Jean Rollin’s 1968 debut feature is a strange, often confused affair that will probably leave most viewers baffled. It does, however, offer hints of where his remarkable career would go, and has much to fascinate within its confused whole.

Originating as a short film designed to play support to another feature, the film was eventually expanded to feature length, taking the form of a two part story – though part 2 is a more or less direct continuation of part 1. It’s loosely plotted, but initially tells the story of a psychoanalyst who visits a chateau where for women live, believing themselves to be vampires. They’ve been convinced of this by superstitious villagers, who then descend on the chateau to stop the ‘vampires’ escaping.

As the film progresses, it gets stranger and stranger, what little coherent story there was falling away to a series of dream-like moments involving real vampires. Characters disappear and then reappear later with no real explanation, everyone seems to be in a trance-like state and the film’s tenuous grasp on reality rapidly falls away.

It sounds a mess, and in many ways it is. But if you can adjust your mind to accept Rollin’s free-form narrative and not worry about anything making sense, then there is much to enjoy here. While the film betrays the technical inexperience of all involved – the focus is often off, for one thing – it offers up a series of startlingly striking images, some haunting moments and an atmosphere of such complete weirdness that it becomes oddly compulsive. The film is closer to a series of artistic vignettes than a regular narrative story, and is as close to the scattershot unpredictability of a dream as any film you’ll see.

Despite the crude English title, The Rape of the Vampire (Le Viol du Vampire sounds so much more elegant!) is not remotely exploitative – the nudity, while frequent, is restricted to boobs ‘n’ bums, and is entirely non-sexual, while the action scenes are a knowing pastiche of B-movies, serials and horror clichés, twisted and deconstructed to the point where they seem almost deliberately undramatic.

This is hardly the Rollin film to use to introduce new admirers, but for those already attuned to his unique style, it will be a fascinating, trippy experience, and one that shows his remarkable visuals could work just as well in black and white as in lurid colour.

Redemption’s Blu-ray has the usual impressive extras – a fascinating documentary about the film, video interviews with Rollin and star Jean-Loup Philippe and – best of all – two early short films by the director. Les Amours Jaunes (1958) is a decent if ordinary student piece, set in Rollin’s usual coastal location, but Les Pays Loin from 1965 is remarkable – two people find themselves somehow lost in a strange city where no-one speaks their language, and the 16 minute film follows their adventure. It mixes crime movie pastiche with a very Rollinesque sense of alienation and detachment, and makes you wonder what he might have made if not confined to the softcore horror world. Worthy of the price by itself, the film is a very welcome addition to this impressive package.

Review by David Flint (this review also appears at Strange Things are Happening)

Mondo Digital Blu-ray disc and DVD comparisons

Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience review

Wikipedia | IMDb

Buy on Redemption Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Dracula and Son (original title: Dracula père et fils) is a 1976 French comedy and horror film written and directed by Édouard Molinaro, who would subsequently go on to make the international arthouse hit La Cage aux Folles. The film is notorious for being brutally re-edited and re-dubbed with crass humour for the US market, and for supposedly ‘tricking’ Christopher Lee into starring. Lee believed himself to be playing a different vampire, but found his character renamed ‘Dracula’ when the film was released. As such, it is Lee’s third fictional Dracula film (he was also in Jess Franco’s Count Dracula and the documentary In Search of Dracula) that wasn’t made for Hammer Films.

With angry villagers driving them away from their castle in Transylvania, Dracula (Christopher Lee) and his son Ferdinand (Bernard Menez) head abroad. Dracula ends up in London, England where he becomes a horror movie star exploiting his vampire status. His son, meanwhile, is ashamed of his roots and ends up a night watchman in Paris, France where he falls for a girl. Naturally, tensions arise when father and son are reunited and both take a liking to the same girl.

Cast:

• Christopher Lee as Le prince des Ténèbres
• Bernard Menez as Ferdinand Poitevin
• Marie-Hélène Breillat as Nicole Clement
• Catherine Breillat as Herminie Poitevin
• Bernard Alane as Jean
• Jean-Claude Dauphin as Cristéa
• Raymond Bussières as L’homme âgé à l’ANPE
• Mustapha Dali as Khaleb
• Xavier Depraz as Le majordome

Dracula and Son was released in France on September 16, 1976. It was later distributed in 1979 in the United States in an attempt to cash in on that year’s ‘Dracula fever’ in general and Love at First Bite in particular, which it has some similarity to. The American distributors, Quartet Films, cut many scenes and replaced them with different gags, reducing an apparently sophisticated comedy to a crass slapstick movie.

Allmovie gave the film a rating of two stars out of five, but noted that “this was a very witty film prior to its decimation by an uncaring American distributor. A review in TV Guide gave a positive review of three stars out of four, noting that the film “actually works because it treats its subject with respect and doesn’t degrade it for cheap, campy laughs.” while noting that the film has a “poor dubbing job” that made the character Ferdinand Poitevin sound like a cross between Woody Allen and Austin Pendleton.

The film has since lapsed into relative obscurity, and no English language or subtitled version of the complete film is officially available.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Posted by DF

The Diabolical Dr. Z  is a 1965 Spanish/French horror film, originally titled Miss Muerte (Spain: “Miss Death”) and Dans les griffes du maniaque (France: “In the Grip of the Maniac”). It was directed by Jesús Franco, from his own screenplay, which was co-adapted with Jean-Claude Carrière. It stars Mabel Karr, Estella Blain, Fernando Montes, Guy Mairesse, Marcelo Arroita, Howard Vernon, Lucia Prado and Antonio Jimenez Escribano. Franco and composer Daniel White both have uncredited roles as police inspectors.

When Doctor von Zimmer (Dr. Z) dies from a heart attack after his mind control experiments have been dismissed by critics, his daughter Irma (Karr) avenges him, using an exotic dancer with long deadly fingernails clad in a skull-mask and a revealing bodysuit (Blain) as her bizarre human murder weapon.

IMDb

” …the first of Franco’s to feature the freaky femme fatale concepts that would be fleshed out (no pun intended) to pornographic extremes in later pics. Here it is merely used as a very kinky plot device. The idea of the sultry female with ‘dangerously’ long fingernails that both indimdates and attracts men is a well worn concept, both visually and in literature, but the idea to actually feature said appendages as an instrument of death in a movie is truly male fantasy taken to it’s most demented extreme. The whole business is handled so bizarrely matter-of-fact that it can make first time viewers’ shake their collective heads in disbelief.” Films from the Far Reaches

“The film features several memorable sequences, often involving heart-pounding chases (Miss Death pursued in the empty theater by the hypnotized criminal Bergen; Dr. Moroni’s fog-laden close encounter with both Miss Death and Irma Zimmer before he is dispatched) or graphic violence (Irma Zimmer’s botched ‘suicide’ which leaves her facially scarred; Mrs. Moroni’s death, by having her head plunged through a window-pane, ten years prior to Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975)!; Dr. Vicas’ train seduction and eventual assassination at the hands of Miss Death). Also notable, of course, is Miss Death’s weird and kinky dance routine – complete with fetching outfit!” Latarnia.com

“Even with it’s clunkier moments (jump-cuts, continuity issues, etc.), the film is dynamic in writing and inventive in execution. One thing I greatly appreciate about Dr. Z is the pacing; it just flies by! In the shadow of Dr. Orloff, this films packs on the weirdness, the beauty, and the fun.” Cinema Somnamulist

Buy The Diabolical Dr. Z on Mondo Macabro DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“This picture seems poised between nightmare and crude sensationalism, lacking the sadistic exuberance of Gritos en la noche but not yet a callous exploitation of sadism, as in his numerous women-in-prison movies…” The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror, edited by Phil Hardy

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Sheitan (“devil” in Arabic) is a 2006 French horror film. It was directed by Kim Chapiron, and written by Kim and Christian Chapiron. It stars and was co-produced by Vincent Cassel. His wife Monica Bellucci also makes a cameo appearance in the film.

