Devil Hunter (1980) aka El Canibal

Jess Franco famously said that all of his movies are crap. Well, this one has to rank among his crappiest. From a technical standpoint, it’s probably the worst Franco flick I’ve seen.

But his films are also known for abundant nudity and pretty women in perilous situations. Devil Hunter is a good example.

It starts off with a naked native woman running through a jungle swamp, pursued by four native men. They capture her, tie her feet and arms to a pole and carry her off like a big game hunter’s prize. Their tribe worships a bug-eyed cannibal god-man-freak who roams the jungle in search of captive tender female flesh, so they tie the lucky lady to an X-cross to await her doom. The beast gropes her, claws her breasts, chomps her neck, and treats us to a display of blood and ill-mannered chewing technique.

Cut to the big city where an actress played by lovely Ursula Fellner (aka Playboy’s Ursula Buchfellner) is on location for a shoot. Four villains barge into her bathroom and pluck her from the tub, wet, naked and screaming. Nice.

They take her to a remote location – yep, the very same area where the bug-eyed-cannibal-worshipping tribe live. The bad guys want Ursula’s rich daddy to pay ransom to get her back, so they don’t want to hurt her…too much. They chain Ursula AOH, but not before kindly “dressing” her in a skimpy pink outfit. One honcho threatens her with a mean-looking curved machete, just enough to make her sweat and scream.

But the villagers have a different idea. Seems the only thing the cannibal god likes better than female flesh is white female flesh (no, I don't know why). They capture Ursula, tie her to one of those big-game poles and lug her back to the village. There she’s stripped, oiled up, and bound to the village totem pole with vines. Her wrists are at her sides, tied together with the vines looped around the back of the totem pole. Another vine secures her neck to the pole. Woo-hoo, it’s party time! The tribesmen hit the drums while the women dance (dressed in nothing but the same skimpy loincloths as the men). A sorceress-like woman with some connection to the cannibal god wiggles lasciviously, completely naked, and even flashes her pussy.

Next, they bind Ursula, still naked and arms outstretched, to the same X-cross where we saw the first cannibal-god victim. Her new-boyfriend-with-the-bloodshot-eyes likes what he sees, but instead of eating her, he removes her from the X-cross. Why? So we can watch him carry her through the jungle, occasionally slinging her over his shoulder. He takes her to an oceanfront cliff and appears ready to jettison her to the rocks below. Well of course, the “hero” shows up to rescue Ursula, after having climbed laboriously up the side of the cliff, and dispatches the mook. But wait…the hero slings Ursula over his shoulders and carries her – still naked - back down the cliff to the beach. Why? First, and most importantly, so we can get long and plentiful views of her bare butt mooning us. Secondly, he has a boat waiting there, which they use to sail away to get Ursula some new clothes. The End.

Movie plusses: Ursula Fellner (duh). She spends 95% of her screen time naked, or in bondage, or both – just the way it ought to be. Her reactions are good, she keeps it real and she’s the main reason to watch. There are lots of other gratuitous nudity scenes throughout.

Movie minuses: Well, as I said before, this movie is a turd. A viewer must slog through a lot of muck to enjoy the good stuff. Plot, dialogue, effects – it’s pretty lame.