The Afterman (1985): or, Apocalypse When?

We begin: a bearded, slightly dumpy man sits in a darkened, presumably underground room, surrounded by dot-matrix printers and TRS-80s. Barely decipherable alerts flash in blocky green letters, monitoring something or other that's bound to be important. The Man watches news footage of atomic bombs dropping, and wistfully stares at old photos.When he gets hungry, he goes to a huge storeroom filled to the rafters with cardboard boxes. The boxes contain cans of futuristic spray-food substance, which he devours greedily. He stares at the screens, falls asleep, twiddles his thumbs. Apparently this is all he does; this is what his life is like.

Well, it's not quite ALL he does. A man has needs besides food and shelter, after all. When the Wily Worm of Wantonness rears its cyclopean dome, he waddles to another part of the complex and, shirtless, enters a walk-in freezer. There he finds the frost-flecked body of a woman, upon whose nude, frozen flesh he satiates his wicked urges.

At some length. In the first 5 minutes of the movie.

So many questions.

Cold hands, warm heart

Ladies and germs, welcome to The Afterman, Belgian director Rob Van Eyck's bleak vision of a speculative future, circa 1985. Executed entirely without dialogue, the flick is half art-house sci-fi, half grimy exploitation road movie, and 100% MAD. It's a movie that feels simultaneously thoughtful and incoherent, skillful and inept, intellectually serious but at times deliriously dumb. Take a bit of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, filter it through Quest for Fire, and dunk it in the boiling effluvia of the grindhouse melting pot, and maybe you're almost there. It's a movie that, quite frankly, I can scarcely believe exists.

Shortly after his necro-tryst with his Passed-On Popsicle of Passion--who may be his deceased wife, but is not certainly such--the Man (Jacques Verbist--NOT the guy on the VHS cover) is forced to evacuate his bunker due to a massive system failure, which leads to an off-screen explosion. We are left to infer that he's been waiting out the apocalypse, which has dismantled civilization--deserted, crumbling buildings dot the landscape, and abandoned heavy machinery returns to rust all around. Whatever brought about the fall of society was presumably not the atom bombs he was watching earlier, at least in my reading, since lush forests and fields stretch to the horizon and no one evinces the slightest radiation burns or tumors. Still, whatever happened isn't terribly important; the point is, the End has arrived, and the remaining humans must survive as best they can.

Immediately upon his emergence, the Man sees a group of other men watching him from a nearby ridge. With an inarticulate cry of glee, he rushes to them, while they calmly, ominously watch him come. He's clearly overjoyed to meet fellow survivors, and embraces their tough-guy leader. Unfortunately for him, his gesture is disastrously misread, as the wordless myrmidions lay the boots to him, after which the Leader sardonically rapes his ass while his henchmen circle-jerk around them! Welcome to our Brave New World, Bippy!

"Wait a minute...YOU'RE NOT A PROCTOLOGIST!"

At this point, we're still less than 10 minutes in, by the way.

Left bloody and now understandably shy of strangers, the Man sets about surviving without his cans of Post-Apocalyptic Cheez Whiz to rely upon. Despite his doughy physique and post-traumatic stress, he proves to be quite the trapper, snaring a muskrat underwater with his bare hands! It's a hard-knock life out there, but as long as there are aquatic rodents to be had, our Man will never go hungry.

I have seen the future, and it needs salt.

What happens next is hard to explain--the Man follows some strange sounds to a cave and sneaks inside, where he finds what appears to be a fully functioning day spa! There's tile, potted plants, patio lounge chairs, and a clearly man-made (and well-chlorinated) swimming pool, in which a beautiful woman is swimming nude! "Dude, where's the power for the filters and lights coming from if the world is over?" you might well ask--but don't expect an answer, since nobody talks.

As the Man watches from behind some palm leaves--which he sometimes rustles meaningfully--another naked woman joins the first for a dip, which quickly becomes an aquatic lesbonic sex-up. This goes on for quite some time--not that I'm complaining--but comes to a surprising end when the first water nymph goes down below the water line to pleasure her lover, who holds her there with her strong thighs until she drowns! (And from the sadistic look on the survivor's face, this was clearly the intended result.) Our Man zips up and freaks (the fuck) out, then runs weeping from the scene--as would we all.

Fifteen minutes now. Try to keep up.

When she was bad, she was horrid.

And so the movie goes--we traverse the post-Apocalyptic landscape with our portly, hollow-eyed hero, and through him we discover just how far into savagery the human race descends without the burden of the Social Contract to keep us in line. At his next stop he spies on an agricultural couple who have vegetables, livestock, and a beautiful slave woman (Danielle Detremmerie) in a chicken-wire pen. The bald, shirtless Farmer leads Slave Woman around on a swing-set chain, and periodically takes advantage of her from behind as she bends at the waist to weed the cucumbers. The girl submits without a struggle, used to this treatment. The Farmer's wife continues feeding the chickens without batting an eye.

Later that night, while the Horny Horticulturist has more loud sex with his wife (this guy plows more than soil, if you get what I'm sayin'), the Man sneaks in to steal some food--but is quickly captured and enslaved himself! Over the following days he is whipped viciously, teamed with the girl to till the Farmer's fields--literally, not figuratively, this time--and never seems to understand that a cage made out of chicken wire and extremely thin sticks should not be an impediment to his freedom. Then again, he does get a little non-rodent grub and something to do all day, so maybe it's a measured decision. He's the Cube Monkey of the future!

"Well, we might as well face it--we're here for good. So, wanna do it?"

