**THIS TRANSCRIPT IS A.I GENERATED AND MAY NOT BE 100% ACCURATE**

This is death by DVD. And I am your host Harry-Scott Sullivan, and on this episode, so good. It'll make you want to eat a baby. We're talking about anthropophagus from 1980, also known as the Grim Reaper, The Beast, the Savage Island anthropophagus, The Beast anthropophagus, the Grim Reaper.

And much, much more directed by exploitation legend Joe D'Amato, also known as David Hills, Michael DiCaprio, Ralph De Palma, Alexandra Boyarsky, Oona peer, Robert Yip. Once he was credited as Chang Li Sun, Joan Russell, Dario Donati, Alexander Barofsky, Steve and Benson, OJ Clarke, John Bird, Kevin Mancuso, Peter Newton, Anna Bergman, Michael Wo TRUEBA, Roma, Dino Gas, Dolby. And finally their real name, Aristide.

Massaccesi or Massaccesi, which I prefer a lot more because it makes me think about provolone and brie and gouda mozzarella parmesan. Asiago Gorgonzola, mozzarella, camembert, manchego, grana padano, ricotta and dom gruyere monster Monterey Jack fat. feta. That's a Greek cheese. Which reminds me about the movie that we're supposed to be talking about, not cheeses and different names.

Am I running this joke into the ground yet? I don't think it's overkill quite yet. And it's not really a Greek movie. It's a Greek movie by way of Italy because it's an Italian production and everyone involved in the writing, directing and the producing of this movie were Italians. But it does take place on a Greek island and was mostly shot in Greece.

Actually, I think it was entirely shot in Greece. And this movie was written by Aristide. Message easy. I'm going to call him Joe D'Amato. So I'm sure this introduction will be confusing because I said so many goddamn names. Who knows who's who anymore? But Aristide Massaccesi, mostly known as Joe D'amato, at least in North America, but as an exploitation director.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. And George Eastman is the other writer, also known as Richard Franks, Lou Cooper, Alex Carver, George Al Eastman, Tom Salina. And their real name is Luigi MONTEFIORE, which is such a great name. It's so pleasing to say. MONTEFIORE But we all know him and love him mostly is George Eastman.

Not only is the director of this movie and exploitation and cult legend, but so is George Eastman, the writer and coincidentally, one of the stars of this movie. Now, I think that joke has finally reached overkill territory, but it was worth it and completely true. I just didn't make up all those names. That's what both of these gentlemen have been credited as credited to the DES for the last 50 or so years.

And I'm sure there's a bunch of names that I've left out. The director of this film, Aristide Massad, she's better known but lovingly known as Joe D'Amato, is deceased. He died in 1999, but George Eastman is still with us. Mr. Luigi MONTEFIORE And I'll be referring to them from this point on entirely by the quote unquote, American names they picked for themselves.

And maybe if I remember, too, I'll explain why these guys have so many names, but we really got to get the hook in so you don't stop listening and actually talk about the movie. And then I'll get off subject and talk about the history of the writers and directors and some of the actors. And some of the actors are very important.

A cast member from this film has just recently passed away, and really it's the entire reason I wanted to do this film, because this person died to Farrow and I wanted to watch some of their films and commemorate their amazing life. And I watched through PA Figgis and thought, You know what? Let's just talk about it on my DVD.

And here we are. So what is anthropologists and why do I call it a cult classic? Why do I call it a classic? Well, there's a lot of reasons for that. It's not something I do. It's just how things are and what the movie is. Certainly, by all means, you can say that anthropomorphic horse is an exploitation film.

I think that's the most apt thing that you could say. Trying to give this a genre wouldn't just call it a horror movie. Some people like to call it a cannibal film. I digress a bit from that point because I think there are key elements to what makes a cannibal genre film and we'll get more into genres and cult classic in the meaning of exploitation.

Why? This is an exploitation film in just a moment, but this movie only really has one of the elements which would be needed to make a cannibal film. But let's just look at the title. Anthropomorphic is All That Means is Cannibal, which I always thought was a little weird that the American release of this wasn't called just Cannibal straight up.

I always thought that that would be such a appalling in title. You go into the drive in, you want to go see a movie, but you don't know what to see. And there's a movie called Cannibal Playing. I think that really pulls you in. What the fuck is it about cannibals? But equally anthropomorphic is that means the same thing.

And perhaps having the learned title a word that you don't have Ridgley here or No, that's not in English whatsoever. That also can pull people in. But calling it cannibal would give away a lot of what happens in the movie. And I guess I'll just say spoilers here for this movie that was made in 1980. I am going to talk about it from all directions so you all know how it ends.

You will know who dies and how they die and what happens. You already know that the movie is called Cannibal and that really, now that I've said it out loud, I realized, well, no, fuck, Cannibal is actually not really a good name for the movie because there is some building of tension toward the beginning of the film. You don't know it's a cannibal.

And if you hadn't seen the film, at least you know now that cannibal, like I said, the whole spoiler things, fuck off, Get out of here. It's death by DVD. We're just talking about the movie. We're not doing a whole here's point A to point Z, and I'm going to tell you every detail of the plot. No, we're just going to talk about this cult classic exploitation legend over film by Joe Diamond to Joe.

A flash of steel and unearthly shriek and icy breath.

a knock at the door and.

Omens of evil Warnings of death, an invitation to terror from the Grim Reaper and innocent travelers trapped in a mysterious house, tortured by a malevolent force destined to discover the hidden room in the realm of the Grim Reaper.