It’s Christmas Eve in Paris and in the awful-looking Styxx Club, a group of young hedonists are drinking, sleazing and listening to the worst DJ you can possibly imagine. One of the group, Thaï (Nicolas Le Phat Tan) bumps into stunning vamp, Eve (played by actress/model Roxane Mesquida, also seen in Rubber) and quickly becomes enamoured. Meanwhile, one of his friends, Bart (Olivier Barthelemy), gets into some bottle-related scrapes; the other two members of the group, Yasmine (Leïla Bekhti) and Ladj (Ladj Ly) are marginally less annoying. With blood pouring from Bart’s head wound, they elect to accept Eve’s offer of an early night back at her place in the country (I assume that’s what she suggests).

On the long journey back (she’s stunning but really, all of them abandoning Christmas for her?!), they steal some gas and sweets from a petrol station and with Thaï asleep, Bart indulges in some mild foreplay with a willing Eve in the car. Come daylight, the gang are in the remote countryside and run into Eve’s housekeeper, Joseph (Vincent Cassel from Irreversible and Mesrine, sporting an enormous set of dentures). Joseph is an extremely jolly chap and joshes with his new pals, taking a particular shine to the hapless Bart, who he constantly mis-names, most humourously as ‘Bork’. Delighted to see Eve, he feeds her some milk, direct from one of his goats. When I say he’s delighted, due to his teeth, he looks permanently ecstatic.

Joseph introduces Bart to his niece, Jeanne (Julie-Marie Parmentier), though the idea is less ‘how do you do?’ more ‘would you like to do?’. To add to the odd introductions, the farm seems to be populated with inbred yokels. To break the ice, Joseph invites the group down to the local hot spring.

Though the chaps are still very much after Eve, Jeanne tries to show her appreciation for Bart by masturbating his dog; Bart is appalled, the dog’s opinion isn’t recorded. The boisterousness advances to water-based jousting, the arrival of the locals leading the some of Bart’s hair being stripped from his head.  It’s around now the film goes rather strange (assuming you thought everything up until now was par for the course).

Back at the house, as night falls, conversation, naturally, turns to sex, Satan and the small matter of a very odd room in the house full of creepy-looking dolls. It becomes apparent the whole family is nuts, although with libidos unsatiated, Eve is still the centre of attraction. After a bit of sexy dancing, a rather unlikely threesome takes place but is interrupted by a scream elsewhere in the house. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Aside from the seriously weird family, it transpires Joseph is taking bodyparts to build a proto-doll which will, at midnight, turn into something demonic. The only remaining parts are two eyes, the donor, sadly not informed in advance of his requirements. The startling imagery and hallucinatory sequences lead to a dizzying climax that continues even as the credits roll.

The film is a showcase for the never disappointing Cassel, who clearly revels in the role of the chest-thumping mentalist. Though dislikeable as characters, the rest of the cast perform their roles well enough to inspire deep loathing, Mesquida certainly believable as the film-long lust attraction. The set-up is a lengthy one, perhaps unnecessarily so, considering the overly speedy denouement which though disturbing, lacks cohesion and throws a dream sequence in for the sake of it, ruining the flow of the film.

It’s perfectly reasonable to mention the film in the same breath as the likes of Frontière(s) and Haute Tension but it lacks the unremitting punch of either. Nihilistic, rude, sexy and concerning, if it lacks one surprising element, it’s gore, the foreboding figure of Cassel being the threat without any need to clarify what he could do to you. An acquired taste but well worth a watch, if only to gaze in awe at the largest set of teeth since Spielberg’s fish.

Daz Lawrence

The Returned (French: Les Revenants) is a 2012 television series about the dead returning to life created by Fabrice Gobert and shown on Canal+ in France and BeTV in Belgium. It is an adaptation of the 2004 French film They Came Back. The soundtrack to the series was written by Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. An English adaptation is being produced by Paul Abbott and FremantleMedia, also entitled They Came Back.

In a small mountain town, many dead people re-appear, apparently alive and normal: teenagers Simon and Camille, “Victor”, a small boy who was murdered by burglars, and Serge, a serial killer. They try to resume their lives as strange phenomena occur: amongst recurring power outages, the water level of the dam mysteriously lowers, and strange marks appear on the bodies of the living and the dead.

The series received positive critical acclaim. Le Monde said that the series marked a resurgence in the fantasy genre with the dead appearing out of nowhere, trying to regain their life where they left off. Libération said that the series recalled the atmosphere of Twin Peaks by David Lynch. In France, viewing figures averaged 1.4 million over the eight episodes.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website

“The Returned isn’t really a zombie drama, see — it’s more a supernatural ‘what if?’ story like a serialised Twilight Zone episode. Its French origin also gives is more of an otherworldly feel for British audiences, too, as everything’s so restrained and it allows itself time to build a thick atmosphere. Of course, tolerances will vary and some will already declare it pretentious and inert, but as first episodes go I thought this was a spellbinding hour with huge potential.” MSN TV

“With its subdued colour palette and painterly compositions, The Returned looks lovely too, even when it’s at its most shocking – not many series can aestheticise the sight of someone being stabbed to death in a subway, or a pensioner taking a dive off a dam. Scottish post-rockers Mogwai’s ominous throbs (which you can listen to on Spotify), incidentally are the perfect accompaniment to all this picturesque gloom.” SFX

Dans Ma Peau (English title: In My Skin) is a 2002 French-made film written, directed and starring Marina De Van. The film also stars Laurent Lucas (Calvaire),  Léa Drucker and Thibault de Montalembert. The film’s score is by Esbjorn Svensson of the celebrated jazz fusion band, Esbjorn Svensson Trio.

Set in contemporary France, Dans Ma Peau sees Esther (De Van) as a career-savvy young woman, making her way up the job ladder as an economist, surrounded by unremarkable middle-class trappings. Whilst wandering around in the garden at a friend’s party at night (I’d criticise this but fear I may be guilty of this too) she trips and cuts her leg badly on some metal equipment. Only realising the extent of the cut some time later, having spoilt the clean carpet of her hosts, she sees a doctor who is surprised she wasn’t in agony. As the wound heels, Esther becomes fascinated with her own flesh, initially re-opening the damaged tissue with a blade, progressing to renting a hotel room so she can tear strips off herself to her heart’s content, whilst having a little nibble into the bargain.

