La montagna del dio cannibale
Director: Sergio Martino
Writer: Sergio Martino, Cesare Frugoni
Cast: Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach, Claudio Cassinelli, Antonio Marsina
Part of: /slash Filmfestival Christmas special

Plot:
Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress) travels to New Guinea to find her husband who went missing after going on an unsanctioned expedition into the jungle there. So she enlists Edward Foster’s (Stacy Keach) help to find him. Together they, and Susan’s brother Arthur (Antonio Marsina) head into the jungle themselves. But the jungle is a dangerous place.

The Mountain of the Cannibal God is a pure exploitation movie. It’s racist and sexist and quite frankly ridiculous. It features an inordinate amount of actual animal killings. But as such it is so incredibly absurd, I could barely take my eyes off the screen.

[SPOILERS]

There was actually some potential in this movie. It starts with a distressed wife who is so forceful she talks her way into an unsanctioned jungle trip. Susan then turns out to be not so much distressed about the disappearance of her husband than the disappearance of the money that went with him. In fact, she actually may not be a good person at all, which is quite the reveal and quite the turning on the head of several stereotypes. But unfortunately before the film is done, it reduces her to an objectified, sexualized victim. She gets tied up, undressed, is almost raped and saved by a man. Thanks for that, movie.

And the movie not only limits itself to the sexism, it goes with the racism as well. And it isn’t just racist because of the natives and the cannibalism, there’s also the good white missionary who lives with the savages and made himself a paradise there where he is a god amongst men. It is pretty disgusting.

Though not as disgusting as the sheer amount of animal deaths they found it necessary to include. Every five minutes you get some kind of animal fighting/eating another kind of animal – and none of those scenes have been touched by special effects. One or two of these scenes I could have overlooked but they bring it again and again and again. I started to feel rather ill.

Despite all that there were a couple of things that were so extremely weird that it somehow gave me a strange sense of fascination with the film. It starts with the fact that Susan actually goes on a jungle expedition in high heels and ends with the soundtrack that sounds like it was written for a school trip video – completely out of place in any case. And I’m also pretty sure that if you looked more closely at the extras, especially the natives at least a few of them would turn out not to be very native at all.

It’s basically a train wreck but watching it at the /slash Christmas party made it not only bearable but actually entertaining for very long stretches.

Summarizing: Watch it, but only in a cinema full of people who know what they want out of a film like that and with alcohol.