Eventually he does break free, however--beating his Priapic Prison Papa with a post--and takes off cross country with a sack of ham and the beautiful slave woman on his heels. At first he doesn't want to share his booty with her--nor she hers with him--but that all changes when he wanders into a cliche pool of quicksand and she pulls him out. From there on out they share and share alike, both in sustenance and sexiness.

They have sex a lot.

In fact, it becomes clear as Van Eyck draws us along that, at least according to him, when you remove all the social constructs and rules of behavior, only two things matter to the human creature: food, and fucking. And not necessarily in that order. Every vignette in the movie incorporates the two: something always gets eaten, and someone always gets fucked. (Though there's no actual food in the lesbian swimmers scene above, the previous statement still holds--IYKWIMAITYD.) This was clearly one of Eyck's main philosophical points of the movie, and his dedication to it is admirable. Sure, it's not exactly a ground-breaking anthropological theory, but it does lend the flick a certain pseudo-intellectual aspect that, if missing, would lessen its impact considerably in my humble.

The parallel lines of human desire intersect most pointedly when the Woman is captured by a hard-partying Cannibal Clan, who really enjoy playing with their food. (Ba-dump.) Later they are taken in by a group of monks who have a hot-tub in their monastery (wha?), worship a statue of a man's ass, and accept payment for their B&B services by forcing the Man to fellate them. They also sacrifice wayward travelers by cutting out their hearts and eating them, but luckily the Woman catches them at it before Manny's on the menu and they make good their escape.

Freaky Friar Loves Huffing

As the film winds down, love continues to bloom between the Man and Woman. They steal clothes from a man bearing a strangely well-stocked suitcase. They forage. They have sex. He fights off some would-be rapists, impaling one on a bed of exposed rebar. Conflict arises when they are taken in by the Castle Woman, an aristocratic Zsa-Zsa Gabor type who totes an elephant gun and has an exotic, scantily clad pianist-cum-housemaid. The Man has sex with the Castle Woman, and his jealous Woman nearly freezes herself to death in the wild out of spite. They make up, have a kid, and finally arrive at the ocean. The End--or perhaps, just perhaps, the Beginning?

The Afterman is a film made of incongruities. Whiplash editing and the lack of exposition or context make for some confusing transitions and plot-points (for instance, the Man figures out what the cannibal clan are eating well before we do, making his retching reaction explicable only in retrospect). Other times, though, the flick feels extremely well-made; some of the shots of the post-Apocalyptic desolation are quite beautiful and haunting, as when the pair hole up in a disintegrating greenhouse, or walk through a crumbling factory that feels like a ruined cathedral. The lack of explanation regarding the nature of the social downfall is often frustrating, but also frees Van Eyck to create scenes of both medieval squalor and modern opulence, which may or may not be a stab at the persistence of class consciousness even after the supporting struts are kicked away. The loosely stitched vignettes never really pretend to a coherent plot, and yet still manage to draw the viewer along as well as any carefully woven narrative thread--partly because we want to see what madness the film will throw at us next.

"Okay--whoever wants to be tonight's entree, hands up!"

As I mentioned above, the quest for sex is pervasive, and so is a strain of brutish violence, executed with special effects that gain rather than lose power by their gritty, low-rent appearance. I've no reason to think the muskrat Man-snack is not a real dead creature; similarly, when the freed cannibal captives attack their guard and graphically gouge out his eyes, I think we're looking at actual ocular orbs--though hopefully those of a sheep and not a human being. Other scenes, such as the rebar impalement, the Farmer's crushed head, and a monk who takes a pitchfork to the neck, are no less visceral. Through repetition and commitment, Van Eyck creates a believably dangerous world for his characters to navigate.

Lead actor Verbist does a fine job as the Man, who learns about this terrible new reality along with the audience. Hollow-eyed, terrified, and perpetually confused, he's pretty much the perfect stand-in for the viewer. Detremmerie is lovely and believably tough, pulling her Man out of the fire as often as he returns the favor. The rest of the cast does well too--everyone has a lean, hungry look appropriate to the material. It's a compliment to both cast and director that even without dialogue we sympathize with the characters and become invested in their plight.

When she plays Peekaboo, she plays for keeps.

In closing, The Afterman is a movie that made me wonder aloud from whence (in ye fucke) it sprung. It fascinated me, held my interest, and stayed in my brain long after the end-credits rolled. Morality play? Speculative picaresque? Blood-and-boobs exploitational drive-in fodder? Maybe all, maybe some, maybe not. But it's certainly unique in my experience, and a film I enjoyed immensely. 2.75 thumbs. If you can find a copy, check it out.

Nota Bene: according to imdb, a 25th Anniversary Edition DVD was released in 2010 at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival. Also, in 2005 Van Eyck directed Afterman 2 which has no plot description on imdb but does show Jacques Verbist returning in the cast. That's a movie I'll definitely be seeking out by hook or crook to see how, if at all, the director updated his vision.

A few more images from The Afterman (1985): 

Even after the Apocalypse, programmers are all the same.

Wheelbarrow

"You're SO lucky you're the last man on earth, buddy."

The Duke of DVD initiates another manservant.

The Louvre, circa 3535 AD.

Now THAT'S a spicy meatball!

No one steals Zsa Zsa's turnips.

 

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985): or, Night of the Oompa Loompa Fetish Dolls

All right, folks, I admit to not having what you would call an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, and I'm quite willing to listen to contrary opinions and be proved wrong. But still, I'm going to go ahead, climb out on that proverbial limb, and make my underinformed but still strongly-held judgment:

Attack of the Beast Creatures is THE BEST independent monster movie EVER to come out of the state of Connecticut.

