Our new column, Staff Picks, takes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme andthe "Staff Picks" section was the placetofind outwhat films were worthy of one's time.Of course, our version of Staff Picks has a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out the films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, we're looking at the short-livedgenre of Cannibal-sploitation movies, typically involving a group of peoplestumbling upon an isolated clan of primitives and finding themselves victims of stereotypically cannibalistic activities.
Virtually all of the films in this genre, particularly the better examples, were made by Italian filmmakers who were fed up with the limitations of "giallo" cinema. Wanting to push the boundaries of cinema, they often adopted a quasi-documentary feel that gave an immediacy to the imagery on display that the confines of narrative fiction couldn't otherwise provide. Beginning with the 1976 film Snuff, also known as Slaughter, the blurring of lines between reality and fiction in the horror genre became a rampant trend that fed nicely into the Cannibal-sploitation subgenre to follow.
The movement's roots go back a bit further, with Umberto Lenzi's 1972 film The Man from the Deep River being the first recognized film of the subgenre, but it exploded following the release of Snuff. The movement presaged the found footage boom that began with 1999's The Blair Witch Project, as the promise of seeing something potentially "real" on screen titillated audiences who had yet to be inundated with the gore and terror that came with the slasher movie trend of the 1980s.
Of course, we have our own reasons for recommending the films we've selected today, namely the amount of nudity in the films. This leaves off many prime examples of the genre such as Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox which, while a prime example of the subgenre, isn't exactly loaded with skin. Director Eli Roth also ticked a lot of our boxes with his 2013 attempt to revive the subgenre The Green Inferno, but let's stick to the films made during that glorious boom in the late 70s and early 80s. Consider those films advanced Cannibal-sploitation flicks and get around to them once you've hit the subgenre's high notes. Enough intro, let's dive in...
Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978)
Italian director Joe D'Amato got into the Cannibal-sploitation fray with this 1978 entry in the subgenre, centered around the titular character, played by Melissa Chimenti(above), who seduces a team of geologists one by one to satisfy her cannibalistic urges! The first of several films D'Amato made in the Caribbean, Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibalshas at least a dose of female empowerment in its otherwise by-the-numbers cannibal adventure. Sirpa Lane and Maurice Poli play a geologist and reporter, respectively, who travel with a team to a remote island to conduct asurvey that would pave the way for the opening of a nuclear power plant. Needless to say, once Papaya gets a load of their plans, things aren't going to end well for the team.
The beautiful locales give Sirpa Lane's geologist all the excuse she needs to get nude, which she does several times throughout the film...
But the real star here is Melissa Chimenti, who bares all in a series of knockout nude scenes as she seduces and destroys the team one member at a time...
One unfortunate trend of the subgenre that really took root here was the indiscriminate killing of animals on screen. With fewer laws regarding that sort of thing during the time, it was a cheap and easy way for directors to elicit real visceral thrills from the audience as they were able to see actual death on screen. This exploded in 1980, but here was a novelty that would come to be a rather unfortunate hallmark of Cannibal-sploitation cinema.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Technically the first Cannibal-sploitation film of the 80s, Ruggero Deodato's first foray into Cannibal-sploitation one was released in Italy in February, 1980, before making its way to the drive-ins and grindhouse theaters of America in the ensuing months. Set in 1979, the film follows a documentary film crew who set out to make a film about a cannibalistic tribe living in the jungles of South America, and are never heard from again. This is one of the first found footage films, with the finished project allegedly being released as a discovery of the film crew's work.
As with nearly every found footage film, though, this is complete bunk, with the only actual cruelty endured by the countless animals murdered in the film. The film's most famous image is that of actress Lucia Costantini having been apparently impaled on a giant sharpened tree branch for committing adultery...
Not long before this scene, we get a graphic nude scene from Costantini as she commits the act for which she is ultimately punished, including a gratuitous look between her legs...
Deodato was obviously a fan of the shot as he also uses it with another actress, Francesca Ciardi...
There was a firestorm of controversy surrounding the film from minute one. After making nearly two million dollars in ticket sales in its first ten days of release in Italy, all prints of the film were seized by the government, with Deodato arrested and made to stand trial for murder. The actors in the film were eventually called into court to get the murder charges against the director dropped, though this was all the publicity needed for the film to mount a successful international advertising campaign.
Zombie Holocaust (1980)
DirectorMarino Girolami also gets in on the Cannibal-sploitation fun with his 1980 entry into the genre which has gone by many titles over the years including Zombie 3 and Butcher M.D. This one starts in New York City, where a hospital worker has been devouring the bodies of corpses brought to the city morgue. An assistant at the morgue played by Alexandra Delli Colliis horrified to find out that this cannibal is from the same small archipelago in eastern Malaysia that she hails from, and teams with a pair of doctors to travel to these islands and discover the source of the evil for themselves.
Of course, once they get there, the natives hail Delli Colli as their queen, happy that she has not only returned to the island, but brought a group of fresh sacrificial offerings for them. Delli Colli plays it to the hilt, helping her people to devour the invaders and install her as their rightful queen. It's a nutty movie that mixes tropes of both cannibal films and zombie films into a mishmash that's not wholly successful, but features enough great stuff to overlook its many shortcomings. Namely, a game Alexandra Delli Colli, who has several nude scenes throughout...
Devil Hunter (1980)
Jesus Franco—the final member of the holy Cannibal-sploitation quartet along with Lenzi, D'Amato, and Deodato—brings us his vision for the subgenre with this other 1980 entry. Things go from bad to worse for Ursula Buchfellner's character Laura Crawford when she is abducted and brought to the jungle by a group of savage white hunters, only to find herself kidnapped by a bloodthirstyband of natives. Throwing every possible exploitation trope he can at the film, Franco also introduces a loose cannon Vietnam vet played by Peter Weston as the film's ostensible hero, setting out to save Laura while taking out as many natives as he can along the way.
This is by far the most skin-filled film in the subgenre, leaning hard into the sexual angle while putting poor Ursula Buchfellner(above) in constant danger of assault, death, or both. She's not the only one baring her bod, though, as we get a cannibal priestess played by Aline Mess, who spends nearly the entire duration of her screen time naked as a jaybird...
Our ostensible hero also gets to bed the lovely Muriel Montossé on his journey into the heart of darkness to rescue Laura...
In terms of skin and total disregard for cultural sensitivity, this is probably the pinnacle of the genre, and features probably the least amount of actual animal mutilation as well, which makes it something of a pillar in the subgenre.
Eaten Alive! (1980)
We finally come back around to Umberto Lenzi with his 1980 entry into the subgenre, filmed before but released after Cannibal Holocaust shocked audiences across Italy. Dispensing with that film's faux-documentary style, this flick takes a straight narrative approach with a white woman named Sheila (Janet Agren) traveling to the jungles of New Guinea to find her lost sister Diana (Paola Senatore, above). Little does she know that Diana has been indoctrinated into a sacrificial cult, and will soon turn her fellow cult members onSheila and her traveling companions.
Not exactly breaking new ground within the subgenre, this one is content to crank up the shock factor, with a dildo covered in snake blood taking center stage in one of the film's more unsettling sequences.Later, a native woman played Me Me Lai is widowed when her husband is burned alive while a group of men then help themselves to her body...
No one makes it out unscathed, a common thread in these films, though Janet Agren at least gets to have a little consensual fun before she and her companions are all murdered...
