Paradiso infernale

Unfortunately, there are no "Cannibal", no "Holocaust" and actually no "II" in this movie. The story is something like BBC documentary supplied with poor and, in fact, unnecessary acting. It can't be compared to Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust", the title of the subject is just the exploitation of Deodato's movie success.

Even some rather natural and, frankly speaking, amazing scenes, for example, with strange fish crawling in aborigine's fundament or the reanimation of a monkey with the help of rubber tube can't save the movie from total failure, at least in my eyes.

And I am sure that it will be completely useless and pretty disappointing for all Italian (cannibal) horror movies fans and for all that violence-lovers. And, for certain, it is not a must see movie for true cinemaddicts.

I'm having trouble classifying Natura Contro aka The Green Inferno from 1988 correctly. Was this an adventure movie meant for Indiana Jones fans? Or a Cannibal film for fans of Cannibal Holocaust?

There is a bit of both in it and that immediately means that you also have to love both to find this one working for you.

The plot summed up: a group of American adventurers takes a stolen plane into the South American jungle to find a professor and his discovery (a treasure in a jungle village). Along the way, they must capture Monkeys to buy gasoline for the plane, capture Anacondas to get a raft, and save an Indian village from Jungle Pirates who kidnap children to trade their organs for dollars!

What this film certainly has in common with Indiana Jones is its very Hollywood, simplistic view of the rest of the world. Indian tribes in South America, who I think probably can't even speak Spanish or Portuguese, turn out to be perfectly fluent in English. They let themselves be bribed with a tape recorder because the tape has a recording of Jungle Sounds (Yeah, you don't hear that often in the Jungle...) And the women walk around in monokini, but put on clothes when they go out with the Americans (because so the Americans wouldn't feel uncomfortable?). I think as a viewer it is best not to ask too many questions.

The lite, at times almost funny style of adventure (which seems to come from a children's film) is in stark contrast to the sometimes very cruel things that happen around. All the gore that should have made this a horror movie remains out of the picture, but castrating a man with a snake, for example, is still quite dramatic and serious. The characters lack the shock you would expect after seeing this happen.

So my biggest problem is the characters' lack of realism in relation to their condition. I'm not saying that the actors do a bad job, they just act like they're in a romantic comedy and not in a alive/dead situation. Weird! Another minor problem is that I suspect this too is a movie first filmed in Italian and then dubbed into English. As there is just a little something wrong with the lip syncro... I much prefer that movies just keep the Italian spoken and opt for subtitles. The masses, which this film probably aimed at in the US, will probably prefer a dub.

Other than that, the film isn't all that bad: the jungle is beautifully filmed and the plot, although a bit cheezy, is quite interesting and fun. I have the strong impression that they first wanted to make a Cannibal Horror film, and then they changed their mind. Scary scenes and gross was omitted and the characters became pranksters and young do-gooders. It just watered down to what it is.

How many points should I give to this film? Difficult! As Horror? Not even 3/10 because there is hardly anything left of it. As an adventure film? Actually, Natura Contro is not doing so badly: the film is adventurous and the characters know how to arouse the viewer's interest.

So 6/10, it's interesting for fans of 80s adventure movies but don't expect any horror!

Oh dear.

Firstly the dubbing is horrific! You can't take it seriously from the start. The characters are cheesy and typical 80's b-movie over the top.

The story and how it pans out is loose, random and boring. It's a bit like a kids treasure hunt. It flits from one thing to another with no depth or development.

It is completely unrealistic, silly, painful and pointless.

Paradiso infernale got one great weakness - it lacks almost on all fields: there is not enough gore, not enough sleaze, not enough action, not enough cheese. What we mostly get are some cliched and watered down copy scenes of "serious" cannibal movies like Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust, one could dare to say this one is made for a mainstream audience and taken away is most of the "spice" of such kind of trashy movies. To make things worse many of the scenes feel very disjointed, somewhat it looks that every idea that crossed the minds of the writers was somewhat squeezed in. Anyway, the flick got some funny scenes and there is some cheesy feel of a cheap Indiana Jones movie, so if you are on the trip to watch everything "cannibalistic" you can put this one on your to watch list, it won't kill you - neither by total joy nor by total boredom.

While it's not universally acclaimed as such, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust is a masterpiece. A lot of the other cannibal flicks hailing from Italy (and elsewhere) aren't masterpieces, however and this is certainly the case with The Green Inferno a.k.a. "Cannibal Holocaust 2". Quite why this film gets to be called Cannibal Holocaust 2 when many better films get stuck with thinking of their own title is beyond me, but there's no way that The Green Inferno deserves to be associated with the Ruggero Deodato film. The film is a sort of cross between an adventure film and a nasty cannibal flick, though it's not as nasty as the genre's "big" films, and the adventure side of it doesn't work too well either considering that the film is completely boring! Nothing that Cannibal Holocaust great features here; the jungle setting is not well used, the natives never really feel like they're posing a threat and the film doesn't manage to be disturbing in the least - something that can never be said for Cannibal Holocaust. There's really not much else to say for this film; if I could go back in time to be before I saw it, I wouldn't see it. If you're looking for something like this that does work – see the brilliant Massacre in Dinosaur Valley!