“I’m a human being like you! I’m a man! Not a FISH!”
MAN FROM DEEP RIVER aka SACRIFICE aka DEEP RIVER SAVAGES
Who made it? Directed by Umberto Lenzi | Written by Francesco Barilli /Massimo D’Avak | Director Of Photography Riccardo Pallottini | Special Effects Sergio Angeloni
Who’s in it? Ivan Rassimov | Me Me Lai |Prasitsak Singhara | Sulallewan Suxantat | Ong Ard | Prapas Chindang
If you weren’t watching this the week it came out, you might have been watching…
Live & Let Die | Westworld | Soylent Green | The Exorcist
Production notes and whatnot
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069956/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_the_Deep_River
What’s it all about?
1972’s Deep River Savages is, once again, an “us vs them” style expose of what happens when civilisation meets savagery. Shot in the pseudo-documentary style, popular in the genre for giving that sleazy, snuff, “did it really happen?!” sense, it comes complete with BBC style voice over and outdoor stock-footage scenes of wildlife and riverside frondy exoticness.
We open with the love child of Richard Chamberlain and Julian Sands, clearly in good spirits after winning some kind of “He-Man doing a C-3P0 impression” contest. This is our hero and we’d better warm to his hunky charms as he’s pretty much going to be our onscreen tour-guide for the next 89mins. The tone is one of an Alan Whicker upbeat travelogue. He’s sightseeing with his camera and safari-suit. Captions tell us we’re in Burma. A place I know nothing about apart from this:
Which I don’t imagine helps. Anyhow, it’s boats and junks and rice and hats and fruits and toothless locals and our Man From Delmonte, (Monte, which is what I’m going to call him), is snapping away with his Nikon. You’d swear, if the camera kept rolling, he’d be plugging Barclaycard.
When in Rome, or indeed Burma, one does what the Burmese do and Monte is next seen at a traditional Burmese kick-boxing fight. Hoo boy. He’s getting his kicks (much like one of the poor boxers) but his squeeze Susan is having none of it so she ups and leaves him to it, like many a bored girlfriend when the quarter-finals are on. Monte cools his heels in a local bar but somehow his shirty Westerner attitude and his western shirty clothing, Julian Sands demeanour and C-3P0 campness gets on the nerve of the locals and he’s in a stabby bar fight. That’ll teach him to try and pay with Barclay Card.
So hopping on a train, pulling his hat over his eyes Indiana Jones style he heads alone with his camera off into the jungle and we’re into the plot proper. Cue lots of lush plant-life, screeching birds overhead and elephants.
Arriving at his destination, he meets a trope, we’ll call him Crazy Ralph. Every good horror movie needs a crazy Ralph. Someone to chew ‘baccy, sneer and warn tourists to “beware the old mill/stay on the path/don’t go to the summer camp/avoid the creepy house.”
NOTE: Ignoring someone chewing-baccy is a “wookie” error. Thanks, here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress here at the International House of Tortuous Star Wars puns.
So “chewie” tells Monte not to go too far up the river. Avoid going “where the river narrows.”
Advice Monte promptly ignores because he’s a hard-drinkin’ safari hunter type who’s going up river to take daring nature shots of fish and take his mind off Susan. To further highlight the culture clash, Monte shaves on the boat like a gentleman and drinks whisky (standards, always) and monologues to himself about foggy London all those 6000 miles away
Which is now making me think of Richard Burton and his beloved Carrie from War Of The Worlds. Blimey I’m easily distracted today.
Anyway, things pick up – in a sense – when Monte awakes to find his trusty guide missing from the boat. A panicky search and his corpse is discovered tangled in the reeds. What has happened to him? Well, they’ve gone too far up river and ignored Chewie’s advice and now he’s in the snare of the locals. And what locals they are: War-paint, spears, loincloths and headbands straight out of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, replete with beardy elders and scowly faces.
In two shakes of a Nikon FTN Silber 35mm SLR, he has been tied up, bagged and beaten like a piñata. Hoisted up, the tribe called quest carry him home, through the forests and reeds and whatnot. Lord know what awaits.
You know that bit in Return Of The Jedi, when the Ewoks capture the rebels? It’s EXACTLY that. I mean EXACTLY that.
So what next. Well we’re in horror territory so upon arrival, Monte is witness to a savage way of life, here in t’jungle where the river narrows. 2 tribesmen are strangled and have their tongues cut out. Men in loincloths and facepaint stand around with spears. In fact, let’s take it as read that this happens a lot, as we’re going to get very bored if I have to keep saying “and men in face-paint and loincloths stand around with spears.”