Granted, that's rated on the famous Vicar-ious sliding scale: the movie has problems, including but not limited to an extremely constrictive budget, amateur acting, deadpan unnatural dialog, and a marked lack of explanation for the various goings-on. But along with all that, it's got the endearing earnestness and unquenchable-if-misguided ambition that are the hallmarks of a glorious failure and a Mad Movie classic. And most importantly: always entertaining and never, but NEVER boring. In short: a winner.

More of a wedge, actually

In May of 1920, the ocean liner S.S. Obelisk meets an unspecified tragedy in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, leading all hands and passengers to abandon ship. Captain John Trieste (Robert Nolfi) and First Mate Case Quinn (Robert Lengyel) find themselves on a lifeboat along with several paying customers who are freaking (the fuck) out about the whole thing. They get caught in a strange rogue current (or do they? Dun-dun-DUN...) which speeds them away from the other lifeboats and finally dumps them on the cold pebble beach of an uncharted island. When asked where they are, a crew member shrugs, "Your guess is as good as mine. Greenland, maybe?"

Saddled with a badly injured shipmate, the Cap'n and Quinn quickly organize the other survivors in hopes of finding enough food and water to sustain them until help arrives. Crusty old rich dude and Hall of Fame Cinematic Asshole Mr. Morgan (John Vichiola) wastes no time informing everyone that a) the injured dude is done for, so they should conserve their energy and just leave him to die, and b) they're highly unlikely to get off the island alive anyway, for which Cap'n John deserves all their unending scorn and hatred. Despite their fellow passenger's stinkin' thinkin', however, the rest of the survivors decide to pitch in and do what they can to contribute to the whole "not dying" project.

Reason behind the nautical saying: "Never wear yer white pants when the seas be rough. (Arrrgh.)"

At this point the characters all wander into the Deciduous Forest of Backstory Exposition. Munching berries like a bunch of brown bears dangerously behind on their pre-hibernation fattening-up, the characters take a few minutes to quiz each other on who they are and why they're there. Turns out Morgan was taking his wife on a sea cruise for her health; whether the wife is on one of the other lifeboats or drowned is unclear. Middle-aged socialite Mrs. Gordon (Kay Bailey) was to meet her husband at the Obelisk's destination, and she is befriended by chubby veterinarian and possible hag-seeking-fag Philip (Frank Murgalo), the most  food-focused member of the group. Flapper chick Cathy (Julia Rust) is the designated "in-shock screamer" of the flick, and tougher-minded flapper Diane (Lisa Pak) makes it her duty to keep the girl together.

There's another crew member, Pat (Frans Kal), but don't worry too much about his backstory--a few minutes into the forest he finds a sparkling pool of what looks like delicious, life-giving water, and crouches down to get himself a face-full of savory wetness. It quickly becomes clear that we're not in Greenland anymore*, however, when the limpid pool turns out to be filled instead with fast-acting, face-eating acid!

Human Alka-Seltzer

*At least, I don't think Greenland is dotted with naturally occurring pools of sulfuric acid. Then again, you could forgive them if they decided to leave that out of the travel brochures.

The crew and survivors hold up admirably under the strain of this shocking (and surprisingly gory) turn of events, as Cap'n John shrugs it off with the pronouncement, "Well, we've gotta be a lot more careful of what we eat and drink now!" No point crying over liquefied friend-face, one assumes. Though to their credit, the crewmen do give the high-school biology class skeleton of their fallen comrade an IMMEDIATE Christian burial, which as we know is exactly what all the survival handbooks and B-movie guides insist upon in such circumstances.

After a LOT more berry picking and some ominous rustling in assorted ferns, Quinn gets thoughtful and opines, "I dunno, there's something about this place...something weird!" Something BESIDES the face-eating acid pools, you mean? Cap'n John and Quinn go back to the shore to check on their injured friend, whom they left unattended and bleeding on the beach (like you do). They find his body completely stripped to the bone (Biology Class Skeleton appearance #2) by some unseen scavengers.Also in keeping with the B-Movie Rulebook, Cap'n John swears Quinn to secrecy on the subject. "Whatever it was, we've GOT to keep it to ourselves! The others have enough to worry about!" Yeah, we definitely don't want to tell them they have to watch out for some man-eating monsters that might be stalking us! That would just make them antsy!

"Whoa! I don't remember eating THAT!"

The secret doesn't stay secret very long, however. That night around the campfire--which the Cap'n allows to be set up right out in the open, natch--the inhabitants of the island make their presence known in the film's one genuinely almost-creepy scene. After the Cap'n puts the moves on Diane with some smooth, worldly-wise dialog (Diane: "I guess you've been lots of places!" Cap'n John [deadpan]: "I've been lots of places."), his Lady Love takes a turn on watch. While she stares out into the darkness, she notices two small glowing eyes staring back. She strains to see them better, and notices three sets of eyes. A moment later, half a dozen--and after another cut, even more! The slow buildup of unknown monsters, with only the ambient light of the campfire (shades of Dogme 95?) is effectively done, imo. And then--finally!--THE BEAST CREATURES ATTACK!

The respectable filmmaking chops continue here, as the initial attack is all chaos and shadows and firelight. The creatures are clearly small in stature and very numerous, and we get only split-second glimpses of their faces as the screaming and thrashing reaches a crescendo. Granted, what we *do* see is rather guffaw inducing, but it's so ACTION PACKED that it's easy to forgive. Beast Creatures jump onto shoulders, swing in on vines, and scurry off into the darkness, shrieking like newborn Alien Chestbursters! One even gets thrown into the flames, leading to a combustible marionette sequence that is as exciting as it is entertaining.

