Customer Reviews

The Grim Reaper

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Finally! "Grim reaper" edition was severely cut, japanize edition was very hard to get and it was rather expensive, latest german or italian editions had technical problems... Now we'll have it as it was supposed to be - and here at Amazon! And rather cheap! Amazing! I've been waiting for this moment for so many years!
Now "Anthropophagus" may not be a masterpiece but it has become a cult classic very long time ago. In the beginning of 80s violence on screen were measured by the standards of "Friday the 13th" and so on. And only Italian filmmakers seemed to dare making something utterly different. They brought gore to the extent when it was really nauseous. In "Anthropophagus" you can see two scenes (one of them is an infamous fetus-eating scene) that are truly disgusting. By the way they were cut from many previous releases of the film. But excepting gore and guts I can say the movie has a really horrific atmosphere - a dreamy one like in many italian horrors. Watching "Anthropophagus" you have a feeling of fear, irreversibility and death - very unpleasant feeling which appears even when everything seems to be calm on screen. I'm pretty confident this is the best work of Joe D'Amato who's known for making cheap exploitative flicks. If you have seen some of them, don't make up your mind about "Anthropophagus" - it's totally different.
If you're in for horror, if you like giallo and such names as Argento, Fulci, Lenzi, Deodato and Bava mean something to you - this movie is for you. I repeat it may not have a big cultural value but you MUST have it on your shelf if you call yourself a horror buff

If your looking for the same old Hollywood "pop-horror" crap, then you might as well stop reading this review now. If you are looking for some good extreme horror that pushes the envelope (which all GOOD horror does), and is actually scary, unlike movies that come out of "Wussy-Wood", then you should definitely check this one out. Although it has it's flaws (cinematography, dubbing), overall it is a great Italian horror movie with great acting, great scenery, and of coarse gore galore.

The story is about a man that ends up having to eat his family after being stuck in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean (got to do what you got to do). Not only does he eat his family but devours a whole town on a small Italian island. How cool is that!? a group of friends decide to take a trip to this island only to find out the whole town is dead and there is a cannibal lurking around.

Gore includes: fetus eating, multiple stabbings, zombie-esque neck-biting, clever to the head, a hanging, and a dude who eats his own entrails.

If your just as sick of Hollywood as I am and want to see some real horror , check out Anthropaphagus.

I like this movie. It's just so damned screwball. You just don't, all that often, see defeated cannibals eating their own guts in anthropophagic effigy. It's just not an everyday occurrence. I know what you're thinking. I've tried all the other options, but is cannibalism really right for me?

The movie is bottlenecked on an island that has mostly avoided the wiles of civilized (1980) technology. Apparently, by the time our intrepid cast arrives, the cannibal, Nikos, has assaulted nearly everyone with his anthropophagic fervor. However, a note of admonishment: Nikos is extremely wasteful, leaving whole corpses, mostly uneaten, to lie around and rot. This is an affront to all the starving cannibals in the world.

It takes a while for the horror to regenerate its presence after Nikos' initial slipshot murder of two non-related tourists at the beginning of the movie, but it gets there eventually. One by one, the cannibal stalks and kills his prey. Down they go, a bite here, a bite there. During the mausoleum/gobbled fetus scene, Nikos actually suffers a flashback to the impetus of his anthropophagic transformation. Stranded at sea on a tiny inflatable raft with his voluptuous wife, he contemplates using his dead son as sustenance and the wife, so repulsed by the idea, throws herself onto Nikos' knife, demanding that he cannibalize her instead. Utilizing Nikos as an anthropophagic archetype, cannibalism will impart to its host the following: hair loss, rugose forehead, superhuman strength and endurance. (Consult your physician immediately if you experience nausea, constipation, dizziness, ocular bleeding or sleeplessness.)

Finally, Nikos meets his demise at the business end of a rusty mattock. Humbled by the blow, he slumps to his knees, then matter-of-factly loops his raw pink intestines through the grievous wound, and eats them with vigorous anthropophagic contempt. Cut and print! Look for Nikos' triumphant return in Anthropophagus 2: Electric Boogaloo, where he has to use his anthropophagic skills to save to local rec center when an evil tycoon threatens to replace it with a vegetarian farmer's market.

Alot of disturbing scenes in this great horror flick, and thats what makes it so good and netorious. Nay sayers who don't like blood and guts flicks, ignore their views as they are biased toward the true brillance of this movie. This is a great horror/shocker film that all horror fans will enjoy.

