Adamo ed Eva, la prima storia d'amore (1983)

... aka: Adam and Eve
... aka: Adam and Eve: The First Love Story
... aka: Adam and Eve vs. Cannibals
... aka: Adam and Eve Versus the Cannibals
... aka: Adamo ed Eva
... aka: Adan y Eva, la primera historia de amor
... aka: Blue Paradise

Directed by:
"Vincent Green" (Enzo Doria)
"John Wilder" (Luigi Russo)

Seeing how Christmas is right around the corner, TV's been flooded with two of the most popular types of shows this time of year: heartwarming, family-friendly holiday specials and religious-themed programming. Since I've already sat through "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" (featuring fine voice work from Mr. Boris Karloff, I might add!) and - my personal favorite - "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," I needed a God flick to make it all complete. After all, my procrastinating ass is really dreading the marathon of last-minute shopping I have to do tomorrow. I could really use some sound moral guidance or else I may start screaming unholy profanities at complete strangers while getting pushed, bumped and standing in hour-long check-out lines. So, what will it be this year? The Greatest Story Ever Told? Nah. The Ten Commandments? No thanks. I've already had to sit through it at least a dozen times. The Passion of the Christ? Not even if you paid me. Adam and Eve Versus the Cannibals? Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Blasphemy, you say? Well, what did you expect? This is The Bloody Pit of Horror, not The 700 Club.

After the creation of the universe (insert stock footage of explosions and volcanoes here), a cocoon rises from beneath the Earth and a bloody, naked, long-haired Adam (Mark Gregory) comes crawling out. He watches a beautiful waterfall, takes a stroll around the Garden of Eden to pet tiger cubs, gets scared by his own reflection in a pond and finally ends up on the beach staring at the horizon longingly. Yes, poor Adam is lonely. He sculpts a woman out of sand, lightning strikes, it starts raining and, as the water washes away his sculpture, Eve (Andrea Goldman) is underneath. Unlike the actor who plays Adam, who looks like the unholy offspring of Fabio and an aborigine, Eve is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned hottie. The two frolic around for what feels like an eternity as a God awful romantic ballad plays on the soundtrack. Any song that chooses to rhyme "sweet caress" and "tenderness" has gone one step too far in violating the upchuck factor if you ask me. And then a sinking feeling begins to fall over me... This is starting to remind me of two movies I absolutely detest: The Blue Lagoon (1981) and Paradise (1982). Both of those stomach-churners were nothing more than thinly disguised excuses for adult audiences to be able ogle underage teenage flesh and pretend like they're watching a "real" movie in the process. This one really doesn't want to make us feel guilty about it by having the religious angle, but it starts out being the same old thinly-disguised smut all the same.

So Little Miss Strategically Placed Hair gets bored, watches a couple of lions humping, is talked into eating the forbidden fruit from an apple tree by a talking python and thus the world gets its first taste of "sin." She and Adam have doggy-style sex and God gets pissed off because apparently it's only OK for large African cats to screw. As a result, the puppet master causes a hellacious wind storm and tries to smash Adam and Eve with a huge, stop-motion boulder Indiana Jones-style. He also levels the entire planet, leaving behind only rocks and sand. Thankfully, from here on out, this thing starts going off in all kinds of bizarre directions. They find a nest with large eggs inside... and then are attacked by a pterodactyl (!!) Adam snaps its neck, rips open its chest with his bare hands and then he and his girl begin eating its raw innards. Not wanting to waste it, Eve creates a fashion forward bikini out of the creature's wings. From there, they encounter a tribe of cannibal ape men, who kidnap them, tie them to poles and take them back to their caves, but a tiger scares them off so Adam and Eve can escape.

After getting into an argument about how to get to the ocean, Adam and Eve part ways. She ends up running across a tribe of peaceful vegetable eaters who paint themselves green, taking a particular liking to one of them (Ángel Alcázar) she dubs "Green Man." The two hit it off, have sex and then Adam stumbles upon them lounging together by his favorite waterfall in their post coital glory. The village of green people is invaded by a slew of pug-nosed mutant cannibal men in huge, puffy orange wigs who start killing and eating everyone. They drag Eve and "Green Man" back to their village, where they kill and eat a naked green woman. Adam saves the day and the three manage to escape into the forest. Torn between her two lovers, Eve chooses Adam, but when he finds out she's knocked up he takes her on "The Maury Show" for a paternity test and discovers she got drunk at a party and slept with 20 other guys and has no clue who the father really is. OK, so that last part didn't really happen... but it might as well as far as this being biblically accurate is concerned.

Bogged down somewhat by numerous icky romantic interludes (and damn if they didn't play "the song" two more bloody times!), this is quite an interesting film otherwise and is actually much-better than either Lagoon or Paradise. The acting is surprisingly decent, the score, costumes, makeup and photography are all good and the various outdoor locations and scenery are superb. This also scores major audacity points for going all gonzo on the bible at a time when it certainly wasn't popular to be doing so. And did I forget to mention this also includes a hilarious fight scene between Green Man and one of the worst man-in-a-bear-suit bear's you'll ever see? Check it out.

★★1/2