October 8th

Last Cannibal World (1977) directed by Ruggero Deodato

AKA Jungle Holocaust, this was originally intended as a sequel to Man from Deep River but bears little similarity that prior film.  This is a true horror picture.  I was thrilled throughout the entire film.  It's a simple story of a man captured by "stone age" cannibals in the Malaysian jungle who has to escape and find his airplane before they either eat him or use him as crocodile bait.

I was blown away by the sequence where the cannibals capture Robert.  Wow -- sometimes you need to be reminded about how badass '70s cinema could be.  Robert awakens in cave, surrounded by screaming cannibals and tied to a large boulder.  They begin poking and prodding him as he struggles against the ropes.  Soon, they begin tearing his clothes off and poking and prodding him in even more sensitive areas.  The imagery is intense: a nude made bound to a rock, surround by howling savages.  It's hard to imagine a worse position to find yourself in.

I also can't say I've ever seen a horror movie in which the male lead spends more than half the film completely naked.  Amazing work from Massimo Foschi, who gamely runs around a jungle completely nude just to make a movie.  The bug bites that poor guy must have suffered...

If I have a complaint, it's that Robert only battled a cannibal in combat once.  For all of the chasing around the jungle they did with him, he was only truly in trouble during that one time after his escape.  And, even there, he had the massive advantage of the venom-tipped spear.  A minor quibble, though, and barely worth bringing up.

Watched: DVD from Shriek Show.

The Walking Dead 3.08: "Made to Suffer" (2012) directed by Bill Gierhart

This episode is intense in spots, but suffers from pacing problems most of the rest of the time.  Which is probably the issue with the entire series, come to think of it.  Rick's group's attack on Woodbury to rescue Glenn and Maggie is exciting and fun to watch, but it's continually broken up by cutting to the Governor and his bizarre preoccupation with preventing Andrea from finding out who the attackers are.  Why does he even care?  Plus, the confrontation between the Governor and Michonne -- which had absolutely no build-up -- was incredibly disappointing.  No fork or amputation, huh?

The mid-season cliffhanger of having the Dixon brothers surrounded by the Woodbury folks was rather tame.  Even if I wasn't already spoiled, I can't say I would've been concerned that the show's most popular character was in trouble.

American Horror Story 2.01: "Asylum: Welcome to Briarcliff" (2012) directed by Bradley Buecker

Like the first episode of the first season, this opener throws a whole helluva lot at the viewer.  Again, like that other episode, it was all pretty exciting.  There's an abandoned asylum -- the best horror setting possible -- a mad scientist, a takes-absolutely-no-shit nun with secret desires for her priest, a lesbian investigative journalist, wacky characters populating the asylum, an arm ripped off, and... aliens?  What the hell?  I was not expecting the abduction angle.  I was willing to brush it off as a cover memory in Kit's broken mind, but the scientist guy removes an implant from Kit's neck and watches it crawl away like a spider.  I know they dropped the ball pretty badly by the end of season one, but I'm already forgetting that in favor of wondering how the hell all of this stuff will come together.