One by one tracks them down.

One by one, they disappear. One by one, They come face to face with the ultimate terror. And now he's coming for you.

The Grim Reaper.

Honestly, I don't feel that Joe D'Amato actually made any movies that would fit into traditionally what you would consider the cannibal genre. Most films that are a part of that genre all have very specific elements that line up with each other. Most of them, obviously, all of them are exploitation, but most of them are going to a certain part of South America almost entirely the Amazon.

Sometimes you get some variety and white people who shouldn't have been there in the first place get introduced to cannibals. And there's some sort of plight. Most famously, you have Ruggero Deodato is Cannibal Holocaust, and then you've got Umberto Lindsay's Cannibal fare box, which will be referenced further on down the line on this episode. And there was a boom in the mid to late seventies into around, I would say around 88, maybe 87 of this specific genre of film.

And then it completely died. You have the film by Eli Roth, The Green Inferno, which all just straight up say, I don't care for. It's like a mock cannibal film. He's very much trying to make homages to the great era, but it didn't last long. And people have made films beforehand and after because you could. I'd say you're wrong, but you could try and have the argument.

That Night of the Living Dead is an early predecessor of the cannibal film. Really? Where that came from were Mondo movies, which this isn't a show about the history of Cannibal films, but I'll go on for just a little while longer and I'll stop myself for a brief moment, because I did say Joe DiMaggio didn't really contribute that much to the cannibal genre.

And anthropologist is very much given a place in the cannibal genre, but it doesn't really fit with what it takes to have one of these films in this weird little blip of a time period. But he did do a manual on The Last Cannibals, and I think it was called Love Goddess of the Cannibals. I've not seen that, but I have seen Emmanuelle in the Last Cannibals.

More of a skin flick than a core cannibal movie you've got. I mean, just Franco did Mondo Cannibal and Devil Hunter, and then you've got Humberto Lindsey, who did the second most famous, in my opinion, cannibal film Cannibal Frogs, but he also did Man from Deep River and then Eaten Alive, which has Robert Kirkman and Ivan resume, all of which are kind of important to the entire genre itself as this ill lived genre, because Rozema was in pretty much the original cannibal movie.

I do believe Eaten Alive also has maybe lay in it. So there's a Emmanuel connection. I think Mel Ferrer also is in Eaten Alive, and for some reason I always confuse eaten alive with Cut and run, which is a completely different movie by Ruggero Deodato and written by Dada Sacchetti. And that one is a little bit different than the average cannibal film.

You've got a whole Jim Jones angle going on, but Richard Lynch is just so fantastic in that movie and Michael Berryman and Karen Black. But Umberto Lindsay in 72 did Man from Deep River. Then you've got Mondo Cannibal, which is Deodato 1977. Emmanuelle in the Last Cannibals is 77. Also, Sergio Martino did the Mountain of the Cannibal God.

Jody Marlowe comes back with Love, Goddess of the Cannibals, the Big One, 1980 Cannibal Holocaust, the definitive cannibal film that's really the direction of the genre. And I'm sorry, Deodato did Ultimate Mondo Cannibal because you've got just Franco's Mondo Cannibal 1980 or Cannibal World White Cannibal Queen, a woman for the Cannibals, Barbarian Goddess. And that one stars Al Cleaver and all of these people are exploitation legends, but none of these people are George Eastman or Jody Amato, which are the subject matter for the episode.

You get a half assed brief history of cannibal films here and why I felt it was important to bring that up lets us divulge more and to anthropologist because I think this movie is constantly missing genre. And now, yeah, it's a horror movie, but it's not a horror cannibal movie. It's a horror exploitation movie. And in fact it's more or less and exploitation horror movie than anything else.

And the arrangement of these words does matter. Now. I feel anthropologist is exploitation. 101 This is a movie. And I don't mean to be callous. I don't mean to be standing on a soapbox. But this is a movie I feel as a fan of Death by DVD. I'll say it that way. You probably should have seen this by now.

This is a movie you end up seeing very early on when you are an exploitation fan. Most of us all know about this film and the lore of this film and why it's generally revered as a cult classic. And that's something I want to dive into on this episode, cult classic and what it means. But I don't think we're at the place for it yet.

So knock on wood, let's hope that I can remember to talk about that later on throughout the episode. Now, if you haven't seen this movie, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not a poser. It doesn't really matter. I feel when you're into this sort of stuff, you've seen this movie and you've heard a lot of people talk about it before.

There's a fantastic disc release of this seven films put out. It has been spoken of since it came out. The popularity of this movie surged because it became one of the legendary video nasties. In fact, this film and the next movie that Joe Diamond made absurd, both of them are video nasties and both of them, if you're looking at the list alphabetically or the first two that you will discover anthropomorphic.

Yes. And absurd and somewhat absurd is a bit of a sequel. None of the films aren't connected in the least bit, but it's sharing a lot of motivation. And I think a lot of the motivation from this film Anthropomorphic is certainly comes from Bob Clark and John Carpenter. You got Black Christmas and Halloween. I like to add Bob Clark just in respect.

Any time I can talk about that beautiful man, I will. One more Halloween than anything else. And the following film, Absurd, which we aren't talking about on this episode we're talking about anthropomorphic is absurd is much, much more of a Halloween knockoff. And I like it. I will say right now, I guess I should do this for the end of the episode.