Released in the midst of the avalanche of challenging French films of the late 90′s and early 2000′s (High Tension, Irreversible, Martyrs, etc), In My Skin is no less gruelling in terms of grisly, lingering shots of torn body parts but lacks the narrative to hold your attention throughout, revealing all its cards at an early stage.

De Van, who does a better job than most of juggling writing, directing and acting duties, still spends too much time patting herself on the back, hardly allowing any other character to develop and leading the audience by the hand throughout; despite the film demanding that the viewer think about why Esther could possibly be acting in such a bizarre way, you are left either thinking the obvious (alienated by the dull plasticity of middle-class life and the apathy of her friends and family and needing to ‘love’ herself) or not caring at all, which barely leaves the film better than an autopsy video.

As a metaphor, it really drags, though as a showcase for special effects and make-up artist, Dominique Colladant (Nosferatu the Vampyre, Frankenstein 90) it’s hide behind the cushion stuff, gruesomely effective and sadistic, though by the end of the film you’re pretty much immune, surely not the intention. Dans ma peur won the Best International Film Award at the Fant-Asia  Awards in 2003. Challenging but ultimately hollow and too self-congratulatory.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Le Frisson des Vampires (English title: The Shiver of the Vampires) is a 1971 French erotic horror film directed by cult filmmaker Jean Rollin. It was his third vampire movie.

Having had many VHS and DVD releases, many of them on UK label Redemption, the definitive version of the film was released in the USA 2012 by Redemption/Kino Lorber as part of a five-disc Jean Rollin Blu-ray collection, along with La Rose de Fer, Fascination, La Vampire Nue, and Lèvres de Sang.

Two newlyweds, Isle and Antoine, are on their honeymoon, on their way to visit Isle’s two cousins. Unfortunately, they discover that her cousins died the day before. Nonetheless, they go to the chateau where they lived anyway. They are greeted by two female Renfields who show them to a room.

Isle goes to the cemetery to visit the graves of her cousins, and a woman named Isabelle tells Isle that she was about to get married to both of her cousins, but in a way she was already their brides. Isle decides to sleep alone on that night because she is upset. While getting ready for bed a woman emerges from the grandfather clock. She introduces herself as Isolde and takes Isle back to the cemetery where she bites Isle in the neck. Antoine, feeling lonely, goes to see Isle, but finds that she isn’t in her room. He searches the castle and comes to the chapel where it seems a human sacrifice is taking place. Two of the participants turn out to be Isle’s cousins and explain they must kill the woman or she will become like them — vampires. Antoine goes back to find Isle in her room and isn’t sure whether it was all a dream…

Wikipedia | IMDb | Watch uncensored trailer (nudity)

‘Rollin was a loveably scrappy underdog, and what he lacked in originality and budget he made up with imagination and sheer oddity. Shiver of the Vampires is easily one of his most visually interesting efforts. The set design alone is brilliantly kooky–see the wacko, wax-covered fishbowl with a skull in it–and Rollin goes wild with his cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon, casting many scenes in bold washes of color. It’s surreal and psychedelic, doubly so when you factor in the film’s minor-key prog rock score, which gives Shiver a lead over the Hammer films, at least in terms of pure hipness.’ Casey Broadwater, Blu-ray.com

‘Shiver of the Vampires is a movie that works more as a treat for the eyes and the soul, rather than the brain. There doesn’t appear to be a deeper meaning to any of it, and it might seem that things happen in the film for no reason. Everything feels like a strange dream and on that level it works really well. This dream-like atmosphere is further enhanced by the use of some unusual primary lighting effects, the kind that Italian directors like Bava and Argento have also used to great effect. While many of Rollin’s movies are quite colorful, Shiver of the Vampires differs in the way that he uses the color to bath the locations in red. It’s a nice touch that sets the gothic castle apart from other horror movies that make use of similar settings.’ Ian Jane, DVDTalk.com

‘Shiver of the Vampires finds Rollin continuing to test thematic tools he’d revisit over and over (and over) again throughout his career. There are the ubiquitous female twins, the lesbian vampiress, the modern abandoned castle, numerous graveyard scenes, crazy lighting schemes, and numerous invented rituals. It all sounds very dark, but the film is really a blast. The vampire cousins, who seem much too old to be cousins of our bride, are fantastic characters, well drawn and exuberant, whose presence makes the film more fun than it has any right to be.’ Charlie Hobbs, TwitchFillm.com

Thanks to Wrong Side of the Art for some of the images above

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (original title: L’étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps) is a 2013 Belgian/French giallo horror thriller by French directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Amer). It stars Klaus Tange, Ursula Bedena and Joe Koener.

A woman vanishes. Her husband inquires into the strange circumstances of her disappearance. Did she leave him? Is she dead?  As he goes along searching, he plunges into a world of nightmare and violence…

IMDb

‘Plot be damned: Cattet and Forzani approach cinema with an incessant desire for experimentation, done towards something like a distillation of giallo to its essence: say what you want about L’Étrange Couleur des larmes de ton corps – brutally violent, it’s probably not for everyone – it’s certainly got the strength of its convictions.’ Mark Peranson, Pardo Live

Clovis Trouille was born on 24 October 1889, in La Fère, France. He worked as a restorer and decorator of department store mannequins, but is remembered as a Sunday painter who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts of Amiens from 1905 to 1910.

After his work was seen by Louis Aragon and Salvador Dalí, Trouille was declared a Surrealist by André Breton - a label Trouille accepted only as a way of gaining exposure, not having any real sympathy with that movement.

The simple style and lurid colouring of Trouille’s paintings echo the lithographic posters used in advertising in the first half of the 20th century. His understandable utter contempt for the Church as a corrupt institution provided Trouille with the inspiration for decades of work:

Dialogue at the Carmel (1944) shows a skull wearing a crown of thorns being used as an ornament.

The Mummy shows a mummified woman coming to life as a result of a shaft of light falling on a large bust of André Breton.

The Magician (1944) has a self-portrait satisfying a group of swooning women with a wave of his magician’s wand.

My Tomb (1947) shows Trouille’s tomb as a focal point of corruption and depravity in a graveyard.

Wikipedia | Related: Nosferatu (1921)

The 1970s saw old taboos falling away in the cinema, and few horror film sub-genres benefited from the relaxation in censorship more than the cannibal film. In fact, this is a genre that scarcely existed prior to the Seventies. Sure, horror films had long hinted at cannibalism as a plot device – movies like Doctor X (1932) and others portrayed it as an element of psychosis without ever being overly explicit, and this would continue into the 1970s with films such as Cannibal Girls Frightmare and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – but no one had really explored the idea explicitly. Some things were just too tasteless, and cannibalism was something of a no-no with assorted censor boards around the world.

