Tweet
Released by: Severin Films
Released on: November 26th, 2024.
Director: Sergio Martino
Cast: Ursula Andress, Stacey Keach, Antonio Marsina, Claudio Cassinelli
Year: 1978
Purchase From Severin Films
Slave Of The Cannibal God – Movie Review:
Sergio Martino's 1978 film Slave Of The Cannibal God (also known as Mountain Of The Cannibal God) introduces us to Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress), a woman whose husband has gone missing during an expedition that he lead into the jungles of New Guinea. She's gone to the police for help, but they've been no use so she visits the British Embassy and asks for their help in finding out what happened to him. The advice she's given is to collaborate with her brother, Arthur Weisser (Antonio Marsina), and get in touch with an ethnologist named Edward Foster (Stacey Keach). She does exactly this, and soon enough the three of them have arrived on the outskirts of the jungle where Foster connects with a team of natives to help them make their way through the thick of it.
Trouble finds them quickly when Susan is threatened by a large poisonous spider which is promptly stabbed with a machete. The natives take this as a bad omen and sacrifice a lizard to make amends, which upsets Arthur who attacks them. A few of the natives leave after this occurs, and with their team now much smaller than it was, Foster continues to lead them deeper into the jungle, suspicious that Susan's husband was actually searching for the fabled mountain of Ra-Ra-Min, which is the home to a tribe of cannibals known as the Puka. When Susan is attacked by natives in the jungle, she's saved by Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli), who joins their team, but things get worse before they get better. When Arthur sleeps with a native girl at the village where they take solace one night, it opens up a big can of worms not just with the locals, but with the strange, masked natives who have been skulking about nearby…
Not quite the gut-muncher that more notorious Italian cannibal films like Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox are, this one nevertheless still packs a bit of a punch. There's quite a bit of very real animal violence on display here, most of it animals eating one another rather than humans slaughtering them, but we get a bit of that too. Sensitive viewers could certainly be put off by this footage, and for good reason, as it is quite graphic and unsettling. In addition to that, there's also some moderate to strong gore set pieces here involving the human characters, and then the not insignificant matter of a graphic masturbation scene and the now infamous scene of a man romantically entwined with a rather large hog.
However, when you take those more sensational elements out of the film, this picture plays more like a jungle adventure than a horror film. This one doesn't contain long, lingering scenes of natives chowing down on their Caucasian visitors like the Lenzi and Deodato entries noted above do, and it spends a lot more time on the voyage to find the cannibals (and in turn, Susan's husband) than it does with the cannibals themselves. The cinematography does a pretty good job of adding to all of this, as Martino employs plenty of long shots that show off the absolutely massive size and scope of the very real jungle where all of this is taking place. This is quite a good looking movie in that regard, and the excellent score from Guido and Maurizio De Angelis helps add tension and drama to the storyline and adds to the feel of adventure that permeates much of the movie in the first half.
As to the cast, Andress is lovely here, delivering a decent enough performance as the female lead and seemingly quite comfortable with the film's finale that we won't spoil here. Keach does a good job as the surly leader of the expedition and the lone American in the group. He's rough and tough but likeable and charismatic. Antonio Marsina is fine as Susan's brother, we know early on not to trust him and that he's up to something and Marsina does a good job of communicating his characters real motivations with some interesting facial movements. Claudio Cassinelli rounds out the main cast nicely. He too is likeable, seemingly quite noble, and he handles himself well in the action scenes as well as the few quieter moments he gets to enjoy in the picture.
Slave Of The Cannibal God – UHD/Blu-ray Review:
NOTE: As this review is based on an online screener provided by Severin Films for review purposes, the technical portion and the extras review for this release will is not complete. If/when finished product is made available, we’ll update this review accordingly.
The stream offered for review presents the movie in a 1080p high definition transfer, framed at 2.35.1, while the UHD would, obviously, be a HVEC encoded 2160p transfer “scanned in 4K from the original camera negative.” Picture quality on the stream looks good, which bodes well for the UHD transfer. Colors look nice, skin tones – and there are a lot of them on display in this movie – appear accurate. Black levels are decent and the image is free of any distracting print damage while retaining the natural film grain you’d hope for.
Audio chores on the stream are handled by an English language 2.0 Mono track with optional subtitles in English. The finished product should also include an Italian language track 2.0 Mono track. A far as the English track goes, it’s solid. The score sounds nice, the dialogue is clear and easy to follow and there aren’t any audible defects to note.
Finished product will be a two-disc set with extras spread out across the set as follows:
Disc One (UHD):
-Audio Commentary With Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies
-Trailer
Disc Two (Blu-ray):
-Audio Commentary With Claire Donner Of The Miskatonic Institute Of Horror Studies
-In The Jungle – Interview With Director Sergio Martino
-Unabated – Interview With Camera Operator Claudio Morabito
-Adventure Of A Lifetime – Interview With Production Designer Antonello Geleng
-Brothers In Arms – Interview With Antonello Geleng And Special Effects Artist Paolo Ricci
Listed on the specifications for this release if is Dangerous Liaison, an archival fifteen minute interview with Stacy Keach carried over from the 2020 Code Red Blu-ray release where the actor talks quite candidly about how much he enjoyed making this movie. He talks about getting along with co-stars Andress and Cassinelli and how Cassinelli actually saved Andress from a ‘white water cobra' using the same technique he'd been taught to utilize in the movie. He talks about how interesting it was to him to shoot a film outside of the United States, how he thought that Martino was a great director and how, yes, this movie is quite a bit more outrageous than most of the other films that he's starred in over the years.
-Trailer
Slave Of The Cannibal God – The Final Word:
Slave Of The Cannibal God doesn't have quite the same ‘impact' as some of the more notorious entries in the Italian cannibal movie cycle, at times feeling more like a jungle adventure film than a cannibal film, but it's pretty entertaining stuff even if the animal violence will, completely understandably, put some viewers off.