The film starts in Vietnam with a soldier, Hooper finding two colleagues in a pit waiting to be freed. However, on trying to accomplish this he sees that they are eating human flesh as they are infected with a virus that turns people into cannibals. As if this wasn’t bad enough, he is then bitten by one of the men who is a friend called Charles Bukowski (!) Years pass and Hopper is now resident in Atlanta. He is managing his cannibalistic ways with the help of medication (!) but we can see him still getting the urge to sink his teeth into human flesh (the struggle is real). He suddenly gets a phone call from Bukowski who suggests they meet up for a drink and maybe a bit to eat (sorry, I couldn’t resist…)

Cannibal Apocalypse is a strange film. It’s a mix of action film, horror film and what is known as Vetsploitation (nothing to do with medically assisting pets and everything to do with armed forces veterans). Whilst i enjoyed the film up to a point, I didn’t really engage fully and thought it was trying too hard to be over the top and extreme. After a while, I just didn’t care what happened to any character in it and sat watching it with my arms crossed (not literally) and rolling my eyes (literally).

I thought it was great that an actor of name (John Saxon) was involved in a project like this but apparently he only read a poorly translated English draft of the script that didn’t mention cannibalism and when he realised that this was a part of the story, he threatened to quit the project. This is just a rumour and I, for one, don’t believe it. Saxon was one of those actors who made a career of starring in cult films and Cannibal Apocalypse fits perfectly in his filmography.

For me, Cannibal Apocalypse was an interesting experiment but, ultimately, it just didn’t work and hence, I didn’t fully enjoy it. And with a film title like Cannibal Apocalypse, I was expecting a depraved masterpiece.

The film was released in a heavily edited form and retitled as ‘Invasion of the Flesh Hunters’ with an R rating. It’s also known as ‘Cannibals In The Streets’.

2 out of 5 stars