There is a good touch of 1968’s Planet Of The Apes in the whole set up, especially when Monte spots the beauty of the bunch. Paler skinned, booby, coy and a great deal more “Western looking,” she’s the native “it’s okay to fancy.” (See similar tropes of Helena Bonham Carter/Lisa Marie/all the hot aliens from Star Trek). There’s a lot of this around the 70’s. And ‘Monty’s fancy is taken. Which is odd, given the circumstances. But hell, that’s men for you.
The next few minutes of screen time establish the set-up. Monte is now very much a prisoner, considered (as they found him in a wet-suit in the river) little more than a particularly helpful halibut. “I’m a man!” he bellows at one point. “NOT A FISH!” The USS Indianapolis monologue, this is not.
He is put to work in the tribe, complaining and kvetching and pleading for freedom all the while. He catches fish, he lashes bamboo together, is pushed around and beaten and caged like an animal. When they try and feed him he spits out the food (rude) and cries sorrowful anguished lonely tears.
Help and hope arrive in the shape of one of the tribeswomen who explains she ain’t really from these parts, but was adopted. Monte suddenly sees a way out! Maybe they can both escape together? However she tells him it’s a useless plan as they are too far from anywhere and further up river (where, one assumes, the river narrows even further to nary a trickle) reside a cannibal tribe. More despair is stirred in when a helicopter circles the tribe’s camp and Monte yells and waves…only for the chopper to chop-off elsewhere for more sightseeing, leaving him stranded for life.
We’re about half an hour in.
Spin forward a month with a caption and some spinning newspapers and Monte, for reasons passing understanding, is fitting right in. Maybe he likes the weather, maybe he’s given up hope, maybe he fancies the lady on show. Maybe he’s got thing for face-paints. Or maybe he’s juts biding his time?
Either way, a work-based accident for which no-one is insured causes a tribesman to be flattened by a falling idol. He is ceremoniously torched, much like Qui Gon Jinn at the thankful end of The Phantom Menace. The tribesmen see off the corpse with a respectful wake, which involves taking the guy’s wife and giving her a right old seeing-to on his ashes. Which, when it comes to getting over your loss, beats the hell out of tequilas and a haircut.
But this is Monte’s chance, and while they hand out the sandwiches and toast to what a solid bloke this chap was, Monte’s off! Running through the dappled jungle, we don’t know where he’s hoping to get to. But one assumes a world where you don’t get your tongue cut out, get crushed by an idol or treated like herring. He hits the depths of the jungle. But uh-oh. The tell-tale signs of skulls hanging from trees tell him he ain’t in Kansas anymore. And he comes across some more tribesmen who aren’t going to let him escape.
Whether these are just more chaps from the tribe or the much hyped “fine young cannibals” from the narrow river, I cannot fathom. But whoe’er they are, he ain’t going nowhere.
We then get a lovely bit of Robin Hood Price Of Accents action as Monte takes on a tribesman with those stick things. Sticks. Or “staffs” if you prefer. You know, the long two handed ones, like broom-handles. Where opponents take turns to tilt at 45 degrees and go “clack” against the other? It’s all rather Friar Tuck. (My favourite spoonerism, since you ask. Think about it).
So there’s plenty of gruff manly clackity clack action as East meets West. But down Monte goes. One again a circling helicopter gives Monte a glimpse of salvation…but no. He remains in the clutches of the tribe. He battles with his stick valiantly, but…just like The Doctor’s hapless assistants in the world of Eddie Izzard, once again….he’s captured. See here at about 4m 15s
Or watch the whole thing, as it’s infinitely more enjoyable than “Deep River Savages.”
But Monte is slowly being accepted. He is told that in just three more moons, if he survives, he will be a true member of the tribe and be accepted as one of them. (Olde fashioned Fantasie Faerie types always say “moons” rather than “days”. Irritating).
So three days? He can manage that. Much like Marty McFly trapped in 1955.
“Okay, alright, Saturday is good, Saturday’s good, I could spend a week in 1955. I could hang out, you could show me around…”
However it’s not the 3 moons he was looking for, as Obi Wan nearly said, as Monte is promptly tortured for 3 days. First up, he’s sent to what appears to be the Aztec Zone of Richard O’Brien’s Crystal Maze and locked on a revolving scarecrow-type contraption, his head locked between bamboo.
.This is the shot used on a lot of the promo material. As he revolves on the turntable, folk with blow pipes send poisonous darts at him.
Next he’s pinned down and stretched under the baking Burmese sun to cook and fry, threatened continuously by the shadows of vultures circling above.
Once a nice golden brown colour and his juices are running clear (don’t forget to turn halfway through cooking) he has the final trial of “lunch by monkey brain,” a la Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom.
