The Jaguar Project (1983)

Damn, this is straight-up MY kind of war flick! "The Jaguar Project" (aka. "Cannibal Mercenary" - aka. "The Mercenary" - aka. "The Jungle Killers") - is pretty much beginning-to-end badassedness that goes above and beyond in offering up the 'exploitation' goods without much else getting in the way, aside from a little copious back-story here and there...

A soldier - all tweaked out on PTSD and with a Polio-stricken daughter - is hired on as a mercenary with a $500,000 incentive to lead a team of men into the jungles of Vietnam to locate a girl and take out an army of cannibal Viet Congs. Along the way, they're faced with a dick-chopping female spy, some baby-faced freako slope and his gang of golden showers assholes, some firecracker torture, among other such arduous obstacles.

There's not much I can think to fault this one for. It's just an all-around strong and entertaining trashfest with enough violence and gore to maintain one's interest. Not just a heads up - there are apparently several versions of this movie floating around, notably another known cut in which a subplot involving white people hunting for a Buddha artifact is spliced in and much of the "good stuff" is removed. The one I'm reviewing here is - what I can only assume to be - the fully intact version, clocking in at about 104 minutes. It's the one you want. I have not seen the other, more Westernized version, but I hear it's dog shit. You want some fun Thai action then you gotta give this little gem a spin!

Flesh Eating Mothers (1988)

As cheesy and idiotic as it is, "Flesh Eating Mothers" is a relatively watchable horror flick. It's kind of like if those Desperate Housewives bitches were infected by the "Rage" virus from "28 Days Later" or something...

An average suburban neighborhood erupts into cannibalistic chaos when everyone's mothers become infected with a new type of STD that makes them devour the flesh of their loved ones. The teenage children of these ravenous moms band together to find a cure without having to kill their crazed ol' ladies (who inexplicably develop Jack Nicholson 'Joker' mouths...)

Nothing all that astounding, here, although FEM is entertaining enough, overall. They could've gone a little 'harder' with the gore, I thought, but there's a few ok scenes of bodies being torn and chewed up, plus a cat getting pulled apart. Not bad. Not GREAT, though. As a whole, it doesn't take itself seriously at all and, for the most part, keeps moving at a decent enough pace, as to circumvent too much boredom. I'm giving "Flesh Eating Mothers" a moderate recommendation if you dig Troma-esque shit, but there's no reason to go out of your way for this one...

Blood Massacre (1991)

"Blood Massacre" takes a little time to get 'rolling', but once it does it becomes halfway watchable. That's not to say it isn't a cheap and horribly put together piece of shit, but it just happened to get less plodding around the halfway mark.

A gang of goofy Nam vets on the run after a video store hold-up - which resulted in the death of an employee - hole up in the farm house of a family who turn out to be psychotic cannibals. Hence, the tables take an ironic turn...

The way this one is acted, shot, lit - and probably even catered - sucks. One actor in particular sounded like he graduated from the Jimmy Stewart School of Acting and I refuse to believe this ridiculous performance wasn't on purpose. The rest are just deadpan. And the 'twist' can't even be considered such, seeing as how it's SO apparent SO early on. No one in this is likeable and you're given no one to root for which COULD have worked had the film chose to explore any of these characters beyond their stereotypes in even the slightest possible way, but they go from victims to cannibals (to even more...) and from sadists to booby trap-rigging Rambos... It's incredibly ass-backwards. As unnecessary as this movie is to watch, once the bullshit lead-up is done and the killings start to happen, "Blood Massacre" becomes tolerable enough and the double-twist ending is laughably over-the-top and idiotic.

The Green Inferno (2013)

Despite his status as an implicit 'one-trick-pony', relying predominantly on the pandering of low rent, fanboy-run social media-based horror "news" outlets who have continually publicized his plethora of ill-fated projects over the better part of a decade, Eli Roth actually managed to complete something and get it released. And, I'll be damned, I was actually somewhat interested in this latest work as it was a departure from the infantile, jump-scare laden, supernatural toilet waste that passes as 'horror' these days, as far as more 'mainstream' releases go. The idea of a NEW tribal cannibal flick hitting the big screen was inherently appealing to me, regardless of the smug douche hackster gracing the director's chair...