Yet the idea that remote tribes in the Amazon or on islands like Papua New Guinea were still practising cannibalism was a common one at the time, thanks to a conflation of suspicion, colonialist ideas, misunderstanding of tribal rituals (such as head hunting / shrinking) and old-fashioned racism. And, if we are to be fair, these beliefs were not entirely without validity, as some cultures still did practice cannibalism, albeit not as determinedly as was often made out. Certainly, the subject was exploited – 1956 roadshow movie Cannibal Island promised much in its sensationalist promotional art, even if the film itself was Gaw the Killer, an anthropological documentary from the 1931, re-edited and re-dubbed, that was notably lacking in anthropophagy, despite the best efforts of the narrator to suggest otherwise.

Buy Cannibal Island on DVD from Amazon.com

Elsewhere, cartoons and comic books perpetuated the idea that any great white hunter who was captured by natives was bound to end up in a cooking pot, and Tarzan movies hinted that he bones the natives wore as decoration were not all from animals. 1954′s Cannibal Attack saw Johnny Weissmuller playing Johnny Weissmuller, fighting off enemy agents in a cannibal-filled jungle.

Hell Night director Tom De Simone’s terrible movie Terror in the Jungle (1968) had a small boy captured by a cannibal tribe and only saved by his ‘glowing’ blonde hair. Worship of blonde white people would be a theme in later, trashier cannibal movies too). Even the children’s big game hunting Adventure novel series by Willard Price had a Cannibal Adventure entry. But notably, none of these early efforts actually went the extra mile – the natives in these films may have been cannibals, but we had to take the filmmakers and writers word for that – no cannibalism actually took place on screen.

In the 1960s, the Mondo documentary would also take an interest in bizarre tribal rituals, and these mostly Italian films would subsequently come to inform the style of the cannibal films that emerged later. Certainly, later shockumentaries such as Savage Man, Savage Beast, This Violent World and Shocking Africa were closely related to contemporary films like Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World, with their lurid mix of anthropological studies and sensationalism.

One such mondo movie was the 1974 Italian/Japanese Nuova Guinea, l’isola dei cannibali. Tribal scenes from this production – which also includes footage of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip on a Royal visit to the island (!) – were inserted into the zombie film Hell of the Living Dead (1981) to add verisimilitude. It was  later opportunistically released on DVD in the USA as The Real Cannibal Holocaust.

Buy The Real Cannibal Holocaust on DVD from Amazon.com

The cannibal film as we know it now began in 1972, with Il paese del sesso selvaggio, also known as Deep River Savages, The Man from Deep River and Sacrifice!  It was directed by Umberto Lenzi, who would spend the next decade playing catch-up in a genre he pretty much invented with scriptwriters Francesco Barilli and Massimo D’Avak. This film essentially set many of the templates for the genre – graphic violence, extensive nudity, real animal slaughter and the culture clash between ‘civilised’ Westerners and ‘primitive’ tribes.

The film is, essentially, a rip-off of American western A Man Called Horse, with Italian exploitation icon Ivan Rassimov as a British photographer who finds himself stranded in the jungles of Thailand and captured by a native tribe. Eventually, after undergoing assorted humiliations and initiation rituals, he is accepted within the community, who are at war with a fierce, more primitive cannibal tribe.

Co-starring Mei Mei Lai (who would become one of the sub-genre’s stock players), the film is set up more as an adventure story than a horror film, but the look and feel of the story would subsequently inform other cannibal movies, and the scene where the cannibal tribe kill and eat a native certainly sets the scene for what is to come.

Buy The Man from Deep River + Warlock Moon + Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat on DVD from Amazon.com

Made in 1976, Ruggero Deodato’s Ultimo mondo cannibale (Last Cannibal World; Cannibal; Jungle Holocaust) also had the feel of an old-school jungle adventure, though Deodato expanded on what Lenzi had started – this tale of an explorer (played by Massimo Foschi) who is captured by a cannibal tribe features a remarkable amount of nudity (Foschi is kept naked in a cage for much of the film, teased and tormented by the tribe) and sex – including an animalistic sex scene between Foschi and Mei Mei Lai (Rassimov also co-stars). It also featured more graphic gore and real animal killing – the latter would become the achilles heel of the genre, something that even its admirers would find hard to defend. Even if the slaughtered animals were eaten by the filmmakers, showing such scenes for entertainment still left a bad taste with many, and over and above the sex and violence, would be the major cause of censorship for these films.

The Last Cannibal World proved to be a popular hit around the world (it even played UK cinemas after BBFC cuts) and sparked a mini-boom in cannibal film production. In 1977, Joe D’Amato continued his bizarre mutation of the Black Emanuelle series – which, under his guidance, had evolved from soft porn travelogue to featuring white slavery, rape, snuff movies, hardcore sex and even bestiality – with Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (aka Trap Them and Kill Them), a strange and uniquely 1970s mixture of of softcore sex and hardcore gore, as Laura Gemser goes in search of a lost cannibal tribe. Quite what audiences expecting sexy thrills thought when they were confronted with graphic castration scenes is anyone’s guess, but the film played successfully across Europe and America, albeit often in a cut form.

D’Amato returned to the genre in 1978 with Papaya – Love Goddess of the Cannibals, with Sirpa Lane which, despite its title features no cannibals, in a film that again mixed gore and softcore yet still managed to be rather dull.

Also in 1978, we had the only cannibal film with a big name cast. Mountain of the Cannibal God (aka Slave of the Cannibal God; Prisoner of the Cannibal God) saw former Bond girl Ursula Andress stripped and fondled by a cannibal tribe as she and Stacey Keach search for her missing husband. The starry cast didn’t mean that director Sergio Martino wasn’t going to include some particularly unnecessary animal cruelty and a bizarre (faked) scene of a man fucking a pig though, as well as graphic gore. At heart an old fashioned jungle adventure spiced up with 1970s sex ‘n’ violence, the most remarkable part of the film is how Martino managed to persuade Andress to appear completely naked. Perhaps she just wanted to show off how good her body was 16 years after Dr No!

Buy The Mountain of the Cannibal God on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

That same year saw an Indonesian entry in the genre with Primitives, also known as Savage Terror. This was essentially a rehash of The Last Cannibal World, but with less gore and no nudity, which resulted in a rather plodding jungle drama. This one is definitely for genre completists only, and proved to be a major disappointment when released on VHS to a cannibal-hungry public by Go Video in the UK as a follow-up to Cannibal Holocaust.

Ahh yes, Cannibal Holocaust. The Citizen Kane of cannibal movies, and the genre’s only undisputed masterpiece, the film would also become the most notorious film in the genre, shocking audiences and censors alike and even now seen as being about as extreme as cinema can go.

The film began life as just another cannibal film, Deodato hired to make something to follow up The Last Cannibal World. But with the relative freedom granted to him (all his backers wanted was a gory cannibal film), he came up with a movie that critiqued the sensationalism of the Mondo movie makers and the audience’s lust for blood, with his tale of an exploitative documentary crew who set out to film cannibal tribes but through their own arrogance and cruelty bring about their own demise.

