“Make Them Die Slowly” on The Deuce

(a/k/a "Cannibal Ferox")

Released:  1983 (in USA)

Director:  Umberto Lenzi

Writer:  Umberto Lenzi

Starring:  Giovanni Radice (as John Morghen), Lorraine De Selle, Danilo Mattei (as Bryan Redford), Zora Kerova, Walter Lucchini (as Walter Lloyd), Fiamma Maglione (as Meg Fleming)

"Oh God, please let her die soon...And let me die soon, too, please!"

Recently, I visited New York City for the first time in about 20 years.  Although I was only there for the weekend, I carved out time to stroll The Deuce on Saturday night.

The makeover of Times Square was well underway the last time that I walked those streets.  So, I wasn’t surprised to find the grindhouses of 42nd Street gone.  Still, the area retains its electric vibe and it was a nice to see outposts of AMC Theaters and Regal Cinemas had opened on the block.

At least, you can still catch a movie in the one-time “Entertainment Capital of the World”.

I was even more delighted to see that the old Liberty Theater is now one of those “Odditoriums” for Ripley’s Believe It or Not!  

How perfect is that?

One summer night, in the early ‘80s, I stood in front of the Liberty for about a half-hour trying to screw up enough courage to cross the threshold…

They were showing a pair of films that I could scarcely believe existed.   The titles were impossibly lurid.  The images on the posters, beyond shocking.   The double-bill?

Trap Them and Kill Them and Make Them Die Slowly.

At this point, your vision should become all wavy, as we flashback to a simpler time.  Before the author was forced to confront the complete depravity of the Italian cannibal genre...

When I was about 15 or 16, I started buying the “Village Voice” from my local newsstand in Cranford, N.J.  That paper opened up a whole new world of moviegoing to me.

Soon, my friends and I began to trek in to the awesome revival houses in Manhattan: 8th Street Playhouse, Bleeker Street Cinemas, the Thalia.  For our efforts, we were introduced to the works of Kubrick, Scorcese, Bergman, and even Russ Meyer.

The trip in from New Jersey could go one of two ways.  If you took the train into Manhattan, you stepped out at Penn Station.  33rd Street.  Madison Square Garden, Macy’s, Empire State Building...  Nice neighborhood. 

If you took the bus in, you stepped out into Port Authority.  42nd Street and 8th Ave.  Literally, the belly of the beast.

As far back as I can remember I wanted to visit 42nd Street.  I’d watch all those cautionary tales about the big city, you know the ones: Taxi Driver, Death Wish, The Exterminator…  And in every one, there’s a scene where the hero walks down 42nd Street.

Oh sure, in the movies, he (always a he) ends up propositioned by a strung-out hooker, threatened by a switchblade-wielding pimp, or mugged by some coked-up street punks.

But BEFORE that happens, usually in some darkly lit alley, the hero is first seen walking down one of the most brightly lit and garishly colorful streets in America. 

It wasn’t the sex or drugs or violence that I wanted to see.  It was those movie theaters!

Seriously.  Go back and re-watch those films.  42nd Street looks like the coolest place on earth!   All of those marquees, barely in focus, behind the narrowing eyes of our pushed-too-far hero, promising “Three Big Hits!” or “Double-Fisted Fury.”

The best my local Cranford Theater could muster was, “Kiddie Matinee.” 

The first time that I stepped onto 42nd Street I could not believe my eyes.  It was even BETTER than it looked in the movies!  There were a dozen theaters on that single block, between 7th and 8th Avenues.

And they showed the craziest flicks!

I used to convince my friends to swing by there, on our way to a more sensible part of town, just so I could check out the posters.

During one of our excursions, we ran into the Original Cocaine Smitty, Jr.  He walked right up and introduced himself, just like that.  He was a drug dealer, of course, but you probably guessed that.

Smitty tried to usher us into his “office”, which was the Church’s Fried Chicken on 42nd and 8th.  When we politely declined, he sized us up and declared, “Why the hell did you drag your white asses all the way out from Jersey if you don’t want some blow?” 

It was a scene right out of one of those movies!

That was 30 years ago.  Since then, I’ve met hundreds of people whose names I can no longer remember.  But I’ve never forgotten the Original Cocaine Smitty, Jr.

As we never actually DID anything on 42nd Street, except gawk, my friends soon grew tired of Times Square.   So, I went on my own.

