Anthropophagous 2000

Not that Joe's old cult film needed a remake, or a sequel. Andreas Schnaas, who clearly must have loved the original film growing up, probably always wanted it to be more gruesome than it actually was. Because let's face it, the original film is a cult film mainly for the word of mouth of the infamous two scenes that were mainly cut from most versions available for years. When many of us finally saw the infamous fetus scene, honestly, we laughed! It was hard to believe it was cut at all. How could anyone take it seriously, it was so poorly done! I think Schnaas made the movie he wished D'amato had made. Which is mainly an extreme gorefest and nothing else.

If you are watching this movie for the splatter and gore, you definitely could pick a worse film. The gore, for the budget, is some top notch stuff. Some of it is so over the top that it becomes more hilarious than outright disturbing. Which is trademark Schnaas.

If you are watching this movie hoping that a filmmaker came along to try and actually make a better film out of Anthropophagus, than you might want to know that this is not the movie, and Andreas Schnaas is not that filmmaker. Say what one will about exploitation maestro Joe D'amato, but his original film is leagues better than this movie. And it mainly comes down to the simple fact that, although it may have lacked a lot of gore and splatter, it made up for it with its grim atmosphere and the performance of Eastman as the Man Eater.

Anyone that has watched any of Schnaas's VS movies, or any of his work before this will immediately know that he clearly was trying here. Having said that, he just has no knack keeping things interesting in between the gruesome FX work. The movie is boring and the viewer is left waiting for the next grand gore piece. Thankfully, the gore really does make up for the films awful pacing. When it comes you will immediately forget you were bored to begin with.

I like Andreas Schnaas and I like most of the splatter garbage he has been spitting out for years. And I do like this movie because I enjoy his work. But it's undeniable just how subpar this one is when comparing it to the original film. If you like Schnaas and his work, than you will probably like this. If you are a gore fan just looking for a good splatter flick, you won't necessarily be disappointed. But you may want to keep the fast forward button on stand by, just to get to all the good stuff quicker.

"Anthropophagous 2000" is the first Schnaas film I've seen. As a huge Joe D'Amato fan, I couldn't but give it a try. Well, I wasn't totally displeased, but I wasn't overly excited either. When Andreas Schnaas is good, he is very good, but when he's bad, he's rotten.

The film has its strong points: (1) The atmosphere is creepy and suspenseful. (2) The violence is brutal and plentiful. (3) There are enough surprises to keep viewers interested (especially if you are familiar with the original Joe D'Amato classic). (4) Andreas Schnaas is very good as the Grim Reaper (at least he tries his best to make a solid performance).

But there are also weak points. To name the most important ones:

(1) The major letdown is the lack of realistic gore. The gore effects in "Anthropophagous 2000" are of very uneven quality: some are quite impressive, while others are cheesy to the point of offense to the viewer. Was Schnaas distracted by other projects while he was making this, or did he run out of money, or did he simply lose interest?

(2) The sex scenes are laughable. How people are supposed to have sex with their under- and outerwear on (and how we are supposed to believe they're having sex) is beyond me. I'm not asking for Andreas Bethmann- type explicitness, but those scenes just don't work.

These drawbacks aside, "Anthropophagous 2000" is a nice effort. It's brutal, it's gory, and it's definitely worth a look – or maybe two. But it could have been better.

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

German director Andreas Schnaas' remake of Joe D'Amato's infamous Anthropophagous is pretty much a direct rip and follows the same storyline of vacationers stuck on an island and being terrorized by a cannibal. I've heard a lot about Schnaas but this was the first film of his I've seen. He's got quite a reputation for gore and the film doesn't disappoint on that level. There are all sorts of insanely violent scenes with tons of gore but the special effects are so incredibly poor that you can't help but laugh at them. It's that laughter that gives this film its charm, ala an Ed Wood movie. Technically speaking everything here is pretty horrid and doesn't hold a candle to the original flick. The famous "abortion" scene is also done here but not nearly as well.

I will never understand why anyone would like to do a remake of MAN EATER, but this direct to video does fine in recreating the non-stop gore-approach of the original.

It's from a gorehound for gorehounds (only).

From a technical point of view the movie is okay. Storywise it is stupid as hell. But who cares if you got all that lovely killings? Me. - That's why I only vote a 5/10.

Going to a beach-front getaway, a group of friends hoping to have a fun time together slowly realize their dwindling numbers are the result of a cannibalistic murderer running loose and try to stop his rampage before it's too late.

This here was quite the fun if prototypical German splatter effort. As is par for the course with those kinds of films, this one tends to get the majority of it's positives from the continuous and over-the-top splatter effects for the utterly graphic kills, and even though the low-budget shines through from time-to-time the film gets by more on the cleverness and quantity of the effects. From the marvelous opening, where one victim is repeated hacked up with an axe before being viciously scalped, to a savage double-murder in the woods where one is disemboweled and gutted while the other is removed of his esophageal tract, and the later scene where one is impaled with a wooden pole, there's plenty of rather gruesome and nauseatingly graphic kills here that give this plenty of crudely-styled spectacle that goes quite nicely into the film's rather enjoyable and explosive pace. The here here is so fact and frantic that there's little stopping it from unleashing a multitude of fine gore effects from the next one as these scenes manage to set-up the absolutely amazing finale that one-ups the original in excessive gore combined with the big action that comes along throughout here as this has a fine series of scenes that build up really well. There's some excessively fun action scenes in here that make-up the blistering pace here with several great escape chases through the abandoned town and out into the surrounding woods where they get into close encounters here, even managing several scenes here that outdo the original as the pregnant friend slaughter, the great brawl with the killer as the remaining friends engage in a long showdown and the wraparound here in the caves gives this a great sense of fun. Along with some rather fine Gothic-flavored suspense scenes, these hold this one up over it's few minor flaws. The main problem here is the same prototypical problem the other German splatter efforts feature as the ludicrously low-budget effects here give themselves away on nearly every occasion as the use of plastic mannequin heads for the bodily dismemberment rarely matches up with the performer in terms of facial features while the rough edges and plastered skin look ridiculously fake before the fake blood and intestines get featured. Though it tends to run a bit too close to the original in terms of going shot-for-shot too many times for it's own good, it's all the flaws found here.

Rated Unrated/NC-17: Extreme Graphic Violence, Nudity, Graphic Language, strong sex scenes, mild drug use, extreme violence against children and graphic violence against pregnant women.