This film is label as "based on a True Story", but it's questionable for Foschi told me the film was not based on a true story!, and he also told me all the cannibal was local actors! In fact, AIP re-released this film as "Carnivores" and double billed it with a 1972 film "Raw Meat" in 1980! This film is a classic and well made compare to Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, but it received no hype from cult movie fans due to fact it is on numerous unauthorized video companies here in the states, so it isn't rare compare to CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. The British video print CANNIBAL is cut.

Rating: 9 [out of 10]; Rating explanation: "A must see for everyone who is a fan of the genre. Anyone seriously or casually interested in film should enjoy it or at least find something interesting about it."

Much more modest than his Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal is often more poignant, horrific and tense.

A small group of travelers (they're on a mission linked to searching for oil) are headed in a small airplane from Manila to an unsettled part of Mindanao (also in the Philippines). They land, losing a wheel, and discover a deserted camp where the party who was to have met their arrival was staying. While exploring the campsite, they discover clues that suggest the people stationed in this section of Mindanao were massacred.

They quickly figure out that the welcoming party was probably killed by cannibals. They're tempted to take off in their plane again, but it's too late in the evening. The female in their party has to relieve herself, so despite cautions from the others, she heads out into the night to do her job. Predictably, this is a bad choice, and she ends up as a burger for the natives. The story progresses and the three remaining civilized folks search for her in the morning. Cannibal is the story of their fight for survival and return to civilization. Although much of the subject matter is brutal, none of it is quite as graphic as Cannibal Holocaust, and that may be a plus for some viewers.

I don't mean to suggest that I endorse Cannibal because it is less gory and graphic. Rather, my preference for Cannibal may point out that no matter how much gore one uses, gore in itself isn't usually a basis for a higher rating. Cannibal Holocaust succeeds on its own terms, and if I were rating it today, rather than at the beginning of my institution of ratings, I would rate it higher than my previous "6" (in fact, in retrospect I would give Cannibal Holocaust an 8 or 8.5). Yet, I still prefer Cannibal. Cannibal is a tight, focused film, yet poetic and subtle in a way that Terence Malick wished The Thin Red Line was. And that comparison isn't completely unfounded, as Deodato uses nature in a similar way, for the same purposes as Malick in The Thin Red Line. Only, despite the technical prowess of Red Line, Deodato makes his point more succinctly, forcefully, and ultimately entertainingly.

Whereas Cannibal Holocaust at times plays like a sequence of effective visual set pieces in some let's-get-back-to-nature Grand Guignol, Cannibal uses similar themes for a much stronger emotional impact. I suppose that's because you care about the characters more here. When it looked like Ivan Rassimov might be a goner from the natives attempts to get him to fly, you feel disturbed. You really feel disturbed when Me Me Lai meets her fate. Lai, although playing a part without the benefits of speech, relays an incredibly complex character that you come to sympathize strongly with. In Cannibal Holocaust, by contrast, you tend to dislike all the primary characters, so their doom doesn't have the same impact.

On the other hand, Deodato is making dissimilar points in the two films. Cannibal Holocaust asks the question, "Just who are the savages after all?" while Cannibal is about the commonalities and tragedy of existence, while implying an underlying hope in itself as well as in not taking things for granted. Both points are valid. One is a criticism of society in general, the other is more of an existentialist nightmare.

The jungle becomes as much of a character as any of the actors and is frequently the biggest villain. At the same time it also brings sustenance, highlighting a duality that is tasteful to directors on the European continent. Despite the horrors playing out on the screen, cruelty is never quite the issue here. Rather, relative standards of survival and social custom are underscored.

Everyone involved with making this film did their job admirably, and in my opinion, even details like the score worked better here than in Cannibal Holocaust (although I'm aware that many people love the Cannibal Holocaust score).

Recommendation: Most film fans should check out this film. Although it will appeal on the surface mainly to fans of horror, especially the gorecore and cannibal subgenres, fans of any sort of serious filmmaking should look beyond the surface for some of the more conceptual concerns that I've pointed out above. The only people who should avoid Cannibal are those who are more casual viewers who are easily disturbed.