CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE

Directed by Antonio Margheriti. Italy, Spain. 1980.

Vetsploitation films existed before March 8th, 1965, but their numbers grew exponentially in the years following the start of the Vietnam War. Movies featuring Vietnam veterans as both antagonists and protagonists became a mainstay in American cinemas up until the late '80s, flowing in and out of damn near every sub-genre imaginable. The Vietnam vet, much like the Korean War or WWII hero characters that were the engines for the earlier Vetsploitation entries, became an empty vessel for virtually any motivation or mental illness. It was a catch-all character trope that could be used for any political, sociological, or philosophical purpose under the sun.

They could be spree killers like in BORN FOR HELL, or serial slashers like the mad antagonists of DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE and STANLEY. There were blaxploitation crossovers like SLAUGHTER. The hixploitation crowd gave us oddities like NIGHTMARE HONEYMOON. Hell, you couldn’t even keep the hardcore crowd away. Future funny man Harry Reems serial rapes his way through half of New York in Shaun Costello’s decidedly un-erotic skin flick, FORCED ENTRY. Vietnam vets could be trigger-happy cops (DEADLY HERO), vigilantes (TAXI DRIVER), anti-heroes (ROLLING THUNDER), biker gang leaders (HELL’S CHOSEN FEW), terrorists (BLACK SUNDAY), romantic leads (HEROES), tragic victims of the military-industrial complex (FIRST BLOOD), and even rollicking B-movie action heroes (THE EXTERMINATOR). They could even be zombies, like in Bob Clark’s wonderfully creepy DEATHDREAM.

So, leave it to the Italians to add ‘cannibals’ to that list. CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE was one of two Vietnam War-focused films Antonio Margheriti released in 1980. There’s a reason this film lives on, while no one mentions Margheriti’s THE LAST HUNTER anymore. That film has a much firmer grasp on reality. CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE couldn’t spell ‘reality’ even with a six-letter head start. The Italian exploitation film industry had a habit of mixing multiple subgenres, melding them to capture a larger audience. This wasn’t even the first time cannibals were shoehorned into a decidedly un-horror subgenre of film. EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS, an utterly bizarre mixture of softcore porno with graphic gut-munching, had been released a full three years earlier. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, only that it makes money.

CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE is a film of two halves and twelve brain cells, a bizarre mixture of disparate sub-genres and financial motivations that never once gels into something coherent. From that description, it might sound like I dislike this film. That’s not even remotely the case, but while I get a kick out of whatever the hell this movie is, I’m not going to pretend that Margheriti and schlock screenwriting maestro Dardano Sacchetti have crafted a masterpiece here. Maybe they could have, but they seem to have lost their marbles halfway through the writing process.

The movie begins with shots of Vietnamese men and women running away from stock footage of American helicopters. A cadre of soldiers led by Army Captain Norman Hooper lands outside a cave that is being used by the Viet Cong as a base of operations. A village set would have been too expensive to build. Captain Hooper is played by John Saxon, a manly man so damn manly he walks around in the open while all his heavily armed compadres hide behind rocks and bushes. A cute dog approaches the men, and naturally, they stop to pet it, unaware that there are plastic explosives tied to its collar. The dog goes boom, and everything goes to shit. Grenades are tossed, countless extras run into frame just to be mowed down, and a couple of throats are cut.

A Vietnamese woman is set ablaze by an American troop carrying a flamethrower. When she topples forward, dead, her body falls into a pit where two American POWs are being held. They quickly tear her clothes off and begin gobbling up her crispy flesh. When the fighting ceases, one of the troops spots the pit. Captain Hooper opens the trap door and reaches inside, beckoning for the POWs to take his hand. One of them does, latching onto Hopper, and biting into his arm.

We cut, and now we’re a few years later. The war has ended, and Hooper is living a quiet life with his news crew wife, Jane. While she’s off at work, Hooper passes the time flying his RC plane. He’s interrupted by Mary, a creepy high school girl living next door. She asks to borrow Jane’s hairdryer, but what she really wants is to get it on with John Saxon. Can you blame her? Initially hesitant to even consider the prospect, Hooper’s mind changes after receiving a phone call from Charlie, one of the cannibal POWs from the opening flashback. He’s just been released from the nuthouse and wants to grab a beer with his old Captain. Hooper refuses, hanging up the phone. He then turns to Mary and lifts her skirt. Lost in the throes of cannibalism-tinged wartime PTSD, Hooper shoves his face into the young girl’s stomach... and bites her.

Charlie meanwhile is having a hard time adjusting to post-war life. After stopping a few bikers from harassing some college girls, he decides to take in a war movie, but the sounds of combat and the sight of a hot blonde getting fondled in the row in front of him is just too much. Unable to control himself, Charlie bites a chunk out of the blonde’s neck and takes off running. Naturally, the biker gang is all too eager to give chase. Charlie seeks shelter inside an empty flea market, where he finds a loaded gun. He shoots one of the bikers and offs a security guard for good measure.

Jane calls Hooper to tell him about the shooting at the flea market. The police begin gathering outside, dodging bullets and demanding Charlie turn himself in. Hooper arrives and offers to end the situation peacefully. He enters the flea market and talks Charlie down. They leave together, and Charlie is arrested, biting one of the cops as they toss him in the back of a paddy wagon for transport back to the nuthouse.

