La secte des cannibales

If you've never seen an Italian cannibal flick before, Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive might seem like the perfect slice of bloody exploitation, packed as it is with lashings of gore, sex and general nastiness. However, anyone au fait with the genre will identify many of the film's gory highlights as being stolen from earlier movies by Lenzi's contemporaries Ruggero Deodato and Sergio Martino. This is a shame, since the story has loads of potential and could have been developed nicely without resorting to pilfering footage.

Sheila, a rich young heiress from Alabama, is searching for her sister Diana, who has gone missing. When she discovers that Diana has been brainwashed by Jonas, a Jim Jones-style cult leader, and is living in a compound in the jungles of New Guinea, she enlists the help of Vietnam veteran Mark and ventures into the New Guinea wilderness on a rescue mission. But freeing Diana is a tougher job than it at first seems: the cultists will not let her go without a fight and the surrounding area is inhabited by cannibals. Only with the help of native woman Mowara can they hope to escape.

In addition to the gore, Lenzi packs his film with plenty of nudity from his female stars and includes some entertaining and gratuitous sex scenes: Mowara (Me Me Lai) is gang-banged amidst her recently deceased husband's ashes and spends most of her time topless; Janet Agren, who plays Sheila, is defiled by Jonas wielding a blood coated dildo; and Diana (Paola Senatore) gets it doggy-style from a randy cannibal.

Eaten Alive is a glorious exercise in bad taste and exploitation that would have got a higher rating from me had all of the footage been original.