I’d walk the block, and plan an imaginary night of moviegoing.  Should I see the pair of Kung Fu flicks, or maybe the Blaxploitation triple-bill?  Then, I’d come up with some excuse not to go inside.  “I’ve already seen that first movie,” or “The poster for the bottom half of the bill looks really bad.”

Eventually, I’d hop on the subway and do something far from the chicken joint that the Original Cocaine Smitty, Jr. called home.  Far from those other chicken places, as well.  The ones burned into my brain at the tip of John Eastland’s flamethrower.

Then, came that summer night.  I spotted the marquee as soon as I turned the corner.

Trap Them and Kill Them and Make Them Die Slowly.

What.  The.  Fuck?!?!

I knew movies.  I read the “Village Voice”, for god’s sake!  Yet Andrew Sarris and J. Hoberman never mentioned these.  It was like a giant rift in the space/time continuum had opened up before me.

Carefully, I sidestepped the abyss and circled the block, as usual.  I looked over the other posters, but all I could think about was the Liberty.  Eventually, I found myself back in their foyer.

“The Most Violent Film Ever Made” screamed the placard over the entranceway.  “Banned in 31 Countries!”  There was a portable TV near the box office, which showed the trailer on a loop.

I couldn’t process any of this.

At that point, I’d never heard of the cannibal genre.  In fact, I’d only seen one Italian gore film, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, and I hadn’t yet learned that that film was Italian!

The trailer didn’t help.  It featured scenes of some cheesy New York crime film, intercut with…I don’t know what.  Raw footage of hell?

What the fuck were these films? 

Of course, the answer was right inside.  I just had to buy a ticket… I hemmed and hawed.

One the one hand, this was surely the only time these films would ever screen in public.  By the next morning, anyone who worked at this theater would be in jail and the prints of these features, or whatever they were, would be burned.

On the other hand, if New York was as dangerous as all of those movies made it seem, and if Times Square was a magnet for the worst of the worst, then surely EVERY PERVERT IN THE CITY was inside this theater right now!

What to do?  What to do??

I did what any white-ass boy from New Jersey would do.  I thrust my hands down into my pockets and skulked away. 

I turned my back on Make Them Die Slowly.  But like the original Cocaine Smitty, Jr., I couldn’t forget it.

I reshaped the whole humiliating evening into a humorous story, which I told to anyone who ever brought up Times Square.  “Guess what was playing there?  Go on, guess!”  It never failed to get a chuckle of disbelief.

A few years later, I was living in Los Angeles and working at Trans World Entertainment, a Cannon Films wannabe.  One of of my duties as a “runner” was to swing by the warehouse and pick up promo pieces and screeners for the sales staff. 

One day while helping the warehouse guys search the shelves, I came across a stack of posters for Make Them Die Slowly.   It turns out that one of the heads of TWE also ran a company called Continental Motion Pictures, which held rights to the film in Central America, or some such place.  I asked, but no one on the sales staff had a VHS copy.

A decade went by.  I now lived in Hollywood and loved hanging out at the fleapit cinemas on the Boulevard.  Imagine my shock, when I picked up the “L.A. Weekly” one day in 1997 and saw an ad for a screening of Cannibal Ferox (the more accurate name for Make Them Die Slowly), about a mile from my apartment…

Held the night before!

Of course, that screening at the Vine Theater lives on forever, as it was videotaped by Sage Stallone and Bob Murawski and the footage later included as an extra on the DVD.  Cannibal Ferox was one of the first releases from Grindhouse Releasing and you’d better believe that I snatched it up as soon as it hit the shelves.

So, you may ask, how is this film, that burned its name so deeply into memory?  It’s pretty crappy, actually.

In the years that have gone by, I’ve read enough to understand Cannibal Ferox’s place within that strange offshoot of Italian horror, the cannibal genre.  And thanks to the internet and the DVD revolution, I’ve now tracked down most of the related films. 

They are as violent, sleazy, racist, misogynistic and, above all else, morally indefensible as you’ve heard.  That said, I’ll argue that there are some compelling ideas in a few of the cannibal films, including that OTHER notorious entry, Cannibal Holocaust.

Cannibal Ferox?  Not so much.

Still, if you are fan of F’dup Flix, and have a strong stomach, it remains a rite of passage.

Cannibal Ferox was directed by Umberto Lenzi, who made a string of fine Giallo and Poliziotteschi films (Italian slasher and crime films, respectively).  Lenzi also directed an interesting adventure film called Man from Deep River. 

