Look I know that if you go watching an Italian cannibal movie expecting to see enlightened attitudes to... well... anything, basically, then you're a fool. I know I'm going to see racist treatment of anyone who isn't European and probably animal cruelty and a healthy dollop of misogyny to go with it.

But Man From Deep River really got on my fucking tits.

The animal cruelty is just gross - as you'd expect but it just never fucking lets up! And I think I'm far from a "snowflake" on this issue - for instance, there's a scene of mongoose killing a cobra which, while not enjoyable for me to watch, I don't get too upset about it - I mean, this is just what mongooses (mongeese?) do. But when they clamp that monkey's head in that vice thing and lop the top of it's head off, I just wanted to fucking hit someone. What a bunch of pricks. And then it just goes on and on and on.

And while misogyny is something I can live with just fine in most old exploitation films, this movie felt like some sick fantasy of a scummy old Italian perv. Like the scene where they cremate the villager, and then his widow lies down in the still-warm ashes to be fucked by all the male villagers because no one owns her now. And the whole betrothal ceremony where Me Me Lai sits in a hut so every single man can come and feel her tits through a hole in the wall so she can choose the one who does it the best... I mean, come on guys, what the fuck?

But the final insult is the racism. It's not that I'm all that sensitive to it, but it just makes everyone involved look like a fucking idiot. There's a moment where Me Me Lai tells Bradley she loves him and he goes "No. I haven't taught you how to love yet. You are still a savage." At that moment, he just struck me as the most monumental dickhead character I had ever seen.

Apart from these sorts of conscientious issues I had with it - and to be honest I feel bitter about saying that, because I prefer not to wag my finger at anything - this movie is pretty well made and is Umberto Lenzi on his game from a technical point of view. And I understand how seminal it is for the cannibal genre as a whole. But wow, it just made me so cranky!

Yeah this movie can fuck off.