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(More customer reviews)With Shriek Show, connoisoeurs of eurotrash know its best to wait, because quite frankly, few of the titles in their catalogue are worth the single-disc asking price! BUT, as with their Post Apocalyptic Action Triple Feature Pack, their Psycho Killers Triple Feature Pack, their Jungle Horror Triple Feature Pack, their Martial Arts Triple Feature Pack and their Evil Animals Triple Feature Pack, their Zombie Triple Feature Pack, their Wicked Women Triple Feature Pack, and their Demons Triple Feature Pack, this newest edition, the JUNGLE GIRLS TRIPLE FEATURE PACK provides a cheap fix for those who absolutely must see some of the worst euro-junk from the 80's. And at about $6 a disc, these pieces of crap are finally WORTH the money, though you'll pay far less in certain retail chain stores. I found it for $12.99, which further justified a peek.
Up first is GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS, a deathly dull Jess Franco piece filled to the brim with topless women who remain topless throughout to distract you from the utter bankruptcy of ingenuity and awfulness of the story, about a young topless jungle girl, raised by a black tribe, who grows up to take revenge on the nearby tribe of topless evil amazons who killed her parents when she was young. Coming as is did at a time when Franco movies had long since stopped being even remotely interesting (and trust me, most of this man's work isn't even remotely interesting, save for perhaps WANDA THE WICKED WARDEN), the whole thing feels like one lazy grab for what few dollars remained in the exploitation market at the time before being dumped internationally on video under any number of the usual retitlings. In fact, much of the film was directed by a Eurocine journeyman and it was largely edited by company men as well. Eva Leon proves she's still got it, at least from the neck down, as the leader of the Golden Temple Amazons, her wardobe consisting of an eyepatch, a vest and a teensy tiny g-string as she whips her minions and our heroine with gusto. The golden temple "set," such as it is (and probably the centrepiece of most of the scenes actually shot by Franco), is really just a cave with foreground miniatures of "golden" pillars and friggin' BIRDCAGE bars feebly tyring to telegraph some kind of scale. Oh, screw it, let's move on to...
AMAZONIA: THE CATHERINE MILLS STORY (aka Schiave Bianche: Violenza in Amazzonia). Probably the best of the bad bunch in this set, if only for the participation of famed mondo pioneer Franco Prosperi (Mondo Cane, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Africa Addios) who seems to have had an influence on director Mario Garrizzo, who directs this largely in the pseudo-documentary style of Prosperi and Jacopetti's earlier works. Hell, most of the cutaways in this (the shots of beautiful scenery and animals killing each other) look suspiciously like they were shot by the Mondo giants, for they frequently don't match the footage of the main story, . The rather haunting score feels familiar, too. That story, such as it is, is told in flashback by virginal schoolgirl Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray), on trial for the murder of two people. Turns out her parents were killed by a ruthless tribe (she says) during a picnic boat trip down the Amazon. Rescued by the benevolent lead hunter of the tribe, which is the typically nonsensical mix of Spaniards and Asians that seems to crop up in all of these damned things, she gradually learns their ways, and watches their graphic rituals, and spends virtually the entire film topless, and falls in love with her new guardian, all the while nurturing her plan for revenge against him and his people. The revelation of the killers' identities would have been a surprise had they not diappeared from the narrative DURING the crucial murder sequence because the filmmakers couldn't figure out a smart way to temporarily divert the audience's attention away from them, so they just vanish until the end of the film. Dialogue in this is minimal, and comes largely from the courtroom framing sequence, while the presence of a Mondo-style narrator at the beginning and end of the film (where we're supposedly shown footage of the "actual" Catherine Miles in jail, is another nod to Prosperi's roots.
Finally, we have DIAMONDS OF KILIMANDJARO, another slog through the jungle from Jess Franco starring Katia Bienert (EUGENIE) as the white jungle goddess sought out by a crew of hunters and relatives working for her mother, Franco regular Lina Romay doesn't just PLAY a bloated bedridden mess in this, but was actually starting to LOOK like one in real life, and she was only 29! But even in her brief scenes, she fares better than Bienert, who looks positively STONED--or stupid--throughout, swinging topless from vines she barely has the strength to hold on to. One would never believe that this stick of wood had been "acting" for three or four years by the time this came out! Her enemy in this is topless Black Jungle Goddess Aline Mess, a feral stunner who has planted Katia's WHITE, SCOTTISH uncle (complete with tam o'shanter hat and bagpipe theme music) on the tribal throne as part of her cunning plan to take revenge on the evil white men who have threatened her people. Relatively bloodless, but generous in the boobies department, but since it's a mid-80's Franco, everything is shot so matter-of-factly, and without one hint of sensuality, that you just stop carring after the second pair are paraded across the screen.
Extras on these discs are the photo galleries (on all three discs), original trailers for each film, plus several others (again, all three discs) and interviews with Eurocine honcho Daniel Lasouer (on GOLDEN TEMPLE and DIAMONDS, each about 12 minutes), both of which prove to be more enlightening--and more interesting--than either of the films they accompany.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Jungle Girls Pack (Golden Temple Amazons / Amazonia / Diamonds of Kilimandjaro)
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