautiful Maraya, played by Me Me Lai.

Man From Deep River differs drastically in tone and style from the cannibal films that would follow in its wake. Lenzi imbues the film with a sense of fun and adventure that is a million miles away from the coitus and carnage mentality of the later films. The lush cinematography of Riccardo Pallotini and sweeping orchestral score from Daniele Patucchi do nothing to foreshadow the scuzzy ambiance and porno synth score of Lenzi’s later Cannibal Ferox. From the lively opening scenes in Bangkok you know you’re in for an adventure, the shots of the local culture and landmarks have a real travelogue feeling. This aesthetic can be put down the influence of Italian Mondo movies, faux documentary pieces which liked to contrast beautifully shot footage of exotic locales with footage of violent and bizarre local customs (often times staged). The intention here seems to have been to bring the Mondo sensibility to an adventure story, and the film really benefits from its this more subdued approach when compared to some later ‘cannibal’ films which go straight for the jugular.

That’s not to say that Man From Deep River doesn’t have its fair share of irreversible mutilations and unspeakable tortures. The North American poster highlights one of these, as John is suspended in a bizarre bondage contraption which spins around on the spot as the natives fire darts onto spots on his body that have been painted on. This delirious sequence is one of the films most memorable images, and it seems obvious why they decided to highlight it on the poster artwork. Of course, it would be amiss to talk about this film without mentioning the animal cruelty which plagues so many of these Italian cannibal pictures. Thankfully the version I saw had a lot of it cut out, but I didn’t get off lightly, witnessing a goats throat being cut and monkey brains being eaten. These scenes are another hold over from the Mondo mentality of film-making, where directors would go to extra lengths to capture the most shocking and brutal scenes. Arguably the removal of these scenes robs the film of some of its “Raw power” but that’s a never ending debate which I won’t get into here.

Man From Deep River is essential viewing for fans of Italian exploitation, for representing a turning point in the country’s genre film making in the early 70’s. However, if you go into it expecting a gut munching-fest a a la Cannibal Holocaust you might be disappointed. Go into it expecting an adventure from beautiful 70’s Bangkok, down the river and into the jungle, I guarantee you’ll enjoy what you see.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/man-from-deep-river-1972/)