Comments on: Jungle Holocaust (1977)

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:36:52 +0000

What allows Deodato to suckerpunch us with an intelligent movie is that he's inconsistently intelligent. He lulls us into underestimating him with stuff like The Raiders of Atlantis and The Barbarians.

By: IL

IL — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:23:11 +0000

Sounds to me like a story of degradation; the guy started off civilized but is rapidly sinking to the savages’ level. As for the rape, I think the idea is that the savages’ women have been raised to view sex much as we view a trip to the dentist: a necessary function, but not something one tends to enjoy. (Sex education for them in one lesson probably goes like this: “Sometimes men want to make babies with you. Making babies not fun, but bearable. When men decide to make babies with you, spread legs and think of fertility goddess.”) I don’t know of any savage tribes who do all of these things, but missionaries and anthropologists have discovered various tribes that each do some of these things.

What I’d have to wonder is how there are any women at all if the mothers are throwing their daughters away like that. My best guess would be the same as for how there could be any men in America 3000 where women had a policy of throwing away their baby boys: the men or boys would sometimes rescue the discards whenever they decided they want a new pet/student/slave.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:13:04 +0000

Crocodiles are also being eaten by Australians (more of a tourist dish though, but you can still get a steak in plenty of restaurants), so I wouldn’t really consider crocodile to be such an unusual food item.

Great review btw. and I think you addressed some of the more difficult aspects rather well. I guess what makes these cannibal flicks so notorious is that they are better made than one would expect them to be – Deodato is mostly known for his exploitation flicks and I don’t think one can argue that he’s really misunderstood in this regard, but he’s a far more accomplished director than one would expect given the subject matter he’s dealt with in most of his movies.

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:46:14 +0000

The performers were natives of the area, and I have it on good authority (from people who have lived in the Philippines) that pretty much anything will be eaten, and not just by jungle dwellers; monkeys, snakes, etc. will be eaten in what qualifies on some islands as the Philippine “suburbs.” So I certainly don’t consider it that unlikely that the crocodile would have ended up on the “craft services” table.

By: fish eye no miko

fish eye no miko — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:49:04 +0000

For the first issue, I’m still gonna say that the screwed-up (even if fake) society portrayed is more to blame for that one

And I’m saying, giving the views of woman in even Western society at that time, I’m not sure it’s that simple. How many other movies of this time had American and European women acting in similar ways; being attracted to men who treated them badly?

whatever use it would if the cameras weren’t rolling

If the camera weren’t rolling, would the croc have been killed at all, though, is my point? The people in this movie weren’t actually jungle dwellers who eat crocodiles, were they?

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:31:58 +0000

For the first issue, I’m still gonna say that the screwed-up (even if fake) society portrayed is more to blame for that one.

For the second issue, like I said, if the crocodile carcass was left to rot — i.e., if it was killed ONLY to make a movie — then yes, it’s an affront. If, however, the animal was eaten or put to whatever use it would if the cameras weren’t rolling, then I don’t have an especial problem with that.

By: fish eye no miko

fish eye no miko — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:14:38 +0000

As further evidence that she, though an unwilling “partner,” interpreted the act as something other than what we would think of as rape, from that moment she stays with Robert willingly

The problem with that is that there were (and maybe still are) plenty of movies, tv shows, etc that show women falling in love with men who rape them. Are you sure this is, “well that’s just the way her tribe sees it” and not a more generally fucked-up view of women that was prevalent even in the “enlightened” West in those days? Did you know that it was legal, HERE IN THE US for a man to rape his wife until well into the mid 70’s (because it wasn’t considered rape)? So, frankly, I’m not sure I’m as willing to be dismissive of this on a “cultural” basis as you are (a culture which was entirely created for the movie, wasn’t it?).

The crocodile, it’s true, is killed by performers in the roles of the tribesmen, but it isn’t tortured to death

No, but it’s still killed just to make a movie. If this were a documentary, that’d be one thing, but it’s not. These are, as you say, ACTORS. They easily could have used a fake alligator, just as they did with the people. Instead, they killed an animal to MAKE A DAMN MOVIE.