By Keri O’Shea
Naming films is a tricky matter. Of course, you want your title to appeal to its right audience, of course you want to generate anticipation, but by the same token, you run the risk of false advertising if you put too much in there. It’s like the perils of advertising a film with something like, ooh, I don’t know, ‘the most terrifying movie you will ever experience’. It sets the film up for a fall; the chances of it living up to that sort of hype are slim to none. This is very much the case with Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death: okay, yes, there are women in it, there’s even a suggestion of cannibalism, and there is at least one avocado. But does it deserve such an overblown title? No it bloody well does not, and once I’d seen the Full Moon Productions logo appear on my screen, I began to feel a little bit like I’d been cheated. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as much a fan of Charles Band’s insane little monster movies as the next person, but I’m not sure I’d trust him to put together what at least ostensibly sounds like an exploitation flick, or at least a pastiche of same. Knowing absolutely nothing about this film before viewing it, I was hoping for something grim and Ferox-y. What I got instead was Cannibal Capers. More or less minus the cannibalism.
It seems at first that director J. F. Lawton – a man who bizarrely went from directing this to writing the feelgood prostitution rom-com Pretty Woman – is indeed making an exploitation film, though. The thing is, the film puts nearly all of its nudity and violence into the first five minutes, as two explorers stumble upon a group of bathing so-called Piranha Women (in the heart of the Californian avocado jungle?) who don’t take kindly to the interruption. They attack the men and, it is suggested, turn them into jerky. And that’s pretty much your lot; the rest of the film is decidedly exploitation-lite. If I was a cynic, I’d suggest that the director front-loaded the film with nudity to get the rights sold, but ours not to reason why…
The plot is as follows: this Californian avocado jungle is the only source of avocados in the free world, and as such is of great political significance. The thing is, there’s this remote tribe of cannibal women in there who keep killing all the men who get anywhere near them. To solve this problem the government approaches Feminist Studies specialist Dr. Margo Hunt (played by soft-core doyenne Shannon Tweed) and tells her she has to go and make peace with those damn radical feminists. Dr. Hunt does so, accompanied by a bimbo student called Bunny (Karen Mistal) and…Bill Maher, who apparently enacted being a feminist-hating macho man long before being reincarnated as a political polemicist. Have I said feminist too much? Believe me, the term is used far more in the film. Take a drink every time you hear it, and you’ll be flat on your back by thirty minutes in. Oh, and Dr Hunt and her followers also have to retrieve a feminist academic who was sent into the jungle to negotiate with the Piranha Women, but went native instead. The missing academic is one Dr. Kurtz (Adrienne Barbeau). Do you see what they did there?
It all sounds diverting, I recognise that, and the cast features some interesting faces; sadly, it’s so much better in writing than in actual fact. The film veers from obvious parody to plain awfulness as it desperately tries to crack jokes at the expense of feminism, shoehorning masses of dialogue in there because evidently someone couldn’t bear any of their research to go to waste. There’s ever a suspicion that underneath all the bad jokes, someone has a genuine chip on their shoulder about gender relations, but that’s by-the-by. Never knowing if it wants to be sly or goofy, this film throws pratfalls and silly physical humour into the mix but in so doing, never manages to feel consistent. You’d think it would be hard to get things so wrong when your basic premise is dropping a Women’s Studies professor behind enemy lines for the sake of avocados, but the jokes don’t land or they’re hammered into the ground like tent-pegs until all semblance of humour is extinct. The key to good comedy is knowing when to STFU; alright, a handful of the jokes here land, but most do not. This doesn’t stop them taking up masses of screen-time anyway.
Lacking humour, the film could have played up the Piranha Women themselves, but after the misleading boob deluge of the first five minutes you have to wait nearly an hour to see the women again. There’s not so much as a drop of blood either, not really, let alone any attempt at showing us The Other White Meat. The closest you get is someone tied to a sacrificial slab, and he sodding escapes. New rule: you can’t use the word ‘cannibal’ in a movie title if you’re only going to hint at it. Although some of the closing scenes were amusing enough, by that point I was totally disengaged and, although the film isn’t particularly long, it had blotted its copy-book long before then.
Intriguing people on board it may have, and an oddball 80s vibe to it too, but Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death fails to live up to its name. Hey, it was always going to be a risk. Whilst this may fare better as a beer movie with a group of friends, it didn’t work very well for a solo viewing. Bring back the endless stock footage of animals killing each other, the 70s synth soundtracks and the hungry natives: I just prefer my cannibal movies that way. Even Adrienne Barbeau couldn’t save this one.
Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death is out now on Region 2 DVD from 88 Films.