Pure exploitation, not caring about who or what they lie about. The people and land of India and Sri Lanka passed off as Papuan, which is about as believable as passing Swedes off as Arabs. Different hair, different skin color, different faces.

This film has the usual nonsense about so called primitives somehow both worshipping white people as gods and also wanting to kill them. Ursula Andress has never looked so unappealing. In the jungle she somehow stays pasty and unhealthy looking, and with her eyebrows shaved off, alien.

And it's just a bad dull confused film that bombed, with cartoon violence that has obvious glowing red paint we are supposed to believe is blood. From reviews of the time:

Allmovie-"a graphic and unpleasant film, with all the noxious trademarks intact: gratuitous violence, real-life atrocities committed against live animals and an uncomfortably imperialist attitude towards underprivileged peoples."

Popcorn Pictures- "Mountain of the Cannibal God merely goes through the usual Italian cannibal exploitation film motions."

Daily Grindhouse-"problematic imperialist attitudes towards indigenous populations".

Here's yet another movie in the Italian exploitation cycle of the cannibal film. This isn't a particularly brilliant movie, but one that is pretty easy to watch with only a few grisly moments scattered throughout. This plays more like a jungle adventure than some of the others, with our explorers having to overcome all manner of dangers including waterfalls, rapids, crocodiles, snakes, and of course the cannibals themselves. You know the drill; see one of these films and you've seen them all. All have basically the same elements except in different orders with different actors. And what actors we have here...

Ursula Andress takes the lead. The former Bond girl and Hammer beauty (appearing as the star of SHE) is in good shape here for a woman of 42 years. She could pass for ten years younger no problem. Andress is the mascara-wearing and rather fearless explorer complete with an Indiana Jones-style hat which she wears at all times. Her acting ability is rather limited but she's more than happy to disrobe when the script calls for it, especially in the predictable ending which sees her stripped and then painted (with putrefying flesh, ugh!) by the natives who think of her as a goddess.

Also popping up is Stacy Keach ("you never forget the taste of human flesh!"),surprisingly a rather popular and famous actor. I'm not exactly sure what he's doing here. I mean, obviously Andress just wasn't getting the parts anymore and had to sink to low-grade exploitation, but Keach? His salary must have been hurting the producers of this too as he is bumped off about halfway through, ignobly falling down a waterfall to his death. Other Italian cast members include a blond-haired creep who gets a spear in the gut for his crimes and a bearded Christopher Lambert lookalike who turns out to be the film's cheap macho lead.

All of the familiar ingredients are in place for this film. You've got the foreign members of the party being picked off one by one in various gruesome ways. You've got one poor extra walking into one of those spiky jungle traps and getting impaled. Then there's the excessive animal cruelty, which sees all manner of monkeys/snakes/birds/lizards/spiders/you name it/ getting killed under the camera's unflinching gaze. These are the hardest parts of the film to stomach. There are more decapitations, impalings and castrations than you can shake a stick at, but the really grisly bits involve various rotted corpses and the inevitable flesh-eating.

The cannibalism doesn't really come into it until the ending, which sees the last two survivors of the party getting captured and held prisoner by the white-painted natives. The film even includes a cannibal dwarf, which must be a first! There's nothing like a good healthy dollop of exploitation to keep people watching. In the film's one clever idea, Andress' husband is discovered tied to a stake, his body believed to be that of a god. You see, the natives think that the Geiger counter attached to his belt is the man's everlasting heart, and due to uranium in the vicinity, it's constantly going wild. This makes for a cool image, and is about the only originality you'll find here. For fans of adventure treks or Italian exploitation cinema, this passes the time nicely but never proves to be anything exceptional.

This incredibly violent but beautiful adventure horror film doesn't seem to have a proper way out for Ursula Andress as a wife searching for her missing husband in the wild outback of New Guinea dealing with all sorts of horrific creatures and even cannibalistic tribes, treading through mucky landscapes and impossible mountainous regions with the help of guide Stacy Keach, other assorted Europeans and fearful natives. They know that danger is everywhere around the corner, and if they aren't being decapitated or pierced with spears, they are flung over waterfalls or end up a snack for the hideously frightening puka tribe. Nearly nude natives aren't the issue, but the painted white pukas have no shame in their bloody rituals. This is not a film to watch late at night because it's not just the gore but the beastiality of the pukas that may give you nightmares.

You really see very few cute mammals and birds in this, but snakes of varying sizes and poisons, lizards of all kinds and even the most vile kinds of humans. A seemingly loyal guide turns out to be a member of the puka tribe, seeking vengeance on the visitors, and in the conclusion, they seek to turn them into Cannibals as well. Watchable but frequently hard to take when it goes too far, it gives a glimpse into a part of the world rarely explored, a place where Indiana Jones would dare not go. Andress is gorgeous and displays her body in a variety of nude shots. When she is nearly raped by a puka, the chief of the tribe reacts in a way far too realistic looking to be faked, although it must have been. The conclusion in a giant cave brought out feelings of claustrophobia in me that was more frightening than anything else. Unforgettable in every way but that isn't necessarily a good thing.