Italian-made cannibal films are known for being gross-out affairs, filled with slick production values (as far exploitation movies go) and feverish levels of intensity. Some of them, like Ruggero Deodato’s CANNIBAL HOLOCUAST, are even considered classics. But when other European countries attempt to ape the savage man-eating cycle, the results are usually embarrassing and unintentionally funny, much like CANNIBAL TERROR, a Spanish/French co-production honored as one of Britain’s “Video Nasties” in the 1980s. The U.K. got a DVD release in 2003, and now Severin delivers this trashy exercise in extreme camp for American audiences.

Two bumbling, foul-mouthed thugs (one of them played by Antonio Mayans, aka Robert Foster, star of countless Jess Franco efforts) and a voluptuous floozy decide to kidnap a little girl who happens to be the daughter of an auto tycoon. While setting up the ransom plans with a gangster over the phone, they set out to the “jungle” to hide out in someone’s villa, but the area is filled with hungry natives in make-up evoking the early days of Motley Crue. Soon, the girl’s worried parents (Euro trash favorites Oliver Mathot and Sylvia Solar) come looking for her, and it’s rifles against bows and arrows.

Produced by the infamous Eurocine, long-time purveyors of sex and sleaze product, most of which was released straight to video in the U.S., CANNIBAL TERROR can be enjoyed largely for its all-around ineptitude. Even the DVD’s back copy makes light of this (“… a mind-roasting exercise in atrocious acting, gratuitous nudity and gut-munching mayhem by a ravenous tribe of flesh eaters who inexplicably sport comb-overs and Elvis sideburns”). It’s true, the jump-happy cannibals look ridiculous, largely a bunch of (mostly male) Europeans in Halloween face paint who at times appear to be staring at the camera, waiting for their cue. On a whole, the film looks like it could be the rushed work of the iconic Jess Franco (it’s not), though ironically, even more absurd cannibal footage from Franco’s CANNIBALS (aka WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN) is tossed in, so you know what to expect.

At times, the film seems to be made up as it goes along. Between the irregular cannibal action (tribe members pulling at butcher shop entrails and freshly killed pigs substituting as human carcasses) there’s gratuitous sequences such as this one: A middle-aged man (who is playing host to the kidnapping ruffians) conveniently leaves, saying he’ll be gone two or three days. In the meantime, one of the thugs watches the man's beautiful, much-younger wife (Pamela Stanford, LORNA, THE EXORCIST) take an outdoor bath, and then chases her, ties her to some trees and has his way with her. The husband comes home early, learns of the rape from the devastated wife (though she seems fine partying it up later that night), takes the culprit out into the “jungle” for a hunting excursion, only to tie him to a tree and whistle for the cannibals to come and gobble the poor bastard up!

The absurdity never stops! Not only is the English dubbing hilarious, but the kidnapped girl is obviously voiced by a grown woman, a common practice with these sort of films (ever see the Italian-made Boris Karloff vehicle ISLAND MONSTER?). The natives’ hut is decorated with blankets and dime store plastic skulls, the “jungle” is just some woodsy locations with a neatly trimmed lawn, a severed head is achieved by displaying an actor popped up through a whole in a table, and during the thrill-packed climax (set deep in the “jungle”) you can spot sports cars shooting by in the background and a native boy sporting blue tennis shoes! The score is also priceless, at times sounding like a sped-up instrumental version of “La Bamba.”