Snuff Hunter, The

Title: The Snuff Hunter

Also known as:
N/A

Year: 2008

Genre: Horror / Erotic / Exploitation

Language: Belgian

Runtime: 60 min

Director: Lorenzo Van Canne

Writer: Lorenzo Van Canne

IMDb: N/A

Plot:
Three girls are trapped in an abandoned warehouse where a maniacal killer is out to find them and force them to watch the snuff films he has created. Will the girls be appalled by the grotesque images shown on the projector or will it arouse secret fetishes they did not even know that existed?

Our thoughts:
Films with the theme of “snuff” are nothing new and recently they have been coming boring and generic. When I first heard of the film 'The Snuff Hunter' I thought this would be no different, just a bunch of people walking around with camera's and filming fake deaths. Luckily I was mistaken and was quite surprised as to what I viewed.

It would be very hard to describe the story for this as it is just more of a viewing experience than a liner story. The film begins with a attractive blond girl walking in an abandoned warehouse; she sits down in a chair and beings to tease a man dressed in a black ski mask. The man begins to try and touch her and she kicks him away, this enrages him...the chase begins! Once the girl is captured she is brought to the snuff room, a red lit room with a 16mm projector in it, the projector is turned on and we see the ski masked man sexually torture a girl and ultimately “snuff her out”. The blond girl that is being forced to watch this display of depravity on the screen at first looks apprehensive but begins to open up. Since this is an XXX film, I am assuming you can guess what happens next.

After the blond girls scene is finished we go into the second act of the film, this is my favorite part of the film it is very reminiscent to 70s roughies. This time the ski-masked man is chasing two girls instead of one, when both are captured and brought into the snuff room they are forced to preform sexual acts on each other. This scene specifically reminded me a lot of the mother/daughter scene in the film 'Wet Wilderness”. Both girls are obviously very uncomfortable and it is a bit unsettling to watch.

The film is shot on digital and it does work, it has very stylized XXX scenes that will make it stand out from everyday XXX films. The sound work is also very creepy and atmospheric. Very little dialog is spoken in the film so there are no subtitles, they would have been nice but they are not much to worry over.

For the first film in the series 'The Snuff Hunter' was a great attempt. I do look forward to the sequels as well as other film efforts by Lorenzo Van Canne, as it is hard to find a director that will add XXX and horror together! I am actually a little bit scared to see his next effort if he ups the violence and gore! This film is hard to target to a specific audience, it is a bit too rough for a casual porn viewing but on the other hand it is not gory enough for the underground horror audience. But the film is defiantly worth a purchase, it is an interesting watch a pretty nice blend of terror and porn.

Positive things:
- Interesting XXX film.
- Audio fit with it well.
- Cool concept.

Negative things:
- Some gore would of helped a lot.
- Lack of English subtitles.

Rating:
Gore: 2.5/5
Nudity: 5/5
Story: 0/5
Effects: 3/5
Comedy: 0/5

We got this from:
N/A

Reviewed by:
Louis C. Justin (Guest reviewer)

Isle Of The Damned

Title: Isle Of The Damned

Also known as:
Bind Them and Kill Them! (Working title)
Cannibal Island Holocaust (Bootleg title)
Island of the Damned (Working title)

Year: 2008

Genre: Comedy / Parody / Exploitation / Cannibals

Language: English

Runtime: 85 min

Director: Mark Colegrove

Writer: Mark Leake

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1260052/

Plot:
Jack Steele is hired to find the lost treasure of famous explorer Marco Polo on an island in Argentina. Jack and his group stumble upon the Yamma Yamma tribe, the deadly cannibal savages that live on that island, and finding the treasure becomes harder than expected. They also meet Alexis Kinkaid who has been living on the island for 10 years, and has a big house for them to stay secure in.