Like everyone, he just wants a Pearl Necklace™

After the shipwreck victims fight off this first wave, they stop to do a damage report. Old man Morgan is the worst injured, as he now has a gaping wound on his leg. The rest of the group gets off with minor scratches and cuts. Cathy goes into shock, because that's her job, but everyone else seems pretty okay with the whole "being on an acid pool-riddled island that's also overrun with little orange land piranhas" thing. The Cap'n calmly decides they need to get to higher ground, as that way the Beast Creatures will be easier to fight off. So the next day, the group sets off on a cross-country trek to the island's lone peak.

Having showed somewhat remarkable restraint so far with his Beast Creature effects, director Michael Stanley decides it's time to give the people what they came for: the rest of the movie takes place in full daylight, and his diminutive stars take center stage, conducting guerrilla-style attacks on the humans as they walk slowly across the island. Beast Creatures pop up out of holes to gnaw on ankles, drop out of trees into the ladies' hair, and generally make serrated-tooth nuisances of themselves again and again. And once you get a good look at them, you'll be so glad for the Death of Restraint!

"Rarrr!"

I mean, just LOOK at that beautiful little bastard! The comparisons to the Zuni Fetish Doll in Trilogy of Terror are apt, as would be a call to that movie's copyright lawyers--the Oompa Loompa Orange paint job and lack of pupils are really the only distinguishing marks. I tell you, parishioners, you don't know true Mad Movie Joy until you watch one of these little guys swinging from a vine into the camera lens, or better yet doing a bouncing, arm-pumping run across the screen accompanied by some of the best "pitter-patter of little feet" Foley effects this side of The Muppet Show. The rest of the movie is one attack and/or crazy character action after another, and I don't mind telling you I was grinning like Karen Black in freeze-frame the whole time.

Time for a Mad Movie Bullet List? I think so!

• Despite all the strange happenings and dangers, the women of the group still giggle like they're on a Girl Scout outing between attacks, bonding over dress repair and laughing with orgasmic glee when they find a non-acidic pool of water to bathe in.
• After a few of the aforementioned hit-and-run attacks, the Beast Creatures regroup for another all-out assault, leading to some of the greatest land-piranha attack footage ever committed to film. Obser-uv:

"We know you have granola bars! GIVE THEM TO US!"

• Despite their ferocity and numbers, the Beast Creatures seem incapable of inflicting any real damage--despite being COVERED with the things, everyone comes away with only a few superficial scratches. Except for poor Mrs. Gordon, who perishes in the swimming hole, likely having drowned after gulping water thanks to the Beast Creature's relentless tickling.
• Morgan goes insane from the stress, foaming at the mouth and dashing off into the woods. Despite his bum leg he easily outpaces both Quinn and Cap'n John, and finally takes a header into one of those pesky acid pools. (Biology Class Skeleton appearance #3)
• More great dialog abounds. Cathy: "Do you think we'll make it?" Cap'n John (deadpan): "We'll make it."

Death from Above!

• Quinn mentions the island "feels like the tropics," despite being in the North Atlantic. The Beast Creatures play jungle drums to unnerve the humans, and are later seen gathered motionless around a Tiki idol on top of Beast Creature Peak. Nothing else is ever made of this connection.
• Both Quinn and Philip fall prey to some primitive traps set by the Beast Creatures--a trip-wire/impaling spike snare, and a shallow eating pit--both set right out in the open, not camouflaged, and easily avoidable.
• Though it took them a day and a half to reach the peak, the whole group makes it back to the beach in 10 minutes at a brisk jog. They also cross a non-acidic river on the way, which apparently they didn't notice on their initial water search.

The Vicar, mid-viewing

• In the FINAL WAVE attack, the creatures somehow manage to take a main character down, the one unexpected death of the movie.
• Final line, from some flabbergasted rescuing sailors-cum-audience stand-ins: "What were THOSE things?"

A lot of people are going to hate Attack of the Beast Creatures, and I'm not going to claim it's perfect, by any means. But your reaction to the obvious flaws is going to determine how you feel about the movie as a whole. Are you going to harp on the fact that the 1920s setting is completely arbitrary and serves no narrative purpose, as there are no period settings or use of timely events, even in dialog? Are you going to rag on the totally period-inappropriate synth score, which sounds less like 20s jazz than some kid in his bedroom aping NPR's "Hearts of Space" on his Moog? Are you going to NOT be filled with joy by the fact that the opening titles go on for over 6 minutes in between action scenes, and include a credit for "Hairstyles by D J's Hair-Inn"? Well then, this movie is not for you.

You can tell I had a blast with Attack of the Beast Creatures. It's silly, it's badly made, and its creatures are laughable, but it is never boring and is full of the kind of enthusiasm and low-budget ambition that seem to be in such short supply these days. The Beast Creatures themselves--their origin and provenance, their connection to a Tiki culture thousands of nautical miles away, the idiosyncrasies of their inhospitable home island--are never explained, perhaps because like all Nature's greatest creations they are at root inexplicable. But they made me smile, laugh, and cheer, and for that I can only offer them my affection.

2.75 thumbs for this pinnacle of Connecticutensian filmmaking. Where's our DVD, Nutmeggers?

NOM NOM NOM!

More images from Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985):

Flapper As Fuck

We Have You Surrounded

"Anybody seen Kyle?"

Forest of Doom

"We paid for it, we're gonna USE it!"