Deodato’s film effectively invents the Found Footage style of filmmaking, his fake documentary approach being so effective that he found himself facing a trial, accused of actually murdering his actors! Given that the film mixes real animal killing with worryingly effective scenes of violence, all shot in shaky, hand-held style, it’s perhaps no surprise that people thought it was real – even into the 1990s, the film was reported as being a ‘snuff movie’ by the British press.

But there is more going on here than mere sensationalism and sadism – Deodato’s film fizzes with a righteous anger and passion, and makes absolutely no concession to moral restraint. There’s a level of intensity here that is beyond fiction – certainly, the story of the film’s production and reception would make for a remarkable movie in its own right. Almost imprisoned and seeing his film banned in Italy and elsewhere (in Britain, it was one of the first video nasties), Deodato was suitably chastened, and never made anything like it again.

Buy Cannibal Holocaust on DVD from Amazon.com

But despite the bans, the legal issues and the outrage, Cannibal Holocaust was enough of a sensation to spawn imitators. Umberto Lenzi returned to the genre he’s more or less invented in 1980 with Eaten Alive (Magiati Vivi; The Emerald Jungle; Doomed to Die), which managed to mix cannibal tribes, nudity and gore with a story that exploits the recent Guyana massacre led by Jim Jones. This tale of a fanatical religious cult leader had an cannibal movie all-star cast – Ivan Rassimov, Mei Mei Lai and Robert Kerman (aka porn star R. Bolla) who had starred in Cannibal Holocaust were joined by Janet Agren and Mel Ferrer in what is a textbook example of a cheap knock-off. Not only does the film cash in on earlier movies and recent news events, it actually ‘cannibalises’ whole scenes from other films, Lenzi’s own Man from Deep River amongst them. Yet despite this, it’s fairly entertaining stuff.

Buy Eaten Alive on DVD from Amazon.com

Lenzi followed this with Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly; Let Them Die Slowly), a more blatant imitation of Cannibal Holocaust. Kerman again makes an appearance (albeit a brief one), while Italian cult icon John Morghen (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) headlines a fairly ham fisted tale of an anthropology student who sets out to prove that cannibalism is a myth, only to find she’s very, very wrong. Directed with indifference by Lenzi (who clearly had no interest in theses films beyond a pay check), the film features more gratuitous animal killing and some remarkably sadistic scenes (two castrations and a woman hung with hooks through her breasts), which invariably ensured that the film would be “banned in 31 countries”.

Buy Cannibal Ferox on DVD from Amazon.com

1980 also brought us Zombie Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.) in which Marino Girolami opportunistically livened up his Zombie Flesh Eaters imitation by adding a mad doctor, cannibals and nudity to the mix, and Cannibal Apocalypse, where Vietnam vets John Saxon and John Morghen were driven to cannibalism in Vietnam and then go on the rampage in the USA.

Jess Franco entered the genre in 1980 with Cannibals (aka The White Cannibal Queen) and Devil Hunter (aka Man Hunter), but the crudity of the cannibal movie was unsuited to a director more at home with surreal, erotic gothic fantasies. Cannibals was the more interesting of the two – Franco’s intense close-ups and slow motion during the cannibalism scenes add a bizarre, almost dream-like edge to the proceedings, in a tale that mixes a one-armed Al Cliver and a naked Sabrina Siani as the blonde goddess worshipped by the ‘cannibal tribe’. Devil Hunter is a ridiculous mishmash with a kidnapped movie star, a bug-eyed, big-dicked monster and cannibals. Franco himself was dismissive of both films, and they are recommended only for the completist.

Cannibals

Similar to the Franco films (coming from the same producers and featuring footage from Cannibals) is the tedious Cannibal Terror, a French effort that sees a bunch of kidnappers hanging out in a cannibal-infested jungle. It’s pretty hard work to sit through even for the most ardent admirer of Eurotrash. Meanwhile, cannibalistic monks cropped up in the 1981 US movie Raw Force (later retitled) Kung Fu Cannibals but they were only one of the smorgasbord element in this exploitation trash and being a ‘religious order’ rather than a tribe merit just a brief mention here.

After this flurry of activity, the genre began to fizzle out, exploitation filmmakers moving on to the next big thing (i.e. knock offs of Conan and Mad Max). It wasn’t until 1985 that we saw a revival of the jungle cannibal film with Amazonia (aka White Slave), directed by Mario Gariazzo. A strange mix of revenge drama and cannibal film, the movie is a gender-reversal of Man from Deep River, with Elvire Audray as Catherine Miles, brought up by a cannibal tribe after her parents are murdered in the Amazon. Despite some gore and nudity, it’s a rather plodding affair. It should not be confused with Ruggero Deodato’s Cut and Run, also sometimes called Amazonia but which – despite the setting and some gruesome moments – was not a return to the cannibal genre for the director.

More fun was Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (aka Naked and Savage), a cheerfully trashy affair directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini, with the survivors of a plane crash – including nubile young models and Indiana Jones like palaeontologist Michael Sopkiw battling slave traders, nature and cannibal tribes (but not dinosaurs) in the Amazon. Gratuitous nudity, splashy gore, bad acting and a ludicrous series of events ensure that this one is a lot of fun.

Natura Contro, retitled Cannibal Holocaust II but unconnected to the earlier film, is possibly the most obscure of the films in the sub-genre. Made in 1988, it is the final film by Antonio Climati, best known for his uncompromising Mondo movies of the 1970s. It’s surprising then that this is fairly tame stuff by cannibal movie standards, telling the story of a group of people who head to the Amazon to find a missing professor. By 1988, both the Italian exploitation film and the cannibal genre were breathing their last, and the excesses of a decade earlier were no longer commercially viable – the mainstream audience for such films had dwindled considerably, while censorship had tightened up.

Natura Contro

It would be another fifteen years before we saw the return of the jungle holocaust film, and then it was hardly worth it. Bruno Mattei, a prolific hack since the 1970s, had someone managed to keep making films, and in 2003 knocked out a pair of ultra-low budget, almost unwatchably bad cannibal films. In the Land of the Cannibals (aka Cannibal Ferox 3) and Cannibal World (aka Cannibal Holocaust 2) were slow, clumsy and boring attempts to cash in on the cult reputation of Mattei (a couple of years later, he’d make two similarly dismal zombie films) and the reputation of the earlier cannibal movies (needless to say, these are not official sequels to either Holocaust or Ferox). These two films seemed to be the final nail in the genre’s coffin.

But with the reputation of Cannibal Holocaust continuing to increase, and a general return to ‘hard core horror’ in the new century with films like Saw and Hostel, the cannibal film has seen a slight revival. But although Deodato has talked about making a sequel to Cannibal Holocaust, the new films have been American productions, even though they are informed by the Italian films of the past.