A wanna-be activist chick joins up with some environmentalists who travel to the amazon to ambush a crew of corporate loggers with a live-streaming cyber protest. Shit doesn't totally go according to plan (or does it?), yet they still manage to avoid getting their heads blown off by the militia. Their victory celebration onboard their little plane is cut short by a crash that kills about half of them, leaving the rest to be kidnapped by a tribe of people-eating savages who mistake the do-gooders for the "evil" tree choppers. From there, you pretty much just watch the remaining captives get killed and eaten.

So, once you make it through the slow start, involving inane college kid babble and the botched protest, things actually start looking promising. The petrified group of Americans being herded into the tribal village made for a pretty strong and dire looking scene and the first guy to be gruesomely dismembered alive (after having his eyes and tongue yanked from his head and devoured...) was a delectably brutal bit of carnage, courtesy of some convincing and bloody practical FX work. Then, unfortunately, it's pretty much downhill from there with the remainder of the human livestock sitting in their bamboo cell and hatching their hair brained escape attempts in between idiotic scenes that only a frat boy-minded tard like Eli Roth would think fits into this type of movie. Shit like: a guy jerking off amidst bloodshed in order to "keep his mind clear", a chick with cartoonishly explosive diarrhea and getting the tribe high by jamming a bag of weed down the throat of a soon-to-be cooked corpse.

Aside from all this unfunny and out-of-place bullshit, the death scenes following the initial dismemberment are quite weak and ineffective. One of them kills herself in the cage. One demise is entirely off-screen and another involves lousy looking CGI bullet ants. That, on top of Roth's insufferable writing and one of the shittiest 'payoffs' I can recall in quite some time, "The Green Inferno" disintegrates quickly into a  tragically unremarkable and all-too 'traditional' looking horror flick, encompassing a cast of genre stereotypes. I guess I was hoping for a few less punches pulled in the long-run. Granted, it was a safe bet that animal killing and rape-sprees weren't going to 'fly' as far as a studio film in this day n' age goes, but there was ample opportunity for some dick chopping that never played out! And the topic of female genital mutilation is prevalent, but still never comes to fruition... Again, it all comes down to that one stand-out death scene.

On the flip side, is it better than all the other "Poltergeist/Paranormal Activity" shit coming out? Absolutely. Without a doubt. Hell, it's way better than the "Hostel" movies by a long shot and props go out to Roth for at least attempting something like this and pushing as hard as he did to get it released in theaters so I can't bitch too much. I only wish it was more worth the effort and the wait. It's worth checking out for those who appreciate the top dogs of the 'cannibal exploitation' subgenre, such as "Cannibal Ferox", "Man from Deep River" and, of course, "Cannibal Holocaust". It's nowhere near as raw and visceral as those, but when is the last time you saw a NEW jungle cannibal flick?

On a side note of bonus douchebaggery, Roth decided to include the Twitter handles of the main cast and select crew members along with their credit at the end. Good idea since the popularity of social media sites has never been known to dwindle and accounts are never suspended or deactivated. Way to incorporate that timelessness into your movie, asshole. Twitter will surely remain eternally relevant.

Cannibal (2013, Manuel Martin Cuenca)

"Cannibal" is a very slow-paced and non-graphic Spanish serial killer-drama film. Due to the little bit of info I had picked up prior to viewing this one, I wasn't entirely caught off-guard, though I must say, it ended up being a pretty unremarkable undertaking...

A highly introverted tailor takes to stalking and kidnapping women, whom he transports to his secluded cabin in the mountains where he butchers them for their meat. Keeping his freezer amply stocked, he dines solely on these human gobbets. He ends up falling into a casual relationship with the hot floozy neighbor chick, who goes missing one day after coming to his apartment for help. Her sister soon shows up looking for her, to which he offers his help - thus, their awkward liaison is sparked.