Quinn learns the hard way why you never accept a BJ from a Beast Creature

"Holla!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Slave of the Cannibal God (1978): or, Sometimes Shorter is Better

Most of my parishioners should understand by now that, while your ever-lovin' Vicar could not really be called a "perfectionist," he does take pride in having at least a rudimentary idea what he's talking about. That's why it's often not enough for me just to watch a movie and then foist my opinions on the breathlessly anticipatory blogosphere; no, sometimes I have to go that extra mile, do that extra little bit of research, find that one bonus tidbit that will make everyone's visit to the dungeons of the Vicarage worthwhile. Say what you will about me, but if there's one think I hate, it's going off half-cocked.

Sometimes, though, the knowledge I gain is hardly worth the torment of its possession. Such was definitely the case with my inaugural movie of 2009, Sergio Martino's infamous 1978 cannibal flick, Slave of the Cannibal God. The version in my collection comes from the Mill Creek 50 Drive-In Movie Classics box set, and clocks in at a lean 82 minutes. It had its gruesome moments, but even to an untrained eye it's obvious some censor has taken a hacksaw to the print. A cursory glance through my Internet Sources (the BEST sources!) told me I was missing anywhere from 9 to 19 minutes of prime sex-and-gore infamy. Not one to let an omission like that stand, I put on my pith helmet and struck out into the jungles of the web, searching for that elusive lost footage.

But before I discuss the result of *that* ill-fated expedition, let's talk about the shorter, kinder, gentler print.

In both versions, Martino (who showed a much defter touch in the previously reviewed All the Colors of the Dark) opens with a seemingly conservation-minded text crawl:

New Guinea is perhaps the last region on earth which still contains immense unexplored areas, shrouded in mystery, where life has remained at its primordial level. Today, on the dawn of the space age, it seems unimaginable that only twenty hours' flight from London there still exists such a wild and uncontaminated world. This story bears witness that it does...

Fair enough--but that green message is accompanied by examples of what Alfred Lord Tennyson famously called "Nature, red in tooth and claw": we get to see an alligator eating a snapping turtle, an albino cobra spreading its hood, and various other shots of animals basically being beastly to one another. Of course this is to establish the metaphorical backdrop for our tale's easy moral, which as usual has to do with men not being any better than komodo dragons when it comes to compassion and survival. However, next to the above sentiment, it seems a little out-of-context.

"Here I go again on my own...Goin' down the only road I've ever known!"

The plot-related portion of the movie begins when Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress, whose forehead has never been higher) arrives in New Guinea with her brother Arthur. (Despite the preponderance of reviews claiming it's Helmut Berger in this role, it is in fact the only slightly less sinister and Germanic-looking Antonio Marsina. Minions of the Tenebrous Empire, you were warned.) The crowd of reporters that greets her lets us know she's rich and important, presumably for being the wife of a world-famous anthropologist who's gone missing in the New Guinea bush. She and Arthur have come to New Guinea to look for him, and there's your plot.

After striking out at the embassy, Susan heads to her husband's jungle compound where she meets his partner Professor Edward Foster, played by a young, buff n' scruffy Stacy Keach. Edward has a hunch about Professor Stevenson's whereabouts, as the old man had been fascinated by the legends surrounding the island of Roaka and its sacred mountain, Ra-Ra Mi. Unfortunately, Ed tells us, the island is off-limits--"They say it's for conservation reasons, but the truth of the matter is...they're afraid of the curse too." Resolved not to leave Papua without her Papa, Ursula recruits Keach and his band of merry natives to lead an illegal expedition to the mountain to get her husband back.

From there it's a short helicopter ride to the middle of jungly nowhere, and our intrepid band of explorers spends quite a bit of time hacking through the brush in close-up. Ursula gets the first brush with death in when she falls over to find herself face to face with a gigantic tarantula! The tarantula, in turn, gets the first ACTUAL death as Keach cleaves it in twain with his handy machete. (Yes, as is usual with this kind of flick, ANIMALS WERE HARMED.) Keach then delivers a chilling monologue about what Ursula could have expected had she been bitten by the deadly beast--a cautionary tale that would carry more weight, I think, if Keach himself were clad in more than mid-thigh camo shorts. I guess he's relying on his cunning to keep him alive.

"Of course the surest way to make them bleed is when you bust their ass and steal their weed."

As it turns out, the spider got off easy. Believing the killing of a spider was a bad omen, the natives in Keach's outfit set about appeasing the gods...by killing an iguana! The tied, writhing animal is gutted graphically for your viewing pleasure, and one of the natives goes the extra mile by pulling out the lizard's heart and using it for chewing gum. My brain was spinning a little--if killing the spider was bad, wouldn't killing the lizard be worse? Will they have to kill a goat to make up for the lizard? Then a tapir for the goat? Then a pygmy hippo and so on? WHERE WILL IT END?

Luckily the natives are untroubled by sacrificial escalation scenarios, and our group continues through the jungle, narrowly avoiding a police copter patrol and giving Arthur the chance to show his douchebaggy side when he interrupts the sacrifice and gets some Keach-knuckles to the gums for his trouble. Offended by the guy's Teutonic insensitivity to their customs, some of the natives split, leaving the band short-handed but still determined. They eventually reach the ocean and (presumably) sail across to the cursed island.

After a brief shot of a python eating a monkey, it's back to the close-up trek for several minutes, never showing more than a few square feet of coverage around the actors. Just when you think they might be filming this in a greenhouse, however, we're on-location and river-rafting! This is supposed to get us to the mountain quicker, but really it's just an excuse to show one of the native guides getting his arm chomped off by an alligator. Which admittedly is pretty awesome. A little later another native is caught in an animal trap, letting Keach show his acting chops by spouting nonsense "native language" to calm his rapidly dwindling crew.