And thus ends the FIRST BLOOD portion of the film. From this point on, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE ceases to be a film that makes sense and instead becomes an Italian horror movie. Up until this point, it has been a fairly serious story about PTSD-riddled soldiers struggling for some semblance of normalcy. The cannibalism, a result of Charlie and his friend Tommy’s extreme starvation at the hands of their captors, is just a manifestation of their shared trauma, the thing these ex-soldiers must overcome to once again see people as they are and not just as food for the endlessly starving military-industrial machine. So while it might not make the most sense to have Charlie’s craving for human flesh be triggered by a war movie and exposed breasts, it does make some kind of sense. We get it.

The allegory could have worked had it been written as a case of wendigo psychosis. You could have kept much of the film intact by taking that angle with the subject matter. But no, what we get instead is something far more... Well, Italian.

Within a few moments of arriving back at the mental hospital, Charlie instigates a small riot with Tommy, during which Charlie bites the leg of a nurse named Helen. The police learn that the security guard’s body showed signs of cannibalism, just in time for the previously bitten cop to tear the breast off one of his coworkers and sloppily eat it in the police station break room. We learn from Jane’s friend and former paramour, the esteemed Dr. Mendez, that all this flesh-eating is being caused by PTSD. But not the normal kind, mind you, but a form of PTSD that has somehow manifested itself as a communicable disease. You know, like a zombie virus.

We’re starting to lose our minds here, folks. We’re in the full throes of pre-insanity, but still, the allegory could work. After all, there are countless films about the contagion of violence. It’s what powers movies like THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES. I mean, sure, the allegory would probably be a lot stronger if we weren’t now talking about a form of trauma-induced rabies that causes uncontrollable cannibalism, but goddamn it, it could still work. Right?

But then the nurse turns into a flesh-hungry cannibal and (for some reason) frees Tommy and Charlie. Hooper goes full cannibal and shows up to help spring our gruesome threesome from the mental hospital lockdown. The four of them head to the sewers and then south to the airport. Why? To return to Vietnam, of course. But not before fighting those pesky bikers, chewing on some innocent people, grinding up a corpse’s leg with an angle grinder, and wrecking a car. Why is any of this happening? Because Italians made it. That’s why.

Margheriti and Sacchetti make one last attempt at keeping the allegory afloat here, with shots of cops entering the sewers, heavily armed in uniform, some carrying flamethrowers, mirroring the shots of Hooper’s platoon arriving at the Viet Cong hideout, but it’s too late. It’s dead, Jim. Don’t even think about it. Just watch a couple rats get set on fire, and a man get eviscerated by a shotgun. We’ve officially entered the “Vietnamese are savages and our tragic victims of an unpopular war are now a savage invading force that needs to be eradicated by good, old-fashioned American violence” territory. That’s a total reversal in subtextual meaning and a betrayal of what started as a fairly good, though dumb, bit of vetsploitation. Our heroes are no longer misunderstood victims of wartime violence. They’re just suckers, thieves, and bad guys. The allegory got its guts shot out, too.

While CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE does end on a very depressing note, it never reaches the same level of soul-shattering grief as COMBAT SHOCK (thank god). It is the right ending for this film, but it does feel a bit less impactful as a result of coming directly after a man is set ablaze and a half dozen cops are lazily shot to death in a sewer. The ending scene really illustrates the schizophrenic nature of the narrative here, much more than the allegorical confusion of just what the fuck Margheriti was trying to say with this film. It feels like the ending of a proper drama, not a movie with a third-act cannibal sewer shootout massacre.

John Saxon was reportedly horrified to learn that this was a cannibal film. He had agreed to take the film based on a hastily translated and truncated script. Saxon thought he agreed to star in a more serious-minded bit of wartime allegory, one in which the virus was psychological. Then they brought out a tray of body parts for the cast to eat on camera, and he began to consider dropping out of the production.

The first time I saw this film, I felt like dropping out too once I realized that the movie was going to grow dumber and dumber the longer it went on. The first 40 or so minutes are tightly constructed, breezily paced, and completely involving, largely thanks to the onscreen talents of Saxon and the late great Giovanni Lombardo Radice. Both actors are playing to their strengths here, giving us a sharp contrast between the struggling but stoic Hooper and the psychologically crumbling Charlie. The tension in the flea market standoff is palpable, and the payoff of that scene, while not on the level of FIRST BLOOD, feels like it was reaching for a kind of emotional maturity that the rest of the film sadly lacks.

Once we get to the cannibal virus shit, the shift in tone absolutely destroys everything the first 40 minutes sets up. It becomes an entirely different movie. I mean, it becomes an entirely different and wholly enjoyable movie, but it no longer feels like we’re watching the same program. Someone snuck in and changed the channel. We’re now watching the gonzo sequel no one wanted, made by an entirely different crew of people who didn’t think the first film had enough blood and guts in it.

But it’s not a different film. It’s the same one, and therein lies the greatest problem with CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE (besides that godawful title). But it’s only a problem if you find yourself invested in the first half. If you find yourself zoning out while watching creepy Mary flash her pubic hair at Hooper, or drifting off to sleep during the endless scenes of Jane and Dr. Mendez blabbering on about the old times, worry not. There’s a whole lot of neck biting and tit-ripping just around the corner. For better or worse, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE is an enjoyable, inexplicable mess.