Ultimo mondo cannibale

Plot synopsis:
A light aircraft is flying over spectacular jungle terrain. On board is oil prospector Robert Harper (Massimo Foschi), his business partner Ralph (Ivan Rossimov), the pilot Charlie (Sheik Razak Shikur), and a young lady named Swan (Judy Rosly). There is much talk about inhospitable and harsh the jungle is which is apparently Malaysia. They are on their way to visit a oil prospecting party which has set up camp there.Upon landing, they find the area abandoned. They soon discover a native weapon covered with blood. Ralph is concerned, exclaiming that the weapon indicates the people who raided the camp are; "worse then natives. Judging the way this was made, they're still living in the stone age." Harper wonders into the jungle, while Ralph follows him and they both get lost. During their trek through the jungle, they discover the partially-decomposed corpse of one of the prospectors. Harper and Ralph manage to return to the airstrip where the seriousness of their predicament becomes apparently. But since they wondered off, it is too late for them to take off for darkness comes and they decide to sit out the night in the plane.Later that night, Swan unwisely decides to leave the plane so she can relive herself in the nearby bushes. She is captured by several unseen natives. The three men are all too scared to help even though they hear her screams, convincing themselves that they should stay put for the night and look for her in the morning when it is daylight.The next morning, Harper, Ralph, and Charlie set out into the jungle to look for Swan. Within minutes, Charlie springs a native trap and is horribly impaled by a spiked ball. Momentarily losing his mind at the sight of his dead friend, Harper runs blindly into the jungle followed by Ralph. This time, they really do get hopelessly lost. After witnessing a group of native warriors eating the remains of Swan, the two men continue on and come across a river. They decide to make a raft to float downstream and hopefully make it back towards the airstrip. During the ride, their raft overturns on some rocks, and Harper is left alone as he grabs onto a shore rock as Ralph is swept away by the current.Over the next day-and-a-half, Harper wonders aimlessly through the trackless and inhospitable jungle dealing with insects, snakes, and other wildlife. Desperately hungry, he unwisely gorges himself on mushrooms, starts to hallucinate and soon passes out. When he wakes up, he finds himself surrounded by dozens of long-haired, savage natives, warily poking their spears at him. The natives take the captive Harper back to their camp which is a huge cave dwelling place.The savage natives tie up Harper where they strip him naked, and string him up in a harness and hoist him into the heights of the misty cave. Having seen him arrive by airplane, the natives apparently believe that he has the power to fly, so they let him freefall 60 or more feet before he is abruptly halted by the harness and rope device to which he is attached to. His painful ordeal continues again and again until he passes out, while the natives wave their arms and hoot hellishly.Over the next several days, Harper is imprisoned in a cage and forced to watch the natives and their lifestyle. He is fed dead and rotting small animals, as well as subjected to further torture and humiliation. Harper watches the natives bring a captive warrior from a rival tribe and have him slowly killed by tying the warrior's arm to an army ant hill where they ants slowly eat the captive warrior alive.Harper befriends one of the very few women of the tribe, a native woman who, despite the language barrier, introduces herself as Pulan (Me Me Lai). But she is held in check by Harper's guards who forbid her from talking to their prisoner. Harper soon becomes clear at what the natives have in store for him: they apparently want to use him as bait to catch a very large meal like a crocodile the natives catch after using a bird to catch their prey. He is forced to watch the natives kill, skin, and eat the crocodile among other various animals from a python to a tree monkey.One evening, Harper decides to make his move. He tricks Pulan into opening his cage, and then grabs her as well as bludgeoning the guard watching him. Harper escapes from the cave with Pulan as a hostage/guide. When she tries to escape, he attacks and savagely rapes her, cementing their bond. Being violated, Pulan apparently decides, by her tribe's custom, to become his companion and servant.One day during a sudden rainstorm, Harper and Pulan come across a cave, and find Ralph, who is alive and well and been hiding out from the natives this entire time. However, Ralph's mobility is impaired by a festering leg wound which he got during the overturning of their raft. Both men decide to force Pulan to lead them back to the airstrip to their plane so they can return home. The next day, the three of them set off as Ralph explains more