Stumped.

About this time the Evil Cannibal Natives appear in Nightmare Mummenschanz masks and attack the crew, graphically beheading one guide and chasing Ursula through the forest, separated from her protective menfolk. Luckily another stranger, Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli) comes out of nowhere to save her. Danger averted and a few more expedition members gone, they make it to the jungle Mission of Father Moses, played by the awesomely named Franco Fantasia.

Not much happens at the village except for a booty-shakin' native ritual and Arthur availing himself of the opportunity to beat some native bush, IYKWIM. Unfortunately the Cannibal tribe attacks again, killing the girl in flagrante de douchebag and inspiring Father Moses to kick them (the fuck) out of the village. Having conquered the jungle and needing a new challenge (not to mention getting some serious play from Ursula), the manly Manolo agrees to join them as they press on to the last leg of their quest.

So on they trek--Keach dies in a freak waterfall-climbing accident (aided by Arthur's douchebaggery), we see our crew torturing and eating seafood, Ursula is attacked by a snake and saved by Manolo, we learn that the prof had actually been looking for uranium on the island, we get a nice heel-turn by Ursula, who reveals she doesn't care about the Professor, she just wants that radioactive loot. She asks Manolo to help, but the steadfast good guy refuses for reasons even a Greenpeace member would have to find suspect at this point: "Help you exploit this island and its peoples? Help you destroy the forests and bring your so-called progress to a place like this?" Um...dude, have you SEEN this place? It's crawling with fucking CANNIBALS!

Schnitzel on a Stick

As if on cue, the Cannibal tribe shows up, spears Arthur, and FINALLY they get taken back to the cavern where most of the grodiness the film is infamous for will take place. There they find the corpse of Professor Stevenson with a Geiger counter in its chest, Ursula is recognized from a photo the doc had with him and dolled up to become the Cannibal God's queen, and Arthur is gutted and eaten by the cannibals, leading to a meat-crazed sex orgy that in my version is cut very, very short. (More on this below.)

Highlights in the cut version include EXTENDED CANNIBAL DWARF sequences, a rapey native who snuggles up to Ursula and gets castrated for his transgression, and an escape that relies heavily on the Cannibal Warriors' practice of NOT shouting for help, even when mortally wounded. Clinging to a log in the raging river with the man(olo) she loves, Ursula has a change of heart and the movie ends happily. Ta-da!

So that's the cut version. Apart from few scenes of animal cruelty (which while bad, is nowhere near the level of what we see in most of the other films of the genre) and not much gore fx, it does have brisk pace with some entertaining twists to keep it moving. Actually, except for being a little bland, at 82 minutes I had to say it worked pretty well as a jungle-adventure movie--without the animal deaths, it would run even leaner and better, imo.

He may be little, but he eats a LOT.

So WHY couldn't I leave well enough alone? WHY did I have to pick at the scab? I can't tell you, but driven by journalistic integrity, I delved further and came up with an uncut print of the movie (under the alternate and more literal title Mountain of the Cannibal God) for research purposes. I didn't rewatch, but fastforwarded through just to see what, if anything, I missed.

The uncut version, as you might assume, is just MORE SICKER MORE. It was first noticeable in the monkey-eaten-by-python scene, which is much longer and more agonizing: you can see the primate looking at the camera several times, as if pleading for help, before his expressive face disappears into the snake's gullet. The snake/falcon fight is longer too, though with nothing like the same brutality.

As for the NON-real sections of the flick, those up the ante as well. The alligator-gets-arm scene is longer and grosser, as are some of the natives' deaths. When Arthur is made a douche-kebab in the cavern, the gutting and ripping out of entrails goes on much longer, with much more detail and gnawing on the part of the natives. The dwarf cannibal's death by falling backwards on a rock is more graphic too, as in this version he actually pops the top of his skull off, revealing the quivering brain beneath. The rapey cannibal gets a post-castration close-up as well, which while not exactly realistic, still gets the point across.

The centerpiece though is the meat-mad orgy the natives go into after feasting on Arthur's Germanic goodness, which makes up the bulk of the cut footage. Natives eat live snakes and hump each other against the walls of the cavern, and a native girl masturbates graphically for a good two minutes while the drumbeats blare. (I guess German food makes her horny.) But the ne plus ultra occurs when, in the midst of the frenzy, we see a warrior performing energetic (and hopefully simulated) intercourse on a BIG-ASS DOMESTICATED PIG. This probably only goes on for a few seconds, but believe me, a little dab will do you.

That pig has haunted me ever since I saw it. Where did it come from? These natives were obviously NOT agriculturally advanced enough to have domesticated livestock--no goats or chickens or ducks in evidence--and the thing was so large it was obviously fed well. And what about human meat made this guy immediately and uncontrollably want to go have his way with the cattle? And why eat people if you have all the pork you want? Then again, maybe that question answers itself.

Yes, there you have it--some things you see and can't unsee, and they diminish you. It happened to me.

Had I stopped with the 82 minute version, I might have given Slave of the Cannibal God 1.75 or even a soft 2 thumbs; however, getting a glimpse of it in its full terrible majesty, I have to knock it down to a 1.25 at the highest. In an attempt to get that piggy image out of my mind, here's a picture of Ursula Andress in a state of undress. And may the Cannibal God have mercy on us all.

"Let me change clothes...I feel dirty."

