Man From The Deep River (1972)

Umberto Lenzi gives us what is regarded as the first cannibal film. Although there is hardly any cannibalism in the whole movie and we don't get to see much of the cannibal tribe. The film is still the staple that many other film makers would try to copy including the much more infamous Ruggero Deodato film Cannibal Holocaust. Man From Deep River is about a British man played by Ivan Rassimov (Jungle Holocaust, Eaten Alive) who gets separated from his guide and abducted by savages in the amazon. The people of the village believe that he is some sort of a fish due to his wet suit. He endures all forms of torture and unsuccessfully attempts to escape from time to time until he saves a little boys life and the villagers make him one of the tribe. He marries the villages beautiful, Me Me Lai and gets her pregnant. This is when he decides his life is in the jungle and he doesn't want to be rescued. Man From The Deep River has everything you expect from a Cannibal film. Its got the violence and gore, it has extreme animal violence, it has savage rape scenes, torture scenes but unfortunately not much cannibalism. Some of the scenes that stick in the mind is the removal of cannibals tongues, a scene where a woman is raped by the males in the tribe on top of the burning ashes of her dead husband, A really nasty fight between a Muskrat kinda thing and a cobra (believe it or not the Muskrat wins), A old woman gets her hand chopped off, there's plenty of J&B Whiskey slugging, we have the half decapitation of a Monkey, followed by brain eating, we have a cockfight, lots of Me Me Lai nudity, Switchblades to the guts, Arrows to the neck, knives to the throat, spears in the chest etc. If youre into Italian Cannibal Films this one is for you.