I don't have any explanation or excuse as to why it took me so long to get around to watching this film, but now that I have seen it, I see why it's such a cult phenomenon. I can also see why this movie had so much legal controversy surrounding it. Anytime you show rape, ultra brutal murders and the slaughtering of real live animals in anything even remotely resembling a documentary, you're bound to get some negative feedback from authority figures.
"Exploitation" films at times don't quite live up to their billing, but this film is "exploitation" to the very letter. All of the cannibals in this movie are actual Brazilian tribesmen, hired (for mere pennies I'm sure) by the makers of this film to basically play themselves. Let's just say they do a pretty good job at "doing what they do". But the real stars of this one are the crew of lost filmmakers that have their footage recovered and brought back to the states, revealing their untimely, but certainly well deserved, demises. These people play some wholly disgusting human beings, burning villages, raping and shooting the locals all for footage that they can twist into exciting television blaming all their own misdeeds on rival tribes and editing all their footage to show it as such. Once their fate starts to become clear, if you're not happy they're gettin' their just deserts then you might want to get yourself checked. And get it they do, chopped, raped and mutilated with blunt axes and rocks until they're basically unrecognizable. But the gore in these scenes is fairly easy to deal with being as it so deserved, the scenes that are a bit more stomach churning are the animal butchery, namely the turtle scene. But rest easy, because every ounce of meat was used by the tribesmen on location, so no waste....no foul.
This movie is smart, it has a good anti-media message urging its viewers to think before swallowing everything the media throws our way. More prevalent a message in today's world even, than in the one that existed in the year this was released ('80).
The long and short on this one? Get out there and watch it, it's a benchmark in cult filmakking, and created the whole fake shock documentary (the Blair Witch Project, Rec, Paranormal Activity) genre single handedly. If you need more convincing than that, this film is probably not going to be for you.
tastelessness 9/10
gore 9/10
must-see-ness 8/10
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