EL PAESE DEL SESSO SELVAGGIO (THE MAN FROM THE DEEP RIVER)

Italy, 1972, 93 minutes, Colour.
Ivan Rassimov, Me Me Lai.
Directed by Umberto Lenzi.

The Man from the Deep River also has the original title The Village of Savage Sex. It is considered the first of the Italian cannibal sub-genre. Lenzi was to return to this later with such films as Eaten Alive, also starring Rassimov.

The film was made in Thailand, and is a delight for sadist audiences. A photographer in the rain forest is captured by the locals, lives with them, marries the chief’s daughter, protects them from an attack by a cannibal tribe.

This was the period of Mondo Carne, a pseudo-documentary of the 1960s (which had the very popular song ‘More’) which had its directors moving around the world to find as many gory and unpleasant situations as they could find. There seemed to be an appetite for this kind of film in the late 60s and during the 1970s.

Umberto Lenzi made over sixty films during his forty years as a director, most of them genre films, historical adventures as well as adaptations of comic book style novels. This is a curio item – not for everyone.

1. Could this film be called enjoyable? Interesting? How attractive, how repelling? How exploitive? Was it a good film?

2. For what audiences was the film made? For what types of interest? Anthropology, interest in the exotic, cruelty and sadistic?

3. Was it a good adventure film? A hero lost in the jungles, accommodating himself to jungle life and its incidents? Or was it something more? A type of Robinson Crusoe in the jungle? Therefore the incidents being important factors in the hero's changing? Which interpretation is more plausible? Why?

4. How important was the clash of civilisations? The world of planes, dating, the boxing, bars and knifings, photography? The difference with the barbarity of the villages leading to community acceptance? What happened to Bradley during his stay?

5. How important were the documentary overtones of the film? The initial statement about its truth, life in Thailand, life along the Burmese boarder? The questions of ancient and barbaric civilisations? The documentary aspects of the community life of the peoples? The quality of life, cruelty, initiations, sexuality, marriage, war, building up the community in its physical sense as well as its moral sense?

6. Was the film too sensational and exploitive? The amount of bloodletting, torture, ugliness of the eating of food, decapitation of the monkey, the cannibals etc? Or was it valuable to visualise these? Audience response to them?

7. The contrast of the village with the cannibals? The murder, the hacking of the arm, the eating of the arm, the fighting? Audience response to the villagers when they were confronted by the cannibals?

8. How did the film gain interest and fascination? What does the seeing of this kind of way of life do to an audience?

9. Was Bradley an interesting character? The background of his way of life, his professionalism in his photography? His capacity for surviving, his hostility, the effect of torture and endurance? His fighting the men and his becoming a hero? Love as changing his attitudes? The possibility of a family? His escaping for Maria's sake? His final decision to stay?

10. How attractive heroine was Maria? In contrast with the barbarity around her? The effect of the witch-doctor on her? Her growing love for Bradley, their playfulness, the contrast with the hard life? Her blindness, the escape, the birth, her death? Audience response to Maria, and finally in her death?

11. How conventional was the portrayal of the chief? His listening to the men and the warriors? His change of attitude towards Bradley?


12. How conventional and successful were the sequences with the witch doctor and his melodrama? The melodrama of his death?

13. How conventional also was the good woman? The fact that she could speak English, her helping of Bradley, her helping him go to escape, the severing of her hand?

14. Why did Bradley decide not to return? The symbol of the helicopter throughout the film? what values did this film stand for? What values was it promoting? With what integrity? what values did it presuppose in its audience?