Raw Force (1982), Savage Man... Savage Beast, aka Ultime grida dalla savana (1975)

The second double feature in the Grindhouse DVD set begins with Raw Force, a competently produced camp horror film with a slightly involved plot. You see there are a group of cannibalistic monks who live on ’Warriors Island’ in the South China Sea. During World War II the Japanese bypassed Warriors Island because the monks there have the power to bring back the dead, disgraced martial artists who go there to die, and use the zombie fighters to defend themselves. The only catch is, to bring back the dead warriors the monks require the flesh of human females to barbeque. By the early 1980’s this supply of unwilling female entrees is supplied by Mr. Speer, a German with a Hitler mustache, and his gang of American hoods who kidnap women, and sell them to the monks in exchange for some of the valuable jade that is plentiful on the island (Speer then sells the jade for cheap back in Asia and still manages to make a huge profit because he has next to no overhead).

Anyways our story really begins when passengers on a cheap cruse, including members of the Burbank Karate Club and a leggy blond SWAT team officer named Cookie, accidentally stumble onto the operation (though they really don’t put everything together until the last 15-20 minutes of the film). Needles to say the group ends up marooned on Warriors Island and must contend with the monks, the zombie warriors, Mr. Speer, American street hoods, and piranhas who live in the big lake at the middle of the island (would this make Warriors Island more of an Atoll?). I think now you probably have a sense of what the movies like, enjoyable nonsense, the Love Boat goes to Hell. My only regret, killing off the 3rd grade teacher character so early, I loved his cheesy earnest delivery.

Now the second film took me by surprise. The Italin produced Ultime grida dalla savana (American title Savage Man… Savage Best) turned out to be a documentary, or perhaps more accurately what Orson Wells would have termed a “filmed essay”. I though a bit about how to best describe the topic or theme of the film, and I think the best encapsulation would be to say that its about “Mans relationship with nature, through the prism of hunting”. The movie jumps around a lot, very lose narrative structure (held together by appropriately billed ’commentary’ by Italian novelist Alberto Moravia) is a series of vignettes ranging from aborigines hunting bats with boomerangs, to a traditional Fox hunt in England, to scientifically coordinated mass fishing off the coast of South America, to a man being killed in front of his family by lions at a nature preserve in Africa, to the plight of Eskimo hunters, to Falconry, the Burmese government clamping down on cannibalism, to hippie animal rights protesters camped out at Cape Code. This film is all over the place and fascinating, in part do to the sensational subject matter and in part to the nugget sized bits things are presented in (anticipated countless cable programs for the short attention spanned on VH1, Spike, and True TV).

In looking into the film after seeing it I learned that it generated a fair share of controversy. Of course because it was violent and exploitive, but also because some of the more sensational scenes were apparently staged, though whether that man being attacked by lions was staged is apparently still in dispute. I suppose I wasn’t as shocked by it as others because 1) I’m watching it in 2009 which is a very different, arguably more jaded and numbed zeitgeist then 1975, and 2) I viewed the film as being more of an artsy grind house offering then an exploitive documentary, though its easily easily one of the more attention grabbing and memorable ‘documentaries’ I’ve every seen. My favorite sequence is the very last in the film, with the German naturalist and mountain man and his (I’d be disappointed if it were faked) ‘first contact’ meeting with a pack of wild wolves (beautiful snow covered Bavarian wilderness all around, a lovely sight). Quite the film experience, I can only imagine it on the big screen.

Ah now I get it, cannibalism is what ties these films together.