Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978)

This is both a review and an analysis; as such, it contains spoilers.

Anyone hearing the rather lurid title "Mountain of the Cannibal God" and anyone familiar with cannibal movies might be expecting an unrestrained trashfest. While Cannibal God has some scenes thrown in for the exploitation market, the direction and writing of the film is outstandingly sharp. It is not just a good cannibal film, it rises above its subgenre to investigate the spiritual and bestial aspects of humanity the exist side-by-side, the lust for progress and wealth in contrast to the desire for peace and purity.

The film concerns a woman, Susan Stevenson, and her brother Arthur, trying to mount an expedition to a forbidden New Guinean island in search of her missing husband. The only man who can take her is Prof. Edward Foster. It doesn't take long for them to convince him to come, along with his aboriginal team. It gradually transpires that all of these people have hidden motives for wanting to go to this mountain.

(Spoilers start now)

The motives each of the characters have for going to the mountain are thematically very important. While Athur believes Foster's interested in the money, Foster is actually seeking release. By saving the life of a cannibal, he had been taken into their tribe as one of them. Having eaten human flesh, he's haunted and feels trapped, cursed. He believes by going up the mountain and killing the cannibals, he will have spiritual release; he'll be purged. This aspiration makes Foster a very spiritual character, as do his strong morals. He shows respect for others and their rituals. In the mission village, he alone doesn't have sex out of the group. He represents the higher aspirations of humanity.

Arthur and Susan, on the other hand, are interested in earning wealth from the uranium on the mountain. Susan misrepresents her interests as interests of spousal love and her husbands interests as scientific. In reality, her husband left her behind so as not to have to share the wealth with her and she's well aware of this. Susan and Arthur are representatives of 'progress,' which is spoke of often in the film as the opposite to the spiritual and more human concerns of others. Their interests are material and self-interested.

One of the major motifs of the film is ritual and the film is structured such that a ritual occurs at each major position of the expedition. The first ritual occurs early in the expedition, right after a spider is killed, in order to purge the group of incurred bad luck. The ritual involves the skinning, gutting, and eating raw of a lizard. Immediately the ritual motif links together two notions: barbarism and spiritual aspirations. This ritual is meant to appease the gods for an offensive act and is therefore a spiritual practice. But its performance is brutal and barbaric; much more brutal than the killing of the spider. Arthur expresses his contempt by attacking the aboriginals. Foster, on the other hand, defends them and their rituals. These reactions to ritual contrast, again, the spiritual and material interests of these characters. The man of progress simply tries to crush both the barbarism and the spirituality of the aboriginals without understanding: throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the proverb goes.

The second ritual occurs in the mission village, when the villagers are mourning the deaths of two of their own. The mission is right at the center of the film, chronologically and thematically. It is the only place in the film that is entirely peaceful and entirely spiritual. The new addition to the expedition from the mission, the physician Manolo, explains that after thirty years in the jungle the missionary has relaxed all of his rigid Christian views; his spirituality is entirely non-denominational. The entrance of Arthur, Susan, and Foster bring with them death and violence, like the Serpent in the Garden. Once they arrive, the cannibals are seen around the village; prior to this, everyone in the village didn't even believe the cannibals existed. A woman cheats on her husband with Arthur; Manolo sleeps with Susan; a cannibal kills the adulteress as her husband hangs himself. Materialistic progress is not compatible with the spiritual village; nor is the cursed, tormented soul of Foster, for having partaken of human flesh. The ritual occurs off-screen, with none of the expedition's members involved; they are not welcome even to see it. The priest and villagers then cast Foster, Arthur, Susan, and Manolo, out of the village for causing the deaths.

In between the second and third rituals, Arthur allows Foster to die by not saving him when he can. Foster never does get to attain his spiritual release. The materialistic Arthur stamps his aspirations out. Manolo, the other spiritual character, continues as the guide for Arthur and Susan. It's interesting that the spiritual characters play the role of guides, as though this were an allegory along the lines of Pilgrim's Progress. What it means that shortly after Arthur is consumed by cannibals and his own sister, moreover, will take some explaining, as the cannibals are certainly not representative of any positive spirituality as the mission is.

The third ritual is performed on the mountain of the cannibals, the mountain which means so many different things to so many different people. The ritual is in honour of their deity who is, it happens, Susan's husband with a geiger counter implanted where his heart was. It's explained that the primitive cannibals confused his geiger counter for an immortal heart. (I guess they never tried breaking it.) A photograph of the husband's depicts him with his wife. Not understanding photographs, the cannibals are convinced this is proof that she is a goddess. So they tie her up, smear her in blood and putrid flesh from her husband's head, and hold a feast on Arthur's body in honour of the god and goddess. There's a lot in here.

First of all, the geiger counter is a symbol that has appeared before. Foster had one in his pack, which Arthur stole. It is the tool to find the uranium, the wealth for which Susan and Arthur have really come to the mountain. The geiger counter for a heart thus depicts a being whose whole 'moral compass' is turned towards personal profit. The cannibals who worship this as a god, then, sure seem representative of a consumerist society, a society in love with wealth. That they consume other people is grim and actually pretty heavyhanded symbolism, which some have also claimed to find in Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust. What Cannibal Holocaust lacks that Cannibal God has is the spirituality. The cannibals are a group of humans whose natural spiritual inclinations have been perverted to profit. All the aboriginals seem like humans in their most basic form; and those with the mission are a humanity whose spiritual side is well-directed. There is nothing religious about this spirituality, nor need it be anything supernatural; just the spirituality of the intellectual and emotional aspects of humanity. The cannibals have a poorly-directed spirituality as their geiger-counter god shows.

The film ends with Manolo successfully saving Susan from the cannibals as they head down a stream. Her final act is to drop a necklace she received from the cannibals into the river. While it's not clear, it seems to me to indicate that the experience has changed her outlook; that Manolo, her spiritual guide, has saved her. Although she had previously corrupted him. What motivates Manolo to forgive and save a woman whom he knows to have allowed Foster to die, to have deceived him and seduced him, to have eaten the flesh of her own brother, is puzzling to me; he could have escaped without her. He also refuses to kill a venomous snake that was near to killing Arthur. Yet he has no reservations about killing the cannibals.

(Spoilers end now)

So Mountain of the Cannibal God, in sum, is a character-based jungle horror film about humanity: primitive or advanced, materialistic or spiritual, consumerist or, I guess, socialist. It doesn't address these themes in an expert way, but I do think it does address them. I find it fascinating and it stirs me, because these themes have always been fascinating to me. It makes the imagery of human brutality to animals, animals brutalizing other animals, less trashy and more a comment on human animality as opposed to humanity's higher possibilities. Mountain of the Cannibal God is not a great film, but it's a pretty good film.