I also like Anthropomorphic is and that's a good jump in to get into this movie because it's complained about a lot. Some people will say it's very similar to a travelog, which I think is incorrect and let's just say wrong first, maybe 5 to 10 minutes, let's be honest, maybe 15. The first 15 minutes of the movie, there is some Travelog esque shots, mostly of Athens.

The film begins in Athens. And what is this movie about? Well, it's a group of friends who end up on this Greek island and people start dying. It's got the aspects of a traditional slasher film. But I hesitate to call this a slasher film. I would put exploitation over that. But I do think there's a big difference in the genres because a lot of films can be a slasher film and an exploitation film.

Most slasher films are exploited Haitian films. They are not non inclusive. You know, any set genre of a film could also be an exploitation film. And so on and so forth. But the traditional aspects, as with the traditional aspects of what makes a quote unquote cannibal genre film are very much lacking and borrowed cleverly, I think I can get away with saying cleverly from John Carpenter's Halloween, but the director of this film, Joe de Mado, I think on technical aspects, was much more familiar with the craft of filmmaking in 1980 than John Carpenter was.

Now, John Carpenter's is a brilliant, brilliant man. He won an Academy Award for a student film and then went on to make one of the most legendary movies directly after that Dark Star. And then, of course, Halloween and all the other movies that you love so much. He is an exuberant craftsman and brilliant at what he does. But Joe Amato was what I call a workhorse.

The man made movies for a living. And when you go to IMDB or Wikipedia and you look up the amount of films that D'Amato made, that's what he came in to do. He came in to shoot a fucking movie and get it over with under time, under budget, so he could keep that money and make another movie. He was a gun.

He was smooth and one of the fastest guns in Italy, and he made some remarkable movies that are going to be remembered for the whole length of time because some of them are so goddamn dirty and so offensive. They have shocked people like anthropologists, to the point that it was banned by the BBC in one of the first films to actually not just alphabetically, but to be banned for the famed video nasties list.

And all that did was make people want to see it more than anything else. Now it is slightly boring. I'll give credence to a lot of critics that say that there is a great deal of silence in this movie. Of course, there's soundtrack. In fact, the movie begins with this kind of mandolin, Greek music. And every single time I watch this movie, I just can't help but think of Guy Ritchie.

It's that same like Snatch specifically. It's got that same sort of mandolin, Romanian, Italian sort of sound to it. Greek, because the movie begins in Athens, but every time never fails. That I put on anthropologist, I immediately just start thinking of snatch and I'm just waiting for when all of our characters are introduced. Jason Statham To be standing there doing some wacky monologue.

You know, I could fancy a Greek island getaway. It sounds nothing like Jason's death, and I'm going to stop it right there. We'll just cut in a Jason Statham impersonation.

My name is Turkish. Funny name for an Englishman. I know my parents to be on the same plane when it crashed. That's how they met. A name me after the name of the plane. And many people are named after a plane crash. That's Tommy. He tells people he was named after a gun. I know. He was really named after a famous 19th century ballet dancer.

Not him, for as.

00;20;22;08 - 00;20;30;17
Speaker 2
Long as can. And it seems really light hearted. And like I said, this movie is about a group of people who end up on a Greek island and they start dying out.

As much trouble as he inflicts on me. I give him a hard.

At the beginning of the movie, we get this false entry that despite me saying all this stuff about John Carpenter and Halloween and how this movie is a slasher movie pacing, the beginning of the movie is like a jaws knock off scene. And I've always really liked it because it seems out of place. You think you're going to be introduced to your characters and you've got these two people that are on the beach.

One puts on a pair of headphones, they're sitting on the beach and the other one decides that they're going to go out for a swim and they're attacked by something and the shots begin underwater. So it's alluring. You're like, This is a fucking monster. It's a water monster. Is it a shark? What's going on? And mind you, this is 1980, so ripping off Jaws has been going on for five solid years.

At this point, it's nothing uncommon, especially with Joe D'Amato, who is one of the kings of the Italian knockoff. Successful movie would come out in the United States. Jody Marlow, two weeks later would have a rip off version of it waiting and available for you. In fact, I think the project he was working on when he died was a Italian Showgirls knockoff, and I think somebody finished that.

I don't know the name of it, but I would love to see it just to see the final work of Joe D'Amato and also see an Italian Showgirls knockoff. But immediately, right off the bat, we get to victims of this unseen monster. And of course, because I ruined it at the beginning of the fucking episode, if you know what the word anthropologist means, it's like cannibals, cannibal.

Something's going on. And have you seen the movie before? You already know what's happened. And then after that little stinger, we get introduced to our characters. Three guys, three girls, which some of our cast is alluring because of who they are related to, and others became famous. You've got Margaret Maslin Teenie. She plays Rita. She went on to become quite a successful novelist, and her husband has translated several of her novels into film, one of which has Penelope Cruz in it.

Serena Grandy plays Maggie's. She was credited under the name Vanessa Steiger. And here, I guess, is a good point to talk about why the director of this movie, the writer of this movie and Serena Grandy, used fake names for one. You wanted to sell the movie to an American audience so they would use American names that would be much more accessible.

And for the sake of the director of this film, Aristide message easy. A lot more easy to pronounce. You don't have to worry about the foreign press fucking your name up as much. And Jodie Amato, who did everything he did hardcore porn. He did softcore porn, He did Gore movies, He did political movies. He did action movies. He did westerns.

