Shriek Show / Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1) / Color / 1 disc / 90 minutes

Blurring the lines between skin flick, true crime, exploitation, ethnographic film, romance, murder mystery, and courtroom drama, AMAZONIA is a suprisingly potent and well-made Italian jungle film.

Starring sexy blonde Elvire Audray as leading lady Catherine Miles, and directed by Mario Gariazzo (1974’s THE BALLOON VENDOR), AMAZONIA treads the same waters as cannibal films such as THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER, and in fact follows the same template: A civilized individual is captured by savages, struggles to adapt, and eventually accepts his or her fate.

AMAZONIA goes beyond that and veers into some much-needed revenge flick territory, resulting in a film that titilates, horrifies and satisfies!

Naive British college student Catherine travels to South America to spend the summer at her family’s lucrative rubber plantation and celebrate her 18th birthday. The family sets out on the Amazon river on a houseboat in hopes of finding a pleasant spot for a picnic. Instead they drive right into a hailstorm of poisoned blowgun darts.

Injured herself, Catherine watches helplessly as her mother and father are struck down by natives and beheaded. She’s captured and dragged through the “green hell” of the jungle, eventually ending up at the natives’ village, where she is bartered off to a lecherous native in exchange for livestock.

Fans of sleaze unite, because from here on, Audray remains in various states of undress for the remainder of the film, as do all the tanned native women.

When it’s discovered Catherine is a virgin, she is treated like a child and afforded a modicum of freedom. After she attempts escape, she is assimilated into the tribe in a painful deflowering ritual involving a stalk of sugar cane. One of her initial captors, Umukai, a native she believes killed her parents, wants Catherine as his companion, and although she despises him, she feels a strange desire for him as well.

Eventually Catherine becomes a part of the native society, embraces their customs and rituals, and develops a friendship with the tribe’s sole English-speaking resident, Umukai’s sister, who was raised in a mission. Eventually she learns the truth about what happened to her parents, and vows revenge, even though it will mean banishment from the tribe, and losing Umukai, who she has fallen in love with.

AMAZONIA is told as a framework story, as Catherine narrates her ordeal with a reporter in the beginning. Despite the film’s assurance that Catherine Miles was a real person, this is a fictional account.

Often incorrectly classified as a “cannibal film,” AMAZONIA contains no scenes of cannibalism. It has often been marketed with the title CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST 2, in an effort to capitalize on the wave of Italian cannibal films popularized with titles such as Umberto Lenzi’s MAN FROM DEEP RIVER, and Sergio Martino’s MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, among others.

What we do have is a film containing uncompromising violence, often interlaced with the startling beauty of the jungle and South American landscape. There are scenes of beheading, stabbings, blowdart deaths, uncomfortable sexual situations, arrow penetrations, and one incredible progressive sequence of a hanged man’s face rotting off. Conversely, the competent film-making makes use of the lush environment’s waterfalls, flora and fauna.

Anthropologists may cringe at the ethnographic representation of the natives and their stereotypical customs, but they are fairly standard for this type of fare. Nudity is all over the place, but it’s rarely used in a lewd or prurient context.

From a storytelling standpoint, AMAZONIA is genuinely solid. It only falters toward the end in a quagmire of courtroom drama, but that’s easy to overlook considering the Grand Guignol that took place leading up to it.

Image quality is good throughout, although the audio volume is very low on the presentation. The DVD includes minimal special features: An Elvire Audray photo gallery and trailers from Fangoria International and Shriek Show.

This is a four star effort: “Shamefully Choice!” See a trailer for the film below!