Video Nasty #18
Cannibal Apocalypse
1980
POWs IN VIETNAM...STARVED IN CAPTIVITY...RELEASED WITH A TASTE FOR HUMAN FLESH.
DON'T SCREAM...YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE.
Original Italian title: Apocalypse Domani
Other alternate titles: Cannibals In The Streets, Invasion Of The Flesh Hunters
NTSC Running time: 96:07
Directed by Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony M. Dawson)
Story by Dardano Sacchetti (as Jimmy Gould)
Screenplay by Margheriti and Sacchetti (as Dawson and Gould)
Produced by Edmondo, Maurizio & Sandro Amati
Starring: John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardo Radice (as John Morghen), Cinzia De Carolis (as Cindy Hamilton), Tony King, Wallace Wilkinson, Ramiro Oliveros
Body Count: 25, plus a dog and a rat. (The dog was not actually harmed. The rat, we're not sure.)
Availability: Uncut Region 1 DVD available from Image Entertainment.
BBFC Status
Why it's a Nasty: Cannibalism!...and animal cruelty.
What was cut: A cut of two seconds to a rat that caught fire.
Current UK Status: Cannibal Apocalypse was awarded an 18 certificate on May 11, 2005 after the shot of the rat on fire had been excised. The same version was again awarded an 18 certificate on March 15, 2010.
Availability: 18 certified version available on Region 2 DVD and online from Optimum Releasing.
Cannibal Apocalypse was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.
Cannibal Apocalypse was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.
When sitting down to watch a film titled Cannibal Apocalypse, would you expect an allegory about the horrors of war and post-traumatic stress syndrome?
Because that's what you get.
We open in the jungles of Vietnam, where Norman Hopper (John Saxon) is leading a battalion into a Viet Cong base, where POWs Tommy Thompson (Tony King) and Charles Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) are being held. When a Vietnamese woman catches fire and falls into the POW's holding pit, the two soldiers quickly tear her apart and feast upon her. Once the smoke clears, Hopper recognizes the two men and extends a hand to them, meaning to pull them out, but getting an armful of teeth...
And Hopper awakes from his nightmare next to his wife, Jane (Elizabeth Turner), a television host with serious concerns about her husband's well-being. She seeks out Dr. Phil Mendez (Ramiro Oliveros), who tells Jane that a) she should have married him instead of Hopper, and b) Hopper is better off than Bukowski and Thompson who are still in a mental institution. Or not, since Bukowski has just been granted a daypass out into the city.
Charlie wants to meet up with his good friend Hopper, have a few beers, discuss old times, but Norman isn't in the mood. In addition to his nightmares (in which Charlie features prominently), he's dealing with the girl next door, Mary (Cinzia De Carolis), a teenage nymphet who is in the midst of failing to seduce Norman when his old war buddy calls. Norman hangs up on Bukowski and seems about to give in to Mary's advances (shame on you, Norman!), but, as he later confesses to his wife, what he's really thinking is how much he'd like to take a bite out of Mary.
Bukowski heads to the movies, where he sits down for a screening of Umberto Lenzi's From Hell To Victory. He's enjoying his popcorn when the couple in front of him gets into a heavy makeout session. The girl's boyfriend is nibbling on her breasts, and Charlie flashes back to when he took a bite from the same part of that Vietnamese lady's anatomy. Unable to control himself, Bukowski leans forward and takes a healthy chunk from the girl's neck. Chased from the theatre, he holes up in a flea market and starts shooting people...
So begins Cannibal Apocalypse. It's brutal. It's violent. It's not for the faint of heart. There's all kinds of gunfire and flesh-eating, with a police captain trying to make sense of all the carnage throughout. When this Captain McCoy (Wallace Wilkinson) arrives on the scene of Bukowski's flea market standoff, he delivers a line you won't see in the movies anymore. "I don't care about his name! What's his background? Is he a subversive, a queer, a commie, a black?" It's apparent as we get to know him better that he's not a racist or a bigot, just a harsh-talking cop who wants things boiled down into neat little packages. Too bad he's not ready for a cannibal plague.