about jungle survival. At one point, Ralph ensnares a cobra, milks its venom, and applies it to the end of Harper's makeshift lance.Pulan's hesitation about traveling through cannibal country is soon justified when they are surrounded by dozens of natives. In the chase, Ralph is hit in the chest by a spear, while Pulan is also hit and falls prey to her fellow native people and quickly killed. Harper is forced to help Ralph along as Pulan is gorily beheaded, sliced open, and gutted. Hot coals are place into her gaping chest cavity and her flesh is eaten.By the time the cannibals catch up to the two men, who make it to the river, Ralph is weakening fast from his fresh wound and can no longer defend himself. So, Harper is forced to fight against one of the cannibal natives. Harper kills his opponent by stabbing him with the poisoned lance. His assimilation into the savage ways of the jungle is completed when in devastating fashion, he disembowels his foe, pulls out an internal organ, and eats in front of the native warriors who watch the whole thing. Following this show of strength, the intimidated natives slowly back away and allow Harper to continue on his journey, carrying his barely conscious friend with him.Harper and Ralph finally follow a track from the river and make it back at the airstrip with the plane still sitting in its place. As the natives look on from a respective distance, Harper places Ralph in back of the plane, starts up and engine and takes off, finally free from his ordeal. But in the back seat, Ralph after hearing from Harper that they have made it and are on their way home, kneels over and dies having succumbed to his wounds.

Tags: violence, horror, cruelty, murder

Review:
He finally manages to escape and kidnaps a young, beautiful female member of the tribe to use as a guide.The movie has a gritty realism to it that makes it play almost like a documentary.
It captures the gradual transformation of the character from a "civilized" man to a grunting "savage" extremely well, although a scene in which he wins over his female companion by raping her is a little over-the-top, to say the least.The midsection of the movie is almost entirely devoid of dialog, so the atrocious dubbing is confined mostly to the first and last sequences.
A plane full of annoying oil hunters crash their plane deep in a jungle and almost immediately the non-Caucasian members of the expedition are caught and devoured by a band of revolting cannibal natives, leaving the smart, sensible survivalist Ralph stranded with the weenie, whiny, panicky dolt Robert, who gets them completely lost within minutes.
This is a pretty detestable movie.The print I watched was called "Last Cannibal World" and it seemed to have all the good bits (the gore and sex, that is) cut out.
At this point their situation goes from bad to worse as they have to deal with getting separated, a tribe of natives who just happen to be cannibals, being lost, and being far out of their element.The movie centers around Robert Harper (Mossimo Foschi) and his ordeals with the cannibals and the jungle in his struggle to get home.
Some will find a scene with a crocodile particularly hard to watch.Overall Jungle Holocaust is one of the best of the Italian Cannibal genre and is oddly uplifting for this kind of film.
'The Last Cannibal World' (aka 'Jungle Holocaust') was his first cannibal movie, and isn't as well known or talked about.
To many viewers' chagrin, Deodato, as he would later demonstrate in CANNIBAL, shows too much real-life animal mutilation.An alligator is torn apart while still alive, a snake eats a mouse, and other horrific scenes.
Ruggero Deodato's general rehearsal before unleashing the notorious `Cannibal Holocaust' upon the world is an explicit horror film, but not as shocking or repulsive as its successor.
This film merely serves as an old-fashioned adventure-movie, there were Cannibal Holocaust is a severely shocking ethical portrait.
But not only is it a cannibal film, it is also a jungle adventure, one mans story of survival.
Don't get me wrong, the gore is great, too, so if your looking for a movie with realistic gore, i highly recommend this, along with Deodato's next film, Cannibal Holocaust.
"Jungle Holocaust" of 1977 does not reach the brilliance of Deodato's masterpiece of three years later, this is still a highly atmospheric and at times stunning film that lovers of Italian cult cinema and sleaze should not miss.
While the film is of course ultra-violent and often disturbing, it is a bit tamer compared to other genre entries such as "Cannibal Holocaust" or "Cannibal Ferox", and often resembles a traditional adventure film - with the difference that this is filled with constant enormous sleaze and nauseating gore.A group of four people have to land their plane somewhere in the middle of the Amazon jungle, one of them, a man called Robert (Massimo Foschi) is captured by a tribe of cannibals who still live like people in the stone age.
