I've watched Skin Em Alive first and the amount of footage that turns up in that film from this one is unbelievable. It seems that director Siciliano did just film Guiseppe Castellano rolling about in his back garden, then inserted that into the African footage from this film. Somehow he ended up with a much tamer film, because Congo Hell has a much more nastier tone to it that Skin Em Alive.
In the Congo, some cowardly Captain has just gone and had all his men captured, tortured and killed, with the exception of a French woman. The Captain has made it back to base, but has lost important documentation that he must regain (he actually used it as a bribe to escape his captors). Now he must return with another squad of mercenaries.
When I think about it, this is just the usual 'Dirty half-dozen' Italian war movie plot, only set in Africa. The mercenaries vary from the racist German guy who loves to blow up wounded enemies with grenades to the guilty Captain to the female doctor ("Wait - you're a....woman?). Combine the 'behind enemy lines' story with a strangely proto-Cannibal movie setting and that pretty much sums it up.
You've got the jungle setting full of swamps, booby traps, deadly animals and unfriendly natives. There's the racist white folk coming to a stick end, a bit of (sigh) animal cruelty, and Mister Cannibal movie himself, Ivan Rassimov! Ivan also starred in Deep River Savages, Last Cannibal World and Eaten Alive, so he was well familiar with rolling about in a jungle, screaming.
I'm a sucker for films where people travel through hostile landscapes fighting with each other so I kind of enjoyed this one. If you're tempted to watch Skin Em Alive, watch this instead. It's also full of racist characters, but at least there's a couple of African mercenaries in here too to balance things out a bit.
