E Dio disse a Caino... (1970)

... aka: And God Said to Cain...

... aka: Dödsjakten (The Death Hunt)

... aka: Et le vent apporta la violence (And the Wind Brought Violence)

... aka: Fury at Sundown

... aka: Hevneren (The Avenger)

... aka: Revenge at Sundown

... aka: Satan der Rache (Devil of Vengeance)

... aka: Un homme, un cheval, un fusil (A Man, a Horse, a Gun)

Directed by:

"Anthony Dawson" (Antonio Margheriti)

Former army lieutenant Gary Hamilton (Klaus Kinski) has been stuck in a prison labor camp for ten long years. After slaving away breaking rocks with a sledge hammer in a rock quarry for a decade, and trying to avoid the rattlesnakes in the process, Gary finds out he's finally be pardoned, and by the President of the United States, no less! Now it's time to settle back into normal life. Well, kind of. He's got some other stuff to take care of first. Gary stops by a saloon for a drink and refuses the bartender's offer to stick the prison with the tab. "A man must pay for everything," he solemnly states before heading out. 

Stopping by an old trader's place, Gary purchases a rifle, a horse and enough ammunition to gun down about 500 people for ten bucks, which is incidentally the same amount of money I spent on a cold, shitty hamburger earlier today. He then meets cadet Dick Acombar (Antonio Cantafora, a fine looking chap) on a stagecoach ride. Dick is about to enter his final year at West Point and has come home for a visit. He's still trying to decide what to do with his life: Enter into military service or settle down with a wife, start a family and work at his rich father's mining company. Mr. Acombar (Peter Carsten, also one of the producers) has higher aspirations for his boy and wants him to enter politics. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that Dick's woes about the future will be solved by the end of the film.

It turns out Gary was framed for stealing a fortune in gold and cash during a stagecoach robbery (and the killings associated with the theft), wrongly convicted, given a life sentence (overturned by the government, who gave him leniency and a surprise pardon for his prior military service) and now has vengeance on his mind. The evil schemer who ruined his life is none other than papa Acombar. When word gets back to him that Gary's out and planning on paying him a visit, he puts a bounty out on his head. His primary goons are the Santamaria brothers; Miguel ("Lee Burton" / Guido Lollobrigida), Francisco ("Alan Collins" / Luciano Pigozzi) and Jim (Lucio De Santis), though it seems like 99% of the whole town is willing to do his bidding.

While Gary was away, Mr. Acombar stole everything that was his, including his house, his personal belongings and his blonde, beautiful and backstabbing lover, Mary (Marcella Michelangeli), who helped frame Gary by casting doubt on his alibi. He's also essentially taken over the entire town. Anyone who opposed him fell victim to an "accident" and now most of those left are conspirators or too scared to go against him. There are a couple of exceptions, including saloon / brothel owner Rosy (María Luisa Sala), whose husband had been murdered, and Dr. Jonathan (Giuliano Raffaelli), who has known Gary since he was a child. Both are eventual allies.

The best thing going on here is the wonderfully gloomy atmosphere achieved by Margheriti and the production people, who have set the events on the evening a tornado is passing through town so we get lots of swaying, unreliable lighting and constant gusts of strong wind blowing around dust, smoke and pieces of hay. This is clearly where the director's experience with Gothic horror - he'd previously made HORROR CASTLE (1963), Castle of Blood (1964) and THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964); all of those good efforts, too - is evident. So much of the movie takes place in the dark that our hero ends up riding off into the sunrise, not the sunset, at the end!

While this definitely has merit in the visuals and mood, the simplistic and predictable scripting knocks it down a notch. Almost the entire last hour is spent with Kinski lurking in the shadows, occasionally ducking into some catacombs that once served as a Native American burial ground, and shooting people, which grows repetitive and tiresome. There are no wrenches thrown into the works. No real curve balls. Just a straightforward revenge story with a little minor additional conflict thrown in to fill in the gaps. Most of the drama revolves around Acombar and his son, with the latter oblivious to his father's misdeeds but determined to find out what's going on. In this case, the apple fell very far from the tree as son Dick is kind and actually has some decency while the dad is such a bad dude he thinks nothing of gunning down a preacher in a church for refusing to help him.

Margheriti directs with an extraordinary amount of low angle shots and there are also quite a few zooms right into bright blue eyes, which seem to jump off the screen since the entire cast look like they've been slathered with bronzer prior to filming. He also manages to come up with a visually striking climactic scene, set in a burning room filled with candelabras and mirrors, which seems to have been a big influence on the finale of Argento's INFERNO (1980).

