It’s summer, the sun is shining and that means: vacation time. How about traveling to an obscure, exotic Greek Island out in the middle of nowhere. We can take along our heavily pregnant friend who’s just minutes from giving birth. Yeah, that’s a great idea, because nothing bad could happen to her.
As soon as our group of friends arrives at the island, things doesn’t seem to be right. The old town nearby is eerily quiet where all the townsfolk just seem to have vanished in thin air. After some exploring, they stumble upon a rotten corpse which should be enough to take a U-turn and maybe visit Disneyland instead. Whoops, too late, cause their boat has been attacked and is adrift. The pregnant woman, who stayed on the boat, has been captured by a grunting man which we so far has only seen from his POV view. Turns out that he’s a deranged cannibal who’s eaten the whole island where the only survivor is a blind girl drenched in blood, hiding in a basement. Have a nice stay.
Antropophagus, or AntHropophagus. or AntHropophagOus, or just I Eat Your Fetus. Yum is Joe D’Amato’s filthy and notorious Eurotrash magnum opus which is most known for one particular scene (or maybe two). The odd title stems from anthropophagy, a doctor term which in English simply means cannibalism. And with that being said, the film is far from as gory as as it’ll make you to believe. We have the half-classic scene of the cannibal eating his own intestines, a severed head in a bucket, a pretty sloppy kill with a meatcleaver, and of course the film’s big selling point: the very juicy fetus scene which made the film earn its spot on the list of Video nasty, and banned in most countries. But don’t worry, the effect of the fetus was a skinned rabbit covered in blood. Poor rabbit, though.
The pacing is slow, especially in the middle-part where the film really uses its precious time to build up the atmosphere. The characters are bland and boring which makes the slow build-up seem longer than it should. A familiar face among the body-counts would be Tisa Farrow, most known from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979). This was her final acting gig before she retired from the film biz to pursue a career as a nurse. She died early this year at age 72. RIP.
The film is pretty tame compared with today’s standards, to be honest. There’s also some very bizarre circus/clown music to be heard during the first half. The film’s strong suit is the thick, raw and sticky atmosphere. George Eastman as the bulky and tall cannibal is also a big plus here, even though he walks slower than a lobotomized zombie on Zoloft. So despite its flaws and clunkiness, the film has its unique vibe and distinctiveness, maybe much thanks to the primitive surroundings and the old European buildings with the overall strong odor of death and decay everywhere. It’s also a technically solid film with some really great ghoulish sceneries – the most memorable being in a moist catacomb where the film’s crew mixed real skeletons with fake ones.
And that segways us to the IMDb’s trivia section: because according to the director, some of the heads and bones in the catacombs were plastic imitations, as mentioned. Upon collecting them after the scenes had been shot, the crew accidentally took with them some real bones. Since D’Amato did not dare to return them, he let them make a “pilgrimage” to his house. Horns up!
I’m also a sucker for that deliciously tasty movie poster, by the way, which is definitively something to have framed in your living room just to piss of your mum and dad every time they visit. That one is made by Enzo Sciotti (1944 – 2021) who also illustrated movie posters for Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, David Lynch, George A. Romero and more. Movie poster designers, and illustrators in general, get little to no credit, and with the rise of AI junk, I hope that will change. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, though.
Antropophagus has gotten numerous releases throughout the years, all from cut-down versions to bootlegs with even more numerous alternative titles to keep you confused. It was for the first time released in full uncut version in 2005 by Shriek Show with both Italian and English dub. The Italian version is laughably bad, so rather stick with the English one. Eastman and D’Amato followed-up with a so-called “spiritual sequel“ a year later called Absurd, which is just dull and painfully boring. The remake Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) by Andreas Schnaas is way more fun. An unofficial sequel was spat out in 2022, simply called Antropophagus II, which I hadn’t heard of until now.
Director: Joe D’Amato
Writer: George Eastman, Joe D’Amato
Country & year: Italy, 1980
Also known as: The Grim Reaper, The Savage Island, The Beast, The Zombie’s Rage, Man-Eater
Actors: Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Serena Grandi, Margaret Mazzantini, Mark Bodin, George Eastman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082479/
Remake:
– Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)
Faux sequel:
– Anthropophagus II (2022)