He did drama movies. He did TV movies. He shot TV shows. And for dozens of his products, like when he did Hardcore Pawns, he would shoot under a different name. So he wouldn't be known as that guy makes fuck films with huge close ups of pubic hair and cock, which may or may not be true. You'll have to explore the body of Jodie Amato's work, pun intended yourself.

George Eastman. Just the same thing George Eastman and Joe actually met because of writing. George was an actor, but he also was working as a writer and a script doctor and would just power through faulty scripts. And I don't remember the exact story, but he had met Jodie Amato and had ended up doctoring a script for him because a talent might have been Franco Nero I don't think so, but didn't want to do the movie because the script sucked.

Eastman fixed it, boom, 24 hours, no stopping, wrote this thing. The actor ended up liking it and their beautiful relationship was formed after that. Both of them worked together quite a bit throughout their respective careers and both are impressive. George Eastman has written countless sexploitation classics, but he's been in a great deal of them also. And Jody Amato, the director of this movie, he really is one of the most significant and important exploitation directors because of his of ability as a director.

There was never any fucking around with Jody Amato. When he set up shop, he set up and he filmed and he knew what to do. There was no second guessing. There was no 72 takes. It was, Let's get the job done and we'll all fix it in post. And that might not be the greatest attitude to take toward filmmaking.

But as I said previously, this guy was a career filmmaker. This was his job. This wasn't his passion. I think, personally speaking, that Jody Amato loved what he did and that's why he did what he did. And I do think he had an art form, an artistic integrity to what he did. But for the most part it was a 9 to 5 and you went to work and you banged that motherfucker out and you got that job done so you could go on and make more.

And you've got an artistic spectrum of that of making so much stuff. It's immortal. But so many of his films, he's also uncredited for and most of these movies were never meant to be seen as they are now. Seven films have released this movie on Blu ray. I believe it's a2k restoration. These movies were shot with the lowest quality film stock and the lowest amount of money possible because they were playing at Drive-Ins.

They were just being sold as products and there was never any intention for them to look as good as they do now. And I really think that, like if Jody Amato was still around, it would shock him. He would be in such all that his films are blown up and restored and so much time is put into showing new audiences that which is for me, partially one of the reasons that I want to talk about this movie.

And I am talking about this movie for an episode of Death by DVD. We have been doing an entire segment for about three, maybe four years now. The video Nasties A through Z with Death by DVD. And this was the first film on that episode that I don't recommend you go listen to because the audio quality is awful.

And sure, we've talked about it before, but I've been thinking really long and hard, long and hard, and I really want to make the direction of this program that you're listening to more of, about showing you and introducing you to weird and wacky stuff that you may have not seen before. And if you have seen it before to give further evaluation to and that takes me all the way back to a little while ago saying that a lot of people think this movie is boring and I can be condemned of saying the same thing.

But as Tessa Ferro passed away, I believe she passed away on January 10th, 2024. I watched the movie and was a little shocked with my previous assessments of it of, Well, you know what? It's not really like Travelog footage and it's really not quite as boring as I remember it being the first 10 to 20 minutes of the movie.

As you're being introduced to all the characters, you've got that stinker of an opening that turns out to be a misrepresentation of your introduction to the characters. Then you actually get to meet them. I believe all these shots at the beginning of the film were in Athens and if you think I'm going to tell you the rest of the filming locations, you're fucking wrong.

Because I do not know what they are. They're islands, they're Greek, the Greek islands. I guarantee you, you can find it out on IMDB for yourself. You've got a lot of wide roaming shots of the area and of locals and of people. And what I like about that is you get crowds of people, you have the characters and they're frolicking about, they're meeting up with their friend and then they're going to go island hopping and you get to see their personalities.

But it's warm and it's bright and you see other people because the rest of the movie is shockingly vacant of human life whatsoever. And it really begins when you're watching it, especially in the perfect settings like this is one of those movies you need to watch in a dark room, possibly because most of the movie's in pretty low light and it makes it hard to see if you're sitting in front of a window or something, but you take it in as the adventure goes.

And we have, like I said, three guys, three girls, and slowly the herd gets thin, but you notice spectacularly that there's no one else around. There are no people whatsoever. And it would appear what's happening in the movie almost seems true. So it's a little transcendental. And that goes to the credit of Joe Amato, because he knew what he was doing.

He came out to make a product. I think he put product over the idea of artistry or craftsmanship sometimes that it was This is what we're going to do. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Let's get it out. No, Well, let's wait until 415. So there's a perfect crescendo of sun that falls over the camera. Just get the mother fucker done.

So let's get back to the cast. Mark Bowden is Daniel Bob Larsson as Arnold, Saverio VALONE, as Andy, George Eastman, as Klaus Schwartzman, and then TiSA Ferro as Julie TiSA Ferro joins this group of people as an outsider After we've been introduced to our lead cast of characters, Lisa Ferro gets dumped in and she overhears them talking about how they're going to island hop and one of them's pregnant and, and she hears about them having to change a bit of their plans because of her pregnancy.

And I forgot to mention to Zora Kirov is in this film. All you exploitation hounds out there will recognize her name from Umberto Lindsay's cannibal fare, asks one of the most famous scenes in that entire movie. It's hard to really pick. What is the most famous scene You've got the old dick cut off a Renault with Giovanni Lombardo, Rudy Che and then Zakharova.

