Tender-Flesh As the number of Video Nasties I've yet to see dwindles, this little pile of garbage popped up on my "to rent" list when I saw it was available.The premise involves a fashion model or something being kidnapped and taken into the jungle to be held for ransom by a motley crew of idiots. Some other goof gets hired to bring her back and is given a sack of money to use as a bargaining chip, though if he returns with the girl and all the money, he gets a significant cut. He's brought a helicopter and pilot with him and, wow, that pilot is one of the worst actors EVER! Granted, they are all totally terrible and the dubbing will make you cry blood. After stealing away into the jungle, we learn that nearby is a cannibal cult whose flesheating earthbound god wanders the woods like a human King Kong looking for tribeswomen to ravage and devour. Now, this fellow is just a naked guy with some of the worst makeup ever, ping-pong balls for eyes and that's pretty much it. His growls and groans are an everpresent feature on the soundtrack, and I found myself muting much of those scenes.Oh, did I forget to mention the almost constant nudity? This is probably the main reason this film was banned, though there is one specific scene, about one second long, where the god attacks a girl and pulls her guts out, but it's not a redeeming factor for gore fans. Also, Jess Franco goes beyond the usual T and A and shows lengthy close-ups of female genitals, and, sadly, male as well. So, if you want "fair" in terms of exploitation, you got it.I can't recommend this trash to anyone. It's not even the good bad movie. It's just atrociously padded trash that only a Video Nasty fan will probably view and even then, if you are making your way through the list, leave this for the very last. If you watch it first, you may get the notion that this is the norm for the list, which is certainly not true.

Michael_Elliott Devil Hunter, The (1980)** (out of 4) A producer is showing off his beautiful actress (Ursula Buchfellner) when terrorists kidnap her and hold her for ransom in the jungle. The producer hires a specialist (Al Cliver) to go in after her but he must battle cannibals and the monster they worship to try and save the beauty. I had previously seen the German version of this film but this new one released by Severin features nearly twelve-minutes worth a new footage and brings the running time up to 102-minutes. I was worried about this but the added running time actually helps the movie. If you know Franco then you know sleaze is his specialty and that's what we get here. There's a whole lot of sleaze in this thing ranging from non-stop nudity to some bloody violence. Speaking of the nudity, I really don't think there are many frames in this film where a woman isn't naked and if there is then it doesn't last more than thirty-seconds or so. As usual, Franco knows how to film a naked body and his camera doesn't shy away from scanning the woman from head to toe and that includes one of the new scenes where a woman does a tribal dance and the camera goes as close as you can to capture those lower regions. Cliver is best known for his role in Lucio Fulci's Zombie but he makes for a good hero. His acting isn't the greatest out there but he does look the part well. Buchfellner is fairly good in her role as well but I'm sure it was her naked body that caught Franco's eyes. The film has a fairly weak story but it does make for some good sleaze if that's what you're looking for.

lazarillo Perhaps I'm more favorably disposed to this movie than to the similar Jess Franco effort "Cannibals" because I only rented this one instead of purchasing the DVD. Regardless though, while "Cannibals" is pure dreck, this movie is kind of entertaining, mostly in spite of itself. A group of kidnappers snatch a bimbo starlet (Ursula Fellehner) and hold her captive on an island. They are pursued by two hired mercenaries (Franco regulars Al Cliver and Anthony Mayans). While the two groups fight amongst themselves, the girl falls into the clutches of a local tribe of "cannibals" (half of which are African, and the other half obviously white Southern Europeans), who plan to sacrifice her to their "god", a tall black guy with ping-pong ball eyes. (Franco famously, if very unconvincingly, once accused the movie "Predator" of stealing his plot idea from this movie).The best part of this flick is the goofball dialogue and dubbing. Anthony Mayan's character, for instance, talks like Gabby Hayes for some reason and keeps having Vietnam flashbacks, even though he looks a little young to have been in 'Nam. One of the kidnappers shouts obscenities at everybody and seems genuinely disturbed by the "wild vegetation" (he makes Giovanni Lombardi Radici's character from "Cannnibal Ferox" seemed well-mannered and soft-spoken by comparison). When asked by reporters what she thinks of the men in their, country Fellehner's character responds in true bimbo fashion, "I have no opinion of men. I just love them." Later one of the mercenaries tells her stay put. Her response: "Huh?!" Naturally, the special effects are laughably un-special, and the public domain copy I saw was obviously ported from a Japanese source since it "optically fogs" Fellehner's pubic region (which is quite a job since the German Playboy Playmate barely spends a minute of her screen time with any clothes on). But despite the rampant (albeit partially "fogged")nudity from Fellehner and other assorted bimbos, this movie really fails to live up to its foreign title "Sexo Cannibal" (the cannibal doesn't get any sex, nor does anyone else really). Amazingly, this rather tame item was one of only two Franco films that were banned in Britain back in the "video nastie" days.Of course, I'm sure an overpriced "uncut" and subtitled version will someday appear for all the spendthrift masochists, i.e. Jess Franco fans, out there. But frankly I don't think they can improve on the unintentional hilarity of this public domain version (aside from "unfogging" Fellehner's pubes, of course).

