Mountain of the Cannibal God

Alternate titles : La Montagna del dio Cannible, Prisoner of the Cannibal God, Slave of the Cannibal God, White Queen of Cannibals, Jagten pa bjergets Hemmelighed, Der Weisse Gottin der Kanninbalen

Tagline : "Their cult, was death. Their lust, was for blood"

When I first came across this film during my write-up of the Video Nasties section, I was extremely surprised to find that 70's stars Ursula Andress and Stacey Keach had appeared in a cannibal movie. So much so, that I just couldn't resist getting hold of a copy and posting a full review.

Set in the Jungles of New Guinea, Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress) is trying to find her missing anthropologist husband Henry. So she and her brother Arthur enlist the services of a Professor Edward Foster (Stacey Keach), who thinks her husband might have headed for a mountain named Ra Ra Me, which is located just off the coast, on the island of Roka.

The locals believe that the mountain is cursed, and the authorities won't allow expeditions there. So they surreptitiously head on into the jungle to see if that's where he went. Along the way they bump into fellow Jungle explorer Manola (played by regular Italian B-movie star Claudio Cassinelli) who agrees to tag along and help.

But, no sooner do they get to the island and hike up the mountain, they are captured by a primitve cannibal tribe and subjected to all manner of unpleasantries. Ursula Andress's character provides some of the more interesting scenes, as she is tied up, stripped naked and smeared with goo (which Andress fans will undoubtedly enjoy) whilst the others are either tortured or turned into the natives dish-of-the-day.

On the whole, this is actually quite an enjoyable jungle adventure film. But unfortunately, being released to cash in on the short lived boom of Italian cannibal films, suffers from the usual scenes of gratuitous animal violence that's becomes synonymous with these pictures. Which in this case (in the uncut version anyway) includes an Iguana being split open and gutted, a monkey being devoured by an anaconda and the natives tearing into a bunch of live snakes with their teeth. Whilst these scenes pail in comparison to the likes of Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust, they are no less unpleasant to watch.

I would still recoomend giving the film a go, it's certainly a cut above the other cannibal films, which if you've seen you'll know what to expect. The UK release also cuts out most of the animal violence, so is certainly a lot more "palatable" (if you'll pardon the pun).

Overall Marks : 7/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• For the scene where Manola (Claudio Casselini) grabs a Cobra by the neck, they used a snake who's mouth had been stitched shut. The next day, whilst shooting on the river, a White Water Cobra climbed onto the raft next to Ursula Andress. Without thinking, Claudio Casselini just grabbed the snake by the neck in the same way he'd done the previous day, even though this was a wild snake that could have bitten him.
• Most of the jungle scenes were actually shot at the Kandy Botanical Gardens in Sri Lanka. So whilst it looked like they were traipsing through dense jungle, in most shots they were actually just a few metres from a paved road.
• Director Sergio Martino claimed that the scene where the anaconda devours the monkey was not set up by them and that they just happened to be filming the snake, when it reached up and grabbed the monkey out of the tree. However, if you look at the scene closely, there's a tree branch that briefly waves in front of the camera, which has obviously been superimposed over the shot to obscure a wire, that was used to pull the monkey down towards the snake, so that it could grab it.
• The cave system, where the cannibal tribe lived, was filmed in Malaysia. Which required lugging all the camera equipment 1600 feet up a mountain each morning, in 36°c heat. Which caused many problems for the crew.
• The original European cinema version, which ran about 99mins(24fps), was the same version originally released to DVD in the late 90s, which had also previously been available on Video in Europe. An extended version, that contained an additional 4mins of footage acquired from the Director's personal collection, was released to Disc in 2002. The additional footage included a scene with the natives indulging in an orgy, including a shot of one of the females "pleasuring herself" and one of the males indulging in beastiality with a wild boar (I wonder why this footage was in the Director's "personal" collection and not in the film when first released?). It also included a scene where Susan (Ursula Andress) manages to stab and kill the tribal Chief, which were all absent from the original release.
• The version released to US cinemas under the title "Slave of the Cannibal God", which later turned up on a number of grey market DVDs, was the same as the European theatrical version, but missed out the close-up shot of a native being castrated. There was also a more heavily censored version, cut for an R-rating in the US, released by Wizzard video and later on DVD by Mill Creek.
• The version released to UK cinemas in 1978 as "Prisoner of the Cannibal God" had the scene's of animal cruelty and more graphic violence removed by the BBFC. The UK video by Hokushin, which was listed as a Video Nasty in the early 80s, was apparently uncut. Later video releases by Vipco where more complete than the previous cinema version, but still had most of the animal violence removed. The Current Blu-Ray by Shameless is of the longer, extended version, but still misses out the more contentious scenes of animal cruelty. The Paranormal Channel (now defunct) on SKY TV however, inadvertantly broadcast the US theatrical version in 2009, which missed out the castration scene, but had all the animal cruelty intact.

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