The spikes through the boobs. man. But that's the poster. You know, her faces is on the poster. So TiSA Ferro as well. Zora Karimova, you've got some exploitation Hall of Fame members here. TiSA is the youngest of all the Faroes. Her mother was a marine. O'Sullivan and her father, John Farrow, her older sister is Mia Farrow. This is actually one of her last films after this.

She did also in 1980, The Last Hunter, which is by Antonio Margret, and has David Warburg, another exploitation legend in it, anthropologists. But the year before, in 79, she did Zombi two played Anne and that led to a full Chinese zombie flesh eaters or a.k.a Zombie Dawn of the Dead too. Unofficially, I think she's more recognized to exploitation fans from zombie to than anything else.

But I don't know how I left out. Zora Cravat. I'm sorry. Apologies on my end. Got to put some respect on Zora's name. You get introduced to Tessa's character because she is a caretaker and needs to go visit one of these islands. She's not been able to get in contact with the family on this island, and everyone happily agrees to do so with her.

And that's the story that sense everything in motion. You can really say, as Joe Bob Briggs says here, the story does not get in the way of the plot. Plot is very simple. These people go to an island and something rotten is going to happen to them on the island. But the story kind of ends there. You're introduced to everything.

And now that you know, the characters were melding forces here and he's a pharaoh joins them and they're doing her a favor by taking her to this island to find this girl. She's supposed to be taking care of. And that sense all the actions of the movie into motion. And it moves pretty flawlessly from there on out. Now, there are a great deal of scenes that have no dialog and there's overpowering music that's going throughout it.

And I will say it's annoying that it's entirely a dub. You don't even get to hear teases voice. She was dubbed by Carolyn Defend Sacker. I do think though in full she's zombie. You get to hear her voice too. And it's easy to push this film away as cheap sleaze and cheap exploitation. But I think there is a little bit more to it.

I know there was a full script that existed before George Eastman had involvement with it and George Eastman sat down and went over everything with a fine tooth comb and came up with some of the most legendary sequences in this movie. I started this show off with a joke about baby Twinkies. We got some sweet, sweet baby eating in this episode.

I don't know if anyone has ever said Sweets sweet baby eating before on a podcast, but there's a first time for everything and some additional scenes of incredible, shocking violence. The baby eating is why it was put on the BBC's list and became a banned movie in the video nasties. But there's a lot more. The video nasties list is insane.

This is one of those movies too, that you hear about so much. You read about it so much and then you watch it and it's a lot more tame than you expected things to be. I always found it kind of funny that people were very accepting of this film, but would starkly refuse to watch Cannibal Holocaust. I just can't watch a movie like that because of the animals.

I It's terrible what they did to the animals, but a fucking baby gets eaten in this goddamn movie and nobody bats an eyelash, which seems like something that is happening worldwide. People are very upset because certain people didn't get nominated for a feature length dull commercial as What's the statistic? Two mothers are dying per 10 hours and certain place in the Middle East that we're not supposed to talk about, but that's a different story, I guess for a different day.

But it really has always bothered me with Cannibal Holocaust, how it has gotten such infamy me and such hate over the years. But man, there is so much worse depicted, I feel, in this film. And this film is much more imaginative because Cannibal Holocaust is following a set story and a depiction of the awfulness of people, specifically Americans, and how fucking awful Americans are.

And it's true as to where this movie has no political agenda whatsoever. And that takes me back to the beginning and talking about art versus production. I think there's artistic integrity in this film, certainly. Sure. But it's more of a production, it's more of a product, it's more of a a consumable than anything else. It's cashing in on crazes and pushing the boom of horror that is just completely gone now.

But man, especially in Italy in the eighties, this was a fucking hot commodity with little story to get into the way of the plot. Once our characters get to the island, it's just on. It just flows from that point. And I daresay if you're bored then maybe you're boring. And that's the problem because this is a by the numbers exploitation film.

I think this is a pinnacle of exploitation films and we've dived a little bit into those titles. But you've got classics, but then you've got cult classics and then you've got exploitation films. So what's the difference between all these things? Can a classic be a cult classic and a cult movie also be a classic? Well, history in the fans are more left up to decide that than anything else.

If anthropologist hadn't been on the video Nasty List, would it be as revered and renowned as it is now? I think it would have been, even if the video nasties didn't exist. I think this work because of the specific amount of violence and you're not really exposed to an overwhelming amount. I really think like Dawn of the Dead, like Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

I think that's more violent, Evil, Dead Sticking with movies with Dead in their title by Sam Raimi, More Blood, More Violence than in this. You do have some really, really shocking scenes. And I will say the violence is pretty effective. It looks good, but not as much per minute of the fucking movie as some of the if gosh, even even like Friday the 13th.

No, that one's stupid. Don't. Now that's that's that's not right. Cannibal Holocaust though certainly less violence anthropomorphic is that is features certainly less more violence than cannibal exist and that's not why it's accepted by more audience members. And that's just because people are fickle because cannibal Holocaust is a brilliant movie. And the political nature of that film is what makes it so overwhelmingly wonderful.

And I think a lot of people that have beef with that movie, maybe it just went over their head. So I don't know. But who am I to make assumptions like that on that subject, though? This is not an articulate movie. This doesn't make you wonder. I mean, it does kind of, but that's more or less because of what happens with the characters and the motivations of the characters.

We're going to go ahead and get into deep spoiler territory here. So I'll still be a nice guy and give you a little warning, but you get that first scene of the movie. What is this? This is a predator. Is it a monster? Is it some underwater creature? No, it's a cannibal because that's what the name of the movie is, Anthropomorphic is.

