I recently went to a "mystery horror movie night" at the local Magic Lantern Theater in Spokane WA. They played Jesus Franco's The Diabolical Dr. Z, which I was going to review cause it suits the blog, but I never did. What I was surprised about was how good it was. Sure, there were some really bizarre moments and the scripting wasn't good, but the cinematography was pulling elements from German expressionism, and the potential was all there. Its strange that Franco went so far from that into this and things like Oasis of the Zombies.
Devil Hunter is one of these movies where you're watching it and whether you're paying attention or not, you're sorta like, "what's going on here? who is that? what's the plot to this movie?" and given that, it's also a time checker. You'll be looking before the 30 minute mark to see how much of this plotless, messy schlock is left.
Wikipedia and IMDb both say a short blurb sentence about a model who is kidnapped in the jungle, and a guy sent to rescue her and confronting cannibals. Yeah, I mean I guess. There are certainly cannibals, and there are also indigenous tribes that dance around showing tribal nudity. There's a lot of this in who knows sorta "plot" movements, and holy crap does it go on for way too long. This is 105 minutes when it should've pulled a Blood Feast and been just barely an hour.
The thought I had while watching this was all these movies going to South America or the Philippines or wherever to film the tribal stuff. What did those people think? I mean, I doubt they were practicing tribal nudity at this time - some places in Africa and maybe really remote tribes were maybe, but like did they know what was being filmed, did they understand that they were being depicted as cannibals, etc?
I’m not trying to bring woke into this, more about wondering what exactly was the interaction here- when they asked these women if they wanted to be in a movie, and I guess the women said yes, and then they said” take off your clothes and dance around like an idiot,” What exactly did they think was going on? Especially when a camera was literally aimed at their crotch? I wonder if that’s part of the Video Nasty thing with some of these cannibal movies and the like, is that they knew that these people had been exploited. They were like, "bro you went to some Third World country and paid these people basically no money to act like cannibals and be sexualized? Come on, dude!" I guess that is the definition of exploitation though, it is how these are labeled.
So this is too long, but there is a point about 80 minutes in where just about all the characters are naked, there's hazy gauze all over the camera, the sound effects are echo-ey and strange, the breasts and vulvas are being zoomed in on by the camera, and weird slow motion shit is happening and what can I say... it fucking rules. Its incredible. It reminded me a lot of Oasis of the Zombies, which I gave 1 star to in 2015. That is a movie I legitimately still think about 11 years later for evoking such a weird and specific feeling that honestly I haven't felt in anything but Franco's work. I have to give credit, it grabs ya, and it reminds me of the things I liked in the Blind Dead series.
I will give this a 2.5, I guess. Near pornography levels of nudity and some light cannibal fare, this is kinda a hard R by today but it's not that crazy for Nasty.
Argument slightly against Video Nasty
Nasty Meter 2/10
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