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I love Umberto Lenzi's cop movies -- ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH is my favorite -- and his DESERT COMMANDOS pretty much legitimized the Italian Euro War phenomenon by managing to actually be a pretty good movie. Give him guns, machines, some guys to run around talking tough and it's hard for him to miss.
What a shame it is then to encounter his EATEN ALIVE and CANNIBAL FEROX. They could have been by anybody, really, and one watches them with a sense that he was under contract, was told what kind of films to make, was assigned a cast & crew and given a budget, deadline and script. Lenzi then went out and executed his films the same way that a guy at McDonald's fixes a batch of French Fries. Of the two, EATEN ALIVE is the more original -- which is kind of amazing considering that it features extensive footage copped from three other cannibal movies -- and easier to enjoy than CANNIBAL FEROX, though not much.
I will let others outline the plot: What fascinated me about the film is how staged it all looks, and yet what a somewhat infamous reputation this film has as some sort of all-out assault on good taste. It isn't, though the film is an exercise in bad taste, complete with a title-earning scene where two of the pretty supporting ladies are quite literally sliced up and eaten alive by cannibals which is the film's high point. The problem is that Lenzi lets us get a good, long look at the cannibal feast scene and it has the convincing ring of a 3rd season STAR TREK episode complete with a fake jungle set for the really gory close up shots. And I don't know about anyone else, but if someone was slicing off pieces of my person and eating them I wouldn't just lie there and look distressed.
My problem with the film might be that I have a lot of respect for Lenzi as a filmmaker, and again this could have been directed by anybody. All of your cannibal movie conventions are touched on but it never feels like they are filmed with any real conviction, other than to try and bully Ruggero Deodato out of the sandbox. The two directors certainly must have known each other and either had a sort of juvenile rivalry or an actual dislike for each other's work and a conscious need to upstage them. Lenzi invented the cannibal genre with MAN FROM DEEP RIVER, Deodato blew it away with JUNGLE HOLOCAUST, Lenzi fired back with EATEN ALIVE, Deodato blew him (and everyone else) away with the superior CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, and Lenzi fired a last parting salvo with CANNIBAL FEROX, which is about as realistic as that Krazy Glu commercial where the guy superglues his hardhat to a girder and hangs in midair.
This film is less desperate and a bit more hesitant to push viewers into the abyss with everything holy than FEROX, which remains as a sort of misguided attempt to upstage CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. This one is more of a mish-mash, with an interesting jungle adventure crossed with a Jim Jones like suicide cult -- the cannibals seem like they were added as an afterthought rather than the reason for making the film. I think that fans of the genre will have a better impression of the film than fans of Lenzi's films looking for something new by the formidable director. It isn't as entertaining as SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, adventurous as his own MAN FROM DEEP RIVER and certainly lacks the wallop of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. Combine those considerations with the recycled footage, stomach churning scenes of animal violence, misogynistic scenes of sexual violence and stagy, wooden methodology of film-making and what you get ends up being an OK jungle thriller with two or three standout scenes, and Umberto Lenzi was capable of so much more.
4/10; Gore freaks will go nuts however.


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