And that means cannibal because the movie's about a cannibal. But it's he. Yeah. By all technical definitions, but it's not like ritualistic. It's I brought up that there's this kind of motivation from Carpenter's Halloween, and that's where you could take some of the slasher aspects of this movie. But it really lacks the driving force. Another The guy walks slow.

You don't really get to see them very much. You do get similar shots as to like when Michael Myers mask gets pulled off and Halloween and there's this big shocking scene in the stairwell there. I think some things that transcend back and forth where clearly D'Amato was influenced by that. But Jody Amato was a really interesting guy. He wouldn't even see the movies he was knocking off.

He would just get a brief synopsis from somebody, go, okay, I think I can do that. That sounds about right. And then four days later there would be a 90 minute film produced. It's it's more about pacing than anything else, is where this can really take some similarities to the modern American slasher film. And of course, by modern American slasher film, I mean movies made between 1970 and 1979.

Since this came out in 1980, a big ups to Bob Clark and John Carpenter, even the shadowing in this movie, how much of it appears to be in the the dark and how much the characters only revealed to you in very coarse shadows? I think a lot of that is John Carpenter esque. And that's another thing that made Jody Morrow so brilliant, is he could just watch a scene of somebody else's work and knock it off fairly well.

He would rip it off to a point that it would be original enough on his own. And this movie has a lot of static regular shot. There's nothing incredibly artistic. There's nothing that blows your mind. Many of the island shots are very nice. The scenery is very nice. It's actually a pretty cool night. Four day segment in this that I've always really enjoyed because when the lightning flashes in the scene, it's just day again.

It takes place in a forest setting. So it works for me and I'm a stickler for that. I really get pissed off over lazy night for day shots or day for night shots, rather. So the whole of this movie is the people get to the island and all start dying. We do find another character on the island and an amazing sequence where somebody leaps out of a vat of wine.

MARGARET As Santini But once they get to the island to the end of the film, I can understand how you feel almost dualist. And it does get lethargic because they're kind of questing it almost as a video game. Feel like the first Zelda game where you're just walking from one place to another and occasionally something stabs at you and jumps out at you like an RPG kind of thing.

They're set in this location. No one is around. And this is where a little bit of the art creeps. It's just gorgeous. No one else is in this movie. I don't know what they did to get all these islanders to fuck off, but it sort of encroaches upon you. You don't realize first that there's no one else in the movie but our characters, and it hits you at some point.

Even though they talk about it, they're searching this island and no one is it bafflingly enough, No one's on it. And as the small bit of story comes forward, you find out Tessa Farrow's character, Julie, the caretaker of this blind girl, she knows a little bit about the island. There was a man named Klaus Wortman, whose family disappeared.

He and his family, rather, they were in a boating incident and were cast out on to sea, which drove his sister crazy. And now suddenly no one's on the island. I don't really want to digress further into the story and the nuances and what happens, because that's the enjoyment of watching it. When you have somebody that just from point A to point B goes through the entire plot synopsis of the movie.

What the fuck do you have left to enjoy at that point? And what I'm attempting to do here is to push you to watching anthropology. I guess I'd like you to see this movie and tell me what you thought about this movie. Tell people fucking listened to Death by DVD and they made this turd sound kind of nice and it's not.

I have been rough on this movie in the past, and I. You just got to know when to hold them, know when to show them, like goddamn Kenny Rogers said. But really, you just got to grow into things. I don't think I ever appreciated this movie because I never really sat down and paid attention to it. All the things that I've brought up at the beginning of this episode, it's a cult classic.

It's a classic. This is a movie that most exploitation and horror fans have seen very early on. And because you've read about it and you hear about it, she has Badlands magazine, Deep Red. They talked about this all the time. It was in all the big rags. And of course, it's a video nasty, so it's lurid. You want to find something like this and then you sit down and you're expecting a mile a minute Gore fest.

You're expecting some of the most offensive stuff you've ever seen in your entire life. And none of that comes on screen. So it's very easy to dismiss it. This movie is boring, but I think it's well-paced. I think the silences and the distraught nature of the characters not even communicating with each other is a part of the film.

And of course, dubbing it's an Italian horror movie. So the chances that this was shot with sound at all is slim to none. There was no sound. There was no boom operator. There was absolutely none of that. They had cameras, they had the actors. I'm sure it was a mixed cast of people speaking Italian people speaking English. You get Zakharova, and he's a feral speaking English and almost entirely everyone else is Italian.

All this shit came together in post the soundtrack, the vibes, the spooky, hokey pokey, ethereal noises. But I just don't think it's boring. And it's burning is half the other video nasties. And that's something you realize when you either take a venture into exploitation films or a video Nasty fan, and it doesn't matter what type of horror fan you are, you can like whatever the hell you like, but you go off in the deep end and you hit that diving board.

You start going through all of these films and something that I have realized over the years is nearly none of the video nasties deserved their title. Most of them, and the infamy of most of these films is because they were put on the video nasties list, which takes us back to the question Would this movie have found any sort of cult or classic status if it hadn't been for that list?

I think yes. I think a great chunk of the work of Jodie Amato still would be renowned and still would be looked at and discussed if it hadn't been banned. If it hadn't gotten in trouble, if it hadn't been so esoteric and violent. I still and the same goes for Dear Dodos Cannibal Holocaust End House on the Edge of the Park.