Kinski's fine as the emotionless, quiet avenger, but he's been put to better use elsewhere and this isn't one of his more memorable roles. There's no graphic violence, just a tiny bit of blood, and the only non-shooting deaths are a hanging and someone getting crushed by a church bell, a fate fittingly reserved for Euro horror vet Pigozzi. There's also a cheesy theme song called "Rocks, Blood and Sand" sung by Don Powell.

Reportedly, this is an unsanctioned remake - uncredited rip-off if you prefer! - of a movie released just two years earlier called Uno straniero a Paso Bravo / "A Stranger in Paso Bravo" (1968). Directed by Salvatore Rosso and starring Anthony Steffen, that film has identical character names and much of the same plot, though its writers are not credited here; Giovanni Addessi, who also produced the film, and Margheriti are the only two listed as writers. (For the record, I have not seen that film myself and thus cannot verify any of the plagiarism claims.)

Though a box office success in both Germany and Italy, this was never theatrically released in America. It made its VHS debut here in 1986 on the Unicorn Video label. In the UK it was released on video under the title Fury at Sundown in 1984. There have been quite a few DVD releases since then, though these are all of varying quality. Since the film is so dark, you really do need a proper print of it. That occurred in 2021 when Arrow Video finally got it out on Blu-ray in their four film set "Vengeance Trails: 4 Classic Westerns." The other titles included there are Lucio Fulci's Massacre Time (1966), Maurizio Lucidi's My Name is Pecos (1966) and Massimo Dallamano's Bandidos (1967). This set was followed by a second called "Blood Money" from the same company.

★★1/2

Nudo e selvaggio (1985)

... aka: Amazonas (Amazon)

... aka: Cannibal Ferox II

... aka: Cannibal Inferno

... aka: Dinosauruslaakson tuho (Destruction of Dinosaur Valley)

... aka: Massacre in Dinosaur Valley

... aka: Naked and Wild

... aka: Prisonnières de la vallée des dinosaures (Prisoners of Dinosaur Valley)

... aka: Stranded in Dinosaur Valley

... aka: Valle sangriento (Bloody Valley)

... aka: Zagubieni w dolinie dinozaurów (Lost in the Valley of Dinosaurs)

Directed by:

"Michael E. Lemick" (Michele Massimo Tarantini)

Part of the problem with trying to watch, label and file away films into certain subgenres is that we have a tendency to take a minor trend or faint blip on the horror radar and expand it into something much larger than what it actually is. A good example of this is the Italian giallo. There are supposedly specific qualifiers a film has to meet to even be considered a giallo, yet if you look at a list of these films from genre "experts" you'll find tons of entries that don't fit the established criteria at all. Stretching too far beyond the parameters of a defined term, or ignoring them altogether, in an effort to exaggerate the relevance of something only succeeds in making the term lose all meaning. Some subgenres really are just small!

As a result of the above, we now have endless people running around calling every single Italian film that has mystery, thriller, crime and / or horror elements a giallo. If that's not annoying enough already, these same folks have expanded their scope to include basically all of Europe, and sometimes even North America and Asia, in a never ending quest to broaden that small subgenre. The major issue I have with this is that it can be a huge disservice to certain films, which are frequently panned not because they're bad but because they fail to meet viewer expectations due to being improperly categorized.

Another example is the zombie film. Just like Mario Bava had laid down the template for giallo back in the early 60s, George Romero did the same for the modern zombie film. I don't know about you, but when I sit down to watch one of these types of films, I want to see multiple flesh-eating revived corpses; preferably a large, threatening mob of them, and I want primary focus to be put on them. I don't want to pluck a title off a list only for it have one zombie featured in a scene or two. Movies like that should not be grouped together with the likes of DAWN OF THE DEAD and THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. It's not the same thing!

And that brings us back around to the, again mostly Italian, jungle cannibal film. This was a tiny little subgenre that emerged in the 70s and extended into the 80s (there have also been a handful of more recent revival attempts) that became popular due to their high levels of exploitative nudity, gore and real animal killings. To be considered, these films should, at the very least, prominently feature jungle cannibal tribes. In other words, a film concerning a family of human-meat consumers living in the suburbs doesn't count. Nor does a film like Massacre at Dinosaur Valley, which features a jungle tribe for all of 20 minutes and, here's the real kicker, has no scenes of cannibalism in it unless one counts a single brief shot of a native biting into a human heart.

Despite a few similarities, Massacre really shouldn't be in the same company as Italian gut-munchers like Cannibal Holocaust and Eaten Alive. The fact it usually is creates expectations that the film doesn't, and shouldn't have to (it didn't mis-categorize itself), meet. Distributors certainly haven't helped matters in this regard either, releasing this under numerous alternate titles like Cannibal Inferno and Cannibal Ferox II.

