Antonio Climati is a man who will be remembered for one thing and one thing only: spectacularly contentious mondo films. During the 70s and early 80s, Climati produced a handful of some of the most unpleasant movies ever committed to celluloid, all in the name of "documentary". It was his 1976 film THIS VIOLENT WORLD that directly inspired some of the scenes in Deodato's exploitation classic CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, a film which dealt a critical blow to the mondo genre. With the similarities between mondo and the violent jungle travelogue approach of the classic cannibal movie, it seems only fitting that Climati would finally try his hand at it too. Ironically, his film has clearly been strongly influenced by CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, right down to the title...
Cannibal movie fans will immediately recognise the plot devices used in THE GREEN INFERNO from Deodato and Lenzi's past frolics in the jungle. However, it had one main difference- it was made ten years after the "golden era" of the genre. This is greatly reflected in the violence of the movie, which is enormously toned down. Whilst the "westerners captured by natives" plot remains perfectly in line with the most generic cannibal movie, there is no actual cannibalism in the picture and gore is kept to an absolute minimum. Similar to Deodato's CUT AND RUN, THE GREEN INFERNO treads the boards of a cannibal pictures whilst carefully avoiding cannibalism.
This isn't the only cannibal convention that has been sacrificed here. One of the most controversial aspects of the genre is the depiction of cruelty against and the killing of animals. Amazingly in THE GREEN INFERNO, these are replaced with scenes of COMPASSION towards animals! In one scene, a monkey is revived by the exploring party... and in total shades of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, at another point, a turtle is pulled out of a water tank, only to be replaced unharmed.
One has to wonder what Climati's intentions were. The awkward "anti-animal cruelty" stance that the movie seems to adopt would be easier to appreciate if one hadn't seen Climati's previous work. Movies such as SAVAGE MAN... SAVAGE BEAST positively reveled in horrifically drawn-out scenes of animal killing, so what could have changed in the meantime? In honesty, many of the animal scenes are still clearly cruel and putting the subjects under distress. This makes Climati's stance quite transparent. I honestly believe he was attempting to criticise the cannibal genre just as Deodato had damningly and directly criticised him in the past. This was also coupled with the chronological fact that audiences were simply less willing to watch animals being butchered with machetes by the time this flick was made.
As a movie, THE GREEN INFERNO is competently made yet somewhat forgettable. It has the same atmosphere as the earlier genre entries, but comes across as being rather watered down. The sound-track, photography and dialogue are all utterly perfunctory, and besides the animal issues mentioned already, a genre veteran can quite easily predict the entire plot after a few short minutes. However, in a way it is a fittingly odd end to an extremely strange genre of exploitation cinema- anaemic, bitter, and self-referentially critical.
