Cannibal Apocalypse (1980)

Although it might be tempting to lump Cannibal Apocalypse in with similar gut munching genre films from the 70s and 80s it is both different from and much more entertaining than many of these. Director Antonio Margheriti keeps the action moving but also focusses as much on character as on grue, John Saxon creates a sympathetic lead, and the premise has some surprising symbolism about post traumatic stress disorder.

A platoon of US soldiers lands in a Vietnamese village on a search and rescue mission led by Captain Norman Hopper (John Saxon). Hopper finds two POWs trapped in a pit, munching on the flesh of a villager, and as he reaches out to rescue them, one (the distractingly named Charles Bukowski, played by genre legend John Morghen) bites him. Cut to a few years later, back in the US and Bukowski is released from a psychiatric hospital, but he still has a taste for human flesh, a craving caused by a virus contracted in Vietnam. Hopper starts to realise that Bukowski may have passed the virus on to him - and to anyone else that he can get his teeth into.

Margheriti does not skimp on the gore, such as the football sized hole that a shotgun blast leaves in somebody's guts, and it will not be too much of a suprise to hear that this film made the British Government's infamous Video Nasty list in the 1980s. Nevrtheless, Cannibal Apocalypse has several elements that lift the film above the more grim, cheerless and tiresome horror efforts that were also being made at the time. 

Firstly the script is both straightforward and fast moving, and gives John Saxon the opportunity to build a likeable and sympathetic leading character, an every-man thrust into a bizarre situation that gradually slips out of his control.

The polar opposite of Hopper is his former comrade-in-arms Bukowski. He is brilliantly played by Morghen, an actor who seems here as in the likes of Cannibal Ferox and House on the Edge of the Park, to be typecast as some of the most grubby and unwholesome characters in cinema history.

The most fascinating part of the film is the symbolism of the virus that causes them to turn to flesheating. Unlike the zombies or cannibals of other contemporary horror films, these characters do not become mindless killers, but, although slaves to their new appetites, remain seemingly sentient,  more like high functioning addicts. Another interpretation stems from where the characters originally contracted the virus, their wartime experiences. This, like Post-traumatic stress disorder, is something that they bring back to civilian life, and, like PTSD, can sit dormant for years, but if untreated, eventually begins  to have a detrimental effect on the veterans, as well as their families and friends, and, eventually, their fellow citizens.

One accusation that could be placed at both Vietnam and Cannibal genre films is racism. The North American or European protagonists are, even if cruel and degenerate, still the "normal" people that the audience relate to, and the Vietnamese / Cannibals are savage, exotic, mysterious and "foreign", even if the action takes place for in their own country.  Cannibal Apocalypse overcomes these by placing most of the action in urban America, and making the Americans the cannibals. The flesheating is never implied to be a part of Vietnamese culture, just something that the war has driven the Americans to acting out.

Of course there are some of the usual things present in low budget exploitation filmmaking, such as clunky dialogue, underwritten supporting characters and badly matched stock footage, but none of this detracts from a distinctive, and unsettling slice of 80s horror.

Christmas Evil (1980)

As a counterpoint to more wholesome festive film fare comes Christmas Evil, a camp and entertaining effort from the glory days of the Slasher movie.

The plot centres on Harry Stadling, a boy who had his childhood illusions about Christmas shattered while watching his dad dressed in a Santa suit, groping his mom. Cut to thirty odd years later, and Harry now works in a toy factory, desperately trying to recreate those illusions for a new generation of kids. However, after a series of humiliations at work, Harry suffers a breakdown and starts to think that he is Father Christmas - although this Santa seems just as interested in punishing the naughty as rewarding the good.

Christmas Evil came out during the height of the Slasher film boom (He Knows You're Alone, Maniac, Terror Train, Don't Answer the Phone, and of course, Friday The 13th all hit cinemas in the same year), helping to kick-start a sub-genre of Santa themed killers (To All a Goodnight, Silent Night Deadly Night etc.), but is distinct from many of these. Firstly, although it is a sexual incident that drives the plot, and the killer is acting as a punisher (two staple tropes of these sort of films), the killings are not carried out as punishment for sex. Rather, they are done as a vengeance for the humiliation that Harry suffers, and his anger at people exploiting Christmas for commercial gain at the expense of goodwill.

Christmas Evil lacks the high level of grubby sleaze of others in the genre, instead going for a lurid (in a camp way), and exaggerated, almost dreamlike feel. This can be seen in the use of juxtaposition of jolly Christmas songs in the overall context of a slasher film, the portentous dialogue, odd camera angles, and sometimes ludicrous plot twists (such as the idea that a man dressed in a Santa costume could stab three people outside a busy church, drive off in a van with reindeer painted on the side, and the authorities would have trouble finding him.) Granted, the sight of Harry obsessively spying on young children through binoculars looks possibly more unnerving nowadays than on the time of release, but there is no suggestion that he is deriving any sexual gratification from this.

As a contrast to the fanciful, disorienting, illusion that Harry increasingly sees the world as, is the grimy reality of life in a small industrial town, with the small minded people who live and work there. The best of them are, at heart, good people who just want to work and provide for their families, while the worst would rather exploit the goodwill of someone like Harry, an oddball dreamer, who will never fit into the hard-drinking macho world of his colleagues.

Of course, in many ways this is still a traditional slasher, with many of the familiar tropes such as bloody killings with sharp objects and a grating wonky synth soundtrack. However these both work perfectly well within the overall over-the-top feel of the film.

Christmas Evil ends with a classic horror archetype, the tragic monster hounded by a torch wielding mob – a mob that seems to have their flaming torches suspiciously close to hand, suggesting this may not be the first time they have behaved like this. The pursuit takes place through increasingly surreal looking streets lined with white snow and glowing Christmas decorations, and it is ambiguous as to how much of this is in Harry’s imagination. There is a wonderful slightly expressionistic touch in the final shot, with Harry’s van flying off a bridge, but the angle hinting it could be heading into the sky, suggesting that, in his mind at least, Harry may finally get his wish to be Santa Claus.