Really Awful Movies

A stern warning precedes Cannibal Ferox concerning “barbaric torture and sadistic cruelty.” And does it deliver. Like, we’re talking UPS.

Everyone’s favorite Roman whipping boy Giovanni Lombardo Radice (John Morghen) who’s been variously drilled, severed and flayed in different films, suffers by far his worst fate here (let’s just say spoiling it would involve keywords that would run afoul of certain search engines).

He plays Mike Logan, a degenerate New Yorker and emerald prospector who’s down in the Colombian Amazon like a latter day conquistador, whipping the natives into shape (and often worse).

In the film’s incongruous opener, there’s been a death in his apartment and the NYPD says a junkie was looking for Mike but of course, Mike’s nowhere to be found.

Also hiking through South American brush as it happens, is an anthropology PhD candidate Gloria Davis, who takes a Rousseau noble savage view of Amazonian, well, savages as it turns out…She’s seeking to prove her thesis that the “cannibal ferox” is a myth foisted on the locals by barbaric Spaniards. Boy, does she have some explaining to do to her university’s doctoral committee!

It should be said this is one poorly planned expedition indeed! Davis, along with a couple of friends who’ve concerned themselves more with weighing their load with whiskey than with useful provisions, soon find their jeep stuck in deep mud.

They soon find an Amazonian tribesman eating worms and opine, “that’s disgusting, let’s get outta here!” So much for dispassionate empirical observation!

Soon, the viewer is privy to lots of b-roll footage of grotesque animal attacks (we’re talking really really nasty) and reaction cutaways and that is merely a preview of the nastiness to come. We see a native girl who’s had a spike driven through her and finally meet Mike Logan and his buddy Joe, New Yorkers “running away from cannibals” with quite a story to tell of things below the waist being consumed by these savages.

When Joe falls into a flu-like state, the others debate leaving him there before deciding the moral thing to do is stay put and tend to him. And that’s never ever ever ever a good move in a horror film. We cannot stress that enough.

Soon, the natives get restless and it should be said, so did this reviewer. For all the insides-churning gore, dissolution and sickening set pieces, this is a surprisingly poorly-paced film.

*** (out of 5)

[CHECK OUT OUR DISCUSSION ABOUT ITALIAN CANNIBAL FILMS ON THE REALLY AWFUL MOVIES PODCAST]

Terrible title notwithstanding, We Are Still Here is a not terrible and often very inspired “creepy house in the snowy woods” movie.

Like in The Shining, there’s a house with really bad mojo, a blue- collar black guy who meets a grim fate, a creepy bar (Buffalo Bill’s, although here it’s a real establishment) and a star with forehead to spare – Andrew Sensenig as Paul. He’s a skeptical husband who sports Charlie Brown sweaters.

However, We Are Still Here is not Kubrick-inspired. Instead it derives its inspiration from the Italian master of the macabre, Lucio Fulci, albeit with a narrative structure that makes far more sense and a lot less nasty gore.

Anne and Paul have lost their son Bobby in a flat bed truck mishap and are still rebuilding their lives. Anne (Re-Animator’s still formidable Scream Queen Barbara Crampton) is convinced she “can feel Bobby in the house.” This should result in a quick call to a real estate agent before the ink is dry on the closing date, but we’ve been around the block a few times in horror and we know this neighbourhood too.

Soon, picture frames are cracking, there are odd smells coming from the basement, and after Anne finds Bobby’s baseball glove, a ball ominously bounces down the stairs (perhaps that very same ball that cursed the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2015 playoff run).

Their creepy intrusive neighbors pop by for libations, in this case some J&B whiskey, and the male half informs them of…wait for it… the home’s unsavory past!

Apparently, the ol’ homestead was a Fin de siècle funeral parlor run by one unscrupulous Mr. Dagmar, who emptied loved ones’ coffins and sold off body parts to the local university (and “to Orientals in Boston” who run restaurants). Anne needs no convincing and enlists the help of her two friends – wacky hippies who drive a beat up Plymouth with a dreamcatcher on the dash who are masters in the art of conjuring spirits.

They all soon find out that something insidious lurks inside.

We Are Still Here is a loving, crafty, capable tribute to haunted house horror. There are dynamite jump scares, and if supernatural’s your thing, you’ll be justly rewarded. Add a half-star if that’s the case.

***1/2 (out of 5)