That flick is a rip-off of the American Western, A Man Called Horse, with Thai tribesmen subbing for Native Americans.  Aside from the locale switch, it had one other minor twist.  The main tribe, the one that comes to accept the white warrior, lives in fear of another, even more barbaric tribe.  One that EATS their enemies.

And with that simple, sleazy addition, Lenzi gave birth to the cannibal genre.

By the time of Cannibal Ferox, Lenzi was chowing down on his third helping of flesh (Eaten Alive was his second effort).  You can sense his post-meal stupor throughout the film.  In an interview on Grindhouse’s release, Lenzi states that he never wanted to be the king of the cannibal genre.  In fact, he correctly hands that crown to his friend, Ruggero Deodato.

Ever the journeyman, Lenzi would deliver just what the distributors wanted, even if his heart wasn’t in it.  So, if Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust raised the bar on disturbing imagery, Lenzi would projectile vomit over it.

As noted by everyone, Cannibal Ferox’s story is a pale reflection of Cannibal Holocaust.  The basic set-up remains the same – white people with an interest in anthropology go searching for primitive tribes in the Amazon, treat them poorly, and rue the day. 

Yet, Lenzi strips away all of the earlier film’s complexities: The found footage idea is ditched, the fractured time structure is smoothed back out, and the search & rescue framing device becomes a half-baked police procedural.

Most crucially, all of the troubling ethical sins are scrubbed from the anthropologists and handed to a lone outsider character, a drug addicted lowlife on the run from the NYC mob.

As Mike, Giovanni Radice (billed as John Morghen) bursts out of the jungle and onto the screen in full-on, batshit crazy mode.  Within seconds he’s calling Gloria (Lorraine de Selle), our doctoral student/heroine, “a twat.”  Minutes later, he’s knifing a piglet and snorting coke.  In a ridiculous plot development, Gloria’s friend, an out-of-place party-girl named Pat (Zora Kerova), finds all of this an irresistible turn-on.

Meanwhile in New York…

I kid you not!   The film also features a running subplot about Myrna (Fiamma Maglione), a woman that Mike left behind in New York, who is also under the spell of this psycho.  Questioned by the cops and threatened by the mob, Myrna refuses to believe that Mike is the bad guy that everyone says. 

In another absurd story reach, Myrna eventually heads down to South America to search for him, herself.  Because, you know… Love.

Finally, we come to the reason why this film is so famous.  After an hour of Gloria & Co. stumbling around in the jungle while Mike sadistically tortures every living thing that crosses his path, the floodgates open.  Much like the 3rd act of a rape/revenge flick, the put-upon natives rise up and exact justice…in the most graphic ways imaginable.

If you’re looking for gore, Cannibal Ferox is your huckleberry.  Castration, decapitation, amputation, disembowelment, eye-gouging and, of course, the infamous breast-piercing. 

Yep.  It’s here.  It’s gross.  Hooray?

If you’re looking for something more to chew on, you’re out of luck.  Well, there is one nice moment, where the girls comfort each other, while in a literal black pit of despair, by singing “Red River Valley”.  Of course, it’s absurd – does Lenzi believe that Americans still sing this folk song from the 1800s?  Yet, it’s also a rare tender moment in an otherwise brutal film.

So, yeah...

Unless you’ve been waiting 20 years to see this film, don’t see the film. 

But, pick up the Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray, anyway!  I’m serious.  I don’t like the film, and I still jumped at the chance to upgrade.

The 3-disc set is so cram-packed with interviews, documentaries and just plain LOVE for all things grindhouse-y, that you can skip the movie and still feel like you walked those mean streets of Times Square, back in the day.   Just like me… 

And the Original Cocaine Smitty, Jr.

Come to think of it, this movie would have been a whole lot better if Radice’s character had half the charm of the Original Cocaine Smitty, Jr.

I mean, why drag your white asses all the way down to the Amazon, if you don’t want some blow?

Footnotes:

1. The screengrabs on this page are from the DVD, not the Blu-ray!, from Grindhouse Releasing, because, yes, my computer is that old.  Besides, the photos are heavily compressed and do not represent the actual PQ, anyway.  The DVD now appears to be out of print, but you can buy the Blu-ray here.

2. I never did see Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, the more accurate title of Trap Them and Kill Them.  I lost interest once I read that it was directed by Joe D'Amato.

3. The name of the Original Cocaine Smitty, Jr. was not changed to protect the innocent.  If anyone else ever met him, please post about it below!  I am sorely disappointed that Google has never heard of him.  Hopefully, this post now changes that.