Claudio Fragasso's DIRTY WAR (Italy, 2010)

Bruno Mattei's CANNIBALS: LEGEND OR REALITY (2008)

Original title: CANNIBALI: LEGGENDA O REALTÁ




BLOODY HELL!!!

I've been wanting the "lost" Bruno Mattei cannibal movie CANNIBALS: LEGEND OR REAITY (Cannibali: Leggenda o Realtà) for many months now. It's among the last "new" films he made towards the end of his life (unter the alias "David Hunt"). It's really a 4 episode made-for-tv thingy but only released as an edited film version on DVD. And only in ONE country: the good ol'e Czech Republic! It's a pest ordering DVDs from there. But last night... finally... my buddy Member-X from Cinehound found a store for me that has the DVD and accepts non-Czech customers. And they even take PayPal! So this afternoon I place the order. And then I surf on some German site and discover that...

EDIT: and in the text that followed I wrote about how I thought there was going to be a reg. 1 dvd release but unfortunately I confused it with the release of another, entirely different movie. I've decided to delete the text in order not to confuse fans even more.

Oh, and I just discovered there's a new Claudio Fragasso film as well (from 2010)!!




EDIT, December 2011: There's was some confusion around the time when a reg. 1 DVD that was called THE REAL CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was going to get released and unfortunately I thought it was an aka title for the Mattei film. It is not. It's a completely different mondo movie called GUINEA AMA (by Akira Ide). As a wild coincidence Bruno Mattei actually used some of the mondo footage from GUINEA AMA in his HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD! How's that for weirdness!!

A pile of steaming... entertainment.

I remember the very first issue I ever read of Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal in English and Total Metal in Denmark) and there was a story about this guy who discovers a living, breathing pile of garbage in his basement. It's just lying there not moving but when the unfortunate sap flicks a booger into the pile of shit that last added bit is enough to create enough energy for the pile to kill the man and proceed to take over the world. Or something. (I read it bloody 30 yrs ago, my memory is faint here!). Anyway, I wonder how much more trash it's gonna take before the garbage blob that is yours truly will start killing random pedestrians and attack the world! If that's the intentions I'm certainly doing something right here cos I just ordered Bruno Mattei's LIBIDO MANIA and the Shaw Brothers' VIRGINS OF THE SEVEN SEAS!!! And, uh, they weren't cheap either. :-(
60 euros!! Mein gott, I could have bought a new car in the Czech Republic for that kinda money!!

Both films are uncut and they're released (for the first anywhere on DVD) by the German label Camera Obscura and I'm getting them from OMG Entertainment in Holland. The German title for VIRGINS OF THE SEVEN SEAS is Karate, Küsse, blonde Katzen and some international sites omit the German umlaut (i.e. dots over the U), thus making it "Karate, Kusse, blonde Katzen" which is somewhat funny... well, if you're Danish anyway. LOL.

The movie itself is one scene of depravity after another. There's rampant misogyny, beatings, degradation, lesbianism (If Helen Ko's character counts), rape and other scenes of moral debasement. With the frequent pratfall humor, you'd think this air of buffoonery would override the roughhouse nature of the proceedings, but it only adds to the overall tastelessness.

From Cool Ass Cinema, read the full review here.

[click scan to read the text]

About LIBIDO MANIA:

[...]...it's still perverse enough that you'd never want any family members to see this lying around on a coffee table.

Read the full review on Mondo Digital here.