Our thoughts:
Cannibal parodies/comedies is a rare breed of film, and to be honest I can't even name one, atleast when it comes to the savage tribe type of cannibals, and not just men who's turned to cannibals, like in "Cannibal! The Musical". I was very excited to finally watch a movie of this kind but at the same time scared not being sure it could be pulled off the correct way with the low budget Dire Wit Films had. But then again, the front cover says "Banned in 492 countries!", so how can it not be great? Oh, yeah, right. Covers actually can lie. While we know that the "banned"-thing is a lie, it still promises some kind of cruelty, so it does have a few things to live up to before being accepted.

The plot is different from what I would expect. That they are looking for the lost treasure of Marco Polo, it was a bit ridiculous, but the movie never tries to be anything but that. They walk around the entire film in a jungle that is obviously your standard American forest, and the cannibals are Americans in wigs and dirt on them. I think I even saw an overweight cannibal. Is that common? Do they really have that much food, and do they move that little, that they can turn fat? Nevermind, that was hardly a problem. Every sound in this film is pretty much added later, and the dubbing is intentionally the worst ever, probably to pay respect to Italian classics. The entire film is, excuse my language, fucking stupid. Sometimes in a very good way, sometimes far from even a little funny. Plotwise, the thing I enjoyed the most was that they kept on saying that we are the real savages, not the cannibals. A very nice "Cannibal Holocaust" reference.

It had me laughing a couple of times, because sometimes jokes about necrophilia, boys getting raped, rabbit fucking, cocks getting chopped off and accidental steps on newly borns can be hilarious. But there are times where the dubbing is just annoying, and the films seems to be nothing buy long, even though they always try to keep us entertained.

The gore in the film is good, not great. It has better gore than many independent films, that's for sure, and I especially liked all the scenes with intestines and guts being pulled out. The chopping of the penis wasn't as cruel and brutal as a scene like that can be, and I think it's because it felt like the penis was way too easy to cut through, so you never really got to think about it. A nice touch with that scene was after it was off, when he was digging in the hole where the penis recently was attached, and he pulled out the balls. That felt alot more painful. And I love that they got the impalement scene of "Cannibal Holocaust" into the film, and done right too. Good job on the gore, I guess.

"Isle Of The Damned" could've been about 30 minutes shorter and still have all the best part intact. It's hard to not laugh at times, but I really got bored between those times. The gore was nice and we got enough of it, and I feel that if they took the film more serious (and I don't mean making it a serious film, just not trying to make it too stupid), it could've been an excellent parody of a forgotten genre. Check this one out because of the fact that it's a cannibal parody. Don't expect much more than a couple of laughs, some perversion, like rabbit fucking and mass-sodomy, and some gore.

Positive things:
- The big mask one cannibal wore was kickass. It deserves it's own movie!
- Over the top violence and sex/perversion.
- The soundtrack was perfect, I have to give it that.
- It's a cannibal parody!
- The scenes of wild animals, even though they obviously were from a zoo or something like that.

Negative things:
- Long.
- They made it way too stupid than it had to be. Much because of the...
- ...horrible (intentional) dubbing.

Rating:
Gore: 2/5
Nudity: 1/5
Story: 2/5
Effects: 2/5
Comedy: 3/5

We got this from:
DireWitFilms.com

Reviewed by:
Ronny

Anthropophagus

Title: Anthropophagus

Also known as:
Antropophagus
Anthropophagous: The Beast
Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper
Antropofago
Man Beast
The Grim Reaper
The Savage Island
The Zombie's Rage

Year: 1980

Genre: Horror / Cannibalism

Language: Italian

Runtime: 88 min

Director: Joe D'Amato

Writer: Joe D'Amato, George Eastman

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082479/

Plot:
A small collection of friends decide to sail to a small island to meet up with some other friends, for a nice relaxing vacation. Things take a turn for the worse when the arrive on the island to find all of its inhabitants missing and their boat drifts off. Slowly, the horrible truth is revealed about the fate of the villagers and they need to find a way to get off the island, before it's too late.

