Movies - The Anthropophagous Beast

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	Movies - The Anthropophagous Beast

The Anthropophagous Beast is a 1980 italian language horror film, directed by Joe d'Amato and co-written by d'Amato and George Eastman, who also starred in the film.

The film also starred Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Margaret Donnelly, Vanessa Steiger, Mark Bodin, Bob Larsen, Simone Baker, Mark Logan, Rubina Rey and Zora Kerova.

The plot

A group of tourists arrive on a small Greek island, only to find it almost completely deserted. It seems that the only person still alive there is a blind girl who does not know what has happened to the rest of the town, but is terrified of a man who she describes as smelling of blood.

As members of the group disappear or are murdered by a mysterious man, the survivors search for clues as to what is going on. They find a diary, which tells the story of a man who was shipwrecked with his wife and child. In order to survive, the man was forced to eat his dead family. This act drove him insane and he went on to decimate the rest of the island's inhabitants.

In the film's most notorious scene, the killer strangles a heavily-pregnant woman, and then pulls the foetus from between her legs and proceeds to eat it.

In the end the killer is dispatched by means of an axe to the stomach, but before he dies he attempts to devour himself, chewing violently on his own intestines before finally dying.

Background

The Anthropophagous Beast was director Joe d'Amato's first 'straight' horror film, having previously made erotic horror films such as Emmanuelle in America and Erotic Nights of the Living Dead. D'Amato and co-writer Luigi Montefiore were long-time associates, and Montefiore often had lead roles in d'Amato's films, usually under the pseudonym of George Eastman.

As well as The Anthropophagous Beast, the film was known in by several other titles, including:

Antropophagous
The Grim Reaper
Man Eater
Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper (DVD re-release title)

In the UK, the film was placed on the DPP list and classified as a video nasty for a time in 1984. This was due mainly to the infamous fetus-eating scene. In reality, the fetus was a skinned rabbit. This did not prevent the film from being falsly described as a snuff film, a story which was even featured on BBC News. It is now available in the UK in a cut form, under the title The Grim Reaper.

Follow-ups

D'Amato followed up this movie with a pseudo-sequel, Absurd, the following year.
An unofficial remake was created by German horror director Andreas Schnaas in 1999, entitled Anthropophagous 2000.

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