In a way, we’re breaking ourselves new ground in terms of dinosaur movies.
Technically.
What i’m getting at is that Massacre In Dinosaur Valley… doesn’t actually feature any dinosaur.
Come one, couldn’t even be arsed to reuse footage from a more recent dinosaur film? Sure as shit they couldn’t reuse footage from One Million B.C. Or the 1925 The Lost World, since this one is in color… because that would imply them spending time in colourizing the old b&w footage.
But yeah, i’m not surprised that some synopses do actually list anything BUT dinosaurs being into the actual film, because guess what, this isn’t a dinosaur film.
It’s actually an Italian cannibal flick named “Nudo E Selvaggio” (lit. “Naked And Wild”), also going after the unofficial title of Cannibal Ferox II (according to IMDB, anyway), but for english speaking regions (and some others) it was retitled as Massacre In Dinosaur Valley, with modern releases (under the Massacre In The Dinosaur Valley, mostly) being uncut, unlike the older ones, which is par for the course with cannibal films.
Welcome to the experience of sifting through dinosaur movie lists, or more appropriately the experience of searching for genre films of any kind back in the day, you were bound to be jebaited by some of these companies Trojan horsing old and new flicks alike as something else entirely in the hope you bought it without having time or desire to do some research first.
But aside from me falling for it and willing to take you down with me in this unplanned and dinosaurless review for a rubric about dinosaur films, there’s the old Hermes Conrad clause of technicality supreme, because it’s not completely random, as the plot is actually about a group of fossil hunters that while flying have the plane crashing in the Amazon jungle, where the survivors will have to face the wild fauna, the cannibals going around (still pissed off at Deodato and Lenzi, i assume) and slave traders, because i guess the dinosaur slot wasn’t available, but there WAS space to have also the super models on the planes.
The cannibal did need something to fuck and/or eat, maybe not even in that order, i guess.
We will assume the “ Valley Of The Dinosaurs” (which is actually named as such by the characters in the movie) had dinosaurs at some point, but then i guess it’s going by RPG logic, so “Death Mountain” doesn’t have to really mean it.
…. yeah, you’ve been duped into it.
You have when the closest thing dino-related is the obvious “dino claw hand” prop the witchdoctor/chanter uses at one point to draw blood from one of the captured supermodels.
This one comes from a very forgotten name in the field, Michele Massimo Tarantini, using a psedonym – as genre tradition dictactes ), Michael L. Lemick in this occasion.
as to why it’s also been released as “Cannibal Ferox II”, is because… pure marketing, there’s not even some shared actors from Umberto Lenzi’s original Cannibal Ferox.
Also, it’s a very “choppy” film at times, even its uncut version that includes the cockfight (as in birds) the movie just feels like you’ve accidentally pressed a button on the remote and skipped 5 scenes ahead, but NOPE, it just jumps around doing bullshit to pad itself out before these fuckers can become cannibal chow, including random lingerie shots with Brazilians posings as “cannibal Amazon people”, our protagonist doing shit-tier solo “Bud Spencer & Terence Hill” style barfights, shagging ladies, and whatever is delaying any plot to actually happen.
To be honest, this is one of the weakest in the genre i’ve seen yet, you do get a lot of sleaze, as in a lot of nudity, pervy men ogling, etc., but on the other hand there’s not much gore, the special effects are crap, which is what i consider the most important aspect, since you’re never given any reason to give any mileage of shit about the characters or the plot, for that matter.
It’s a late entry in the cannibal flick trend, and one that can’t even get the cannibals rights, they feel too clean and staged to even be slightly believable looking as “savages”, almost an unintentional parody. Almost.
That’s actually the best way of describing the film: almost.
It’s almost so bad its good, since the acting is over the top and crap to a notable degree, the characters are all sleazy douchebags of some variety, the locations are beatiful to look at, but the latter is a thing pretty much all of these italian cannibal film had by virtue of shooting in these kind of locations (as it the soundtrack that’s very synthetizer heavy, it was the 80s in this case) and the trashiness isn’t even that strong to make it go straight to hilarious.
it’s campy and trashy, sure, but it’s so shoddy and tame (the piranha bit is fun cannibal trash, though) you will be reminded that there’s a reason the “cannibal trend” died out a decade before, as in, it run its course as most trends do, even Deadato couldn’t quite manage to make lightning strike twice, true, but sure as shit weak entries like Massacre In Dinosaur Valley didn’t help in reigniting interest.
There are some laughs to be had and some fun moments, but this is simply a bad cannibal flick that’s severely underbudgeted and underdelivers in pretty much all aspects, aside nudity and sex (which isn’t that surprising since Tarantini’s filmography is prevalently made up of vintage sexy comedies that were popular, because sure as hell doesn’t deliver on the gore effects or anything else, but especially disappoints on the gore, which isn’t exactly fine praise for a cannibal film.
I mean, you might argue if it’s even really a cannibal flick if it doesn’t have a castration scene…. which this one does not, FIY. The best is a heart rip-and-munch sequence, whatever.
Maybe if you enjoy your ol’ italian cannibal flick with a lot more trash to it… you’re still likely to be honestly mostly bored by Tarantini’s tale of well groomed cannibals in the “dinosaurs valley: dinosaurs (and gore) sold separately”.
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