The performances are solid - namely the Carlos character, played by Antonio de la Torre - whom no background is given for, but you can only assume he has the old classic serial killer/cannibal-syndrome of never wanting a woman to leave him, of which, the intimate act of cannibalism satisfies. Speaking of cannibalism, the film doesn't expound on the topic much - just showing Carlos butchering a chick off-screen (just showing her leg and some blood-flow) at the beginning and failing to capture a skinny dipper later on. The movie plays out as more of a "pastel" conceptualization of a serial killer/cannibal lifestyle, with really no violence or 'horror' elements. That's all fine, but I felt that the movie missed it's mark with the painful tedium it demonstrates. I normally have no problem with 'character studies', but "Cannibal" just moved WAY too slow and amounted to way too little to appeal to me. It's well shot and acted, but the whole cannibal element was underplayed and is virtually meaningless in the long run. This movie could have left all that out and still have been the same, as far as I'm concerned. And it would have forced them to have picked a more fitting title...

Butcher Boys (2012, Duane Graves/Justin Meeks)

Seems like Kim Henkel only surfaces these days to come up with half-baked "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" sequels/throwbacks. As much as I love the classic 1974 original, it just goes to show that Tobe Hooper and his crew were pretty much a pack of one-trick ponies that got lucky during one hot Texas summer, 40 years ago. That film continues to live on, while those involved in it's inception have arguably petered out over time (give or take a few mediocre efforts). "Butcher Boys" - which Henkel served as a writer on - is actually more idiotic than his 1994 quasi-remake shitfest, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation".

A group of teens are driving through San Antonio when they get into a skirmish with a gang of pretty-boy cannibal thugs...

That's it. The movie is mostly comprised of a long foot chase, peppered with pointless cameo appearances from since-inactive cast members from the first two TCM films. The victims here are given zero personality or character development and are mostly killed off in a matter of minutes while the aggressors are equally as dull and non-menacing. It's packed with tons of references to TCM, of course, but it's all just so meaningless and unamusing. And, aside from one scene of raw flesh eating, there's no notable gore to speak of so it really couldn't even deliver on ANY level. Being such a die-hard for the original Hooper film, I wanted to like "Butcher Boys" at least a little bit, but it's just so incompetently made - pacing, acting, attempts at humor, etc. All just terrible. They couldn't even make the cameos fun. Avoid this piece of shit.

Omnivores (2013, Oscar Rojo)

I had heard some pretty positive remarks about this one so I made a point to bump it up a few notches higher on the 'to watch' list. I don't know what people are seeing in this, but "Omnivores" pretty much sucked.

A prominent restaurant critic/writer is commissioned by a publishing house to sample the culinary wares of a new wave of "clandestine restaurants" - highly exclusive, underground dinner parties featuring extremely exotic and expensive meals. He catches wind of one that is supposedly serving human meat to knowing guests who pay big to partake of such rare 'delicacies'...

It's basically the same set-up as "Hostel" - involving rich pricks who 'get off' on human peril and bloodshed and even go so far as to bid on it. The violence and gore is incredibly subdued to the point of being pretty much nonexistent. The opening scene and a somewhat 'graphic' throat slashing were the only standout moments of 'carnage'... Other than that, the acting is fine but all the characters are wooden as all hell and painfully boring. As far as the plot, everything is incredibly heavy on lead-up - such as the bearded butcher collecting and preparing the helpless victims and the critic's admittance into the cannibalistic supper club - which, in particular, builds up for a very boring and predictable outcome. It's so brief and underplayed that it's impossible to derive any satisfaction from the big conclusion.

"Omnivores" is a boring, pointless 'torture porn' retread. Very disappointing on all levels.

Long Pigs (2007, Chris Power & Nathan Hymes)

The 'fake snuff' thing has completely run it's course, as far as I'm concerned. I was never really a huge fan and now it's just become even more boring to me. So why did I watch "Long Pigs"? Because a few people told me it had some notably decent practical gore effects and because I'm just a sucker for the "extreme" variety of cinema.

Two documentary film-makers follow a cannibalistic serial killer around as he kidnaps, kills, mutilates and cooks his victims. They also try to delve into his personal life involving his sickly mother, hockey buddy and job. There's also phony interviews with a radio host, detectives and crime experts, as well as the grieving father of a 9-year old girl whom the killer had abducted and consumed.

