CANNIBAL TERROR BLU-RAY review

The second of this week's new 88 Films cannibal related releases sees a married couple venture into cannibal country in search of their kidnapped daughter, Flaurence.

Perhaps best known as one of the original video nasties, it's worth pointing out that this film only really made its name onto the list by virtue of having the word 'cannibal' in its title. To be fair, it does also feature cannibals in the film (I'm looking at you, Cannibal Holocaust 2 AKA Green Inferno), but 'Terror' is a bit of a stretch. The film begins with what can only be described as jaunty calypso music, as two thieves masquerading as businessmen (Olivier Matzot & Antonio Mayans) and a buxom woman (Pamela Stanford) decide to kidnap the daughter of a local dignitary and hide her out in a safe house at the edge of a "jungle". When one of the thieves, Mario, decides to rape the wife of the homeowner, they are forced to flee into the neighbouring woodlands inhabited by a tribe of cannibals.

Right from the off this film just seems off. The dubbing of a film from its original language to English can be unavoidably distracting, by why oh why did they choose to dub the little girl's voice with clearly that of a grown woman? Particularly when, in a film that has long stretches with no dialogue, this little girl doesn't ever seem to stop talking whenever she's on screen. Maybe we should be applauding them for avoiding a lazy stereotype, but the casting of young, white Spanish men as the cannibal tribe was a bold choice, or perhaps (more than likely) a helpful budgetary workaround to rope in people who liked the sound of appearing in a movie without really knowing what they were letting themselves in for. Wearing elaborate face paint designs, they look less like your typical cannibal tribe and more like the front row of an Ultimate Warrior tribute wrestling match.

The entire concept is ill conceived, with a number of poorly delivered scenarios constituting what amounts for a plot. For some reason the filmmakers have decided that it would be a good idea to cross cut between a sex scene with no actual bearing to the plot with a vicious rape out in the woods, what dialogue there is is of the standard of "this is right on the edge of cannibal country. They'd love to put you in a soup", and although cannibals are a real phenomenon, this film seems to think they're just better organised zombies. There's debate over the actual amount of involvement from Jess Franco, prolific director and writer of White Cannibal Queen, Zombie Lake and countless other low budget exploitation films, but one would assume he jumped ship fairly early on as even by his standards, this is pretty low grade stuff.

Now, I'm not saying there isn't things to enjoy about this film. For a start, the re-using of actors in multiple roles has to be commended. For example, when one of the main characters gets eaten by the cannibals, the same actor appears 15 minutes later wearing a huge fake handlebar moustache, and in what is one of the bravest filmmaking choices I've ever seen, they re-use the same actor playing the cannibal chief as a different character IN THE SAME SCENE.

This may be an unforgivably dreadful piece of filmmaking, but I'd be lying if I didn't find elements of Cannibal Terror to enjoy out of sheer ridiculousness. If you're a fan of schlocky genre fare, I would imagine this would go down a treat with some friends and the ability to pause, rewind and re-enjoy.

Verdict
1/5

Special Features-
 -That's not the Amazon! - The strange store of the Eurocine cannibal film cycle.
 -Deleted scenes
 -Trailer

BARE BREASTED COUNTESS DVD review

Driven to commit heinous crimes by an evil force, the Countess (Lina Romay) returns to the island she calls home and slowly begins to kill the locals using her powers of seduction.

Jess Franco's Bare Breasted Countess aka Female Vampire has been released under various guises and cuts in its lifetime (including a hardcore cut going by the not so subtle name of The Swallowers) and is rife with all the hallmarks of a Franco film; female nudity, dealings with the occult and a subject matter that made him the bane of film censors. It's also very, very silly. So the question is how best to approach this review? Tongue in cheek or tongue in.... well, I'll let you finish that sentence off yourself.

The opening scene sees our lead, the Countess Irina Karlstein (a mute ingenue with a penchant for parading around with her top off) meeting a young man at a farm, where she performs fellatio on him before chomping down to feed from him in semi (pun intended) traditional vampire fashion. As a mute it is hard to establish her motivations, but luckily she does provide a winsome voiceover to her cliff top drives and there's a handy reporter on hand at the start to help out with a lot of the exposition. Using her mouth as her weapon of choice she lures innocent young men with her feminine wiles and then performs deadly fellatio on them, or as the coroner puts it when he is presented with a corpse drained of semen and blood, he was "killed by mouth".

In terms of cinematic craft there's not a lot going for it, but the tropes and language of this softcore era are all present and correct here. At a time when throwback genre films such as The Love Witch are currently in cinemas, this is a great opportunity to see how close it comes to recreating the real thing. It's almost entirely dialogue free, just occasional snippets to connect one softcore scene to another; and although perhaps not as immediately reference friendly as Franco's Vampyros Lesbos, this is still classic European exploitation cinema. As well as direction from Jess Franco (under a pseudonym), this film also features two of his regulars in his muse Lina Romay and friend Jack Taylor, moustachioed and resembling a cut price Franco Nero.

Surprisingly and almost certainly accidental, there is a feminist subtext to this film with Irina ranking somewhere near Jess Weixler's Dawn in the horror/comedy Teeth for female characters who use their sexuality to satiate their needs against the wishes of the male led society. I'm certain that this reading was not what was intended during production and it's a bit of a stretch to imagine this film wanting to appeal to anything other than the male gaze (you could get yourself in serious trouble by having a drinking game for every time the camera lingers on a gratuitous crotch shot), but at least that way it affords the character more depth than what is on show.

Partially due to, shall we say, more sophisticated cinematic tastes and storytelling methods, it's hard to not make this kind of 70s era straight-faced eroticism look a bit funny by modern standards (just look at the success of Belinda Blinked), but that doesn't mean there isn't fun to be had here. The depiction of female sexuality is frankly ridiculous and laughable as she dry humps her bed frame and then a phallic shaped pillow, and the mere fact that the main character is a beautiful, sex-crazed woman who isn't able to speak a word says everything you need to know about the sexual politics of the time.

The first release from new boutique horror label Maison Rouge with collectable art cards and a reversible sleeve included with the DVD; if you're a fan of this kind of euro erotica then Bare Breasted Countess should be in your collection, and if you're a fan of cheesy, over the top films that will give you plenty to ponder over, it's worthy of a place too. I'm still not completely sure why she masturbates over the corpse of one of her victims, though.

Verdict 2/5 for filmmaking

Verdict 4/5 for fun, so...

Overall Verdict

3/5