Cannibal Terror

Cannibal Terror (Terreur Cannibale) (1980)

Runtime: 93 incredibly long minutes

Directed by: Alain Derull… and Olivier Mathot… and Julio Perez Tabernero

Starring: Derull, Mathot, and a bunch of other people no one has ever heard of before

From: Eurocine

Ooof, this was not a funny kind of bad. I know some feel that way and its description on Arrow’s streaming site says just as much… for me, I was glad I didn’t drive a car or operate heavy machinery immediately afterwards!

This French/Spanish production not only had zero budget, but its biggest sin is how incredibly boring most of the film is. Ostensibly the plot concerns a little girl being kidnapped by goons because her parents are filthy rich, only to encounter a tribe of cannibals… note that the entire movie is filmed in Spain so the tribe is located in a rural area that does not look like a jungle at all, the tribe of “natives” are obvious white guys that have 70’s sideburns/hair & clearly wear white briefs under their loincloths, the gore doesn’t look convincing-although at least it’s there for those that love such things-the kidnapped girl is never in distress despite the fact that she was gone from her parents for days, the English dubbing was lackluster and most of it is just SO poorly done and amateur-that’s why the movie drags incredibly badly. There is why Cannibal Terror bored me to tears & may do the same for you also.

Sure, it’s never a good sign when a movie has two uncredited directors (two of the three happened to act in the movie also) and it was interesting that the filmmaking would have made Roger Corman proud-this and Jesus Franco’s White Cannibal Queen were filmed at the same time on the same set & even shared some of the same cast-it’s a movie I’ll be happy to forget pretty soon. White Cannibal Queen had to be better than this & I am assuming that most of the films to come out of Eurocine-that’s including much of Franco & Rollin’s work-provides more entertainment value than this, good or bad. The score is hated by many-I don’t loathe it… it just seemed misplaced more than anything else.

Although, I did howl after a rather inexplicable exchange between father and daughter on the phone where dad made her an origami animal and she had to guess from description what it was. Even after he proclaimed it meowed, she asked if it was a ZEBRA or a SHARK. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was dumb enough to get along swimmingly or develop a Stockholm Syndrome relationship w/ her kidnappers…