The starter is served.  "Monsieur Cannibal", Ruggero Deodato, serves it and is just the beginning of his (in)famous cannibal trilogy. In 1977 Deodato has the opportunity to direct a cannibal movie that probably opens him different roads but for sure was for him a great publicity (good and bad). Like the best stories this work is the result of series curious coincidences that begins in 1972 when Umberto Lenzi directed the first Italian cannibal movie "Il paese del sesso selvaggio". Five years later proposing to him the sequel but given the commercial success of the previous movie, Lenzi asks more moneys and doesn’t find an agreement with the production.
And so, behind the camera there is Ruggero Deodato, a director with great experience in the world of cinema, with several films, commercials, and that in the two years before 1977, directed an erotic movie "Ondata di Piacere" and a poliziottesco "Uomini si nasce, poliziotti si muore" But never such a film.
With a part of the same cast of "Il paese del sesso selvaggio" (Me Me Lai and Ivan Rassimov) Ruggero Deodato enters the cannibal world, and a spark bursts between the two, or better to say here start a true love story that leads to the totem "Cannibal Holocaust" and later to "Inferno in diretta" that closes the "cannibal trilogy ".
The basic story is similar to other films of the genre, and to the one of Lenz’s. A group of western people ends in a jungle where find a tribe that is, of course, cannibal. But unlike other works in "Ultimo mondo cannibale” hasn’t a social criticism (such as "Cannibal Holocaust") but only a morbid fun and pleasure in seeing bodies slaughtered.
This is "Ultimo mondo cannibale" a horror in which Deodato anticipates some of his ideas, some of his ways to tell a story showing his total lack of limits. Apart from the usual innocent animals who are dismembered (something of the director that we dislike) the massacres and other atrocities are everywhere in this film and they reach their goal, horrified viewers.
It’s not an easy movie or a mainstream on but achieves its goals and so it is enough to appreciate it. The cast then with Ivan Rassimov, Massimo Foschi and the beautiful Me Me Lai (seen in "Au pair girls", "Revenge of the Pink Panther" and in another cannibal movie Lenzi "Mangiati vivi") makes his duty.
There are some moments very absurd as the scene of masturbation, rape or even the one in which Pulan (Me Me Lai) is eaten. But as first chapter, as a debut in the genre, Deodato makes a great job.
Rolf and Robert Harper searching of two missing colleagues landing in emergency in the jungle of Mindanao. They find that colleagues disappeared have made a bad end, the same fate that touches almost immediately to the pilot of the plane and a guide. Alone the two are attacked by some indios, Rolf wounded managed to escape. Robert is captured, imprisoned and forced to watch a series of violent rituals. During his imprisonment he befriends Pulan, a beautiful indios who helps him to escape.
Rolf is found in a cavern in which had taken refuge (and after the raping Pulan) the three are trying to get to the plane. But the road to salvation is still very long, because the tribe chasing them. Then the turning point, Robert eats the liver of the tribal chief, winning the respect of other, and eventually he and Rolf manage to escape.

Censored, criticized, very close to finish in the "video nasty" in Britain, "Ultimo mondo cannibale" as well as lay the foundations for the trilogy of Deodato, gain a posthumous success thanks to the clamor of "Cannibal Holocaust".



 Technical Data Sheet

Title: Jungle Holocaust
Alternate Titles: O Mundo dos Last Canibais, Fases da Morte 8 - About Last Mundo dos Canibais, Mundo Canibal (Brazil) Cannibal (Britain-video title), Cannibals (Greece-video box title), Carnivorous, Jungle Holocaust (DVD BOX ), The Last Survivor (cut version) (USA), Le Dernier monde cannibal, Horror Cannibal (France), Kannibaalit (Finland) Last Cannibal World (International), World Cannibal 2 - Der Vogelmensch (Germany) World cannabale 2 (Poland) , Mundo caníbal Spain, De Sista kannibalerna (Sweden), Viimeiset kannibaalit (Finland)
Year of Release: 1977
Country: Italy
Director: Ruggero Deodato
Duration: 92 '
Cast: Massimo Foschi, Me Me Lai, Ivan Rassimov, Sheik Razak Shikur