His only hope to escape the savages, who eat human flesh, is a beautiful tribeswoman (Me Me Lai)...The film makes a pretty good point about how a civilized man can be driven absolutely savage by being thrown into a world ruled by savagery.
As far as I am considered, this film is not nearly as memorable as "Cannibal Holocaust", which stands out as the unmatched masterpiece of the Italian Cannibal sub-genre, but "L'Ultimo Mondo Cannibale" is still an immensely atmospheric with some ingenious aspects that I highly recommend to all my fellow lovers of Italian Horror and exploitation cinema!.
If you are setting out like Deodato is in this movie to make a movie about cannibals, you need scenes of people getting eaten or killed in different ways, and of course an explenation to why.
Last Cannibal World claims to be a true story about a stone-age cannibal tribe living on the Malaysian island of Mindanao who captures a 'modern' man named Robert Haper, who crash lands on the island.
The pilot is sure he can fix the plane ("If I can find the wheel it shouldn't be too hard to put it back again!"), but won't fly until the following day, since it was getting dark.Before long, of course, the group ends up separated and being pursued by cannibals through the jungle, and then the movie becomes a strange mix of gruesome horror and a twisted look at the animal side of humans.
(aka: JUNGLE HOLOCAUST)Unlike Deodato's later atrocity CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, I can at least stomach this one since only one crocodile is killed and skinned by the natives, and then they eat it afterwards.
Rassimov is badly hurt while My My Lai get's captured by the cannibals and is eaten alive in some scenes that later appeared in Umberto Lenzi's EATEN ALIVE (1980).In a memorable scene, Foschi cuts open the native guy he has killed and starts to eat his innards, just to let the other cannibals watching know he means business.
Last Cannibal World isn't the first even Italian cannibal film (that being Deep River Savages) and it's not Ruggero Deodato's first jungle film either - that's Gungala, a film with a far less sinister atmosphere than this vileness.
What this film did was kick off another genre exploiting free-for-all of cannibal movie clones which isn't what you'd call the best period of Italian cinema.Some guy actor called Massimo Foschi, who will be spending the majority of this film naked, plays an oil prospector called Robert Foster.
Me Me stands out a mile not only because she's the only cannibal with all her teeth, she also seems to have a very good plastic surgeon judging by those fake boobs!We spend rather a long time watching the natives being primitive and eating snakes/crocodiles, stock footage of animals eating other animals, and the natives being savage by having a rival native's arm eaten by ants before eventually escapes with Me Me and the romance/lengthy chase sequence begins!
If you remove the animal cruelty from this one (and luckily my copy is missing the croc eating scene, but keeps the gore intact), you have a decent jungle adventure which thinks it's being clever in showing one civilised man's descent into savagery as the only way he can survive his ordeal in the jungle, although it's all just an excuse for gore and violence.
The animal stuff is kept to a minimum thankfully, but that would be remedied in Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, a truly nauseating exercise without any redeeming features.The goriest part of this film is reserved for Me Me, who is rewarded for leaving the tribe by being served up with a bat confit, grub ganache, native drool foam, bamboo tuille and a crocodile jus.
Best to see this gem unspoiled but do heed warnings.) I was expecting a film sort of like Cannibal Holocaust, an exploitation cannibal film probably with gratuitous gore, plenty of nudity, dumb story, dumber acting, explicit animal cruelty, unconvincing natives in loincloths, chintzy budget, and uh lessee really dumb story and dumber acting and oh I uh already mentioned that.
My personal take of course but the natives are what I would call refreshingly convincing, the story neither dumb nor predicable, and the acting not bad at all, at least not what one expects from such a title and it is a real cannibal film.
The eeriness lies with the fact that this film plays like a dress rehearsal for Deodato's towering masterpiece, "Cannibal Holocaust".
That is not to say that Jungle Holocaust is not an enjoyable film in its own right but the faux documentary scenario, opening sequence, genital pulling, animal violence and even parts of the score seemed to have made their way into "Cannibal Holocaust".Jungle Holocaust opens with a plane flying above the Malaysian jungle.
