(aka: EATEN ALIVE)
This is the second of three cannibal films directed by Lenzi (filmed in Sir Lanka) with CANNIBAL FEROX (1981) being the third. To be honest with you, I saw both of these films one right after the other and I can truly say that they are both about the same. One isn't any more gross or gory than the other, imo.
Film starts in Niagara Falls where a policeman is killed by an asian fellow blowing poison darts. Then the movie cuts to NYC where the same guy kills two more people using poison darts before he is run over by a truck and killed. It's all a part of an ecological cult that Janet Agren is investigating in regards to the disappearance of her sister.
Her search takes her to 'New Guinea' where she hires a Viet-Nam deserter (porn star R. Bolla) to guide her to the village where her sister was last seen. On the way there, we get to watch snakes eating animals, natives gutting and skinning crocodiles and our two heroes being chased by cannibals.
They finally reach the village and meet the cult leader (Ivan Rassimov) who has absolute control over everybody. He's an obvious copy of Jim Jones.
Gross food scenes include:
Cannibals eating native girl's arm and left breast. Not bad...
Then we see three native guys screw another native girl in a ritualistic soft-porn scene. One goes down on top of her, right after the other.
Janet Agren, naked, covered in gold paint getting a snake blood covered dildo inserted into her. It doesn't actually show it, but it's implied by the pain shown on her face.
A native guy who has betrayed the cult, getting his dick cut off before he is gored to death with a stick. Cool !!
Another native girl and Algren's sister being eaten by cannibals after they escape from Rassimov's camp. They are first disemboweled and then their organs are eaten before they are hacked and gored to death with spears. You know it's all fake because the bodies look like full-size rubber latex mannequins. It's still a cool scene, anyway.
The Shriek DVD is taken from an excellent wide-screen print with a few film extras such as an interviews with Lenzi, Bolla and Rassimov. Lenzi says that his next film, CANNIBAL FEROX did better at the box office, but he equates both of these films as being of the same quality. So do I.
In these politically-correct times, films like these wouldn't get made today. It get's a 6 out of 10 for being interesting and un-PC misogynistic at the same time.
