Anthropophagus (1980)

When I first heard of Anthropophagus, people said it was full of brutal violence. That it was a gorefest. It's one of those movies you have to track down the uncut version to really get the full experience (It was on the Video Nasty list, after all). So I got the complete version and, as you may assume, I went into Anthropophagus expecting gore galore. But what I ended up getting wasn't as gory as expected. Not to say there wasn't any gore, and when it gets gory it gets GORY. There are two or three awesome gags in there, but I was expecting at least ten.

Fucking expectations...

The movie opens with weird circus-sounding music and a couple on a beach. The woman decides to take a swim while the guy listens to music on gigantic headphones while laying on an uncomfortable looking jagged rock. There's soft sand all around him! Why the fuck would anyone lay THERE?



This scene doesn't last long, as the woman is attacked from under the water and the douche with the boombox on his head gets it replaced with a cleaver.


We are then introduced to a group of friends planning to go to an island. A woman overhears them talking about going to the island, and since she's going to visit friends there she wants to tag along. So off they are to the island! By the way, I don't remember anyone's name, they all look the same anyway, so I will just refer to characters as either "guy" or "girl" except for "pregnant woman," "tagalong girl," and "tarot girl" who are the only people I could identify from the others. Most of the time it doesn't matter who's in a scene anyways.

This movie starts off very dry. In fact, most of the movie is dryer than a Sinbad stand-up, but I must persevere! I know there's gore in here, and I must see it!

I'm gonna spare you most of the details on the boring ten minute sail to the island. All that happens is the tarot girl reads the pregnant woman's tarot cards, and says she has no future. This makes her even more apprehensive about the trip she knew would be bad news. Later on in the boat ride she is going through the deck of tarot cards, one by one, and eventually comes to the death card. There's a death card in this tarot deck, just like all other tarot decks? OH MY GOD! IT'S A SIGN!



They get to the island and the first step off of the boat the pregnant woman sprains her ankle. She stays at the boat with her husband and everyone else descends upon the island. They soon find that it is deserted, except for a mysterious woman in black that keeps on evading them. The tagalong girl's friends are nowhere to be found.

Left on the boat, the pregnant woman is soaking her feet in saltwater. When the water gets too warm her husband goes to refill the bucket for her, but is pulled into the water. After a minute the pregnant woman gets up and retrieves the bucket herself, making sure to look everywhere but inside the bucket as she's pulling it up. Then she sticks her foot in and, SURPRISE, there's an H.G. Lewis quality head floating in it!


Awesome...

The group decides to go back to the boat and sees it far away floating in the middle of the water. They somehow rationalize this as being okay and decide to go back into the island, just as we see the pregnant woman's feet as they're dragged away.

The rest of the first day on the island is so boring I forgot what happened (i.e. nothing) and I don't feel like watching it again, so I'm not going to write about it.

The next thing I remember is the tagalong girl and a guy investigating a noise in the basement of the house they're staying at. (I don't know who's house it is either, I guess since the island was deserted they instituted the finder's keeper's code.)

They find out the noise is just a kitty playing piano! That's not threatening at all, it's downright adorable! They use this drop in guard to actually do something in the movie, thank god. A blood soaked woman shoots out of a barrel and stabs the guy in the back. This was so out of left field it actually made me kind of jump! Congrats on that, Anthropophagus.



It turns out she is the tagalong girl's friend from the beginning of the movie. For some reason the cannibal spared her, but she's traumatized and terrified of him finding her. Also, she can "smell when he's coming." Yeah... I swear I didn't make that up.

Next thing you know she's sniffing him out. He's close, and she can smell him. So the guy that got stabbed walks around the house looking for him when he hears her scream. He rushes back to the room, and nobody's there. So I guess he just chalks it up to her being insane and leaves to keep searching, locking the door behind him. As he closes the door it is revealed that the cannibal is hiding behind it, and he is one scary motherfucker.


After he fumbles with the lock he goes after the cannibal, but is easily overpowered. He ends up getting his throat bitten and bleeding to death.


Mysteriously, he lets the girl go unharmed again. I remember thinking I'm gonna be pissed if there's not really a huge maniac on the island eating shit and it's just this skinny bitch. Thankfully, that wasn't the case.

I forgot to mention that the tarot girl ran away in the middle of the night in a jealous rage that the guy she likes tried to kiss tagalong girl. Not the brightest idea with a fucking killer on the loose.

Anyways, the next morning the group finds a mansion on the island that apparently belongs to that mysterious woman in black. Remember her? Well, it doesn't matter since she hangs herself right when they get to the house. We never even hear her speak. What the fuck is the point of having her in the movie?


After this are the best parts of the movie. One of the guys decides to investigate a crypt and finds who other than the pregnant woman! And she's alive! But not for long, as the cannibal soon appears in the crypt. What follows is the goriest thing in the film... or in most films.

First, he stabs the guy with his own knife. Then he turns his attention to the pregnant woman. As he chokes her he slowly puts his hand under her dress, reaches into her vag, and pulls out her fucking fetus! Holy shit. This is what I'm talking about. There's even an umbilical cord still attached!


Do you see that shit?

In reality it's only a rabbit, but it looked so real that D'Amato, just like Deodato with Cannibal Holocaust, was questioned about the authenticity of the scene. That is just fucking ridiculous. Like they're really gonna kill a woman and eat her fetus on camera. That would take enormous dedication as an actor... Get a fucking grip.

So, that fetus scene is what all the talk is about. It's a shocking scene, but I just wish there were more gory things in the film.

In the mansion they find an old diary that describes how this monster went from eating food to eating people. He was stranded on a life raft with his wife and ginger son. His son died, so he decided he wanted to eat him. His wife wouldn't let it happen and he ended up accidentally stabbing her, making him wail out an epic "NOOOOOOO!"



Directly after the fetus scene the cannibal appears in the mansion. He chases the tagalong girl and her friend up to the attic, but turns back after he finds he's locked out. Then like, thirty seconds later he breaks down through the roof. You don't even hear any footsteps! Rope and pulley? Spiderman's climbing abilities? Teleportation machine? You decide.

Anyways, he grabs tagalong's friend's head and kills her, but not before tagalong gets a shot on him with a pickaxe, making him fall off of the roof.


Then, for some reason, she goes to look into the well. OOPS. The cannibal's in there! The rope gets caught around her hand and she's hanging in the well with him chasing up. This is a pretty good scene that made me feel anxious.



Then once they're out, he has a hold of the rope. Everything seems lost when one of the guys shows up and gives him a pickaxe to the stomach! This is the other gory scene. After he gets axed, his intestines start falling out. What is a cannibal to do in this situation?...

EAT THEM MOTHERFUCKER


Like that's a surprise... It IS on the poster after all...

Overall, this wasn't a horrible movie, but it wasn't very good either. It has a stupid story like most gorefests, but it doesn't have enough gore to qualify as a gorefest. It definitely does have it's moments, but it's just not enough. I surely would have enjoyed this movie more if there wasn't as much hype as I saw for it. This is pretty much just a horror movie with a couple gore scenes that is cheesy enough to laugh at with friends. Go into it with that mentality and you wont be let down.

That's one 'Video Nasty' down, 71 to go!