AMAZONAS (1985)
A thing that bugs me immensely is how foreign movies portray Brazil. That gets more riled up than Bruce Lee all p.o. about Hollywood´s handling of chinese characters. A particulary idiotic case is the “Moonraker” scene where James Bond jet-boats the Amazon river and suddenly ends up down Iguaçu Falls, something as plausible as going from the Mississipi River to the Thames in two minutes on a straight line. Well, allow me to dispel some myths.
Yes, we do have a big ass green area in the north of the country, the Amazon Rain Forest, located in the state of Amazonas. But that´s as far as we go in terms of Savage Land. Our country has a decent amount of ecological reserves, but there´s no naked cannibals running amok the urban streets of Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. You won´t find snakes under the hotel bed and there are no piranhas in our beaches (they can´t survive in salt water, dammit!). Not even Amazonas is as thrilling. Giant cobras are rare and they don´t move about like springs, and you´re more likely to be et by a bunch of regular-sized alligators than a single huge crocodile. And even that involves a lot of bad luck, for our lazy alligators prefer to spend the day tanning at the sun, and will only bite if you´re stupid enough to come close and pat ´em in the head.
Italian director Michele Massimo Tarantini, neé Michael E. Lemick, now lives in Brazil. He knows the contry. He should have known better before commiting this offending piece of trash. But then again, maybe not. If he portrayed the REAL Amazon, this movie wouldn´t have been so stupidly amusing.
The story of “Massacre in Dinosaur Valley” (a.k.a. “Nudo e Selvaggio” and renamed “Amazonas” for the Dragon release, althought the opening credits maintain the english title) is clichéd to the very last speck of celluloid. We have the charismatic american actor Michael Sopkiw, in his last film, as the not-so-invincible Kevin (to Tarantini´s credit, the hero gets his butt whooped in the beginning, while trying to beat two guys twice his size). We have the tropical version of Professor Challenger (in this case, “Professor Ibañez”) and his gorgeous daughter (soap opera star and professional Indy racer Suzane Carvalho), from “Women In Fury”; she has a site at
http://www.uol.com.br/suzane/). We have the impotent, neurotic ´Nam vet José and his posh high-maintenance wife (Marta Anderson, also in “Dona Flor and Seus Dois Maridos”). And to add gratuitous T&A, we have a photographer and two models. Oh yeah, there´s also cameos by the great, late Jofre Soares, who worked with José Mojica Marins in “The Black Exorcism of Coffin Joe”, and comedian Roberto Roney wasted as an unfunny drunk.
Kevin is a macho archaeologist (isn´t that an oxymoron?) from the Boston Institute of Archaelogy. I don´t know if Boston really does have such institute, but I´m sure the name was chosen because it rhymes with “bosta”, a brazilian slang for “shit”. Kevin wants to dig dinosaur bones on a forbidden area of Amazonas, and the only one with clearance to go there is Prof Ibañez. He then kisses the scholar´s ass by quoting his books (much like that annoying kid from “Jurassic Park”) and gets a free ride with the above-mentioned crew. But the plane clashes (it´s one of them Star Trek-like clashes), leaving ´em stranded in the heart of the jungle (BTW, it´s not even the real Amazonas, but the Tijuca Forest in Rio de Janeiro!). On the way back to civilization, they stumble on hungry alligators, piranhas, quicksand and a tribe of meat-eating indians who smoke pot, use pyrothecnics and have a lot of med school plastic skulls around. But the real threat is an illegal mine where the sadistic China (actor Carlos Imperial, who´s not chinese at all) abuses his slave laborers. Everything´s derivative, but at least it´s well directed and full of gore and nudity.
If you like cheese, you´ll like “Amazonas”, but here´s a fair warning: the scene depicted on the cover art can only be found in another b-movie called “Conan the Barbarian”, starring a muscleman with a funny name full of letters; I think you´ve heard about this one. Oh, and sharp ears will recognize the score. It´s the same one composed by Andrew Barrymore for Lamberto Bava´s “Blastfighter” (also starring Sopkiw, also co-written by Dardano Sacchetti, who´s not credited in “Massacre”), with a lame pseudo-latin song thrown in to add the “brazilian” flavour. Yeough, I say.
The transfer is fine and clear, with just two scenes looking like they came from a VHS tape (maybe the original negative was lost). The longest one is an extension of the sex scene between Kevin and the brunette model; the other is short and shows the mentioned pyrotechnic show, a sequence so lame it should be left out. But at least Dragon did their best to make a real complete version. It´s a pity that their edition of “Happy Hell Night”, released at the same time with a false “uncut edition” label, has almost all the gore chopped off.
P.S.: Oh yeah, I was almost forgetting: this DVD is PAL. If your fancy home theater can´t handle it, don´t even try.
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