I think those movies would still be synonymous with cult and exploitation horror if they hadn't had gotten in any sort of trouble. And that really goes to the filmmakers being not just workhorses, because Deodato worked in the same industry, so did Lucio Fulci, but artists as well. It wasn't just going to work. They enjoyed that they had flair because Fauji himself, his horror films, they were just getting by.

They were him working and making money. The films he really cared about, the romantic comedies and the stuff from the late sixties and one of the seventies, even better. And since those were the movies, which that's borderline horror, those were the ones he really cared about a lot more. And he still showed up and put his whole ass into the horror films he made.

The Beyond Need I say more. So let's at this point, let's just talk about the real shocking sequences with this movie. You got the pregnant character. Well, she's not pregnant for long. A baby is ripped straight from her womb and eaten right in front of you. And that's pretty shocking. It's really graphic, too. They used a skinned rabbit for the scene to even push the effect on a little bit more.

But I can't help but always giggle because it reminds me of David Cronenberg's The Brood. It looks like one of the weird baby eggs sex from that movie. It's a skinned rabbit. It doesn't. And it gets the job done. And I had that whole back and forth with how people can prefer this over cannibal Holocaust. But hey, somebody skinned a rabbit for this movie, whereas all the signs and anger and protesting, which they're writing, it's not like there wasn't people were deeply offended by this movie.

And the other one, I'm just fucking drawing little lines in the sand here. And the most infamous thing about this movie is it's in the final sequence of the film. We find out long story short, that Klaus Wartman was stranded at sea with his wife and son. His son passed away. They're floating around on this little dinghy. He's getting burned by the sun, which explains his look throughout the film.

When you're first introduced to the character, all you know is he's some sort of monster and it's in a great flash of lightning. It's a very clever scene where he's standing behind a door and his skin is all burnt up and flaking and his hair is gone white, bleached by the sun, and you find out child passed away while they were lost at sea.

And he said, Fuck it, we're going to eat. That kid that deeply upset his wife. She ends up getting killed in this struggle. And that's all we really know. How did he get back to the island? I have no fucking idea. There's a lot of plot holes in this movie if you really want to examine it. But it's really not the type of movie that you can damn and demand.

You know what Luigi Montoya for you son of a bitch. I need to know how this bastard got back to the island. He swam. I don't know. He had two bodies. He ate his kid and his wife. And that drove him mad, making him dropoff, I guess. Why? Who knows? I would like to know. Sure. If we could hire Alan Dean Foster to write the film novelization for this movie, I would like to know more.

But in the pretense of the film and what we're watching, it's kind of perfect. He ends up killing his wife offscreen, probably eats her and his son, driven absolutely crazy by the sun itself, blaring down on him and burning him, gets back to the island, he fucking kills and eats everyone. There are some really amazing shots of the beast Slayer, Klaus Wortman, George Eastman's character.

Those were shot in catacombs on another island, and it's really unfortunate when they showed up, most of the bodies that were in this catacomb had been there for several hundred years. So you had some femurs, maybe some toes, a couple skulls here and there, but not nearly enough, as grisly as what would be suitable for this monster's lair.

So they brought in tons and tons of fake bones and skulls. But when they're cleaning up the production, at the end of the day, there was no, Hey, is this real or is this fake? So a great deal of the actual bodies that had been in this catacomb were taken back to whatever studio Joe D'Amato was working for and probably left and prop departments, who knows?

They could still even be being used to this day. And as grisly as that is, unfortunately, it's not the only time that this happened. While Joe D'Amato was doing a production, he did Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, which also had George Eastman involved a lot of scenes that were shot in a very extravagant cemetery. And they moved a bunch of crosses.

They moved stuff around, and at the end of the day, they had no clue whose tombstone went where anymore. So there's some graveyard out in, I believe, Spain, where all the headstones got moved around by George Eastman and Jody Amato. And no one knows where the actual bodies are anymore. Kind of awful reminiscent of something like Poltergeist using actual skeletons for the swimming pool scene.

But I think this is a little bit more interesting and definitely a bit more brutal. I mean, some 700 800 year old Greek catacomb and all of a sudden all these bones are just shoved back in bags and taken to some prop department in Italy. That may be one of the darkest sort facts on anthropologists, which I would like to say no fault to Joe D'Amato.

But yeah, that's a that's a big fault. You stole some bodies. Not, of course, but it's a great fact for the episode, isn't it? I think when you get to the final scene of this movie, you get to Farrow. It's a very overblown facing off against George Eastman. It's a visual that will be infamous forever in the annals of film, not just exploitation, not just cult cinema, not just cult classics, but it's so shocking and it's so disturbing.

The final scene of the movie, I think, is what really sets everything on its axis and flips it all over because it makes you wonder more about the character and the depravity than anything. George Eastman's Klaus Wartman. His stomach is ripped open with a pickax and he begins eating his own intestines feverishly until he dies. So it's not a matter of hunger, it's just absolutely psychosis.

This person has snapped and their brain probably scrambled to an egg like consists urgency because of exposure to the sun. They're just eating everything, filling the void, the void of their wife, the void of their son, and all their mistakes. Just carnivorous eating and eating and eating. They've killed everyone on the island and taken it down to this pit like a spider.