While all this goes on, the local tribe kill time with their usual sport of BBFC Censor Baiting. So we witness actual live cock-fights, crocodile carving and a real snake go tongue-to-claw with what looks like a Mongoose.
But finally, after his trials, and all the cock, goose, croc and snake bits have been Dysoned up, Monte is presented to the elder Ewok and presented with a ceremonial sword. He is now very much accepted as a part of the tribe and his workmates are presumably told not to tease him or call him “Seabass face” anymore.
All this tanning and time passing now makes Monte more the Flash Gordon type. I won’t call him Flash, as this will confuse you. But you get the idea.
The next 30 mins or so cut more back to the documentary style as we now witness what happens when a westerner joins a lost Burmese tribe. Monte gets all the loin-cloth and face-paint get up. He introduces modern medicine tracheotomy to an impressed witch doctor type to treat diphtheria.
He finally “gets the girl” by a fascinating mating ritual it’s worth dwelling on.
Have you seen ITV’s Blind Date? The UK one?
Three men vying to be picked and one woman asking questions from behind a screen? Well it’s a bit like that. Except there’s a hole in the screen and each fella bungs his hand through and gives the dame a good old booby feel-up. Whoever’s mangly boob mashing and tummy-stroking and fingering she likes the best, gets to be the husband.
It’s a “lorra lorra laffs,” as Cilla Black used to say.
Well Monte lets his fingers do the talking and she likes what she “feels” so its wedding bells all round. At which point the “savage” couple fall into standard 1950s I Love Lucy tropes. He goes to work, she cooks and cleans. It gets terribly domestic and it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to have her in fluffy-mules and him in a fedora, sipping a glass of scotch and having the boss over for dinner
Bliss continues as they get it on in the shed, on what appears to be a lot of finely ground flour or enough cocaine to keep a Rolling Stones tour going for literally hours. She falls pregnant from Monte, (Flash by haircut, Flash by sexual technique) cueing up a “cancel-worthy” bit of dialogue from our hero: “A boy! “My little black savage!”
All would be well from this point, Monte finally finding happiness among the simple tribal life, away from Kickboxing and Nikon repair bills. But life in the savage wilderness is red in tooth and claw as we now discover.
His past accomplice, (you remember her, the adopted woman) comes a-running! The cannibals from the even narrower part of the stream are heading their way. There is much chasing and carnage, slicing body parts (arms, breasts, hands). The only way to save her is a canoe to the “big city” where proper medicine can be administered. So off they head, canoe laden with whatnot, up the river to get help.
But … “I’ve been captured” once again. They don’t get far. This place is more difficult to escape than IKEA at 5.25pm.
In the final 10 mins it all kicks off and the cannibals mount their last attack. Everything is thrown into the fray as huts are burned, tribesmen are stabbed, women are chased, blow-pipes are puffed, darts are shot, grass is ignited and we finally witness the full brutality of life in the jungle.
In all the fracas, Monte’s “little black savage” is born. An omen of a black butterfly, flitting about the maternity ward, makes his wife scream. It apparently wasn’t on the John Lewis gift list. The obligatory goat gets his little throat slit and blood comes a gushing, thus sealing the deal. But the omen was a true one, signifying death, and Monte’s wife passes over. “The wind will carry me with you forever. Help my people. They need you…” she croaks.
Final flashbacks occur of Monte’s time with the tribe. From his fearful start, his torture, his rituals to the eventual romance, love, pride and acceptance.
The final test is the circling one more time of a helicopter.
Monte hides. He wants to stay with his new people, his new family, his new life. Awwww, bless. Pass the crocodile soup.
Is It Any Good?
This movie, like many of its type, has gone through numerous iterations and re-titlings. Usually these “rebrandings” (Sacrifice! Aka Man From Deep River! Aka etc etc) enable the distributors to get as many bums on seats as possible by simply re-branding the movie to modern tastes. Were it released today, it may well go under the title “Magic Mike Goes Native” or “Not Woke? Poor Bloke!” or something like that.
However, and I cannot stress this enough, the best possible title for this jungle cannibal escapade would simply be: “If Ewoks Were Wankers.”