When Robert realises that the cannibals intend to use him as live crocodile bait, he takes Pulan hostage and flees.In my opinion, Jungle Holocaust is more of an adventure film than a horror movie.
Jungle Holocaust is definitely one of the better films in the cannibal genre despite the fact that it is not particularly scary.
Good cast with: Massimo Foschi, Ivan Rasimov,and Me Me Lai. Considering this film was shot entirely on location in the jungle on the island of Mindanao, Malaysia it is exceptionally well crafted.
Apparently based on the true story of Robert Harper, Ruggero Deodato's first foray into the cheap Italian cannibal gore sub-genre serves as both an interesting prelude to his quintessential cannibal masterpiece, Cannibal Holocaust, and as a decent entry in the cannibal cycle in its own right.
However, getting home isn't going to be easy, as cannibals aren't the only thing to worry about in the wilderness of the Amazon jungle.I'm not sure how the real life Robert Harper would have taken this film.
Naturally, there's plenty of violence here; and while it's not as graphic as some of the later cannibal films, like Deodato's own Cannibal Holocaust and Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox, I still wouldn't recommend this to people with weak stomachs.
Ruggero Deodato's "Jungle Holocaust" is nearly as good as "Cannibal Holocaust".This would be Deodato's first cannibal film and it's pretty entertaining.The film is filled with animal cruelty so sensitive horror fans should avoid it.Here,we see the natives kill a python,and kill and cut-open a medium sized crocodile.The camera work is solid and captures perfectly an ever growing sense of hopelessness.The direction is good and the gore effects are very graphic.The scene where Me Me Lai has her head chopped off and is cut open from throat to groin,and later has her guts pulled out,is very disgusting and memorable.The acting is very good-especially Foschi is quite believable as  Harper.Overall,"Jungle Holocaust" is a surprisingly good cannibal film filled with animal cruelty,gratuitous nudity and plenty of gore.It's not as powerful as "Cannibal Holocaust",but it's close...Highly recommended..
Unlike Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust this film was not one of the infamous video nasties banned in Britain.
Of course, most of these animals end up as food after not-so-humane butchering.After watching some natives munching on their comrades, two of the survivors, Rolf (Ivan Rassimov) and Robert (Massimo Foschi) manage to build a raft and they get a nice ride down the rapids.
Many years ago, when I was too young to see such things for myself, my dad described to me a scene from a cannibal movie that he had watched at the local flea pit: a man finds a scrap of cloth in the jungle; when he picks it up, a trap is triggered which leaves him impaled on a huge spiky ball.
Years later, when I myself developed an interest in all things gory, I recalled his description of this moment, but realised that he had never told me the title of the film.Now, after trawling through virtually every film in the genre, I have finally discovered the identity of this elusive flick: it is none other than Ruggero Deodato's Jungle Holocaust.Deodato, who would later bring us the incredible Cannibal Holocaust (1980), the king of all Italian gut-muncher films, fills this jungle adventure/survival horror with everything one would come to expect from a cannibal filmgraphic gore, animal deaths and nudity and it is, in my opinion, the first true example of the genre (some may argue that Umberto Lenzi's 1972 movie, The Man From Deep River, should be given this accolade, but the cannibals in that were merely incidental).The purportedly true story tells of a group of four unfortunates who crash their plane in a remote area inhabited by man-eating stone-age natives.
Two of the group are killed, but Robert Harper (Massimo Foschi) and Rolf (Ivan Rassimov) escape into the jungle, but soon become lost in the dense foliage.Arriving at a river, they build a raft and head upstream.
On the brighter side, he also meets a gorgeous female member of the savage tribe (played by genre regular Me Me Lai, who is pretty much naked for the whole film) who gives him a hand shandy for his troubles!After he realises that he is eventually to be used as bait for crocodiles, Robert makes a desperate bid for freedom, taking the lovely Ms. Lai as his hostage.
Some of the crew are mysteriously killed and his best friend is lost as well, a tribe of cannibal wild people capture Robert as they torture and humiliate him a lovely cannibal woman helps him try to escape so he can be find his friend and get out.Entertaining, bloody and well made Italian cannibal horror adventure directed by the man who gave the world the infamous "Cannibal Holocaust" known as Ruggero Deoato, this movie serves as a prequel to that movie and is supposedly based on a true story.