Jonathan Hensleigh’s Welcome to the Jungle , made in 2007, channels Holocaust with its found footage format as a group of remarkably annoying treasure hunters head to New Guinea in search of the missing Michael Rockerfeller, hoping to cash in on his discovery. Instead, their bickering attracts the attention of local cannibal tribes, who stalk and slaughter them. There;s an interesting idea at play here, but the characters are all so utterly loathsome that you’ll struggle to make it to the point where they start getting killed.

The latest attempt to revive the genre comes from Eli Roth, who’s Green Inferno is about to be released. The film takes its title from Cannibal Holocaust (one of Roth’s favourite films) and the plot – student activists travel to the Amazon to protect a tribe but find themselves captured by cannibals – sounds like a copy of Cannibal Ferox. Having received positive reviews at festivals, we hope the film is able to capture the spirit of the original movies, if not their frenzied style.

Certainly, we are unlikely to see anyone making a film quite like Cannibal Holocaust again – there are laws in place to stop it, if nothing else. But we can now look back at this most controversial of horror sub-genres and see that they represent a time when cinema was without restraint. As such, they are more than simply films, they are historical time capsules, and for those with strong stomachs, well worth investigating.

Article by David Flint

Related: Cannibal Holocaust | Devil Hunter | The Man from Deep River | The Mountain of the Cannibal God

Offline reading:

Buy Eaten Alive! Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Tender Dracula, or Confessions of a Blood Drinker (French: Tendre Dracula or, alternately, La Grande Trouille) is a 1974 French horror film directed by Pierre Grunstein. It stars Peter Cushing, Alida Valli, Miou-Miou, Bernard Menez and Nathalie Courval. The plot involves two writers who take their girlfriends to a castle where an actor (Peter Cushing) who has played vampires in many films is living. The longer they stay in the castle, the more likely it seems that the actor is an actual vampire.

A frantic television executive dispatches two bungling writers, Alfred (Bernard Menez, La Grande Bouffe, Dracula and Son) and Boris (Stéphane Shandor), to convince acting legend MacGregor (horror mainstay, Peter Cushing) not to throw away his peerless career playing a vampire in order to branch out into the world of slushy romance. They head off to a remote Scottish castle where the actor resides, taking with them two budding actresses, Madeleine (Nathalie Courval) and Marie (a regularly undressed, be-wigged Miou-Miou) and soon encounter resident butler Abélard (Percival Russel) and MacGregor’s wife (Alida Valli, another horror legend, seen in the likes of Suspiria and Lisa and the Devil), both of whom veer from Carry On to existential experimentation in the blink of an eye. We finally meet a Keats-spouting MacGregor, already way beyond convincing to change his new career path but the remaining 70 minutes care little about such frippery.

Struggling to decide which genre it wants to demolish, we are regularly distracted by a stream of gratuitous nudity, none of which is anything other than typical 70′s softcore but all of it somewhat jarring when considering Mr Cushing’s name is above the title – those alarmed at his participation in the sleazy Corruption should take a cold shower.

Some singing also ensues but fortunately both Valli and Cushing steer clear, both looking occasionally like they are prepared for the film to start in earnest. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether the actor is leading his guests along or he has grand designs on his prey.

The presence of Valli and Cushing, as well as a castle, should be foolproof enough to ‘get by’ but this oddly-pitched French production is far too satisfied with its props to go to the effort of story/script/wit/point. This, mercifully, was Pierre Grunstein’s only directorial effort, though his career as a producer (Jean de Florette, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) would suggest he wasn’t utterly blind to talent and film-making skill. Made in the period during which Cushing was in deep mourning for the loss of his wife, Helen, it is easy to see the actor throwing himself into any old project to distract him from his misery, though this is somewhat wobbly as an appeal, given it also being the period of some of his greatest roles, Tales from the Crypt, Horror Express, Madhouse and so on.

The muddled cast, with Cushing’s voice dubbed by French acting titan Jean Rochefort in the original release, appear to be acting alongside rather than with each other; both Courval and Miou-Miuo regularly burst out into song in a strange Greek Chorus, seemingly an attempt to remind everyone where we are in the plot. In the most preposterous scene, Cushing spanks Miou-Miou, the kind of thing you could get away with in 1974, with the chances of English-speaking audiences ever viewing the film being slim. What we do get is a glimpse of is Cushing as The Count, more redolent of the smooth Lugosi vamp than Lee’s aristocrat but still only an interesting footnote than a statement.

So confused is the aim, especially as Euro-humour rarely travels well at the best of times, that it’s hard to be too damning of the film, purely because it’s difficult to know what the point was in the first place. Towards the end, Cushing’s character flicks through a scrapbook containing photos of some the real actor’s most famous roles. You’d think that at this point someone would have twigged that something had gone terribly astray in the very production they were working on.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Some of the images above appear courtesy of the Peter Cushing Blog

Le Diable Noir (The Black Devil) is a 1905 silent short film by Georges Melies.

Melies was a pioneer of the horror film, special effects and cinema in general – his 1896 film The Haunted Castle is considered by many to be the first horror film. Over the next few years, he would churn out dozens of short films, often with a fantastical and comedic edge to them, and Le Diable Noir is fairly typical of these movies.

Running just under 4 minutes, it opens with the titular character entering a hotel room (a typically one-dimensional stage set that will be immediately recognisable to anyone who has seen a lot of Melies films), where he frolics with gay abandon before vanishing, just as the hotel guest is shown into the room. This sober looking fellow is clearly looking forward to a good night’s sleep on the none-too-comfortable bed, but soon finds that the furniture in the room is moving from place to place, shifted by an unseen force.As he tries to make sense of this, the impish devil becomes visible, and torments the man as he chases it with a broom. Magically appearing and disappearing, the devil seems impossible to capture, and eventually sets the bed on fire. Naturally, the poor guest is blamed for this and thrown out, much to the devil’s delight.

This is slight stuff, obviously, but still entertaining on a basic level. As with much of Melies’ work, it is shot from one static angle, giving it a theatrical feel. This lack of movement and short running time would make films like this essentially redundant within a few more years.

Like much of Melies’ work, Le Diable Noir is free to view online:

DF

The Vampire is a short story collection, first published in Britain in 1965 by Pan Books. It is an adaptation of a 1960 anthology, I vampiri tra Noi that was published in Italy.

The book is ‘presented’ by Roger Vadim, who’s involvement seems restricted to a page and a half foreword. His name, prominent on the cover, was obviously considered the main selling point – the Italian edition of the book appeared in the same year as his vampire film Blood and Roses. The actual editors are Ornella Volta and Valeria Riva, and the English edition is adapted by Margaret Crosland.

