DVD Release
Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978)
R0 / NTSC DVD
Blue Underground / 2007
Director: Sergio Martino
Writers: Sergio Martino & Cesare Frugoni
Cast: Stacy Keach, Ursula Andress, Claudio Cassinelli & Antonio Marsina
Review by James Garfield
Susan (Ursula Andress) Stevenson’s ethnologist husband has gone missing during an expedition in New Guinea. Susan goes after him, enlisting his friend Edward Foster (Stacy Keach) as a guide. The missing man was last seen headed for a “cursed” mountain on an island. The trip there is fraught with peril from animals and natives, as well as the prospect of betrayal by members of the search party with ulterior motives. Finally, at the mountain, the remaining members of the expedition must cope with a Stone Age cannibal tribe. Is there any escape?
What are well-known actors like Andress and Keach doing in one of the infamous Italian cannibal films? This one distinguishes itself by being largely a jungle adventure a la King Solomon’s Mines, which is probably how the actors were sold on it. Still, gore scenes occur frequently throughout, and things really erupt when the cannibal tribe takes the survivors prisoner. Unfortunately, the gore often occurs in scenes of genuine violence against animals, either by humans or other animals. Most unforgettably, some natives flay an iguana and rip out its heart for nourishment; Foster, a good multiculturalist, pleads for tolerance: “It’s their religion!”
Another landmine of the cannibal genre pops up here: the racist view of the natives as unthinking savages, “balanced” by the revelation of destructive motives among the whites. Yet Mountain isn’t a total embarrassment for Keach and Andress; the film manages, unlike the other major cannibal movies, to depict the beauty as well as the indifferent destructiveness of nature. It’s amazing how much sleaze sneaks into such a sleek, professional-looking flick. The highlight, missing for years from most prints, is a scene of (simulated) bestiality between a native and a pig. But that’s exactly why those of us who watch Italian cannibal films watch them: to have our brains seared and our eyeballs raped by such spectacles.
Cannibal Holocaust is still the champ of this genre, though Mountain is a lot easier to take. Andress’s nude scenes help a lot here. Check out the “making of” featurette, mainly consisting of an interview with Sergio Martino, to witness the amusing spectacle of footage from the film being used to directly contradict what the director says.
