... 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