Although the book claims to both ‘unabridged’ and an ‘adaptation with some additional material’, this collection is in fact considerably shorter than the original Italian edition. The contents of the Italian version are as follows:

Confessione, John Haigh (Confession, 1949)
Lettera di un Uomo Onestissimo, anonymous (da Augustin Calmet, Dissertationes sur les Apparition des Esprits et sur les Vampires, 1749)
Vampiri d’Ungheria e Dintorni, Augustin Calmet (an extract from da Dissertationes sur les Apparition des Esprits et sur les Vampires, 1749)
Non Dura, François Marie Arouet Voltaire (da Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1784-1787)
Il Vampiro in Convento, Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli (da Lettres à une Illustre Morte Décédée en Pologne Depuis Peu de Temps, 1771)
I Vampiri al Lume della Scienza, Prospero Lambertini, Papa Benedetto XIV (da De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione, 1749)
Rapporto Medico sui Vampiri, Gerard Van Swieten (Remarques sur les Vampyrisme de Silesie de l’An 1755, 1755)
La Colpa È dei Preti, Prospero Lambertini, Papa Benedetto XIV (da Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli, La Vie du Pape Bénoît XIV, Prosper Lambertini, 1783)
La Fidanzata di Corinto, Wolfgang Goethe (Die Braut von Corinth, 1797)
Il Vampiro, John Polidori (The Vampyre, a Tale by the Right Honourable Lord Byron, 1819)
Vampirismo, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (ind. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffomann) (Vampirismus, 1828)
Il Vampiro per Bene, Charles Nodier (da De Quelques Phénomènes du Sommeil, 1831)
Berenice, Edgar Allan Poe (1835)
Il Vij, Nikolaj Vasil’evič Gogol’ (Vij, 1835)
La Macabra Amante, Théophile Gautier (La Morte Amoureuse, 1836)
La Bella Vampirizzata, Alexandre Dumas (La Belle Vampirisée, 1849)
La Famiglia del Vurdalak, Alekséj Konstantinovič Tolstòj (La Famille du Vurdalak, 1847)
Che Cos’Era?, Fitz James O’ Brien (What Was It?, 1859)
Lokis, Prosper Mérimée (Lokis, le Manuscrit du Professeur Wittenbach, 1869)
Il tuo Amico Vampiro, Isidore Ducasse, conte di Lautréamont (da Chants de Maldoror, 1868)
Carmilla, J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
Perché il Sangue È la Vita, Francis Marion Crawford (For the Blood Is the Life, 1880)
L’Horlà, Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla, 1887)
Un Vampiro, Luigi Capuana (1907)
Il Conte Magnus, M.R. James (Count Magnus, 1904)
La Signora Amworth, E.F. Benson (Mrs. Amworth, 1922)
Il Vampiro del Sussex, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, 1927)
Il Vampiro Passivo, Ghérasim Luca (da Le Vampire Passif, 1945)
Vampiro in Mezze Maniche, Thomas Narcejac, ps. di Pierre Ayraud (Le Vampire, 1950)
Sogno Rosso, Catherine Lucille Moore (Scarlet Dream, 1934)
Carnevale, Lawrence Durrell (da Balthazar, 1958)
Storia del Sesto Capitano di Polizia, anonimo (da Alf Laila Wa Laila [Le Mille e una Notte], XIII sec.)
Il Vampiro Ballerino, Aleksandr Nikolajevič Afanas’ev (ind. Afanasev) (da [Antiche Fiabe Russe], 1855-1864)
La Città Vampira, Paul Féval (La Ville Vampire, 1875)
L’Ebreo che Leggeva Storie di Vampiri, Guillaume Apollinaire (Le Juif Latin, 1910)
L’Uomo del Piano di Sopra, Ray Bradbury (The Man Upstairs, 1947)
Il Pivello, Edwin Charles Tubb (Fresh Guy, 1958)

Of these stories, only the ones listed in bold appear in The Vampire. However, there are several new additions, including an extract from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The contents of the British edition are as follows:

The Vampires of Hungary and Surrounding Countries, Augustin Calmet (da Dissertationes sur les Apparition des Esprits et sur les Vampires)
Carnival, Lawrence Durrell
Carmilla, J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The Beautiful Vampire, Théophile Gautier (La Morte Amoureuse)
Berenice, Edgar Allan Poe
Chriseis, Simon Raven (an extract from Doctors Wear Scarlet, 1960)
The Horla, Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla)
Mrs Amworth, E.F. Benson
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Cloak, Robert Bloch (1948)
Viy, Nicolai Gogol
Fresh Guy, E.C. Tubb
A Vampire, Luigi Capuana (Un Vampiro, 1907)
The Man Upstairs, Ray Bradbury
The Death of Dracula, Bram Stoker (an extract from Dracula, 1897)

The book also has three pages of notes about the stories.

As vampire anthologies go, this is an impressive selection, more thorough than most and weighing in at 316 pages. You rather do wish that the longer Italian edition – which seems as thorough as you could hope for in 1960 – had been completely translated, however.

The Vampire proved popular enough to be later reprinted, and also appears in a French edition in 1961, Histoires des Vampires.

DF

Like a Doll (Comme une Poupée) is a 2014 French short horror film directed by Joseph Catté.

“Toying with gender roles, madness and horror, Joseph Catté’s new short film Comme une Poupée (Like a Doll) is a good example of how to make something impressive out of very little – in this case a single actress (Pauline Helly), a story by Roland Topor (author of The Tenant, another psychological gender swap study) and a lot of blood.

The result is an impressive, beautifully constructed and effective five minute short film that should have you wanting to see more from Catté.”

David Flint, courtesy of Strange Things Are Happening

Redemption Films is a British media company created by Nigel Wingrove that began releasing VHS videos in 1992. Wingrove chose to market the company’s initial releases in stark black and white (with blood red trimmings). The company logo featured Eileen Daly, his wife at the time. Initially, some horror and cult movie fans were perplexed by this distinctive approach but they sold well to the general public and the branding/packaging appealed to stores looking to create cult movie selections.

Eventually. under pressure from admirers of original artwork, Redemption (and Salvation) began to issue their sleeves with both original and new artwork, as many DVD and Blu-ray companies now do. In retrospect, some of the unique artwork for Redemption/Salvation releases has now acquired its own cult status and original VHS tapes such as Crazy Desires of a Murderer are very collectible.

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Cannibal Terror (original title: Terreur Cannibale) is a 1980 French/Spanish horror film. It was directed by porn specialist Alain Deruelle [as A.W. Steeve], Olivier Mathot and Julio Pérez Tabernero (Sexy Cat; Las alegres vampiras de Vögel; Hot Panties) from a screenplay by Tabernero and H.L. Rostaine. Jesus Franco was also apparently an uncredited co-writer. It stars Silvia Solar (Eyeball; Devil’s Kiss), Pamela Stanford (Lorna the Exorcist; Sexy Sisters), Burt Altman [Bertrand Altmann] (Zombie Lake; Devil Hunter), Stan Hamilton, Gérard Lemaire, Olivier Mathot (Revenge in the House of Usher; Maniac Killer), Antonio Mayans and Sabrina Siani (Ator, the Fighting Eagle; Conquest).

