Indiana Jones and the Temple of “Why Am I Watching This?”
Some films transport you to far-off lands, immersing you in exotic adventure. Slave of the Cannibal God transports you to the humid, mosquito-infested corner of cinema hell where the only artifacts are fake skeletons, rubber snakes, and the dignity Ursula Andress used to have. Shot in Sri Lanka but spiritually set in the Valley of Bad Decisions, this is a movie where the plot is as thin as the film stock and twice as grainy.
Ursula Andress Deserved a Better Jungle
Andress plays Susan Stevenson, a woman searching for her missing husband, though her acting suggests she’s mostly searching for the nearest air-conditioned trailer. She’s joined by Stacy Keach as Professor Edward Foster, looking like he wandered in from a completely different movie about fishing rights. Their journey into the jungle is allegedly about love and science, but quickly degenerates into wrestling with snakes, tripping over alligators, and staring at stock footage of tarantulas like they’re in a poorly supervised petting zoo.
Everyone Has a Secret, and They’re All Stupid
The so-called twist? Nobody is here for the missing husband. Andress and her brother are uranium prospectors. Keach wants to exterminate a cannibal tribe for reasons that sound like a rejected National Geographic pitch. Another explorer joins because… well, because the script needed an extra body for the kill count. By the halfway point, you’re not rooting for anyone—you’re just hoping the mosquitoes take over so the credits will roll.
Cannibalism, Courtesy of the 1970s
Once they reach the mountain of Ra Ra Me—a name that sounds like a tiki drink—the cannibals finally show up, and the movie leans into its “video nasty” reputation with all the subtlety of a blunt machete. We get ritual killings, a tribal worship of the skeletal husband (who apparently died still clutching his Geiger counter), and the pièce de résistance: Ursula Andress stripped, smeared in orange goo, and ceremonially transformed into the “Cannibal Goddess.” It’s all meant to be shocking, but it plays like dinner theater for people whose safe word is “pass the uranium.”
Animal Cruelty Masquerading as Realism
And then there’s the animal cruelty. The filmmakers apparently thought the jungle wasn’t dangerous enough without staging actual animal deaths for the camera. Watching a monkey get eaten by a snake might be a “cultural artifact” for some grindhouse audiences, but for most modern viewers it’s just a reminder that the film industry once had the ethical standards of a drunk termite.
Violence, Sleaze, and Zero Fun
Yes, there’s gore—arms hacked, bodies roasted, genitals removed—but none of it has the craftsmanship of the great exploitation flicks. It’s all ugly without being artful, which is the worst possible combination. Even Cannibal Holocaustknew how to package its atrocities in a way that made you feel something other than mild irritation and a vague desire to bathe.
The Escape You Don’t Care About
In the end, Andress and her male co-survivor escape, though the film treats it less like triumph and more like a contractual obligation. They limp away from the carnage, and we limp toward the exit, both parties having endured more than they should have for such little payoff. The cannibal tribe goes back to their day, the uranium is forgotten, and the audience is left with the grim knowledge that they could have spent the last 100 minutes doing literally anything else.
Final Word: A Video Nasty in the Worst Sense
Slave of the Cannibal God is the kind of movie that gives exploitation cinema a bad name—not because it’s transgressive, but because it’s tedious. It’s sleazy without spark, violent without tension, and exotic without authenticity. The mountain might belong to the Cannibal God, but the runtime belongs to the devil.