Made during the height of Italy's Cannibal Boom, a short-lived but impressive trend that saw most of its' films on the Nasties list, Cannibal Apocalypse took the flesh-eating out of the jungles and into the streets of Atlanta, where much of the film was shot. Instead of primitive tribes, the anthropophagists here are ordinary citizens, afflicted by a kind of rabies they picked up in 'Nam. Whether the result of chemical warfare or some other source, the film doesn't explore the cause. It doesn't need to. The soldiers who have returned home are cursed with the horrors of their time in the war, post-traumatic stress disorder made into a literal, physical ailment. Tommy and Charlie cannot help themselves, their need to eat their fellow man has overridden everything else in their lives. It's an intriguing idea, and one the film could have explored more deeply...if Margheriti and Sacchetti weren't so intent on fitting in as much carnage as possible. And boy, do they deliver!
There's plenty of names here that we'll be seeing again. Giovanni Lombardo Radice appears in three Nasties, we'll be seeing him again in Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox and Ruggero Deodato's House On The Edge Of The Park. John Saxon has a great supporting role in Dario Argento's Tenebre. And Dardano Sacchetti may be the King Of The Nasties, with screenplay credits on FIVE of the seventy-two (the others are The House By The Cemetery [see Video Nasty #3], The Beyond, Blood Bath, and Zombie Flesh Eaters, on which he went uncredited in order to give his wife a screen credit and facilitate further work). And in a bit of meta-fiction, actress May Heatherly (who also appears in Pieces) appears in Cannibal Apocalypse as Helen and in From Hell To Victory, the film Bukowski sees in the cinema. Spooky!
And while the BBFC may have loosened its' restrictions on the cinematic depiction of cannibalism, they are still not too keen on cruelty to animals. The two second shot shorn from this film takes place in the final reel, during a chase through the sewers, where Tommy blasts his flamethrower onto some rats, one of which scurries into the water upon being engulfed in flames. Did the rat survive? Most likely, as it jumps into the water, dousing the flames, and those are some resilient little fuckers. (Remember my little rat problem last year? Yeah, I wasn't too sad to see one catch fire, but if it survived, good on it.) Other than that short and insignificant shot, UK viewers can now easily catch this one...and I hope they do. This is a fun movie that had no trouble holding my attention.
It's a shame that John Saxon, who was rather disgusted by the concept but already contractually obligated to appear by the time he found out, has claimed to have never seen it and been totally okay with its' one-time UK ban. John, if you're reading this, I urge you to reconsider and give it a chance. Your performance was great, you did a terrific job of capturing Hopper's haunted, troubled psyche, especially at the end, and you should be proud to have Cannibal Apocalypse on your resume. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.
And that's it for now, my friends. I'll catch you soon enough, though probably not as soon as either of us would like. I've got some new projects percolating, including a trip through bloody darkness with a mad genius known only as The Phantom. I can't give you any details yet, it's super top secret, but you can rest assured that when the feral cat leaps from the burlap sack, it will land squarely on this page, claws outstretched...and hungry. Until next time, steer clear of quiet men in camouflage jackets. They're probably harmless...but they might also be wondering what you taste like. I'll think twice if they cross my path. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
Charlie wants to meet up with his good friend Hopper, have a few beers, discuss old times, but Norman isn't in the mood. In addition to his nightmares (in which Charlie features prominently), he's dealing with the girl next door, Mary (Cinzia De Carolis), a teenage nymphet who is in the midst of failing to seduce Norman when his old war buddy calls. Norman hangs up on Bukowski and seems about to give in to Mary's advances (shame on you, Norman!), but, as he later confesses to his wife, what he's really thinking is how much he'd like to take a bite out of Mary.
Bukowski heads to the movies, where he sits down for a screening of Umberto Lenzi's From Hell To Victory. He's enjoying his popcorn when the couple in front of him gets into a heavy makeout session. The girl's boyfriend is nibbling on her breasts, and Charlie flashes back to when he took a bite from the same part of that Vietnamese lady's anatomy. Unable to control himself, Bukowski leans forward and takes a healthy chunk from the girl's neck. Chased from the theatre, he holes up in a flea market and starts shooting people...
