Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, an exciting new column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to send my way.

Yet again, the good folks at horroryearbook had nothing to do with this one. (fucking slackers, send me some new shit to review already!) I recently received a very mysterious looking bloodstained envelope, postmarked from Italy of all places. There was no return address on the envelope and no letter or contact information inside the package. The envelope simply contained a crude looking screening copy of the lost Antonello Giallo cannibal cult classic ISLE OF THE DAMNED with a hand written post-it note attached to it which I later learned said “please review, thank you” in Italian.

I was very excited to finally have the opportunity to see this most notorious motion picture. As a long time fan of Italian horror, I am very familiar with the classic works of director Antonello Giallo. Some of Giallo’s more memorable efforts include the brutal sex thriller TWO NUDE EYES FOR YOUR SLAYER, the lurid and uncompromising DON’T RAPE MICKEY MOUSE, the Poe inspired THE CAT IN THE COFFIN, and the infamous and widely banned PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED.

After some extensive online research I learned that ISLE OF THE DAMNED was shot on location in Argentina in 1980. The film was Antonello Giallo’s attempt to cash in on the short lived cannibal film craze. ISLE OF THE DAMNED was so mean spirited and vile that the Argentinean government actually issued a warrant for Giallo’s arrest for suspicion of abuse of the native peoples! Giallo fled the country before the trail could begin, and the film was eventually banned in over 400 countries before finally going out of print. I’m not exactly sure who is responsible for this dvd presentation, but I was delighted to see that the film is 100% uncut and presented in a pristine digitally remastered form. A vast improvement over the murky looking and optically censored Japanese bootlegs that had been making the rounds for the past decade.

ISLE OF THE DAMNED is the gut wrenching tale of a tough as nails private investigator named Jack Steele. Steele is hired by a morbidly obese, rape happy, child molesting treasure hunter to track down the coveted treasures of Marco Polo. Their quest for lost gold eventually leads them to the savage jungles of Argentina. Steele decides to bring along his impish and quite possibly gay adopted son Billy along for the ride in an effort to make a man out of him. The so-called civilized white men are quickly shocked back into the stone age when they stumble upon the primitive cannibal tribe of the Yamma Yamma.

The cannibals make a hot lunch out of the group’s guides, and the survivors have to take refuge in the large mansion of a reclusive and mysterious anthropologist named Alexis Kincaid. Steele becomes convinced that Kincaid holds the secrets to Marco Polo’s treasures but can’t begin to imagine the deadly secrets that Kincaid actually possesses. As the cannibals whip themselves into a ferox, the treasure hunters themselves degenerate into a state of savagery. Will they find the lost treasures, or will they get an up close and personal look at the bellies of the beasts?

I was blown away by this film. It really delivers the savage horrors and contains plenty of extremely gory moments of cannibalistic atrocities and cruelty. ISLE OF THE DAMNED makes CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST look like MARY POPPINS by comparison. There had to have been at least six dozen scenes of graphic impalement, castration, disembowelment, and gory gut munching. I found this film to be severely intense, gruesome, horrifying, and unsettling. It is chock full of close up entrail ripping cannibal chow downs and ample amounts of nudity and cruelty to animals. I consider myself to be a hardened horror fan, and even I had a hard time sitting through the brutal scene where a young girl has her father’s freshly severed penis shoved into her vagina. Parents of impressionable and mentally retarded young children should really think twice before popping this one into the dvd player on family fun night. Sick fucks with an appetite for depraved ultra violence on the other hand should consider this a must see.

If you’re still reading this review you obviously fall into the latter category. If you want to learn more about the works of Antonello Giallo or find out where you can catch a screening of ISLE OF THE DAMNED, you should check out the official Giallo Myspace tribute page: http://myspace.com/antonellogiallo or take a peek at http://direwitfilms.com for more info.

KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING!!!