Italians and sadists and cannibals, oh my! Welcome kiddies. Tonight’s
little fright fest is a USDA approved choice cut of…oh hell, I’m sorry. I
just watched an episode of "Tales from the Crypt". I hope you can all
understand. Anyway, the movie is Make Them Die Slowly. Let’s get on with
it, shall we? But before we start, I should explain the numbering system.
Watching this the first time, we devised an extensive character nickname
chart, but some of the names are a bit long to type every time they come up,
so we’ve numbered them for your (okay, our, we’re lazy) convenience. In
every particular order they are:
1. Shitface (dead thirty seconds in, but the start of our nicknames so he gets a mention)
2. Son of Shitface (#6’s driver and jungle guide)
3. Twin of Son of Shitface (the wounded guy)
4. Friend of Twin of Son of Shitface (Mike the crack fiend)
5. Whore of Friend of Twin of Son of Shitface (the blonde chick)
6. Friend of Whore of Friend of Twin of Son of Shitface (lead character, a.k.a. Twat)
Now see why I didn’t want to type all that more than once? Speaking
of french toast, let’s start the review.
We begin with Shitface looking for 4. Apparently 4 has stolen
some money. Ol’ Shitface gets blamed and a mob guy blows his ass away.
Well, that scene wasn’t working. Let’s go to the jungle now. 2, 5, and
6 arrive in a village, but 2 and 5 are not happy campers. With a little
prodding from 6, they board a riverboat. Here we come to find out that
6 is writing a thesis on cannibalism for her doctorate, and she’s out to
prove that it doesn’t exist. Oh, look who’s WRONG!
Once they get to the actual jungle (it gets worse there every day...
ah, don’t hit!), their jeep promply digs itself a nice cozy burrow in a
mudhole and flips off all attempts to move it. So, tramping through
some crazy-ass jungle on foot, they see a creepy old guy munchin’ on
some grubs, and the bodies of several natives who have died in various
nasty and creative ways. Just as they stumble upon such things, 3 and
4 pop out of the jungle, and 3 is hurt. 4 spins a tale about being
tortured in a nearby village by insane cannibals, and the crew sets up
camp for the night. Oh bloody dog shit, lots of camping scenes. This
better not be Night of the Demon in disguise.
The next day, 6 is missing from the camp, so they go a-searchin’
for her. They find a charred, mangled body in a village. The natives
look on, fearful, as they continue their search. Hmm….plot point?
Eventually they find numero six-o in a trap with a tiny pig which she is
inexplicably terrified of. 4 jumps in and slashes the pig to death, in
Real-O-Vision no less. Those Italians pull out all the stops. The
ASPCA would hate these people. 3 collapses from his injuries, and they
put him in an empty hut.
Funny story about that scene; John Morgen, the guy playing 4, is
really a very nice and mild-mannered fellow. Refusing to actually stab
a defenseless pig to death, the FX guy did it for him. In a moment of
divine retribution, Morgen was doing some close-ups of him swinging the
knife down. He was swinging it into a bowl of blood held by the self-
same FX guy, so when he brought the knife up, blood would drip off. In
one of the downward swings, he cut the FX guy’s hand nearly in half with
the very real machete they were using. Back to the movie.
Later on, 4 and 5 have sex in a hut. Basking in some strange kind
of sadistic afterglow, they go out, find some native girls, and start to
harass them. 2 sees this and tries to stop it. He gets the leg up on
the miserable bastard too, but 4 pulls a gun and forces him to back down.
While 4 is away, 3 spills their entire backstory. 4, as you can
guess by now, is a yucky man. One of the natives had told him about
emeralds in the jungle, and 4 finagled him into showing him where they
were, with intentions to rip him off and take everything for himself.
When it is discovered that the riches are no longer where they were
expected, 4 pulls his trusty gun and takes the native back to his village.
The big strong men are out on a big hunting trip, and all the women and
young people have been left defenseless. The native 4 captured is tied
to a pole, where 4 whips him, gouges out his eye, and slices off his
balls. He suffers and dies, in other words. Finally, 3 reveals that 4
is the one who wounded him, to keep him from overpowering 4 and going
for help. Back in the concrete jungle, some detectives interview a
woman, a friend of 4, who might know where he has disappeared to.
On the village end of things, the manly men return to find the
carnage 4 has wreaked, and they are some pissed-off motherfuckers. This
might be a good place for some more trivia. This movie’s alternate title
is Cannibal Ferox. Ferox means to take warlike action. It’s all
starting to come together, ain’t it? On with the bloodletting! The
natives, now the cannibals, gut 3 and munch on all his sticky inside bits.
2 and 6 see this and run for the hills, but are captured and tossed in
a half-submerged cage with 5. 4 is tied to a stake. It’s eye for an...
er... testicle time. His balls and dong are sliced off and eaten. 2
and 6 are being transported via canoe, and once they make landfall, they
run for it again. And are captured again. Well, 6 is captured again.
2 jumps in the water, gets attacked by piranhas, screams, alerts the
natives, and gets blowgunned to death. Thank you, Darwin. Once 6 is
back in camp, she and 5 are dumped into a strange kiln-lookin’ thing.
The natives are apparently quite the experts at psychological torture
for being such a supposedly peaceful lot. They lower a piece of (human?)
meat into the hole where 5 and 6 are, and they hug each other and sing
in a desperate attempt to keep their humanity. For such a gritty, yucky
movie, this is a surprisingly poignant scene.
Back in the city again, we see the cops and 4’s female friend
interviewing a customs guy. They discover the group’s plans and set
off to rescue them. Meanwhile in the jungle, 4 escapes and swipes a
knife from one of the natives. Now when I say knife, I don’t mean a
little knife you use to skin fish. This is a ma-motherfuckin’-chete
if I’ve ever seen one. You could slice through the hull of an aircraft
carrier with one of these things. Anyway, the girls are trying to
escape via the meat-lowering rope, but 4 cuts it. Then his escape
attempt is bungled, and his hand is lopped off for penance. In the
hole, the girls are losing hope as the cops from the city fly over the
camp in a plane, completely missing the scene playing out below. They
land a bit later, and a native boy gives them 4’s watch. And now the
violence shifts into tenth-gear overdrive.
5 is stripped topless and gets huge meathooks rammed through her
breasts. Call me crazy, but those look like real boobies to me, folks.
She’s hung to death on her breasts while 6 begs for her to die quickly,
but she…you guessed it…DIES SLOWLY! We have title! They stick 4 under
a table with a hole in it that apparently serves no purpose other than
to have a human head stuck in the hole and trepanned. Which they do
with extreme prejudice. And then they munch his brains. Royal Fork has
dick on these people. While all this lovely stickiness is taking place,
6 escapes with a sympathetic native that realizes she means no harm. He
has some huge-ass wooden spikes slammed through his body when he stumbles
into one of their own traps. The cops finally pull ashore in a boat and
find 6 lying there half dead.
Back in the city one more time, 6 is giving her thesis at N.Y.U. and
being greatly lauded for her report on the fact that cannibalism, in
fact, DOES NOT EXIST!!! Lying motherfucker! Oh, if they only knew. And
just think, this is the DUMMED DOWN VERSION of Cannibal Ferox! Can’t
wait to get my hands on that one. But I love this movie, seriously.
Sadism has never been more appealing. And an alcoholic cow that drinks
all your beer. GOODNIGHT!