As mentioned, all the jungly tropes, clichés and fear-of-foreigners clichés are on display here, straight out of the Rebels landing on Endor in Richard Maquand’s Return Of The Jedi. Count them. Strange westerners in a tropical climbe? Check. Cutting through reeds and fronds as they get further into the woods? Check. Trapped in ropes by yelling and sqwarking “natives”? Check. Hoisted on poles and carried off to the lair? Check. Crying and screaming to be set free as the westerners approach huts and fires? Check. Learning the native customs and becoming one of the tribe? Check. Showing western techniques the natives consider magic? Check. All it would take is for Monte (a very capable and convincing Ivan Rassimov) to tell them the tale of Yavin 4 and for the cannibals to all have white uniforms and appalling shots for this to be Return Of The Jedi II – Jungle Jedi Ferox
The movie has a lush travelogue air to it and we feel on very safe ground as we begin. We trust our hero and are with him all the way, a real sense of identifying with the panic, culture shock and horrors as the “cultured West” meets the savage wildlife. He is a great lead and we buy his performance throughout. Well…mostly. I know the “1 month later” and “6 months later” captions tell us time has passed, however it’s difficult sometimes to jigsaw the horrors and carnage to the acceptance and understanding, when the whole thing occurs in less than 2 hrs.
We should mention Crazy Ralph as a staple, as I think this is our first proper “Crazy Ralph” example in the dozen or so movies we’ve looked at so far.
The name “Ralph” comes from the trope pummelled, molded and finally baked in Friday The 13th. Every horror movie needs one, and Ralph, played famously and unforgettably by Walt Gorney back in 1980, is the template. But as we can see from “Deep River,” he was far from the first. You’ll have lost count of the horror flicks that have a weird, twitchy, untrustworthy figure, just outside the action (local gas station, travel agent, hotel reception, moon base) who warn the hapless victims of what might occur if they continue into the fray. They come in many guises (parodied brilliantly in the hyper-meta Cabin In The Woods) and are traditionally right…but fatefully ignored, much to the teenager’s peril.
As is true for many of the “Cannibal Slashers” that this movie inspired (there is an argument here that Man From Deep River was the first “Cannibal Exploitation/Lunchsploitation movies that started the craze that continued well into the 70s with such noteables as Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust), it was not so much the unconvincing gut-and-shut gore that had censors reaching for the scissors and the rubber stamp, as the animal cruelty.
Many of these flicks padded out the human-on-human feasting with cuts to genuine trapping, taunting, teasing, cutting and eating of real animals. The Man From Deep River is guilty as any of reaching for these audience-squirming scenes as we are witness to genuine on-screen cruelty on snakes, mongeese (plural? Ed), turtles and crocodiles. It was these scenes that caused the BBFC in England to ban these movies, much more than the fake horrors of cannibalism.
So we have what may be the first of these horrors – western culture meet savage rapey cannibalism – and it’s a decent enough adventure. We watch as our hero is first repulsed by acts of violence and then over time (2hrs) comes to accept this “alternative” way of life, understanding his shaving, whisky, technology and manners are just poses of one culture and there is more to the world than Victorian values as he learns the ways of a more primitive, but no less rewarding, way of existing on this planet of rivers and green.
Nasty?
Not amazingly so. As we’ve said, it’s the animal cruelty, in true RSPB and RSPCA British style that are really the turn offs here. The violence (tongue removal, scuffly rapey sex, slashings of limbs are what we are used to. Ketchup, wax and latex and cutaways of blade flashing and wound splashing are what we’re used to and there’s a fair deal of that. But it’s the animal-action that might turn some stomachs.
Ban Worthy?
Well, we’ve been here before. As the worst type of woolly snowflake liberal, I cannot honestly stand up and say ANY art should be banned. Give it a certification to keep it from the eyes of impressionable little’uns. Make sure no-one stumbles across it by mistake. But banning art is the beginning of a slippery slope that starts with harmless “think of the children!” and ends with book burning. However, that said. The torturing of innocents? These animals have been teased, beaten, goaded, sliced and garrotted for the camera and the audience’s relish. Scenes like this belong in tutorial tapes for medics, nurses, butchers and vets. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
What does it remind me of?
Well as we’ve said, eagled eyed viewers will get their synapses firing as we are very much in the ideas, scenery, ideology and landscape of everything from Return Of The Jedi, Friday The 13th, The Phantom Menace and of course Planet Of The Apes. As we move forward in our journey and discover the horrors of the Italian Cannibal movie genre, all of these scenes and more will be repeated, parodied, stolen and, ahem, “homage” in the work of Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lemzi, Jesus Franco and Joe D’Amato. Some done with more skill, some with more artistry, some with more flair but many with just more tits and chicken liver.
Where do I find it?
Man From Deep River is there on Amazon Prime, if you want to stump up the membership and subscription. YouTube is elbow deep in trailers. But I haven’t been able to find it for free. So it’s an Ebay VHS or a DVD Blu-Ray purchase from the usual stockists if you fancy it. And why wouldn’t you?
Well. For the above reasons mainly. Enjoy.
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