Friday, April 21, 2023

The Last Cannibal.

Police detective Sergio (Sergio Goyri) and his wife Cynthia (Cynthia Torach) are a married couple on the rocks. Cynthia feels neglected by Sergio because he spends most of his time at work investigating hard cases & hardly ever being home. Sergio’s partner at work Ramirez (Andres Garcia Jr) is also having marital problems and it’s gotten so bad that his wife ends up leaving him to go stay at a spiritual haven that promises "relaxation" & "peace". The haven is owned by an anthropologist named Abraham (Gerardo Albarran) who’s very charismatic & intelligent. “Spiritual” as well. As it turns out, this spiritual haven of Abraham’s is actually a deadly setup to bring in victims for the cannibals that he has brought from the amazons to eat up and for him to eat up as well since he too is a cannibal—a nasty habit he picked up when he was lost in the amazons many years ago. When Sergio’s wife gets the courage to leave him for good, she ends up in the clutches of Abraham & his cannibals!

From directors Alejandro Todd & Enrique MurilloEl Ultimo Canibal (or “Canibal” as it's titled in the opening credits) is an oddity from 2003 that is quite impressive. Now don’t get me wrong, the movie is low-budget & cheap and can be quite incoherent at times, but it is still very intriguing & the cannibal action is very amusing to see. The native cannibals in the movie look like something out of the amazons for sure (or rather like the cinematic versions of the past) and there's plenty of gore & splatter to keep your eyes open—lots of munching on fake body parts & all. Gerardo Albarran can either be a good guy or a bad guy in a movie, but he’s definitely a better bad guy for sure and in El Ultimo Canibal he plays one bad motherfucker named Abraham who just happens to take a liking for human flesh & also brutally sexually assaults his female victims as well. There’s also some scenes with Abraham stabbing dudes in the streets and stealing their wallets. Why he was doing that is weirdly explained near the end of the movie, but I honestly feel these scenes were actually from an unfinished movie from one of its 2 directors. Why was there even 2 directors for this 1 cannibal movie? Definitely sounds like the case of an unfinished movie being completed by one another.


El Ultimo Canibal is no Cannibal Holocaust, no Cannibal Ferox or any other of those type of movies, so please don’t compare. Just let El Ultimo Canibal be its own kind of cannibal movie and surely you will enjoy the fuck out of it because it is an intriguing oddity to watch. 


Oh, and why is the movie called “El Ultimo Canibal”? There’s a line at the end of the movie where Sergio Goyri’s character says:This world is full of crazies. We catch some now and then far more dangerous ones come out the next day—Rapists, kidnappers, killers. I think we’re way far behind on catching the last cannibal.” The way he says the final lines is truly remarkable. Cheesy as hell, too.