Cut and Run

The dumb-as-rocks spawn of a threeway between Cannibal Holocaust, Apocalypse Now, and Friday the 13th. Whenever the jungle stuff threatens to get exciting, we cut back to the lame Miami subplot. Gotta justify the director's vacation/tax write-off, I guess.

Let's see...Michael Berryman, Karen Black and Willie Aames in a cheap Italian jungle schlockfest packed with machete wielding natives? Yes, please! The story is utter nonsense involving a Jonestown survivor who reinvents himself as a maniacal drug lord and a TV reporter going to ridiculous lengths to interview him, but it offers up plenty of gory treats and sweaty naked girls. Aames' over the top performance is particularly laughable. Fun crap that doesn't take itself too seriously.

What was the thong budget on this thing? Berryman does his best Jaws and Lynch does his best Jim Jones. It's nice coming to a movie like this, reading the reviews and having to go check that I don't have it set to show Just Kumpels. Nope, my kumpels are just the only ones to have reviewed it in the first place. Do we share the same affinity for people being split in half the height ways. I can only assume.

Needed more Jim Jones cannibal fights. The reporter is the lady who is sick of getting the "World's Biggest Rhubarb" news story so she bites off more than she can chew and randomly will show how hip she is by breaking into Italian. Laughed really hard at the part where a guy is in a trap that'll rip him in half "Shoot me!" he gets ripped in half and the idiot shoots him once it's over. You know something happened when the movie score screams at you.

I think the presence of a machete-wielding Michael Berryman on the cover stopped my parents letting me rent the VHS back in the day. Shame, as the juvenile me would have lapped the nonsense, violence and nudity right up. As it stands, the midlife-crisis me quite enjoyed it. The plot is daft, and the acting isn't great, but genre faves Lynch and Berryman add colour. The gory jungle shenanigans recall the director's earlier efforts, although this feels more like Cannibal Apocalypse Now. Fun.

Slow, boring, confusing, & overall indistinguishable from dozens of other similar movies of the era, this is perhaps the blandest & least entertaining Deodato film I've seen so far. Lacking the unintentional comedy of Body Count & the social element/brutal gore of Holocaust, all it offers is bland action sequences, a half-baked plot, uninteresting characters & lots of sweat. The pacing is pretty wonky, too, which doesn't help. Skippable. Though, Michael Berryman shows up. So that's fun.