Cannibal Apocalypse



I’ve bitched many a times about inaccuracy in b-movie titles. I’m going to again. A good b-movie title should tell you everything you need to know about the movie, and deliver on all implied promises. For example, Death Race 2000. It’s set in the year 2000, there’s a race, and people die during it. (Roger Corman really is the master of b-movie naming.) If there’s a movie called Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) and the general plot of that movie is that a virus is causing people become psychotic, it creates some expectations.

First, there should be cannibals. Cannibal Apocalypse has those. However, the “apocalypse” part doesn’t really pan out. An apocalypse should feature hundreds (or at least dozens) of rabid cannibals running around, eating people. At most there are six cannibals in Cannibal Apocalypse at any one time, and two of them we don’t see until the “gotcha!” scene at the very end. That means that Cannibal Apocalypse has just four cannibals running around the city. That’s not an apocalypse. That’s barely a cannibal disturbance. Four cannibals is a cannibal inconvenience.


Ringling Brothers made clothes for teens?

Enough about the title. John Saxon plays Hopper, a Vietnam vet who’s living a pretty good life in Decatur, GA with his wife. In a flashback we see that 10 years ago he saved two soldiers who were being held captive in Vietnam, though when he found them they were eating a woman who had fallen into their prison. In the present we see Saxon get seduced by the girl who lives next door to him, even though she look all of twelve years old. Meanwhile one of the soldiers Hopper rescued, Charlie, gets released from a mental institution, apparently because they cured his cannibalism. The first thing Charlie does is go see a war movie at the local theater, and take a bite out of a woman sitting in front of him. Charlie runs out of the theater and is pursued by a biker gang (who we earlier saw sexually harassing two teenagers, but they seem to be really into law and order now) before holing up in a flea market. Charlie kills a biker and guard (amusingly, the guard only perks up and comes running when Charlie fires a gun… apparently the bikers driving around inside the building didn’t warrant his attention), and is eventually talked into surrendering by Hopper.

Charlie manages to bite a nurse, turning her into cannibal. Hopper also shows up at the hospital, apparently having succumbed to the siren call of being a cannibal without being bitten. (Did he get bitten in Vietnam, and I missed it?) Together with the other soldier Hopper rescued years before, who was in the same hospital, our cannibal fun bunch takes to the city, eventually hiding in the sewers until the police come in after them with flame-throwers. The police in Decatur have flame-throwers? Cool!


This could be a heck of a heist movie...

The exact nature of the cannibalism bug in this movie is hard to pin down. The implication seems to be Charlie and the other soldier were driven to cannibalism by desperation, yet it acts like a virus later on, with people Charlie bites becoming cannibals too. There’s also the odd fact that the nurse Charlie bites becomes murderous (she bites a doctor’s tongue out) but she also helps Charlie escape and sticks with the cannibal group as they flee across the city. She does object to Hopper’s plan to go back to Vietnam (why do they want to do that?), but not too strenuously.

I was surprised by how unpleasant this movie was. I mean, I was expecting cannibalism and all the related gore, but Cannibal Apocalypse throws in the underage temptress (and in keeping with the sickest Lolita fantasies, she’s the overwhelming aggressor in pursuing Hopper), racist cops, and what look like some genuine rat deaths in the sewer scenes. It was a bit much for a movie shot in America, even if it was made by an Italian crew. I read an interview with the director a while ago, and he said he actually had to fight to keep the movie from being more disgusting -- let's just say that in the original script the nurse didn't bite off the doctor's tongue, and leave it at that.

Posted: Sun - February 26, 2006 at      

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