Joe D'Amato's masterpiece Anthropophagus is both one of the finest and the least appreciated of the Italian Horror Golden Age. D'Amato had already established himself as the master of raw gore in Blue Holocaust (aka Beyond the Darkness aka Buried Alive), and the snuff movie footage in Emmanuelle in America (the inspiration for Videodrome). In his entry into the slasher genre, he enriches Anthropophagus with a steady build-up of layered atmosphere until he has recreated the old dark castle effect of the classic Universal monster movies of the 30s. Then he lets the blood flood. Released butchered in the states as Grim Reaper, this version is uncut and contains the films two highmarks: the scene where a fetus is pulled out of a pregnant woman and eaten, as well as the pull out your fingernails climax where cannibalism is taken to it's most extreme. Most haunting is the flashback explaining where the flesheater came from, it makes your stomach drop. This movie establishes D'Amato in the ranks of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci as one of the masters of the spagetti nightmare.

Why would anyone even buy this knowing it's the [terrible], heavily-edited version? This makes me sick. All this talk about "freedom" and a silly 80's horror movie cannot even be viewed by adults. When the un-cut version becomes available, then I'll give 5 stars and purchase.

When a group of tourists take a boat to an island they discover there is nobody there, however it doesn't stop them from spending the night at an abandoned mansion but there is a deadly cannibalistic madman on the loose.

Gross and interesting Italian cannibal flick that is a little slow sometimes but does warm up on the memorable gore such as the abortion sequence and eating the fetus scene with some nasty flesh-eating here. It plays like a mystery-horror thriller but fails a bit for scares or good pacing, Tisa Farrow (Mia's sister) whom some horror fans know her as the main woman from "Zombi 2" does a good performance. It's an all-right effort that kind of capitalizes on the successes of "Zombi 2" and "Cannibal Holocaust" as it's nowhere as good as those movie.

This 2-Disc special edition has good picture and sound quality with a few grains and the extras include trailers, trailers to other "Shriek Show" releases, a documentary on Joe D'Amato (Director), Alternate opening sequence, and photo gallery.

Also recommended: "Cannibal Ferox", "Jungle Holocaust", "Zombi 2", "City of the Living Dead (a.k.a. Gates of Hell)", "Day of the Dead", "Cannibal Apocalypse", "Battle Royale", "Ichi The Killer", "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky", "The Untold Story", "Silence of the Lambs", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series plus 2003 remake & The Beginning", "Bloodsucking Freaks", "Men Behind The Sun", "The Toxic Avenger", "Torso", "Saw Trilogy", "Final Destination 2", "Dawn of the Dead (1978 and 2004)", "Night of the Living Dead (1968 and 1990)", "The Return of the Living Dead", "Return of the Living Dead 3", "Silent Hill", "Pieces", "Re-Animator", "Dead Alive (a.k.a. Braindead)", "Shogun Assassin", "Phenomena", "Tenebre", "Opera", "Demons", "Caligula", "Beyond The Darkness", "The New York Ripper", "Maniac (1980)", "I Spit on Your Grave", "From Dusk Till Dawn", "Hostel", "Blood Diner", H.G. Lewis movies, "Pet Semetery" and "Cemetery Man".

A film Directed by Joe D'Amato (Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust). Brings you the UNCUT, UNCENSORED, and UNRATED version of Anthropophagus - The Grim Reaper onto DVD on TWO Discs! That also includes an EXTRA BONUS on disc TWO, a "Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut" Part 2 Interview with the director himself. The movie is about a group of American students go on a tour of the Greek Islands and find themselves attacked and eaten by a horrible and very psychotic monster (George Eastman) who believes that eating their flesh will help him atone for eating his OWN family after they were shipwrecked! This version of Anthropophagus - The Grim Reaper, includes the infamous 'ABORTION' scene! This movie also stars Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone & Serena Grandi.

Although this is one of the "all-time" video nasties, the version put on this DVD hardly can be watched for every drop of blood has been cut from this version. Anchor Bay, if you read this, please release this movie as it should be!

A group of young men and women sail the Adriatic only to come to an island strangely abandonned. What they don't know is that a monsterous cannibal , an Anthropophagus (original title) is stalking them and eating them one by one. Although the US cut doesn't include the vicious fetus eating scene or the gut munching finale, this film is still an effective thriller, and a bit more cerebral than the traditional Friday the 13th genre slasher which is a surprise considering that it was filmed by Joe D'Amato, the king of the Italian C-movie.