Cut and Run

Alternate titles : Inferno in Diretta, Amazon:Savage Adventure, Straight to Hell, Amazonia

Tagline : "They discovered the truth and now they must tell the world."

Several years after directing Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deadato returned to the jungles of South America to bring us this commercial action/adventure picture about a film crew who venture into the Amazon, only to get caught up in a bitter war between rival drug cartels.

After stumbling across a massacre in a downtown Florida crack house, news reporter Fran Hudson (Lisa Blount) and her cameraman Mark Ludman (Leonard Mann) are surprised to find a photograph lying around, showing their bosses son, Tommy (Willie Aames) working at a South American jungle camp.

Tommy went missing in the Amazon several months previously, and so they decide to go and see if they can locate him and bring him back home. However, they also discover that one of the other people in the photograph is a certain Colonel Brian Horne, a former Green Beret who was believed to have died several years previously, and so they also decide to see if they can find him the hopes of running a story on him.

Unfortunately, after heading in Amazonia, they discover that the camp is actually run by a couple of rather unfriendly drug cartels, played by John Steiner and Gabrielle Tinti. To make matters worse they arrive right in the middle of a battle between them and a rival drug lord, who turns out to be Colonel Horne himself.

They survive the camp massacre and manage to locate Tommy, along with another survivor named Ana (Valentina Forte). But getting out of the jungle alive proves to be no easy task as they are soon captured by Horne's men, who are being led by a mute assassin named Quecho (played by horror B-movie veteran Michael Berryman) and taken back to his "Apocalypse Now" style encampment.

The film is in several ways reminiscent of Umberto Lenzi's "Eaten Alive" (Emerald Jungle), and is often labelled as a cannibal movie, which it isn't, although it does feature quite a few barbaric natives. The film is totally different in style from Cannibal Holocaust, and has all the makings of a good jungle action film. There's numerous machine gun fights, evil drug smugglers, savage native folk, vile jungle traps etc etc. If you like action adventure pics, you should check this one out. There's also an extra gory version of this film available (though not in the UK) which I would heartily recommend you seek out.

Overall Marks : 6/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Other tag lines "Assignment Survival", "It's the one story you won't find on the 6 O'Clock news".
• The film is sometimes confused with the movie "Amazonia : The Catherine Miles Story", as Cut and Run has also been released under the title Amazonia in some territories. In addition, the Catherine Miles film has also been released as "Cannibal Holocaust 2", even though Deadato had nothing to do with it.
• Michael Berryman got the role as Quecho after the director saw him in "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest".
• Wes Craven was originally going to direct the film, and even went out with the producers scouting for suitable locations. However, they eventually gave the job to Ruggerro Deadato as he was better known to the Italians through the success of Cannibal Holocaust.
• Erique La Salle, who fans of US TV show "ER" will know as Dr Benton, appears in the film as a pimp named Fargas.
• The film was partly inspired by the book "Congo" by Michael Crighton.
• Valentina Forte, who plays Ana, was at the time the girlfriend of the director.
• The late Gabrille Tinti, who plays the drug smuggler Manuel, was a regular in Joe D'Amato films and starred in several of the Black Emanuelle films with his then wife Laura Gemser.
• The music was by Claudio Simonetti from the group The Goblins.
• There were 2 different versions of the film shot for different markets. The first version, reviewed here, was made as a straight forward action film. However, the director also filmed several additional extra gory scenes for the Italian and Japanese markets. This version is sometimes referred to as being a "Directors Cut", and features different takes on the intro fight, the aftermath of crack house massacre and the jungle camp fight, which all include additional violence, nudity and gore.
• The UK and US video releases of the film were of the sanitised "action film" version. The extra gory directors cut could be found on Japanese laserdisc, Hong Kong VCD and video, and on the German video by Astro. The US DVD by Anchor Bay is also of the full uncut directors version, but the extra gore scenes are in Italian language. It was claimed that the extra gory version was never dubbed into English, but this would not appear to be true as the uncut Hong Kong VCD was entirely in the English language. For an in-depth comparison on the differences between the two versions click "Here".

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