Bloomer When a man who doesn't have Alzheimer's can't remember how many films he's made, he probably is the world's most prolific director after all. That man is Jesus Franco, the king of so-called 'eurotrash'. His 1980 flick Devil Hunter is as rushed, opaque, stupid, lazy and exploitative in the truest sense of the word (the film's title is misleading, for starters) as any other Franco film I've seen. That makes it sound pretty awful, and it is... Yet Franco does have some kind of inimitable sensibility, a generous way with the baldly outrageous, with nudity and sleaze and violence, and even with his stupid cheap editing which tries to pave over the extreme haste with which all his films were made. The mix of all these elements causes you to ride his films out, even while you're mostly waiting for them to end because they're so very tedious.Devil Hunter is nigh on incomprehensible for the first half an hour. The kidnap by strangers of a white woman who seems to be a model or film star is intercut with a bunch of native action in South America. There's lots of naked writhing, dancing, and endless repeated zoom-ins on an ugly totem pole. You need to get used to the repetitive zoom-ins and the technique of cutting back to the same shot about three times in a row right away, as these are Franco's main methods of extending a film out to feature length.The monster who looks like the totem pole is actually kind of scary. He has raw bug eyes and his presence is always signalled on the soundtrack by cacophonous groaning, apparently recorded in an echo chamber. Early in the piece he chews on a native lady strapped to a tree, and it's hard to know what really happens here but I think he ate her stomach (or her genitals, sweet Jesus!).Anyway, the adventure begins properly when a studly guy and his freaked out Vietnam vet pal are sent to the island to recover the white girl from the kidnappers. The flakey guy has an accent which, as dubbed, is half Brooklyn-American, half English-Liverpudlian and all retarded. All of the dialogue and dubbing is ridiculous and laughable, making for another layer of the film which can somehow hold your interest.Not too much really happens from here on in, and it happens pretty sluggishly, studded with the odd bit of outrage like a rape. The nebulous action is fleshed out (haha!) by acres of 360 degree nudity from the natives and the two female leads, and even from the monster himself. That he walks around with his penis exposed makes wrestling him an unappetising prospect for the tough guy hero, but it's gotta be done at some point, and it's nice to note that the director will show anyone's genitals on camera.The best feature of Devil Hunter is the location filming. Franco can be extremely cheap with the structural and story aspects of film-making, but he doesn't muck around with sets. You get real islands, jungles, helicopters and mountains, all in widescreen. This is something that is really cool to experience in these days of crappy CGI sets and backdrops ad nauseam.Ultimately, issues of recommendation where this film is concerned seem moot. If you're trying to see all the Video Nasties, you will have to watch this at some point, and you'll be made as restless as I was. If you like Franco, you'll watch this anyway. If you fall into neither of the above categories, the odds are you'll never come across this film. Copies of it aren't just lying around, and I could hardly recommend the seeking out of it. It's Franco. Lazy, crazy Franco.