The Green Inferno

The Green Inferno is a 2013 American splatter cannibal horror film directed by Eli Roth. The film was inspired by and is a homage to Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s and early ’80s “cannibal boom”, including Cannibal Holocaust (1980), which features a film-within-a-film titled The Green Inferno. Among the cast are Lorenza Isso, Magda Apanowicz & Ariel Levy.

Our leading lady Justine who is a freshman in college, joins an activist group led by Alejandro and his girlfriend, Kara mainly because she is challenged by him and seemingly has an initial attraction for him. The group plans a trip to the Amazon rainforest to stop a company from logging and obliterating ancient native tribes there; the goal is to film the logging crews with cell phones and stream footage to raise awareness. Justine, whose father is an attorney for the United Nations, suggests she could bring attention to the issue through her father. The operation is funded by a drug dealer named Carlos, who takes the group of students to Peru via plane.

They arrive in the Amazon and head to a logging site where they begin their protest, chaining themselves to bulldozers while filming the loggers cutting down trees. The logger’s private militia then arrives on the scene, but cannot seem to break open the chains to get them away from the logging site. The protest receives viral attention on the internet when Justine is almost shot dead by one of the militia officers. The group is then arrested, but Carlos pays the police to let them go. Justine then realizes that she was a pawn: if things went badly, nobody would kill the daughter of a UN attorney. As the plane leaves, it crashes into the forest, resulting in the death of Carlos. And that’s when the shot really hits the fan. The survivors (another one accidentally is killed when he dazed and confused walks into the spinning propellers. Justine, Alejandro, Kara, Jonah, Lars, Amy, Samantha, and Daniel, the only survivours are captured by villagers, knocked out by darts dipped in a tranquilizer, who are painted in red and look really savage. While the others are imprisoned in a bamboo cage, Jonah is led onto a rock slab, tied up and the village shaman lady cuts off his eyeballs and tongue and eats it and then his head is cut off and the villagers cut the rest of him up and cook and eat him.

These were the same villagers that the group were trying to save from the loggers! Alejandro later tells the group that the mission to save the tribe was a fake, and that he had been paid by Carlos to do it, who owned a rival logging company. After Amy has a hilarious bout of diarrhea in front of the others, Samantha attempts to escape, but she is darted and the group then finds out that they’re being watched by a watchman. The 3 ladies are ordered out tested with a sharpened instrument, and Justine is revealed to be a virgin. She is then taken away, and prepared for a genital mutilation ceremony. Samantha then escapes after the watchman is distracted by a ringing phone and we see her run upto the river and hide in a canoe. The next day the group is given scraps of pork meat in bowls, and Amy after eating sees that a piece of skin at the bottom of her bowl, bearing one of Samantha’s tattoos. She then realizes that Samantha was recaptured and killed, and that she just ate her girlfriend. She then smashes her bowl and uses a shard to cut her throat and commit suicide. Lars then puts a sack of marijuana that Carlos gave him down Amy’s throat, hoping that will make the tribe sick if they eat her. Eventually, Justine and Daniel escape, leaving Alejandro (for lying) and Lars (who Alejandro knocks out, out of anger) behind. Lars later wakes up, but the tribe then eats him alive.

Daniel and Justine reach the plane but are caught and brought back. Daniel is tied to a pole and has his legs broken, covered in a green powder and is fed to ants while Justine is prepared for the ceremony. Logging machinery attracts the tribe to the jungle; the distraction allows Justine to escape with the help of a child sympathizer. Justine sees a dying Daniel and he begs her to kill him. Justine can’t do it so the child kills him and takes her to the river where she escapes two villagers who chase her and avoids a jaguar and runs into the logging team. Using a phone she took from the crash site to pretend to film the fight, so the militia would stop firing on the natives. Justine is then taken home to safety, by one of the loggers’ helicopters. Back in New York, she lies to her father and the UN, telling them she was the only survivor of the crash and that the tribe was friendly to her. That night, Justine has a nightmare that Alejandro comes back from the jungle. The next morning, she sees that Alejandro’s face on shirts is being used to promote further activism on campus by those unaware of his manipulations.

More like an exploitation film, with certain degree of racist theme abound in the film it still does have enough entertainment value for those who like gore and blood and torture. It doesn’t have anything original at all though and is more like a homage film. 6 outta 10!

RIP Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Hungarian actress whose self-parodying glamour and revolving-door marriages to millionaires put a luster of American celebrity on a long but only modestly successful career in movies and television, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 99. Gabor began her stage career in Vienna and was crowned Miss Hungary in 1936. She emigrated to the United States in 1941 and became a sought-after actress with “European flair and style,” with a personality that “exuded charm and grace.” Her first film role was a supporting role in Lovely to Look At. She later acted in We’re Not Married! and played one of her few leading roles in Moulin Rouge (1952), directed by John Huston, who described her as a “creditable” actress.

Married at least eight times, calling everyone “Dahlink,” flaunting a diamonds-and-furs lifestyle and abetted by gossip columnists and tabloid headline writers, Ms. Gabor played the coifed platinum femme fatale in plunging necklines in dozens of film and television roles, many of them cameos as herself. Outside of her acting career, Gabor was best known for her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle, glamorous personality, and her many marriages, having had nine husbands, including hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and actor George Sanders. She once stated, “Men have always liked me and I have always liked men. But I like a mannish man, a man who knows how to talk to and treat a woman – not just a man with muscles.” Gabor’s divorces inspired her to make numerous quotable puns and innuendos about her marital (and extramarital) history. She commented: “I am a marvelous housekeeper: Every time I leave a man I keep his house.” When asked, “How many husbands have you had?”, she was quoted as responding, “You mean other than my own?”Gabor later claimed to have had a sexual encounter with her stepson, Nicky.

Ms. Gabor had been in and out of hospitals for years. She suffered head and other injuries and was hospitalized for a month in 2002 after a car driven by her hairdresser struck a utility pole in West Hollywood. It left her in a wheelchair, and she retreated from the spotlight. She suffered a stroke in 2005 and had surgery for a blocked carotid artery. In 2007, she again underwent surgery to treat a leg infection and aftereffects of the stroke. In July 2010, she underwent hip-replacement surgery after a fall at her home in which she also suffered a concussion. Released from the hospital in August, she was readmitted two days later for treatment of unspecified complications. In January 2011, her right leg was amputated above the knee after an infection proved resistant to antibiotics. Doctors said the operation was necessary to save her life. Gabor died of a heart attack at her home in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2016, aged 99. She had been on life support for the previous five years.[62]
She is survived by husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, whom she wed in 1986, and the union garnered her the title Princess von Anhalt, Duchess of Saxony.