So begins Cannibal Apocalypse. It's brutal. It's violent. It's not for the faint of heart. There's all kinds of gunfire and flesh-eating, with a police captain trying to make sense of all the carnage throughout. When this Captain McCoy (Wallace Wilkinson) arrives on the scene of Bukowski's flea market standoff, he delivers a line you won't see in the movies anymore. "I don't care about his name! What's his background? Is he a subversive, a queer, a commie, a black?" It's apparent as we get to know him better that he's not a racist or a bigot, just a harsh-talking cop who wants things boiled down into neat little packages. Too bad he's not ready for a cannibal plague.
Made during the height of Italy's Cannibal Boom, a short-lived but impressive trend that saw most of its' films on the Nasties list, Cannibal Apocalypse took the flesh-eating out of the jungles and into the streets of Atlanta, where much of the film was shot. Instead of primitive tribes, the anthropophagists here are ordinary citizens, afflicted by a kind of rabies they picked up in 'Nam. Whether the result of chemical warfare or some other source, the film doesn't explore the cause. It doesn't need to. The soldiers who have returned home are cursed with the horrors of their time in the war, post-traumatic stress disorder made into a literal, physical ailment. Tommy and Charlie cannot help themselves, their need to eat their fellow man has overridden everything else in their lives. It's an intriguing idea, and one the film could have explored more deeply...if Margheriti and Sacchetti weren't so intent on fitting in as much carnage as possible. And boy, do they deliver!
There's plenty of names here that we'll be seeing again. Giovanni Lombardo Radice appears in three Nasties, we'll be seeing him again in Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox and Ruggero Deodato's House On The Edge Of The Park. John Saxon has a great supporting role in Dario Argento's Tenebre. And Dardano Sacchetti may be the King Of The Nasties, with screenplay credits on FIVE of the seventy-two (the others are The House By The Cemetery [see Video Nasty #3], The Beyond, Blood Bath, and Zombie Flesh Eaters, on which he went uncredited in order to give his wife a screen credit and facilitate further work). And in a bit of meta-fiction, actress May Heatherly (who also appears in Pieces) appears in Cannibal Apocalypse as Helen and in From Hell To Victory, the film Bukowski sees in the cinema. Spooky!
And while the BBFC may have loosened its' restrictions on the cinematic depiction of cannibalism, they are still not too keen on cruelty to animals. The two second shot shorn from this film takes place in the final reel, during a chase through the sewers, where Tommy blasts his flamethrower onto some rats, one of which scurries into the water upon being engulfed in flames. Did the rat survive? Most likely, as it jumps into the water, dousing the flames, and those are some resilient little fuckers. (Remember my little rat problem last year? Yeah, I wasn't too sad to see one catch fire, but if it survived, good on it.) Other than that short and insignificant shot, UK viewers can now easily catch this one...and I hope they do. This is a fun movie that had no trouble holding my attention.
It's a shame that John Saxon, who was rather disgusted by the concept but already contractually obligated to appear by the time he found out, has claimed to have never seen it and been totally okay with its' one-time UK ban. John, if you're reading this, I urge you to reconsider and give it a chance. Your performance was great, you did a terrific job of capturing Hopper's haunted, troubled psyche, especially at the end, and you should be proud to have Cannibal Apocalypse on your resume. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.
And that's it for now, my friends. I'll catch you soon enough, though probably not as soon as either of us would like. I've got some new projects percolating, including a trip through bloody darkness with a mad genius known only as The Phantom. I can't give you any details yet, it's super top secret, but you can rest assured that when the feral cat leaps from the burlap sack, it will land squarely on this page, claws outstretched...and hungry. Until next time, steer clear of quiet men in camouflage jackets. They're probably harmless...but they might also be wondering what you taste like. I'll think twice if they cross my path. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
