Audience Member
"Man from Deep River" is about as shocking in its purpose as anything contained within its gore scenes. Directed by Italy's go-to-guy for cannibal sleaze, Umberto Lenzi ("Make Them Die Slowly") weaves in his share of exploitative and downright offensive elements (he can't get enough of *live* animals fighting/being cut apart) to tell the tale of an American photographer (Ivan Rassimov, sporting a bad blonde dye job) who stabs a surly bar patron while drunk, and flees up a river in the Philappines only to run afoul of a cannibal tribe. Now, while Lenzi's subsequent efforts have celebrated the 'gore-to-profits' equation to success, "Deep River" has a surprisingly human story at its core--upon first glance, Rassimov is a prisoner seeking escape; but he eventually assimilates to the tribal culture and even weds one of the ladies (Me Me Lai). In a bit of ironic turnabout, our Ugly American gets in touch with his inner human, and his journey there is told with a pulse more dramatic than horrific, which blind-sided me. While this might not be to all tastes, Lenzi's commitment to the material truly sucked me in and made me care. Those seeking an alternative to "Cannibal Holocaust" should be pleased with "The Man from Deep River."
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/02/23
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Audience Member
Je veux aller vivre en Thaïlande au milieu d'une tribu de sauvages! :-)
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
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Audience Member
This film has the reputation of being one of the better cannibal flicks of the 70s - but I really can't see why! Despite maybe having better production values than some of the others it has virtually no cannibalism in it. In fact it's actually a quite dreary story of 'love in the jungle'.
A photographer goes upriver in Thailand (after randomly stabbing a man in a bar for some reason that is never expanded upon). Heading into uncharted territory he is captured by a native tribe who keep him as a slave for a bit and then integrate him into the tribe itself. At some point the chief's daughter gets the hots for him and they end up getting married and then she has a baby and promptly dies. The end. That's it.
The film is really slow moving with lots of lingering shots of village life and with much of it in the native language it's difficult to know what's going on. As it's an Italian exploitation flick then there's quite a bit of nudity and the occasional graphic bit of violence but nothing to really write home about. The cannibals turn up for all of ten minutes and don't really do much apart from have a fight with the other villagers and eat one poor girl they catch by the waterfall that everyone seems intent on going backwards and forwards to.
The film I watched was the UK version - Deep River Savages - which has about three minutes of animal cruelty missing (another staple of Italian cannibal films) so I don't think I've missed that much so in conclusion it left me feeling that it was ninety minutes of my life that I won't get back!
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
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Audience Member
"Man from Deep River" (also known as "Deep River Savages", "Sacrifice!" and "The Man from the Deep River) has the notorious reputation for kickstarting the whole brutal Italian cannibal subgenre. To be honest that's how I actually heard of the film. However if you are a fan of this questionable subgenre you better change your expectations. Even though it's directed by Umberto Lenzi, the man responsible for two of the most notorious films in the genre with "Eaten Alive!" and "Cannibal Ferox", this is a far cry from the extreme nature of those films as this is more of a survival drama film with cannibalism only being an element in the picture instead of being the main focus.
The plot is actually almost identical to the popular American western "A Man Called Horse" only substituting the western background with a jungle and changing the Native Americans to jungle tribes. So the film starts with a photo journalist visiting Bangkok with his girlfriend, who leaves his ass and he somehow kills a guy while drunk in the bar. On the run from the authorities he decides to hire a local to take him deep river so in order to take picture but it only serves him to get captured by a reclusive tribe and in turn forced to be a slave. The daughter of the tribes leader, who just happens to be smokin' hot, takes a liking to him and after proving himself to the tribe and their customs, he 'marries' the bitch and then knocks her up.
The film is the life and times of living in a jungle tribe and if you've seen "A Man Called Horse" then you know exactly how the plot will unfold as it really is identical. Because of this I actually found the film do drag a bit. Even though it has the reputation of being a "cannibal film", it is actually more of a slow moving drama. Think of "Dances with Wolves" extreme Italian exploitation style.
The whole story arc of our main character is extremely clunky and haphazardly strung together. The beginning of the film is horribly cut, to a laughable extent, as within 5 minutes of arriving in Bangkok his girlfriend leaves him and he ends up killing a guy in a bar. It's truly a "what the fuck" string of events that leads him to the jungle and just left me shaking my head.
For an Italian exploitation film the acting is acceptable but it is no where it needs to be in order to realistically portray the love between the man from the city and the tribal beauty. Ivan Rassimov, whom I knew from numerous Spaghetti Westerns, and Me Me Lai, who shows off her glorious nude body on numerous occasions, just seem wooden together.
Enough of that 'plot' stuff, you're wondering about the CANNABLISM. Don't worry my friends, it's coming. Apparently the rival of our main tribe is a ferocious cannibal tribe that lives further up the mountain. We get to see this cannibal tribe in full on bloody glory when they attack a female tribe member and Umberto Lenzi spares no carrnage as he full on shows this graphic attack. The scene, though extremely gruesome, proved popular enough for Lenzi to re-use as stock footage in his next cannibal-fest "Eaten Alive!"
Of course with these type of films 'cannibalism' isn't' the only exploitative element. Lenzi also loads up the film with tribal nudity and sex scenes. There is also a few instances of real life animal killings, an element the genre would be known for and also the one element I despise in these films.
Overall "Man from Deep River" is a survival drama with a serious douse of Italian exploitation and because of this it will fail to truly enthrall audiences. It's too dramatic and drab for fans of Italian extreme cinema and it's too exploitative and brutal for fans of survival dramas. Needless to say, for better or worse, it was a hit in the underground circle for it's one, pinnacle cannibalism scene and the setting and that one scene would go on to inspire a slew of imitators, all more bloody and extreme than the next so the grindhouse theaters would be flowing with gore for years to come.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
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Audience Member
Take the voice of J. Peterman from Seinfeld, the racial proclivities of Dog the Bouty Hunter, a slew of animals with a perilous fate, a buxom young lady and throw them into a jungle with a poorly devised script and a director repeatedly willing to cross bounds of tackiness in cinematic desperation and the nearly unwatchable result will be The Man from Deep River. Whenever the plot starts to sputter there is an abrupt injection of some beastial evisceration, tribesmen running with spears, or a topless Pantene commercial. Great for those with the attention span of a four-year old, but with questionable refinement. Loved the king cobra vs mongoose scene and the wife selection ceremony. Boy have we come along way since the seventies.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Unless you're interested in tracing the history of Cannibal Holocaust or you're interested in seeing animal slaughter (sicko), then there's no real reason to watch this movie.
That said, it's a pretty enjoyable, if not sickening jungle adventure movie with a shitty english dub, some pretty cinematography, a bunch of nudity, and the aforementioned animal slaughter.
I mean, if you wanna get down to it, you see a pretty sickening game of snake vs. mongoose, a monkey's head gets sliced off by a sword (and then his "brains" are "eaten"), and a bunch of other animals get their heads slowly sawn off in the name of "tribal customs".
This is all there to compare and contrast a "savage" society with a "humane" one, showing that the two are more alike than one would think.
If this sounds familiar (it may not), it's because Mondo Cane did the same thing. This is sort of a fiction remake of that movie, and the template for which nastier films like Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox would follow. If that's your thing, check this movie out.
If not, then don't. I won't judge.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
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