As for the effects, they were fine, but based on what I had heard I guess I was expecting a bit more. The most detailed scene of human slaughtering is shown in ultra-fast motion and is nothing all that 'shocking'. Overall, the gore was actually pretty tame in this flick. So, basically, "Long Pigs" is just a Canadian "Man Bites Dog" rip-off. The acting passable, I will say. Otherwise, "Long Pigs" is a pretty unremarkable 'mocumentary'.

Violent Shit (1989, Andreas Schnaas)

Yeah, "Violent Shit" pretty much sucks a bag of shit. I'm not completely against no-budget SOV splatter-trash. I've enjoyed a little bit of the Polonia Brothers' efforts, but THIS thing is fucking dryer than my cock at a lesbian convention...

The plot is pretty complex so please read my synopsis carefully: a retard with an over-sized meat cleaver runs around the woods killing and eating people.

Nothing more to say as far as the storyline is concerned... It's just THAT. Some asshole in overalls with Silly Putty on his face (supposed to resemble malformation, I guess) staggering around, endlessly. The film is basically just a compilation of gory, over-the-top death scenes strung together. A guy gets his dick hacked off with a cleaver, another dude is cut in half with a hedge trimmer and some bitch gets her vag sliced open and is gutted for an extended period of time. Many scenes in this movie go on for a fucking eternity! Retard-boy running around in slow-motion. Filming through the windshield of a moving car for, what felt like, 10 minutes straight. "Violent Shit" would've been much more tolerable if it had been chopped down to a sensible 15-20 minute run-time. To me, there's nothing worse than a shoddy DIY, backyard horror film-maker padding out his cheap gore flick just to make it a resemble a "feature". This shit is just over 70 minutes, but drags like a mother fucker! I seriously got drowsy and almost nodded over several times... Maybe at some point I'll check out the sequels just out of curiosity, but for now the original "Violent Shit" is one I happily throw on the trash heap... Sucks.

Human Pork Chop (2001, Benny Chan Chi Shun)

"Human Pork Chop" is a very bleak depiction of an actual crime committed in the late 90s, dubbed "The Hello Kitty Murder", in which a 23 year-old Hong Kong woman was kidnapped by three men and tortured in an apartment over the course of a month before dying.

The film delineates the spree of her on-going abuse though daily beatings, humiliations and other kinds of physical torment - involving burning her with melted plastic, stuffing her in the refrigerator and forcing her to eat shit out of a clogged toilet... They eventually killed her (allegedly, since a potential drug overdose was not completely ruled out... ), dismembered her body, ate some of it and threw the rest in the garbage. Her skull was later found hidden in a large Hello Kitty doll...

The violence is pretty constant and the look of the film is wonderfully FILTHY and unpleasant. Not one of the most "disturbing" CATIII flicks out there, though it stays pretty consistent in it's savage, grimy tone - even throwing in a gratuitous canine shellacking. Good stuff. Those into good CATIII mayhem should check this out.

Cannibal Terror (1981, Alain Deruelle)

Awful 'cannibal' film. From what I've seen it is quite possibly the worst but as a fan of the horror genre, I am compelled to watch whatever happens to be on the "video nasties" list if it finds it's way to me. "Cannibal Terror" was one I had heard a little about and thought would be fun just to see how god-awful it was. I wasn't disappointed on that end. This this was a fuckin' hoot-and-a-half! No regrets, overall.

The plot is a heavily 'padded' mess involving two crooks who kidnap very young daughter of a rich man and hold up in Cannibal Country. A woman gets raped, the rapist gets eaten by cannibals (courtesy of a vengeful father), some nothing happens, cannibals dance, close-ups of cheezy looking disembowelment's, and, finally, me having to run an errand and never returning to the film...

Of course, the real biggie about "Cannibal Terror" is the horrible cast of white "cannibals", many of which appear to be sporting chic hairdos, complete with mutton chops and a few perms, I believe I spotted amongst the awkward looking bunch. Yes. I laughed. I also laughed at the poor dubbing and general lack of spirit brought to the table from those who made this atrocious bore. There is nothing disturbing, exciting, insightful, or remotely memorable about "Cannibal Terror" aside from it's flaws. If any real effort was put into this movie it certainly doesn't register within the final product. Fuck, the title is even embarrassingly generic.

This is one 'cannibal' film to skip or if you want a few cheap laughs, just watch a little bit of it...