What we really have here is a mishmash of genres and tropes popular at this time, only done in a breezy, trashy, bloody and ultra-exploitative way. There's a little Indiana Jones, a little Romancing the Stone and a little surviving-the-elements adventure, with pinches of crime, prison and animal attack movies and, yes, a little bit of jungle tribe terror. Usually, the tone is lighthearted and campy, and there's plenty of goofy, good-natured humor. At other times it's incredibly sleazy, brutal, violent and mean-spirited. Don't ask me how, but it works if we're just talking pure brainless entertainment. It's also refreshing to see a movie with "massacre" in the title that, ya know, actually has a massacre and a high body count.

Things open at a hotel / bar in São Sebastião, Brazil where various characters arrive hoping to catch a small plane headed toward Manaus the following morning. There's paleontology professor and author Pedro Ibañez (Leonidas Bayer) and his lovely, strong-willed daughter, Eva (Suzane Carvalho), who are hoping to check out the famed "Valley of the Dinosaurs" while they're in the area. And then there's glamour photographer Robert (Andy Silas) and his two models; the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Belinda, played by Naomi Watts look-a-like Susan Hahn, and the brunette, dark-skinned beauty Monica, played by Mary Reis, in apparently her only film role - a shame!

Adding some hilarious moments to the mix are a miserable, always-bickering middle-aged couple who hate each other's guts. Captain John Heinz (Milton "Morris" / Rodríguez) is a 'Nam vet whose impotency has turned him into a volatile, controlling, hot-tempered asshole. His boozy wife, Betty (Marta Anderson), runs around dressed like Marilyn Monroe and doesn't help her husband's mental state any by constantly picking at his scabs, publicly humiliating him and brazenly flirting with other men. And what would our movie be without an intrepid, resourceful hero? We get one, a pretty good one at that, in Kevin Hall (Michael Sopkiw - AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK), a broke, unshaven "gringo" paleontologist and fossil hunter there to collect and study dinosaur bones. Though amiable, Kevin's the type whose smart mouth always gets him into trouble. He's even black and blue from a bar fight before facing any of this film's myriad horrors!

While flying over the Amazon jungle, where a vicious tribe called the Acuara are said to live, there's engine trouble and the plane is forced to crash land. Everyone is killed except for Kevin, Eva, John, Betty, Belinda and Rob, who are then forced to make their way by foot through the dangerous jungle. Perils they face along the way include leeches, snakes, piranha, crocodiles, quicksand, broken high heels and John's increasingly unhinged behavior. And yes, also the Acuaras, who eventually show up to slaughter some of the group (blowgun darts, arrows, heart cut out), and then kidnap Eva and Belinda, drag them back to their village, drug them, strip them and dress them in beaded loincloths and headbands. A witch doctor then perform a ceremony to summon their God, who shows up with a brontosaurus skull head and green clawed hands! Using gunpowder from shotgun shells as a distraction, Kevin manages to rescue the ladies before they can be sacrificed.

You'd think having to deal with a jungle full of deadly critters, a psycho war vet desperate to relive the good ole days of blastin' "gooks," a bloodthirsty tribe and some monstrous demigod would be enough for one film, but not this one! Kevin, Eva and Belinda are then discovered by China (Carlos Imperial), who lures them back to his emerald mining camp and then holds them hostage. They're beaten, tortured and tied up, but China promises if they behave themselves, he might show them mercy and put them to work as slaves. In the meantime, Kevin is tied up in a pig pen and the ladies are constantly threatened with rape, by both China and his sadistic lesbian henchwoman, Mayara (Gloria Cristal). Can Kevin mastermind a way to get them out of this predicament? And, if he does, will flying saucers then suddenly emerge from the sky and abduct he and his companions?

I've seen this a couple of times now and have always enjoyed it. It's not intended to change the world, it's intended to entertain with briskly-paced action, blood, gore, laughs and copious amount of female flesh. It provides all of that and does so with a knowing wink, while also having acceptable production values (nice locations, sets, props, costumes, etc.), decent cinematography, an enthusiastic cast and a rousing score, some of which was ported over from the previous year's Blastfighter. All of that makes this one of the better Italian trash flicks from this time.

I didn't find any evidence of a U.S. theatrical release, so most people probably first saw this when it popped up on VHS, courtesy of Lightning Video, in 1986. Its U. S. DVD debut came in 2004 via Media Blasters, who included an interview with, and a commentary track by, Sopkiw, as well as an interview with the director. The 2020 Blu-ray from Severin includes new interviews with Sopkiw and co-writer Dardano Sacchetti, as well as roughly ten minutes of deleted scenes. 88 Films out of the UK have also released it on Blu-ray, though their release is slightly cut. Though not credited, the busy Luciano Martino was one of the producers.

★★★