The film is notable for the fact that it shares an amount of footage with Mondo Cannibale (also known as Cannibals and White Cannibal Queen,1980). While many sources suggest that Franco’s footage was ‘borrowed’ for Cannibal Terror, a closer examination reveals that there are more connections than this between the two films. Both films share a number of locations, cast, and even dubbing actors. Some connections that suggest more than a mere ‘borrowing’ of footage are:

Sabrina Siani is the White Cannibal Queen of Mondo Cannibale, and also appears (as a fully clothed adult) in a bar scene in Cannibal Terror. Several shots of the dancing cannibal tribe in their village are common to both films, and several shots appear only in one or the other. One actor with a very distinctive face is seen in Cannibal Terror in no less than three roles (two cannibals and one border guard) and is also quite visible as one of the cannibals devouring Al Cliver’s wife in Mondo Cannibale.

In addition are the obvious cast parallels of Olivier Mathot, Antonio Mayans, both of whom have starring roles in both films. Porn star Pamela Stanford plays Manuella in Cannibal Terror, and has the brief role of the unfortunate Mrs. Jeremy Taylor in Cannibals.

Plot teaser:

After botching a kidnapping, two criminals hide with their victim in a friends house in the jungle. After one of them rapes the friend’s wife, they’re left to be eaten by a nearby cannibal tribe…

Reviews:

“Cannibal Terror is awful, to be sure, even more so than other Eurocine efforts may have led you to expect. That’s not to say that it isn’t fun, and I found myself enjoying it a bit in spite of [or is that because of?] the criticisms above. While I can’t recommend it as horror, those looking for the next great bad movie may want to check it out. The Severin disc is excellent, and highly recommended for those looking to complete their Video Nasties collection.” Wtf-Film

Buy Cannibal Terror on Severin DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“The Pyrenees Mountains standing in for the Amazonian jungle. The flagrantly Caucasian “Indians” and their tiki bar village. The gore effects so pitiful that the camera itself often seems to be ashamed to look at them. The ludicrously inappropriate score, which makes the city theme from Make Them Die Slowly seem like the epitome of taste and sound judgement. The steadfast failure of the script to make any sense at all at any level. Yes, Cannibal Terror truly is the Zombie Lake of cannibal movies, and as such, I score it as a film not to be missed.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“You wonder when the cannibals are coming. They take the kidnapped girl to the jungle (somewhere in a conservatory in Paris, from the looks of it), when they finally encounter the cannibals – the least convincing cannibals in film – caucasians, make-up that stops at their neck, side-burns, comb-overs, potbellies. They dance. They eat pig entrails. They dance again. They threaten. They dance again. Not much happens after that.” Down Among the “Z” Movies

“What follows is repetitive mind numbing padding. People walk around the jungle and then walk around some more. The cannibals peek through the trees watching them walk around. The girl’s parents, along with some cops also… walk around. After an indefinite amount of walking around, the cannibals make themselves known and capture Roberto and his girlfriend and harbor the little girl.” Strictly Splatter

Wikipedia | IMDb

The House of Ghosts (original title: La maison ensorcelée) is a 1908 French comedy horror film written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions.

IMDb | Silent Film House

Goal of the Dead is a 2014 French comedy horror film directed by Thierry Poiraud and Benjamin Rocher. It stars Alban Lenoir, Charlie Bruneau, Tiphaine Daviot, Ahmed Sylla, Bruno Salomone, Patrick Ligardes, Xavier Laurent, Sebastien Vandenberghe.

Official synopsis:

First half:

For the Olympique de Paris soccer team, this away match scheduled against Caplongue was merely supposed to be one last chore before the end of the professional season. Yet no one could ever have imagined that an unknown rabies-like infection was going to spread like wildfire, turning this small town’s inhabitants into ultra-violent and highly contagious creatures. For Samuel, the former golden boy who is nearing retirement, Idriss, the arrogant wunderkind, Coubert, the team’s depressed coach and Solène, the young ambitious journalist, this will turn into the most important confrontation of their lives.

Second half:

While the rabid supporters prowl about Caplongue, which is in a state of ruin, another nightmare begins for Sam. Barricaded in the police station with other survivors, he has to face the young Cléo, his grumpy father, and Solène, who hasn’t forgotten him this time. Meanwhile, Idriss and Marco, hidden in the stadium and looking for a way to escape, are also settling a few scores along the way…

Reviews:

” … this energetic and well-made genre bender is divided, like a game, into two halves … Originally released in France as separate movies, they’ve now been combined into a single feature that suffers under the weight of all the material, especially for such a throwaway concept. But Goal of the Dead is also a more intelligently realized venture than many a broad Gallic comedy or action flick, and as such deserves some recognition abroad…” Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“This is an utterly horrible viewing experience. It takes forever to get going, concentrating instead on its paper-thin, entirely hateable characters for the most part and feeling very much like a tedious sports movie. Things don’t improve when the zombie action kicks in, as it offers nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before, only shot in a rather murkier manner with terrible characters that you won’t have any investment in, failed attempts at humour and directorial pretensions that I you suspect Poiraud and Rocher think will amaze the viewers – but we’ve all seen slow-mo bullets before and a bullet-time exploding head just looks awful. The whole thing – even the football match – takes place in some fashionably but creatively dead semi darkness, which presumably covers up a multitude of ineptness but makes the film about as aesthetically pleasing as a mud pit.”David Flint. Strange Things Are Happening

IMDb | Facebook

In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between. Architects often used multiple gargoyles on buildings to divide the flow of rainwater off the roof to minimise the potential damage from a rainstorm. A trough is cut in the back of the gargoyle and rainwater typically exits through the open mouth. Gargoyles are usually an elongated fantastic animal because the length of the gargoyle determines how far water is thrown from the wall.

The term gargoyle is most often applied to medieval work, but throughout all ages some means of water diversion, when not conveyed in gutters, was adopted.

The term originates from the French gargouille, which in English is likely to mean “throat” or is otherwise known as the “gullet”.

When not constructed as a waterspout and only serving an ornamental or artistic function, the correct term for such a sculpture is a chimera. Just as chimeras, gargoyles are said to frighten off and protect those that it guards, such as a church, from any evil or harmful spirits.

Legend of La Gargouille:

A French legend that sprang up around the name of St. Romanus (AD 631–641) who was made bishop of Rouen, relates how he delivered the country around Rouen from a monster called Gargouille or Goji. La Gargouille is said to have been the typical dragon with bat-like wings, a long neck, and the ability to breathe fire from its mouth. There are multiple versions of the story, either that St. Romanus subdued the creature with a crucifix, or he captured the creature with the help of the only volunteer, a condemned man. In each, the monster is led back to Rouen and burned, but its head and neck would not burn due to being tempered by its own fire breath. The head was then mounted on the walls of the newly built church to scare off evil spirits, and used for protection.

Gargoyles and the Catholic Church:

Gargoyles were viewed in two ways by the church throughout history. The primary use was to convey the concept of evil through the form of the gargoyle, which was especially useful in sending a stark message to the common people, most of whom were illiterate. Gargoyles also are said to scare evil spirits away from the church, this reassured congregants that evil was kept outside of the church’s walls. However, some medieval clergy viewed gargoyles as a form of idolatry.

Horrorpedia will be listing other uses of the term gargoyle, unrelated to architecture, in future posts.

Wikipedia | Related: Gargoyles (1972 film)