Our thoughts:
Ah, "Anthropophagus", probably one of the more well known Joe D'Amato movies, after "Caligula". "Anthropophagus" has gained a cult following over the years, as well as a lot of hype and notoriety for its content, especially upon its initial release. It managed to make its way onto the Video Nasties list, being banned in several countries, and causing outrage from a single scene, believed to be real.

I heard all about "Antrhopophagus" when I was first getting into obscure movies, mostly due to one scene in particular involving a pregnant woman. So when this finally got an uncut DVD release from Shriek Show, I couldn't wait to check it out. After my first viewing; to say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Not only did I think everyone who told me how great and how nasty the movie was must have been on drugs, but I felt I over paid for the movie when I got it for $7. Sure these days I understand most of those feelings I had upon my first viewing were my own fault for going into a movie having listened to the hype, and in general having a set expectation for it. Both of which, will normally spell doom for any movie for any one. After repeated viewings I don't hate the movie nearly as much, but it is still a movie where the hype and the infamy are far greater than the movie itself.

Most of the movie revolves around the group of friends being trapped on an island, where an entire village's population has disappeared. There is a death scene in the beginning involving a young couple on the beach that grabs your attention. I mean, what else is going to happen when you see a guy with a meat cleaver stuck in his head? You had just better enjoy it while you can, since you won't see anything like that for a good while. The rest of the time, we are stuck with a small collection of friends, and one stranger, in which we could honestly give a flying fuck about. Yet they are all we've got, so we have no choice but to watch them wander around a ghost-town of sorts. That is really all there is. They walk about, go from building to building, find the occasional remains of a villager, followed by hysteria of course. In the vein of a slasher flick, people are picked off one by one, though we don't know who it is. Is it a monster? A madman? Do we really care? I don't know about you, but I didn't. I was just waiting for something more interesting to happen.

Eventually it is revealed as to who the killer is, we are given some exposition on the killer and why he is going around eating people. Which has to do with him becoming ship wrecked with his wife and son, where he ends up eating the both of them to survive. Which, naturally, causes him to go insane and eat an entire village. Not entirely sure why, but I'm not about to question logic when something interesting has started happening. Since the madman's solution is to kill and eat anybody he comes across, we are given the scene that made the movie infamous. A scene in which he attacks a pregnant woman, rips out the fetus, and takes a bite. Now I give credit to D'Amato for doing a fairly ballsy scene like that, but it really isn't all that shocking for any seasoned horror fan. Especially considering that the "fetus" really looks like nothing more than a big chunk of meat. (It was a skinned rabbit covered in fake blood, so I guess it really was just a chunk of meat.)

Now while I am no fan of "Anthropophagus", as I hate it less with each viewing and I am starting to appreciate it more for what it is. Yes, I do find most of the movie to be rather dull since most of the running time is consumed with people wandering around an empty village. Though looking at the big picture, D'Amato did manage to create a pretty decent atmosphere of people being trapped on island with no escape, while this sense of dread lingers in the air as you know there is a killer hiding in the shadows. Accompanied by a fairly decent score, it does manage to create a atmosphere that I think is what gets to most of the fans. Plus, no matter how much I may not like the movie, I cannot deny the fact that the movie made an impact because it was actually a fairly shocking movie to come out at the time, which is why it has gained the following it has. As long as you watch the movie without buying into the fandom and hype around "Anthropophagus" then you'll probably enjoy it. At least more so than I did.

Positive things:
- George Eastman as "The Beast".
- A decent amount of blood/gore.

Negative things:
- A decent story that isn't nearly as effective as it could be.
- Most of the movie's running time consists of the friends walking around the empty island.
- Certain scenes don't live up the hype.

Rating:
Gore: 2.5/5
Nudity: 1/5
Story: 2/5
Effects: 2/5
Comedy: 0/5

We bought this from:
HKFlix.com

Reviewed by:
Preston