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Matango (1963): or, There's Not Mushroom for Error

I admit it--I went into my viewing of 1963's Matango (aka Matango, Fungus of Terror, aka Attack of the Mushroom People) with a somewhat mistaken idea of what to expect. Still, I think I can be forgiven for this misapprehension. I mean, it's a 1960s Japanese horror movie from the legendary Toho Studios, home of everyone's favorite gigantic scaly radioactive superhero/villain Gojira. It's got the requisite "atomic testing once again prompts nature to point out the folly of men" base story. Hell, it's directed by Ishirô Honda, the man who brought Godzilla and Mothra to the screen, and who even pitted Big Green and Scaly against King Kong! And come on, just look at that poster. Was I wrong in expecting giant mushroom people? Was I misguided in hoping that said fungo-sapiens would, you know, be on the attack? I think not.

However, what I got was not Titanic Toadstools Toppling Tokyo, or even Shambling Shitake Shattering 'Shima. No, what I got was something completely different--which is not to say unsatisfying, not in the least. Instead of giant rubber-suited monsters grappling in the ruins of a once-proud metropolis, Honda gives us a much quieter tale, one of gritty survivalism stirred with interpersonal betrayals and turnabouts, and even spiced with a little Classical Greek Myth and trippy English Lit for flavor. So did it work? Well, let's delve into the minutiae and see...

We open with a lonely man peering out a barred window onto the garish, neon-lit Tokyo skyline, dropping vague hints about some terrible experience he's been through. "All my friends have died--no, I died. They still live..." He gives off a nice H.P. Lovecraft narrator vibe, claiming that once we hear his story, "You'll think that I'm insane!" Thrill me, daddy! The darkened room, the weird shadows cast bay the neon blinking through the slats of the window--it's a nicely eerie set-up, really drawing the viewer in.

Cut to--the high seas! On a modestly sized yacht backed by the kind of matte work you just don't see anymore these days, a crew of happy-go-lucky socialites are laughing it up on what they think will be...a three hour tour, a THREE hour TOUR!

Gilligan's Island: The Groovy Years

I kid, but the Gilligan's Island analogy really holds up. On board we have the yacht owner, a filthy-rich businessman in full yachtsman ensemble--that is, Mr. Howell except younger and unmarried. The Professor in this group is a doctor of psychology from Tokyo University, with his young seasick grad assistant filling the role of Maryann. The closest analog is the Ginger character, a nightclub singing sensation who early on inflames the lusts of all the men on board with her sizzling ukelele-based dance number! The Skipper and Gilligan are there too (really--they actually call the ship's captain "skipper," and his first mate even wears a bright red shirt and a tight-fitting white hat!). Only Mrs. Howell is missing, her space filled by a famous novelist who is Ginger's escort on the pleasure cruise.

(Note--for ease of reference for my predominantly Western audience, I will henceforth refer to all characters by their Gilligan's Island analog names. Also, I didn't note down the names and spellings during my viewing, and now I can't be arsed to figure out which character was which. Trust me, you'll know 'em when you see 'em.)

It's not long before the weather starts a-getting rough, and the tiny ship is tossed. Despite Gilligan having previously labeled the whole crew as "a bunch of parasites!" (he's an altogether rougher and more competent character here than his American counterpart) everyone chips in to try to save the yacht from destruction--everyone but Mr. Howell, who stays below to put the moves on Maryann. (Outside, commenting on the action while battening down the hatches, the Author tells the Professor, "Did you know if you threaten a girl and then pretend to be sympathetic to her, she'll fall for you immediately?" "That's how you writers think!" the Prof spits back. "That's not psychology!") Be that as it may, though Maryann is too nauseated to respond to Howell's advances, Ginger seems moved by his compassion--or at least the sight of his big fat wallet.

The storm gets worse and worse, and we get treated to some very good miniature work as the ship is tossed hither and yon by increasingly destructive waves. (Toho is famous for this kind of shit, and no wonder--it actually manages to become a very exciting scene.) When the main mast breaks it becomes clear that any hope of navigation is vain, so everyone retreats below to wait out the storm. Unfortunately a wall of water comes in with them, dousing the radio and cutting off their one line of communication with the mainland.

"Touch my monkey. TOUCH HIM!"

After the storm dies down the Skipper and Mr. Howell come out to survey the damage, and the situation is dire. (The sight of the ruined ship, wheel spinning aimlessly, the sails in tatters, surrounded by an eerie, thick fog, is really rather creepy.) Without a mast or a workable rudder, they're at the mercy of the currents, which according to the Skipper's estimations will take them somewhere near the equator, away from Japan. With no help for it, they resign themselves to drifting about in the pervasive fog, waiting for death or something else to happen.

An undetermined amount of time later Gilligan spots a fog-shrouded island that luckily is right in the middle of the current they're riding. They crash into a reef and swim for the island, hoping to find food and water and maybe even people. They trek through the jungle for what feels like a LOOOONG time, finding water but no edible flora nor fauna, until at last they stumble upon the ruined hulk of a research vessel stranded off the beach on opposite side of the island.

I mentioned the creepy stranded boat set above as a high point, but the abandoned rusty research vessel really puts it to shame--VERY creepy and dilapidated, its insides totally coated with some sort of strange, powdery fungus. In one of the ship laboratories the Professor and the Skipper find a Geiger counter and some mutated research specimens, which suggest that the missing crew had been studying the effects of atomic radiation. The women quickly discover that the ship is entirely without mirrors--for some reason the crew removed all reflective surfaces before vanishing. One more gruesome discovery awaits them in the captain's cabin--the seaman's moldering corpse, covered by red fuzzy fungus! (The fungus covers the room's only porthole too, allowing Honda to use an atmospheric red gel for the scene's lighting--nice.) They take the log book and go back to the mess hall, hoping to use the larger ship for shelter while repairs are made to the yacht.

