'Slave of the Cannibal God' has no surprises

Slave of the Cannibal God (aka "Mountain of the Cannibal God" and "Prisoner of the Cannibal God") (1978)
Starring: Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach, Claudio Cassinelli, and Antonio Marsina
Director: Sergio Martino
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Susan Stevenson (Andress) arrives in New Guinea to launch an expedition to search for her husband who has gone missing. A former collegue of is (Keach) reveals that he traveled secretly to a mostly unexplored island to study cannibals who worship a holy mountain. Suan convinces him to help her in her search, and they head into the unknown, along with her sociopathic brother (Marsina).


"Slave of the Cannibal God" is about what you'd expect from a movie with the words "Slave" and "Cannibal" in the the title, starring Andress, and made by Italians. I'd expected more gore, nudity, and sexual perversion, but I suspect I may have seen the "censored" version.

Storywise, the film was reminicent of a 1930s jungle adventure film, or a Joe Kubert-penned Tarzan tale--most of the explorers are in the jungle for reasons that are not at all what they claim they are--but production-wise, it's all cheesy Italian production from the 1970s. (You know you're not going to be watching the cream of the film crop when the first shots in a film are images of random animals in the jungle.


However, the film is mercifully light on filler animal footage, the acting is better than is usually found in these sorts of films, and the story moves along at a good pace. If you like jungle adventure movies, you can do far worse than this one. On the other hand, if you're looking for a gory cannibal flick, you should probably pass on it. I'm still not sure who the "slave" of the title is.)

Man in two minds because of mad science

The Man With the Screaming Brain (2005)
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Vladimir Kolev, Tamara Gorsky, Stacey Keach, Ted Raimi, and Antoinette Byron
Director: Bruce Cambell
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After Ugly American industrialist William Cole (Campbell) and his Bulgarian gangster driver (Kolev) are murdered by a sexy-but-psychopathic Gypsy woman (Gorsky), Cole is resurrected by Russian mad scientist Ivan Ivanovich (Keach) as a proof-of-concept for his revolutionary brain surgery technique. Unfortunately, Ivanovich's methods involve transplanting parts of brains into other brains, so Cole now has to contend with sharing his mind and body with a gangster. One thing they can both agree upon: They want revenge on the Gypsy who murdered them.


"The Man With the Screaming Brain" is part homage, part hilarious spoof of the "mad science" B-movies of the '50s and '60s. We've got greed, lust, mad science, brain transplants, a killer robot, more stereotypes and oddball plot-twists than you can count, and a truly bizarre tale of a failing marriage revitalized by tragedy and twists of fate. Oh, and we have Bruce Campbell speeding through a Bulgarian city on a pink Vespa!

While I think the storyline is a bit shakey--it's actually overburdened by a few too many gags and B-movie plot mainstays tossed in for the movie's own good--it holds together well enough and it should be great fun for fans of Bruce Campbell and the cheesy sort of sci-fi/horror movies it's spoofing. (Fans of contempary cultural reference comedy will be greatly amused by Ted Raimi's "Pavel" character... an up-and-coming mad scientist with a love of hip-hop who utters the line, 'Sounds like there is some shizzle going on down there my nizzle.')