The performances especially by the gorgeous Mei Mei Lei are good and there's some nice gore effects like a open chest cannibalism scene, the movie does have some scenes of real animal killing such as a bat being fed to a snake and a live Alligator butchering that is quite reminiscence of the Turtle killing scene in "CH".
While not as brutal as "CH", this movie is a very good film of the Italian horror genre and of the most underrated.A must see but not if your squeamish!
I prefer the FIRST AND BEST Cannibal movie,"Jungle Holocaust" (a.k.a.LAST CANNIBAL WORLD).
(Do you really believe she had breast implants?!) I also wish the movie showed more of the cannibal scene with Me Me Lai at the ends of BOTH movies:"Jungle Holocaust" and "Cannibal Holocaust".
I had seen most of the other Italian cannibal films from the 70s, but somehow hadn't got around to seeing Jungle Holocaust.
Massimo Foschi give a good performance as Robert Harper, who is trapped and kidnapped by cannibals in the jungle.
The film has a lot of sicks scenes like Animal mutilation to boring cannibal scenes.
And because director Ruggero Deodato chose to use real aboriginals as his cannibals and real jungle locations, the movie has an authentic feel to it that serves to increase the unsettling feeling Jungle Holocaust produces.
I sincerely doubt that any stone-age, cannibal tribe in the history of the Earth contained a woman that looks as good as Me Me does in Jungle Holocaust.
But of course, this being a cannibal movie, if you really love animals yeah don't watch this one.
Camping in the jungle with the cast,crew,and the real tribe of the land, Deodato dices the shots of animals being killed (which he claims were filmed by the producer as inserts) with gruelling psychological torture to Robert Harper, who observes his humanity from "The West" being raised in the (impressively filmed) caves of the tribe,and slammed down into a savage pulp.Adding an unexpected depth to Harper,Deodato crosses the shocks with gentle moments of silence that close in on the bond Harper makes with tribeswoman Pulan.
Saying that, it also contains a wealth of animal cruelty and graphic gore sequences, but it's an Italian cannibal film so what do you expect?
The movie did a good job in following the experiences of Robert Harper and made me want to root for him unlike the white reporters in Cannibal Holocaust.
Robert and his friend Ralf soon find themselves lost and stranded - and evidence of a primitive stone-age cannibal tribe that have been living in the jungle for quite some time.
This is where Robert runs into Pulan (Me Me Lai) - a native girl that appears to taunt Robert sexually in various scenes, and also who is taken by Robert when he escapes from the cannibal tribe after many days of being trapped.
There are scenes of animal cruelty, but thankfully unlike the most other notorious cannibal films, there isn't that many, in fact only one where the natives are involved in killing of a crocodile.
like other low budget and cannibal films, Jungle Holocaust (i like that title best) takes a certain type of person to appreciate it.
A good movie, but not for weak stomaches or people who are just getting into the cannibal genre.* *1/2 out of 4.
Overall, JUNGLE HOLOCAUST would be of interest to those that dig the Italian cannibal films, but don't expect a gore-fest - you'll be disappointed - But Me Me Lai and her big fake tits are a definite bonus...7.5/10.
Director Ruggero Deodato's JUNGLE HOLOCAUST is part of his cannibal trilogy and a part of the rash of such to flow out of Italy in the 70's.
Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, or maybe Jungle Holocaust, Last Cannibal World or simply Cannibal as it's also known amongst English speaking audiences, starts as Robert Harper (Massimo Foschi) the owner of an oil company & his friend Rolf (Ivan Rassimov) land on an island called Mindanao expecting to be greeted by a team of people scouting for oil.
However Ultimo Mondo Cannibale doesn't disappoint in the nastiness stakes either, there's as graphic scenes of cannibalism as in any film I've seen, there's plenty of controversial animal killings, there's rape, murder, gore, torture & loads of nudity to offend those with weak constitutions or sensibilities.
I mean I just think these people are cowards & have an 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude, I bet there's more suffering in slaughterhouses throughout the world in one day than in all the Italian cannibal flicks put together.Technically the film is great, I love the way it's shot with really nice 2:35:1 widescreen cinematography that showcases the jungle locations.