And it's just kind of perfect because it just cuts right there. No credits, movie ends. You've got that Guy Ritchie sound and mandolin shit. And this dude just ate his own guts. And it makes you reflect you've watched this filth, you've committed this act, and you're like, Well, fucking Christ, he ate himself. He ate himself off. And in 1980, you haven't seen anything like this before.

There are tons of movies now, sure, but all of those movies are competing. The first time that you saw it, Otto Cannibalism. And that's the operatic crescendo ending of the film. Is Otto Cannibalism. This monster eats everything and that topples the baby scene. I don't even remember that scene anymore because you just watched somebody eat their own intestines.

You just watch them eat themselves. It's so fucked up. It's so great. It's so rewarding. It makes you question everything and it does make you like like feel a bit of safety has been lost. Is this director insane? Is this a dangerous person? Have I been watching a movie made by a mad man, which I know I've referenced it a lot before, but you know, Cannibal Holocaust is such a distinct different film fare.

Box, I don't think has the same touches. Fairfax is much more mean spirited and violent for the sake of violence. As to cannibal Holocaust, as I've already rambled its political implications, I say implications. I say it's far more than just implied carries that movie to such a different level that the violence is not as shocking anymore. The violence seems almost expected from Americans.

And if you thought that was sad for 1980, it's still sad to this day. And I think the entire truth, it is expected out of Americans, but there are no politics and anthropomorphic is there's just absolute violence. Joe. Bob Briggs wrote about this movie in his first book, and I've always had a lot of regard for that review.

I won't read the whole thing, but I do have it right in front of me. The Grim Reaper is the movie about a guy who will use a meat cleaver when he has to, but usually he just uses his mouth. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking vampire. So was I. But you're wrong. I won't tell you the whole deal.

But the Grim Reaper is not a monster. He's a believable human being who likes to kill people and then chew on them for a while. Joe Bob goes on to give this movie three stars for Scary and two and a half stars. Four story story just doesn't matter in this instance. You get it so briefly. And I think for an exploitation film, for a cult film and for a movie in general, you get it dumped right at the beginning and you don't need anything else.

You don't need any exposition, you don't need to know anything else about who these characters are and why they're doing what they're doing. It was explained to you so briefly and so perfectly. All that matters now as we watched the cascading death coming for us, lurching slowly, creeping into our lives. And it's impressive. It's horrifying. It's disgusting. It's impressive.

All of this and more anthropomorphic. It's 1980 by Jody Amato, written by Jody Amato and Luigi Euphoria, a.k.a. George Eastman. It's a quintessential viewing for me. You got to see Anthropomorphic is you got to sit through it at least once in your life. And I think with that, my job here is done on time and well, if I actually did my job at all, see, what I wanted to do was present you with Anthropomorphic is you've learned a little bit about the movie and even get my opinion on it.

No IMDB facts, I'm sorry. And I didn't in grotesque detail tell you scene by scene what happens. But that takes away from the art and production of film itself and my true and honest opinion. Watch it, experience it. That's the point of something like Death by DVD. In fact, it's the entire point of this fucking show you to experience something new.

I love movies. It's my favorite form of art. I talk about that a lot on this show, but I specifically and especially love horror and cult and exploitation. The weird, the esoteric, the bizarre, cheesy, lost, exciting and awful movies. Movies that make you question your own sanity. At the end of the day, movies that will melt your brain into a sloppy, wet pile of mush and anthropomorphic is, My God, if it ain't one of those films, this is a drive classic.

I'd love to see this blown up, man. I would love to see this on the big screen. All that gut busting, baby eating goodness. my Lord, It would be fantastic. Even Joe Bob Briggs, he says there are three really great scenes in this movie, one in a house where the girl, including a blind girl, are left alone, wondering when the reaper is going to show his molars.

Another in the reaper's crypt where he has a collection of about 50 moldy bodies. In the final scene, when the reaper chases a cute blond girl and the blind girl through a creaky old mansion. There are some sites to be seen with this movie, but again, I'll repeat myself. I think it's quintessential viewing this is a must for all exploitation fans.

And if you were just starting this journey, certainly I hope I have pushed you into direction of Joe D'Amato led Aristide message into your life. The beauty of Joe D'Amato is awaiting you. Over 200 films that we know of. He has directed, credited under hundreds of names. The legacy of Joe D'Amato was far greater than any of us can really put a number on who knows how much he actually was involved with.

He knows how many movies he directed under other pseudonym Erotic Nights of the Living Dead Beyond the Darkness, Black Cobra Woman, A Tour West for the Mighty Sword Death Smiles on a Murderer, 2020 Texas Gladiators. Blue Angel Cafe. Absurd Anthropologists The Arena Beyond the Darkness Caligula. The Untold Story. Deep Blood. Half of The Emmanuel Films. Emmanuelle In the Last Cannibals.

Emmanuelle in the White Slave Trade. Emmanuelle Around the World. Emmanuelle in Bangkok. Emmanuel's Revenge. Emmanuelle and Marika Killing Birds. One of the Zombie movies. And that depends on your list of the actual movies in the zombie series, which is another episode for another Day. Porno Holy Cast. So much and more. Joe D'Amato. You could spend your entire life trying to watch every single one of his films, and I would salute you for that.

And who knows, maybe someday soon we'll come back and talk more about the work of Joe Amato or even do that zombie list I was just talking about. There's so many variants, but until then, that's it. You've reached the end of this episode of Death by DVD. The Ashtray is full and the is empty. I'm Here is John Sullivan, your host.

And until next time, Pleasant Tomorrows and watch more horror.

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