Imagine spending forty years being known for eating a baby. That’s Antropophagus; or The Savage Island; or The Grim Reaper, depending on whether you like your cannibal films to sound like a Black Metal band, a Thrash Metal band, or a Death Metal band.
Thanks to one particularly infamous scene, this grubby little slice of Italian cannibal horror has become synonymous with cinematic depravity, to the point where many people couldn’t tell you another thing about it. Which is a pity, because beneath all the notoriety lurks a surprisingly effective little horror film.
Directed by Joe D’Amato, one of Italian exploitation cinema’s most prolific merchants of filth, Antropophagus was clearly designed to shock. D’Amato, after all, wasn’t exactly known for subtlety. This is a man whose filmography ricochets between hardcore pornography, zombie films, post-apocalyptic action, sword-and-sandal epics and whatever else happened to be paying that particular week. If there was a trend, Joe D’Amato was on it like a fly on shit.
The story follows a group of tourists island-hopping around the Greek islands who decide to make an unscheduled stop after their boat develops engine trouble. The island appears completely abandoned. Meals have been left half-eaten, homes stand empty, and there’s not another soul to be found. Naturally, instead of turning the boat around and getting the hell out of there, they split up.
It soon becomes clear the island isn’t deserted at all. Lurking amongst the crumbling buildings is a hulking, wild-eyed cannibal known only as the Antropophagus (George Eastman), a former resident who became stranded on the island and was eventually driven insane after resorting to eating human flesh to survive. Now everyone else is on the menu.
The tourists themselves are the usual assortment of horror fodder. They’re hardly the deepest characters ever committed to film, but they’re believable enough as ordinary people caught in an extraordinary situation, and D’Amato wisely gives them just enough time to settle into the island before unleashing hell.
One thing that immediately surprised me was just how restrained the film is. Going in, I’d expected wall-to-wall gore and sleaze, but D’Amato spends a remarkable amount of time simply building atmosphere. The empty village, crumbling buildings and eerily silent streets create an oppressive sense of isolation long before anybody meets a grisly end.
It helps that the island itself is a fantastic location. The ancient stone streets and crumbling buildings give it the feel of a forgotten corner of Greece, untouched by time. It looks less like a holiday destination and more like the sort of place Odysseus would’ve sailed past whilst quietly deciding, “Absolutely not.”
The downside to this slow-burn approach is that Antropophagus quite often mistakes people wandering around for actual suspense. There are long stretches where characters simply stroll from one empty building to another shouting each other’s names with all the urgency of someone looking for the TV remote.
The performances aren’t exactly going to trouble the Academy Awards either, but they’re perfectly adequate for this sort of film. Most of the cast exist for one reason and one reason only: to become dinner. Thankfully, the villain more than makes up for it.
Standing at well over six feet tall, Eastman is an intimidating presence before he even starts killing people. He barely speaks throughout the film, relying almost entirely on his imposing physicality and permanently crazed stare.
He doesn’t feel like a traditional slasher villain so much as a starving animal that’s forgotten how to be human. He also looks like what would’ve happened if Jason Voorhees had spent ten years stranded on a Greek island living exclusively on fishermen.
When the violence finally arrives, it’s easy to see why the film gained such a notorious reputation. By modern standards the gore isn’t especially extreme, but D’Amato certainly doesn’t shy away from ripped flesh, disembowelments and mangled corpses. The practical effects remain impressively unpleasant over forty years later.
The kills also have a nasty, grimy quality that modern horror often lacks. There’s nothing slick or stylised about them. Every murder feels dirty, desperate and painfully physical, as though D’Amato wanted the audience to wince rather than cheer.
And then there’s that scene. If you’ve heard anything about Antropophagus, it’ll almost certainly be the infamous foetus sequence. It’s still shocking. Not because it’s especially graphic by today’s standards, but because it’s the sort of moment you simply don’t expect a film to have the balls to include. Even now, forty-odd years later, it retains the power to make audiences recoil.
Ironically, I found the ending even more memorable. The final confrontation is gloriously grimy exploitation cinema. Blood flows, bodies pile up, and the Antropophagus ultimately meets his end in one of Italian horror’s most bizarre death scenes, literally tearing into himself in an animalistic frenzy. It’s disgusting, ridiculous, and utterly brilliant.
Few films benefited more from the Video Nasties panic than Antropophagus. Long before most people had actually seen it, its reputation had become far larger than the film itself. Watching it today, it’s easy to understand why it caused such controversy, but it’s equally surprising how much of the film relies on atmosphere rather than relentless gore.
That’s perhaps its greatest strength. The long stretches of silence, the empty streets and George Eastman’s looming presence create a genuine feeling of unease that the gore simply punctuates. Joe D’Amato proves remarkably patient as a director, allowing the island itself to become every bit as unsettling as the cannibal stalking it.
Dismissing it as “that Video Nasty where the baby gets eaten” does it a disservice. Beneath the controversy lies a surprisingly atmospheric slice of Italian horror, elevated by George Eastman’s genuinely imposing performance and Joe D’Amato’s knack for creating grubby, oppressive worlds.
It’s not the non-stop gorefest its reputation suggests, nor is it the forgotten masterpiece some cult fans claim. It’s simply a solid, slow-burning exploitation horror that still manages to get under your skin. Just don’t watch it when you’re hungry…or babysitting.
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