"Well, gentlemen--at least we won't be lacking for GIANT VEINY COCK."

The middle half-hour or so of this 90 minute movie becomes a saga of hardship and survival on a desert island, as the group's resources run out and nerves begin to fray. They find some canned food in the ship's hold, but not enough. The women are assigned water-hauling duty, going in and out of the jungle every day to the one fresh spring they've found, while the men forage for food and the Skipper returns to the yacht to attempt repairs. Howell finds a rifle and begins cleaning it obsessively, separating himself from the group and perhaps his own sanity. The professor scours the ship's log for clues, learning that the dead captain thought the mushrooms that grow on the island might be dangerous, and that many of the men sent from the research vessel to find edibles never came back from the jungle. Later the girls think they see a strange humanoid figure moving in the jungle--is it a little man wearing a rice paddy hat?--but upon investigation can't find anything but shroomage. And Howell and the Professor discover that seagulls won't land on the island--there's no game of any kind, just plants with poisonous berries, and those plentiful, tempting mushrooms...

Though we do get one eerie nighttime visit from a barely-seen figure in the shadows, for the most part the drama in the flick comes from the characters and their deteriorating civility to one another. Tired of taking orders from Howell, Gilligan rebels (as we always wished he would) proving himself a shrewd survivalist by digging edible roots and turtle eggs that the other crew members never would have known about. (Also shrewdly, he keeps several eggs out of the batch he shares with the group, some for himself and some to sell to Howell at extremely inflated prices.) As time goes on the sailor becomes a Mephistophelean character, taunting the other men for lusting after the women, claiming if he gets too horny he'll just TAKE one of them--then laughing at their "civilized" expressions of horror. Meanwhile even the first mate's dietary supplements can't fill all the bellies on the boat, and the specter of starvation looms.

Shit(ake)faced

It's the Author who first gives in to the temptation to eat the mushrooms, reasoning rather bleakly that if they're going to die anyway, why die hungry? The shrooms have a strange psychological effect, making him feel he's "in touch with the infinite!" (Peyote rituals are knowingly referenced--he's a writer, so he knows about these things.) After a scuffle over Ginger leads the Author to shoot Gilligan and try to assassinate Howell, both he and the singer are exiled from the ship, left to find their own way in the hostile jungle.

The horror elements start to kick in at about the 20-minutes-remaining mark, when Ginger reappears on the boat and tempts the starving Howell with tales of delicious, plentiful mushrooms. He follows her into the jungle, into the midst of a wild Alice-in-Wonderland-esque mushroom field, where she tempts him like Eve to taste the forbidden fruit. He does, and immediately starts tripping! We get some lovely Christmas-light trip effects and a flashback to an acrobatic contortionist dancer at his favorite nightclub in Tokyo (presumably the effects of the hallucinatory fungus on his brain--still, zang). However, when Ginger reveals that the drawback to eating the mushrooms is that "you become a mushroom too!" and shows him the fungal growth on her own body, the trip becomes a very bad one indeed--the mushroom people of the title pop up (presumably the crew of the research vessel, now horribly changed) and menace him in a mad, more than a little horrific scene.

Back at the research vessel, the Professor and Maryann regain the repaired yacht, only to learn that the Skipper has given in to despair and killed himself, leaving them alone with no nautical expertise between. Things get worse when the mushroom people show up and FINALLY, after more than 80 minutes, make with the attacking! They board the boat and make off with Maryann, forcing the Prof to follow them into the jungle. Sadly by the time he finds her she's already eaten the shrooms and thus is lost to him forever. (The scene with innocent young Maraynn chowing down on the mushrooms and letting loose the heavily-reverbed laugh is downright chilling.) The Professor fights his way back to the ship, stopping long enough to punch some Toxie-esque Mushroom Warriors and even separate one from his arm (which doubtless will grow into another Fungal Overlord), then sets himself adrift.

Phallus in Wonderland

Back in Tokyo he finishes up his story, how he was consumed with guilt for not having stayed with Maryann, his true love, and eaten the mushrooms with her to show his devotion. He was picked up by a passing freighter, and ended up in the loony bin after telling his mad story. But the heartsick Professor may just have some proof to back up his tale...

Matango is a movie that's ALL about the slow reveal, preferring to let things simmer rather them bringing them to a full, rolling boil. The acting is pretty good throughout, and Honda throws in some interesting camera work (colored gels, hand-held shots, Dutch angles and the like) to build the feeling of tension and claustrophobia on the ship as the marbles get lost. The effects work, when it finally appears, is pretty amazing, and the seldom-seen Mushroom People are (rubber) suitably creepy in a way they wouldn't be if Honda had them in the spotlight from frame one. (They're shown MUCH more clearly on the poster than they ever are in the film.)

And I for one liked the idea of the mushroom people as the Lotus Eaters from the Odyssey, trading the hardships and uncertainties of humanity for eternal hallucinogenic bliss and fungal transubstantiation. Add some Lewis Carol visuals and you've got a unique slice of Toho filmmaking that really stands apart from the Kaiju flicks for which they're better known.

Even Nice Girls Do It

That said, the slow-burn development does make the plot drag at times, and modern viewers might have a little trouble staying awake during the copious non-fungo-centric downtime. Still, it's worth seeing at least once, for its relative uniqueness and cinematic craftsmanship. I give Matango 2 thumbs. If you give it a chance, you might just have a little fun, Gus.

Oh, come on. You knew it was coming.

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