Mountain of The Cannibal God/Review

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Mountain of The Cannibal God
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After her husband goes missing in the jungles of New Guinea, Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress) and her shady brother Arthur (Antonio Marsina) travel to the island to search for him. When they arrive, they meet with some consulates who refuse to help them put together a search party, but they do point them to an expert named Professor Edward Foster (Stacy Keach) who can lead them to where her husband may be. When Susan explains about her husbands dissapearance, Foster decides to travel with Susan and Arthur on an expedition into the wilds of the island. We later learn that Foster knows Susan's husband and he has a pretty good idea about where he went. There is mountain where a tribe known as the Puka live. The only trouble is, the tribe are cannibals.

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The group head to the island and this is where we get our first bit of gore as some of the locals hack up a lizard and eat its guts. While in the jungles, the group run into some of the Puka and are nearly killed, but luckily they're saved by Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli). The story takes a twist here as it goes from a deadly jungle safari to a warm welcoming party as Manolo brings Foster, Susan and Arthur to a missionary station. It turns out Foster knows the head of the mission, Father Moses (Franco Fantasia) who embraces them all like family. While at the mission, we find out that Foster was captured by the Puka years earlier and tried to escape several times. He also took part in their rituals and had eaten human flesh. Foster is still haunted by these things. He explains to Manolo that he feels if can get to the Puka and kill them all, he could be cleansed of these nightmares he can't awake from.

The party next set out to climb up to the cursed cannibal mountain, and while passing up a waterfall Foster slips and calls out for help but Arthur (the bastard) doesn't do anything. Foster falls off the waterfall and dies. Manolo screams at Arthur and threatens to go back to the mission but Susan pleads with him to help them. Manolo soon finds out that Susan and Arthur aren't anxious to find her husband after all. They're actually looking for a cache of uranium in the mountain area. With some help from Manolo they've found one of Susan's husbands uranium meters that tells them the place is filled to the brim with the precious ore! Soon after, the three are captured by the Puka cannibal tribe. This is where things get REALLY messy! The climax of the film goes even farther into the cannibal/gore area as we see the Puka eating everything from human flesh to live snakes. Its some very nasty stuff and gore fans won't be dissapointed!

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Mountain of The Cannibal God is a very good entry into the cannibal subgenre. It's paced well, its got plenty of action, nice acting from Keach, Marsina and Cassinelli, nasty New Guinea gore and some steamy T & A featuring star Ursula Andress. It's even got a midget cannibal! How can you go wrong? The score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis may have influenced Riz Ortolani's score for Cannibal Holocaust. Its even got the strange electronic sounds mixed in with the jungle beats. Director Sergio Martino is another Italian genre legend that had a great eye for visuals and made some of the best Italo-exploitation films of the 70s. Recommended.


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Peter Roberts is the co-founder/editor-in-chief of the Grindhouse Cinema Database (GCDb) and contributor to the GCDb's sister site Furious Cinema. A Massachusetts native, he is an avid film fan that has been immersed in the world of entertainment and pop culture his entire life. He is a professional digital media designer and educator.

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